What features are required to track customers on a website?

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Auditing and capturing website analytics is incredibly valuable to website owners. These insights can help improve your customer’s experience and help you better prioritize what content your viewers are most engaged with on your site. So, how can you track customers on a website? 

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A handful of tools aid this process, but the best free tools to capture website data are Google Analytics and Google Search Console. 

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Google Analytics can help site owners understand how visitors find your website, what brought them there, and what content they engaged with the most. The process of implementing this sort of tracking is relatively straightforward, depending on your site provider. Check out this article from Google for more information. 

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Google Search Console provides more details, well, about search. When a visitor searches a set of keywords, questions, or phrases, Google measures the entire internet for activity and provides the user with an outcome. Search Console allows site owners to view and measure how new visitors find their site, therefore, enabling the justification to prioritize content, search terms, and content creation.

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Regarding the requirements that Google has for implementing tracking on your website, there are a few ways to approach this on your site, but the simple answer is there aren’t any! 

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1. Accept and present Google’s terms of service on your website. When you sign up for Google Analytics or Search Console, the site owner must accept Google’s terms. The owner can then present these terms on their site. Although this is not a requirement, it’s a best practice to ensure your visitors understand the captured data. 
2. Present custom “cookies” and “privacy policy” statements to new traffic. We’ve all visited a site for the first time and found a message asking to accept or deny cookie collection. An addition like this can help visitors know how their data is used on your site. 

1. Disclaimer: If your site uses more robust tracking metrics or custom solutions, you MUST be presented with an accept/ deny agreement to new visitors. If the site owner does not show this message, they risk having their site blocked by search engines and potential customer backlash if it’s found that they are capturing data incorrectly. 

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Now, as a site owner, what analytics Google provides once I sign up?

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This is an excellent question before choosing an analytic platform, as your business may want to consider a third-party (outside of Google) option to collect detailed, detailed analytical information. However, using Google Analytics, you can view the following critical site information: 

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• Where and how a visitor start their journey on your site 
• What keywords or terms are being used to find the website 
• Once a user clicks one of the search results, you can view the web pages a visitor viewed 
• Search categories or buckets visited by the search
• The effectiveness of search results as it pertains to conversions and user engagement
• Where are your users from, and how long do they spend on your site 
• The amount of capital your traffic is potentially worth 

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Site owners must consider all their options and analytic data points before implementing a tracking feature on their website. Moreover, auditing and measuring analytics like the options mentioned can drastically help you improve your site’s traffic, performance, keywords, and content creation. 

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If you would like expert insights on improving your site, book a call with us using the link here. Thank you for taking a moment to review this blog! We hope that you learned something new!