To me Google analytics is one of the best tools a dealer can use to understanding his/her traditional or digital marketing efforts.  However to often to many dealers don't know how to read Google analytics.  To me it is almost as important as reading your financial statement!  I bet I have your attention now!

Google analytics is awesome because it can help you analyze a campaigns effectiveness, a websites ability to convert leads and stickiness, where to put marketing dollars, when to spend and so much more.  

When setting up a web site if the vendor using their own back end data you should assist on putting the Google Analytics (GA) code on there too.  GA offers a 3rd party view with no financial interest.  Plus web site vendors can alter code to make things like what counts as a session or how to define a bounce rate different.  Use GA as your baseline always!

If you are just starting with GA let's start with the basic metrics to learn first:

Sessions—A session is the period of time a user is actively engaged with your web site within a date range.  I look at Sessions for two primary reasons.  One I want to see if certain marketing, inventory, campaign, etc. efforts spike my web traffic.  The other is to see where I should spend my money.  For example I typically see web site visits go up the last 15 days for the month so I like to put my marketing there to capitalize on the industries organic increases.

Pageviews—Pageviews means the total number of pages viewed by a user. Note, repeated views of a single page are counted.  I love this tool because I can go into the advance search and type in "NEW" or "USED" and see if users are coming to see my new or used inventory more.  For example, in a dealer I consult for he didn't understand why his web site visits were up but his new car business was flat.  By looking at the metrics of the individual pages we found out that the increase in visits were driven almost completely by users searching on pages geared to used cars.

Avg. Session Duration—The average length of a session.  Typically a car dealer will see about 5 to 6 minutes.  This metric also relates to bounce rate which you will see listed later.  If your TOS or Time on Site is to low it suggests that customers aren't engaging and the site isn't sticky.  A couple of reason for this could be your content isn't relevant or the sources leading customer to your web site are not very targeted.

Bounce Rate—Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e., visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).  I love this metric.  It tells so much about the sites ability to create conversions.  It also shows you how effective your marketing plan is.  Typically organic driven visits will have the lowest bounce rate, while pay per click or display advertising your bounce rate will rise.  That doesn't mean the rise isn't worth it but the lower you can keep the bounce rate the better your site will be in the long run.

Conversions—  Is you web site trying to generate activity like form submissions, leads, or calls?  Then you should set up goals in your GA.  Conversions are the number of times goals have been completed on your website.  For most car dealers you can do this by looking at your CRM or your call source provider.  However, if you want to know what buttons work best or what interlinking is getting clicked on most these goal can be really handy.  

In my next blog I will dive deeper into Acquisition.

Bottom line your dealership is better online when you know what the user experience is doing for you interms of engagement and activity.  You and your vendor should be analyzing Google analytics monthly and setting up your marketing with specific goals in mind.  If you are going to spend money on a web site you should understand what it is currently producing and have a road map on where it can/should go.

I like this video from Google too.