These marketing tools are the baseline of what your website should be leveraging to improve its performance as a sales engine.
Google Analytics: It’s shocking how many businesses have a website and either don’t have Google Analytics installed on their website, or don’t have it set up properly to track as much information as they can.
Google Analytics is a free tool that you can sign up for to gain insights about several factors of your website’s user experience. To signup, simply go to Google Analytics to create your free account.
If you’re not sure if you have Google Analytics installed on your site, here’s a way you can check.
- Go to your website >
- Right Click >
- Choose “View Page Source” >
- Find “Google Analytics”
If you have it installed, you’ll see it displayed in your “Find” search results.
Installing GA on your website is not overly complicated, but that can also depend on what platform you’re using. At a very basic level, since many websites are using WordPress, you have a few different options to consider:
- Have a developer install Google Analytics: If your developer is a custom coder, they most likely (and rightly so) hate the overuse of WP Plugins. If you’re lucky enough to have a custom developer working on your site, they can install the snippet of code and ensure it’s installed properly.
- Use a Plugin. The great things about plugins is that they provide non-website developers with the ability to take a shortcut to adding new tools and functionality to your website. The downside is that too many plugins can begin to clog up your website’s performance. If your WordPress website is slow to load, there’s a good chance it’s being heavily weighed down by plugins.
- Use Google Tag Manager: This is the preferred method for adding Google Analytics because GTM provides you the opportunity to connect tracking across multiple domains, or Cross Domain Tracking. This is especially important for E-Commerce store that need to track what happens after your customer adds to cart. On many E-Commerce stores, once you go from Cart to Checkout, your URL changes to the secure checkout flow. This means your domain has changed, and if you don’t have Google Analytics connected on both domains, you’re missing the opportunity to track important cart flow information. If someone abandons cart at shipping, or before completing your order, you’ll want to see that. Google Tag Manager helps you GA code speak to each other across multiple domains.
Google Tag Manager: Your site can function without Google Tag Manager, but honestly, why would it? Like most of us, you’re probably using multiple 3rd party marketing software tools. Many of them tend to have tracking pixels that you need to install on your website in order for them to provide data based on whatever marketing channel they specialize in.
Again, you could add these pixels on an individual basis, but what happens is that your website gets bogged down with a lot of 3rd party Javascript code which can affect the performance of your website. By adding Google Tag Manager, you’re eliminating that issue and allowing easier cross-platform data sharing (if you’re so inclined).
GTM is a container where you can hold all of your 3rd party tracking pixels. To you, it may several marketing tools with individual tracking codes. To your website, it will look like only one tracking code. This can be a game-changer because it will give you the ability to expand your marketing insights and help you make smarter data-based marketing decisions.
Domain SSL: On average, approximately 50% of website users abandon the site if it does not show that it’s secure. Think about it. Do you want to share personal data with a website that looks like they could be easily compromised?
Adding an SSL certificate to your website’s domain is very easy and in some cases, FREE. If you don’t know if you have a secure website, it’s pretty easy to see.
Visit your website. In the browser, you’ll either see http:// or https://. If you don’t see the “s”, you don’t have an SSL installed. Additionally, it’s become pretty customary for browsers to render a lock icon in the browser.
There’s no shortage of tools you could be using to increase your website’s performance, but it starts with ensuring you use the three we mention. What marketing tools do you find critical to your business?