Know which channels actually drive pest control leads with Google Analytics — setup, key reports, and decisions.
As the owner of a home services business, you know your website is critical. While we want to create many different pathways for customers to find and engage with your business, your website serves as the backbone of our whole strategy.
Just like with any other critical element of your business, it is incredibly important for you to understand how your website is performing and areas where you can improve your business performance. One of the main tools in your toolbelt for understanding how your website is performing is Google Analytics.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is your primary tool for understanding what happens after someone decides to visit your website. Whether they found you organically or from an ad campaign, Google Analytics will start to track the different pages a user visits and the actions they take on your site. This tool is where you start to understand how customers decide to work with you and your business after interacting with your website.
Google Analytics can be used to answer a wide variety of questions. Are you generating a large number of clicks on an advertising platform, but the phone still isn’t ringing? Would you like to know which articles on your site are actually contributing to leads? Google Analytics gives you the tools to dive into your site and answer these types of site behavioral questions.
Universal Analytics vs Google Analytics 4
In 2023, Google officially made the switch from the previous version of Google Analytics, known as Universal Analytics, to the new Google Analytics 4. While the Universal Analytics was focused on pages visited, Google Analytics 4 has an increased emphasis on the events that happen on those pages.
For a local service business, this is an adjustment that clarifies the focus you should have when analyzing your website's performance. Ultimately, you don’t make money when someone visits your site. You make money from the actions people take on your site and GA4 has a special focus on helping you analyze just that.
If you have set up Google Analytics previously for your website, but haven’t looked for a few years then you likely need to upgrade to Google Analytics 4. To verify which version of Google Analytics you are currently using:
- Login to your Google Analytics account. If you haven’t logged into Google Analytics for a while and haven’t upgraded to GA4, you will likely see some warning banner at the top of your screen:
- To further verify, you can click on the dropdown menu in the upper left of your screen to see all the properties you have access to:
- If you are still using Universal Analytics, you will only see on entry under the properties column and the ID below the property name will start with UA-. If your ID is a combination of numbers and doesn’t begin with UA, than you are already setup with a GA4 account.
If you are still using Universal Analytics, the simplest way to upgrade is to use the provided Setup Assistant. This tool provided by Google will walk you through the process of setting up your new GA4 property as well as making sure you pull any elements from your Universal Analytics setup into your new GA4 property.
Signing Up For Google Analytics 4
If you are signing up for Google Analytics for the first time, the process all starts at https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/. On that page you will sign in with a gmail account and you will be pushed into the account creation process. This is a pretty simple process, but we will provide a few recommendations as you walk through this step by step process.
- You will first be asked to name your account. We generally recommend you name your account after your business, but this is up to you. You will be asked what data you would like to share with Google. This is again up to you. The data you choose to share is primarily around your usage of the tool. You can choose to share aggregated site metrics to gain access to insights for your business vertical which again is up to you.
- In step 2, you are naming the property you are creating. Think of this as the name of the data source you are tracking. We generally like to follow a pattern of “www.yourwebsite.com – GA4” to keep things very clear, but if you have an alternative naming convention you prefer, feel free to set this to whatever makes sense to you. This is also the step where you set the timezone and currency for your account.
- Here you help Google get an idea of your business vertical and size. Google is still working on expanding the categories they list here so just get as close as you can. This information helps Google provide comparisons and insights against other businesses like yours if you agreed to that in step 1.
- This step is all about helping Google set up the reports your Google Analytics 4 property will start with. This is all customizable in the future, but we generally start with Generate Leads, Raise Brand Awareness, and Examine User Behavior.
- You will be asked to accept the terms of service before being prompted to Start Collecting Data. We will cover the process of installing the Google Analytics 4 tag in a later chapter so you can select the option to Skip This for Now on this screen or you can skip ahead and take care of that install now.
Tracking Your Business Goals
Diving Into Platform Performance
Identifying Top Performing Website Content
Put this chapter to work
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