Google Analytics 4 And Its Best Practices For Your Business!! with Chris N. Cheetham-West

You can find Chris N. Cheetham-West at:
Website: https://chrisnwest.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/speakerchrisnwest/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nimi.cheethamwest
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisNWest
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisnwest/

Chris N. Cheetham-West Podcast Transcription

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Welcome to another episode of Win The Hour, Win The Day, and I am your host, Kris Ward. And today in the house we have Chris Cheetham West. He is a digital marketing expert, but he’s gonna talk to us about Google Analytics because probably we’re under utilizing it, not using it, or also not aware that there’s some significant changes coming up that we really wanna know about. So welcome to the show, Chris.

[00:00:25] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Hey, how you doing? Thanks for bringing me on. So I look forward to sharing some useful tips.

[00:00:29] Kris Ward: Oh, good. We love useful tips here. We’re all about that. Okay, so let’s start at the beginning. I don’t think I hear about Google Analytics in day-to-day conversation. I think we’re probably not putting the onus on it that it should be.

[00:00:45] And I have to say with my team, we do stats meetings and we look at stuff and I think we’re hooked up in Google Analytics, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. And maybe that’s because we, up until recently, been using SEMRush, so I don’t know if we had that tied in together or what, whatever. But yeah, I don’t hear it talked about as much as I think it probably should be. So where do we start? What are we missing?

[00:01:08] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Oh yeah, of course. One, one you can start easily because it’s a free tool and it’s analytics.google.com. It’s really useful. And the thing is, you want to always know if all your efforts are working. So we’re posting on social media doing email marketing campaigns.

[00:01:26] And just engaging online, but we wanna make sure that what we are doing is actually efficient and we know what’s working. So if we know what’s working, then we can easily take advantage of that and do more of what’s working as well. So it’s, that’s use and people are missing all the useful information that’s in the tool, such as where people leave off at their site.

[00:01:48] The places where people come from their site, are they coming from email marketing or are they coming from promotions? And also just overall the journey of the people that come to your site. Where are they dropping off at?

[00:02:00] Kris Ward: Okay, so Google. Google Analytics is free. Now, if I’m using SEMRush, there’s two schools of thoughts here.

[00:02:08] Is it, oh, I should be using Google Analytics more because Google is telling me and it’s Google Analytics, so they’d know more than anybody else cuz it’s in their house. Or am I buying into the fact that, yeah, Google Analytics is a free tool, but it’s more vague and I should be putting some more muscle into that and paying for additional things, which is there? Is there either or, and which way should I be leaning?

[00:02:31] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Oh, no, you definitely should get into it because it actually has advanced features. So there’s so many features. And the good thing I like about the tool is the fact that it connects with so many other tools out there, such as Google Search Council, Google AdWord.

[00:02:47] So if you’re used to doing ads, it seamlessly connects with all these tools. So in one place you can look at how your ads are doing. You can also look at if your websites are having any issues such as indexing problem. So that’s one of the advantages of just going with one other tool is that Google it already integrates with other tools that you might already find useful.

[00:03:09] Kris Ward: Okay. All right. Okay. And I think you’re, am I right we’re not talking about this enough because I, like I said, this doesn’t come up daily with me.

[00:03:17] Chris N. Cheetham -West: No, it’s not. It’s not talking about it enough. It says, and that’s because in general, majority of businesses, they look at the small data such as here’s my visitors and here’s how many people go to my site this month, and maybe here’s how long they stay on the site, but there’s so much more to that, so you really can’t do much with the basic analytics said you get from, let’s say, for instance, a WordPress. Why, like content magic system or like any other like basic tool that’s tracks traffic, so you really don’t get what you really need and what you need to actually optimize.

[00:03:51] And I think that’s the challenge. And I think the challenge is it comes down to just in general, people don’t know much about the tool. So I’ve been presenting on Google Analytics for, I’ll say over eight years now and Oh, okay. For the most part, whether it’s a small business or it’s a large organization, there really, people are intimidated and it’s overwhelming to really look through all that information.

[00:04:13] And that’s why I tell people, don’t try to understand everything about the tool. Just get what you need based on your profession and your type of business.

[00:04:21] Kris Ward: I think it comes down to almost like buying a car. How many cars have I bought in my lifetime? And there’s some basics I’m looking for, and none of it is really about things I should be worried about.

[00:04:31] Is it comfortable? And then I always say, does it give good MI gas mileage? And they say something like, yeah. And I say, okay, but I don’t know my numbers, right? And I think we look at that with our website as well. It’s okay. It’s up there. There’s if you click on this video, it plays.

[00:04:47] But I know I can only speak for myself and sometimes I’m afraid to lift up the hood because it’s given me such headaches in the past going, oh, the analytics. It’s not that I don’t wanna know where they fall off or that where my sources of traffic are coming from, but I’m afraid that the more I look, the more I realize I don’t understand.

[00:05:05] And often then I’m going in the opposite of direction of where I want it to be going. And I get so far removed from my original goal cuz I’m just overwhelmed. So I think we look at our websites, I, for myself, in a wrong without going into any depth, and I think we, I just get, we get overwhelmed and we just abandoned this.

[00:05:26] Chris N. Cheetham -West: That’s a perfect explanation. That’s exactly.

[00:05:28] Kris Ward: Oh, I love being perfect.

[00:05:29] Chris N. Cheetham -West: That’s great. That’s exactly what film, it’s just intimidating, let me just not worry about it at all.

[00:05:35] Kris Ward: Exactly. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we should be making sure we’re signed up for Google Analytics because also you keep, you’ve mentioned a couple times when we were chatting that there’s gonna be a change in a couple of months now. What happens in that change? Is it going to service better? What, where, what are we anticipating with that change?

[00:05:56] Chris N. Cheetham -West: So Google Analytics four is gonna be the one that you have to use actually in July. So I recommend just trying to get one of those instead of just using the universal elements right now.

[00:06:08] So either transition over and start using it as well. So this new tool right here, Googles four, is gonna help us understand the entire customer journey. So if I go to your website today and I make some actions, but I don’t purchase your product, we’re gonna know why. So I go to your website today. I don’t do any purchasing.

[00:06:28] I go to your website next week. I still don’t do any purchasing, and I go to your website three weeks. From now and I finally make a purchase, so Google four is gonna be able to let us know that how long did it take us to make that purchase? Did we come from ads the first time or did we come from social media the second time?

[00:06:48] Or did we go and look at a newsletter and then finally make that purchase? So it attracts the entire journey. So you can use that information in order to optimize. And not only that…

[00:06:59] Kris Ward: Okay, hold on, let me jump in. Just so I understand. So Google Analytics four will say, Person A came to my website three times and they came from these three different directions.

[00:07:10] Whereas previously, up until now, we can say 10 people came on this day, five people came on this day, but it could be the same 10 or the same five. We don’t know. We’re just showing how many hits, but now we’re showing the lifespan of that journey.

[00:07:23] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Exactly. Yes.

[00:07:24] Kris Ward: Okay. That is helpful. All right. Okay. Okay. And Google Analytics four. So that’s already there. It’s in like it, it’s not official, but we can sign up for that.

[00:07:33] Chris N. Cheetham -West: You can. It’s official right now, but it’s just that right now you can sign up for the old analytics, but

[00:07:38] Kris Ward: Oh, okay.

[00:07:38] Chris N. Cheetham -West: in July, they’re not gonna let you use the older or older version, so you’re gonna have to use Google Analytics 4 in order to see the future, the data that comes.

[00:07:47] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:07:47] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yep.

[00:07:48] Kris Ward: That does sound like it’s helpful. Okay. All right. So now we’re gonna be able to see the lifetime journey of, they’re not gonna make it harder, though. It’s gonna be easier for us.

[00:07:56] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yeah, real easy.

[00:07:57] Kris Ward: Okay. And yeah, I think you’re just, you just sound like you make everything sound like a good time, but it may not be all right.

[00:08:04] I know one of your tips when we were chatting was, listen, don’t try to learn everything. And that is it we get overwhelmed. So if we go in and we say, we’re just gonna focus on this one thing, don’t give ourselves the headache and, take our toys and go home.

[00:08:17] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yeah. Yeah exactly. So you want to think about, For sure go in there. Don’t try to know everything, but figure out what type of business am I in and what do I really wanna know? Maybe five different metrics that you wanna look at. So for example, the tool is used by large organizations, small businesses, IT people, also, even PR organizations, reached out to me before saying, Hey, we want to use this for press releases.

[00:08:43] And just understanding how people respond to our articles. So there’s so many different types of uses for it. So you gotta figure out what is it for you? And some companies, for example, one of my clients, they’re a big e-commerce organization, so they sell millions of dollars worth of products every year, and they wanna be able to track the revenue and see how people engage.

[00:09:02] So their main goal would be to go to analytics and look at the e-commerce, right? So that’s another, that’s one way too. Another person. Person might just look at behavior. Maybe they have a branding website. And one good thing about this new Google Analytics 4 is it can track how many people scroll. When they scroll.

[00:09:21] And if they play videos, if they pause the video, if they start the video, if they download PDFs all automatically, you don’t have to put any additional code or anything.

[00:09:31] Kris Ward: Okay. All right. So that does sound like it’s helpful. So even if you’re just, coaching, consulting, or a small business, you can say this visitor revisited four times, played two videos, downloaded one PDF so we can look at the amount of depth and scope that they’re looking for to make a decision.

[00:09:50] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Exactly, yes.

[00:09:52] Kris Ward: Then that does sound helpful. It must be annoying to people like you that you wanna go around town ringing a bell to make us understand because we just, there’s so much coming at you all the time with, social media or AI or there’s all this stuff, and then we’re just not looking at some basic fundamentals that can be highly informative to us.

[00:10:10] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yeah. So yeah, so many simple products and you really just, you use it I’ll say once a week just to get an idea of it. Okay. And then from there you’ll get an idea of what reports you want, and then you can just have that report sent to you on a weekly basis. And so you get, you’re constantly up to date about what your users are doing on your site.

[00:10:28] Kris Ward: Yeah, I had a client and I was helping her with her systems and processes in her business. And again, we work with people to really get time back so they’re not working crazy hours and stuff. But she worked with companies and she did the Google dashboard, and I’m telling you, maybe this is it. I think pilots would have a hard time navigating the depth and the scope of what she was providing for her clients. And so I think we all just go this is too much.

[00:10:54] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yeah that’s exactly, so sometimes even for my business, I don’t have time to look at it every day, but I would rate those small reports, and even for speakers and coaches, like I do speaking engagements. And whenever somebody reaches out to me, the first thing I do is I go to my analytics and see what city or state or country they came from, what pays they landed on.

[00:11:13] Because most of the time it’s not on the homepage. And then what page do they go through? And how long did they stay on my speaker reviews page or my about section before they finally made that choice to contact?

[00:11:27] Kris Ward: Okay. That’s interesting. So it’s not just going in looking at the website, but if I reach out to you and then you say, oh, she reached out to me to be on the show, let’s take a look at.

[00:11:40] And I guess it’s hard to explain, but some way, somehow you are going to be able to key in my name or something and see how long I was on your site. Like how did they pick me out of the crowd.

[00:11:50] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yeah, not the name, but I just look at where they came from. So if somebody fills out my contact form and they say they’re in Chicago, then I just go to my analytics and see the visitors from chicago.

[00:12:01] Kris Ward: Ah, okay. That makes sense. I was like, how does that work? Okay. All right. So you’re doing a little bit of recon work type thing, so I reached out to you. I want you to do a speaking gig. I tell you, I’m, you say where are you from? Oh, I’m from Chicago. Great. So then you go and take a look and you can see we’ve only got two Chicago people.

[00:12:19] Or even one, and so then that helps you, gives you a little bit of assumption, but it’s certainly better than what the rest of us are doing.

[00:12:27] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yes.

[00:12:27] Kris Ward: Which you’re looking at the ceiling, right?

[00:12:29] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yes. Exactly.

[00:12:30] Kris Ward: Okay. Oh, that’s a little bit of a ninja move. Okay. All right. Okay. We look at it once a week, we decide we’re just gonna look at a couple things. What are some other things that you think we’re missing when it comes to either digital marketing or just using the Google analytics?

[00:12:46] Chris N. Cheetham -West: I think what’s missing is just trying to only look at the basics. So that’s one thing that’s missing. And also what’s missing is just optimization.

[00:12:58] So when we look at this information, it’s great, but we gotta think about what are we actually gonna do? Are we gonna take action? So that’s one of the major things. So for example, if we know that people are staying in a certain page for longer, how do we go to that page and add more content there? How do we go to page and add more call to actions because we know they’re spending time on that page and making sure everything runs smoothly.

[00:13:21] So I think the second thing is we look at the information, but you gotta take action. And even in my beginning, in my business, it’s like that’s what I’ll struggle too. I’ll look at the information, but I think to myself, what have I took, taken action on the separation I’m seeing.

[00:13:34] Kris Ward: Okay, so you bring up a really good point, and I think I would’ve done this wrong because if a bunch of people were landing on this page and you say, take action, I would’ve looked at it as, oh, okay, that page we’re doing good on, we better fix the other pages, but we, if that’s where they’re going, then make that page more robust.

[00:13:53] Put your efforts into that first, and then you may still have my philosophy and say what else can we do with the other pages if everybody’s going there? But keep adding to the page they’re visiting. I would’ve missed that. I would’ve missed that opportunity.

[00:14:05] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yep. That, yeah, that’s good. Cause it’s gonna get you more results over time. Even with the search optimization, more content, more engagement. We were there, so why not make that experience a little bit better?

[00:14:17] Kris Ward: And then that also lets us look at what pages they’re exiting on. So that can be a plus or a minus. Like they get to this page and they exit cuz they’ve made a decision or because they’ve had enough and this isn’t what they want.

[00:14:29] So that also can be, you can be giving that a lot of food for thought when you’re able to tell what pages they exit on.

[00:14:36] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yes, exactly. So you gotta think about if you see that page that they’re exiting on, do you want them to exit that page or would you like them to keep going throughout your website?

[00:14:46] That’s the question you wanna answer, because exit pages, they may be good if that’s what the, is that the contact page or if that’s the thank you page after purchasing, yeah, that’s great. But if it’s not, then you wanna look into why are they exiting that page before getting to the ultimate page that you want them to get to.

[00:15:02] Kris Ward: Yeah, I think we’ve had this conversation before with other guests that talk about websites and I think for so many of us, it’s once it’s get it done and be done with it, and you’re just think, oh, this beast of a website, just gotta get it up and then please leave me alone. But we, and I think we’ve been seduced and distracted by social media for so much cuz the sky is always falling with social media. The algorithms are always changing. Like you could be up 24 hours a day and never be on top of it. And so then I think we have neglected what really is our storefront to the world and what we’re doing in all these other platforms making ourselves crazy is so people will visit our website and then we just forget about it.

[00:15:44] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yes. Yeah, true. So that, and that’s the challenge, is like social media is one of those things where it’s great, but you get the immediate engagement from it when you post something. So you think okay, it’s helping my business, that’s great. But there’s all those other areas such as your sites, such as Google, such as search engines, other platforms that you want to pay attention to, because so much business is being done on those different channels.

[00:16:09] Kris Ward: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay, so we’ll look at the behavior report. We’ll check out the exit strategies. We’ll need to know more about our visitors, and really then just figuring out, even looking at which social media sites, that then we can be saying, all right, out of 10 visitors, whatever, seven are coming from LinkedIn, then maybe I don’t need to be making TikTok videos 24 times a day.

[00:16:32] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yes. Exactly. Yep.

[00:16:33] Kris Ward: Exactly. Oh my gosh. Okay. All right, so what else this, what makes you crazy that we don’t understand? If you’re living in this world and the rest of us are just walking around with like without a thought in our head about this, where else do you go? Wow, this is really missed opportunities.

[00:16:51] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Oh, okay. So missed opportunities. Wow. So I think even with the tool, you can see what buttons people are clicking on when they go to your site, they go to your homepage and it’s where are people clicking? And I show you they’re clicking on this page, this button, this on the top left, laptop, right?

[00:17:08] And then of course you know that all my call to action, such my social media icons, at the very bottom, it’ll let you know you probably need to push those to the very top then, because not everybody’s scrolling down on your sites. So that’s, yeah, that’s one of the missed opportunities. And just in general, You might look at your site and say, you know what?

[00:17:25] I can’t track if people fill out my contact form, or I can’t track if people pause a video, or they click a certain button. But you’ll be surprised of how much you can track, with the, with analytics. Pretty much right now with this new Disney profile, tracking scrolls, downloads, you can track it.

[00:17:44] If you put a link to my site, somebody goes to your site. And then they click on an art external article to maybe, I don’t know, entrepreneur.com, you can track and see if they clicked on that link before that wasn’t really possible unless you implemented additional codes. So that’s, so there’s so many different things that are opportunities right now for businesses, coaches, speakers to really maximize how they get results online.

[00:18:10] Kris Ward: Okay, so then I could be saying, oh, they landed on my page, but now they’re checking out my podcast, or am I checking out me on other podcasts? Okay, perfect. And so then in your world, do you lean heavily into this and if money is an object, you would do this and SEMRush or this and other things, or do you think you can live a complete life with the data that you’re getting from here?

[00:18:33] Chris N. Cheetham -West: Yes, you could live pretty much. Yep. Add advertisements, purchases, you pretty much, you’re good to go.

[00:18:39] Kris Ward: Okay. All right. And does, I guess it doesn’t give you info, I guess you like if it lands on your blog page. Of course. I’m asking all this cuz it’s, we can’t do show and tell on an audio podcast, but can you then see which podcast which blogs are doing the best or they just show you that they’re on the blog page?

[00:18:58] Oh yeah. So a lot of summer class, they, they see exactly what blogs or blog posts are doing the best. Okay. So it’ll give you a list of exactly what’s popular and then even the keyword words that people are typing in to get to your website, to get to the blog. So it’ll be something like how to fix your car and the snow, or something like that.

[00:19:15] They typed that in Google and they landed on the page about how to fix your car in bad weather, and you can see that specifically. So now you know to work on that blog post or to create more blog posts that are similar.

[00:19:27] And it’s free. And we’ve all been, yeah, it’s free. Oh my gosh. So we’ve all been ignoring this and it’s free. That’s not helpful. All right. Okay. So you’ve got a lot of work to do, Chris. You need to be bringing that bell and making people pay more attention to you and get this out there, right? I definitely do. Okay. All right. Where can people find more of your brilliance, Chris?

[00:19:48] Chris N. Cheetham -West: So chrisnwest.com. So that’s my website. And then Chris Cheetham West on LinkedIn. On Facebook, same thing. And then on Twitter, Instagram, Chris N. West is the username.

[00:20:00] Kris Ward: Okay, fabulous. I will make sure to put that in the show notes. Please share this with a, entrepreneurial friend, a business buddy, because boy oh boy, we’re missing the boat on this one. Chris, thank you so much. We appreciate you and your wisdom and we will see everyone else in the next episode. Thanks so much.