Improving User Experience and Website Performance with Google Analytics

Google Analytics assists you by giving insights on conversion rates and how it came to be. It removes guesswork on visitor behavior and even provides useful data on user experience. It is also used to improve digital products by telling you what you what users are doing, where they come from, how long are they engaged and more.

All these data impacts your conversion and retention rates, and these data are enormous, giving it the impression of complication, but keep in mind that all of these are needed to help you understand how to move forward not only for website performance but for improving user experience as well.

To improve user experience, one must understand how users behave. What they do in your site, where they go, where they come from, what they click, what they view, or what keeps them from staying and leaving. Learning these with Google Analytics gives you the potential to discover problems that you can address immediately.

Google Analytics have features that can help you understand them better. Take a look at the following features so it can help you further:

1. Behavior Flow – identifies pages, volume of traffic, and paths of traffic, such as the most common routes visitors take to get in and out of specific pages.
2. Event Tracking – it lets you track actions that are otherwise invisible. It allows you to track specific clicks like on CTA buttons, links, navigation, or anything else that’s interactive.
3. Audience – this is your best friend if you want to understand behavior further. It gives you a comprehensive breakdown of who your visitors are. This collects data based on visitors’ location, demographics like gender, and even which devices they used to visit your site.
4. Page Views – this feature checks how often a page is visited. It might be a simple tool but deeper analysis of its data provides you an indepth picture of the relationship between your users and content. Compare unique visits and returning visits as these will give you an idea of what we mean.
5. Bounce Rates – this refers to the percentage of people who entered your site and left without clicking through somewhere else.
6. Time on Page – this tool tells you how long people stay on your website and its individual pages.

Google Releases Keen

Here is a quick news for everyone. Google just released a new app and its name is Keen. What makes this news special is because the release was “quiet”.

By quiet, we mean the app was released by Google’s Area 120 team, it is an internal incubator that creates experimental apps and Keen is one of those apps. Keen is an AI powered application which rivals Pinterest. Keen draws on the search giant’s machine learning expertise to curate topics. It is available today on the web and on android.

Keen aims to be an alternative to “mindlessly” browsing online feeds. According to CJ Adams, co-founder of Keen, “On Keen […] you say what you want to spend more time on, and then curate content from the web and people you trust to help make that happen. ou make a ‘keen,’ which can be about any topic, whether it’s baking delicious bread at home, getting into birding or researching typography. Keen lets you curate the content you love, share your collection with others and find new content based on what you have saved.”

WordPress Migration Tips

When we talk about migrating a WordPress website to a new hosting, the idea itself seems daunting and tedious. Too much technical aspects to consider, and talk about the anxiety it gives when you think about possible propagation issues such as PHP conflicts or security token issues.

Fret not my friend; website migration doesn’t have to be difficult. We at IntegratePro are about to give you tips on transferring a WordPress website to a new hosting:

1. Get things right at the beginning. Make sure that you first find the right hosting provider. Cheap hosting doesn’t mean it is good hosting. You should look for quality in services provided and features too. You don’t want to risk your site being moved again and again. If we may recommend, try SiteGround.
2. Get the right hosting plan for you. It is economic to get an annual plan compared to monthly plan, that’s for sure. And consider the number of visitors your site get to maximize the bulk of work your chosen server will be getting. Yes, plan upgrades are possible, but that would require server transfers to which can result in site downtime. So it is best to choose the right plan early on.
3. Update your site before the transfer. This lessens possible conflicts with the new server. And in case there is one, you get to see them right after migration which gives you ample time to fix. Update your WordPress core files, themes and plugins too. Anyway, an updated website is a secure website.
4. Backup your Old Site. Not only will the backup file be your migration file, it will also give you a copy of the site itself in case things go out of hand. We recommend using backup plugins instead of going with the manual approach of compressing web files and extracting databases. You can use BackupBuddy or Duplicator.
5. Pointing Domain Name to the Right Hosting. This could be your old or new hosting. Knowing when to point them depends on your circumstance. If you are trying to leave a bad performing host filled with bugs and performance issues, then you might want to point to the new host immediately. But if your old site is performing well, then you can do that after everything has already been tested to be extra sure with your new environment.
6. Use a temporary domain. If you are testing out your new hosting, it is better to use a temporary domain instead of making your new hosting live.

Small Business: What Does Your Website Need?

Do you have a small business? Do you want to make a website for it? It is likely a good decision to do so, especially with today’s situation. The “New Normal” is definitely pushing towards digital presence, in fact, it has become important to all businesses these days.

When people are locked down at home, and while the whole world is transforming into a new digital economy, building your own website has become a real need. Yes, having a website is no longer a “want” for business owners, but a “need”.

So what does your website need if you are a small business? We at IntegratePro are going to give you a list of all your needs to help you out as you start your new website.

1. Clearly describe who you are and what you do in your website. Make sure all your copies and content are clear and precise, giving visitors a clear picture of what they visited. Immediately tell your vistors how you can help them as soon as they visit your homepage.
2. Use a sensible and simple website address. When you choose your domain name, it should be as simple as possible, easy to remember and easy to type and use the .com extension as users are conditioned to type that when they enter a web address.
3. Make sure that you have a clear navigation. Limit your menu items to at least 4 items, and make sure that they point to relevant pages or features of your website. Make sure that your navigation is also in expected spots. It is not bad to be experimental but, hey, don’t mess with what works as well.
4. Your contact information must be easy to find. Some lose their customers just because it took them a minute or two to find their contact info so make sure that it can be seen. Make it easily accessible to users on the top right or top left of your homepage. It’s also advisable to place contact information on every page in the footer or sidebar.
5. Add customer testimonials. Not much explanation needed, just make sure you add a testimonial section to give visitors the feeling of authenticity and trust when they visit your website. Oh, and make sure that your testimonials are real testimonials. Visitors easily notice a fabricated testimonial when they see one.
6. Create engaging and obvious call-to-actions to let your customers clearly understand what actions they are expected to take on your site. Do you want them to call your expert for a free consultation or sign up for your newsletter, book a meeting, or add a product to a shopping cart? Tell them.
7. SEO Basics. Learn basic SEO as it will give you tons of help in terms of web presence. No need for an SEO pro, the basics is enought to get the gears going. Of course, SEO services and recommendations are definitely beneficial, but if you can’t afford them at the moment, you must become familiar with some SEO fundamentals and apply them before launching your site. If you need help with your SEO, let us know.
8. Content is still King. Your audience likes fresh content and Google likes it too. You need to make fresh and unique content. If you can give new content daily or weekly, the better. This gives search engines a push to crawl your website and bring them to the top search results.
9. Find the right hosting provider. This can make or break your website venture too so make sure you choose the right hosting provider for you. It’s essential to have a secure and reliable hosting service provider that will help your website run smoothly and continuously without any threats to your content and sales. If we may recommend, try SiteGround.