Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google which measures data relating to your web traffic. The two principal types of information it collects are data about your users and data on how they behave when they come on your website.
If you understand how your website is performing, then you can improve your business strategy going forward.
As your website is your most important marketing tool, optimising your presence in the digital landscape is incredibly important.
And if you are not doing this, you can be sure that others are and will.
Is Google Analytics a useful or necessary tool for legal organisations?
The short answer is overwhelmingly “yes”! It is both useful and, I would argue, necessary to keep ahead of your competition.
The benefits of Google Analytics are in essence:
► It helps you understand who is finding you online and what they are interested in. This in turn can inform your internal business development/marketing/content marketing strategies.
► You can track what people do when they come to your website eg which pages they read.
► You gain data on how people visit your website. This helps you to ensure that you are reaching your target audience and that your offering is maximised on all browsers/devices. Which of your marketing efforts (eg LinkedIn page/newsletter) is driving the most traffic to your website?
► It identifies the best performing pages on your website. This enables you to maximise the impact of your website eg keeping important pages interesting and therefore visited (eg your home page) as well as identifying any areas/pages which need more work.
► It is free!
Why should you as a legal business be thinking of using it? If you are selling a physical item, say the legendary widget, then the benefits of Google Analytics are obvious. However, legal services are just as much a “product” as widgets are. Whilst law organisations are notoriously averse to being considered to be “selling”, that is in fact exactly what they are: legal services rather than widgets but selling nonetheless.
The sooner you embrace this and align your business strategy accordingly, the quicker you will outpace the opposition.
In my experience, smaller legal organisations could do significantly more to optimise use of the information that Google Analytics provides.
This is largely because of lack of time but also lack of knowledge of what information can be mined as well as how to set up and report on the appropriate measurements. The terminology can seem pretty impenetrable to those of us who are not IT gurus.
You don’t need deep pockets to set things up but you do need time and expertise which is why I would recommend:
🗹 finding expert assistance. Getting expert help to set things up will save you time and help you get ahead in that fiercely competitive legal market. You can always manage the reporting going forward yourself (although obviously this can be outsourced too).
🗹 Even if you are going to get others to set up the reports, you will benefit from finding out more yourself about Google Analytics. If you develop a good understanding of how Google Analytics works, you may find that you are confident setting reports up and running them, certainly you will be in a much better position to instruct someone to set up reports that provide the information you need as well as analyse the results.
I am producing a series of articles on this important topic so, if you have not already done so, do subscribe to my weekly newsletter, “Ahead of the Wave” ((1) LinkedIn), if you want to follow these. My next article will explain some of the terminology used by Google Analytics.
Just to complicate things a little…
Google recently brought out a new version of Google Analytics called Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This is currently running in conjunction with the previous version which is called Universal Analytics.
If you are not currently using Google Analytics then use GA4 from the start. If you are already using it, then run both versions in conjunction. This is for a number of reasons including: GA4 is not yet fully up to speed + you want to keep historic data + from 1st July 2023 the only option will be GA4.
If your eyes are glazing at this point, don’t panic but keep reading. Get in touch with an IT expert such as your website provider who will help you sort things out.
And, importantly, don’t give up at this point. Google Analytics really is an amazing and free resource. It makes sense to get to grips with and make use of it.
If you would like to talk through any of the issues raised in the article, please do not hesitate to contact me.