Google Analytics is one of the best (FREE) digital insight tools available, but it is seriously underused by most aviation, aerospace and defense businesses.

BDN’s most sought-after service is our website strategy and design package. As part of our on-boarding process, one of the first questions we ask is whether a client has Google Analytics installed on their current site, and 90% of the time the answer is no. While BDN does not require Google Analytics to start a project, it does make a huge difference when developing the strategy because it allows us to pull insights and intelligence straight from the source we want — website users.

If you are not currently leveraging Google Analytics, we highly encourage you to do so. Even if you don't need a new website, it can still help you improve your overall digital presence and marketing efforts. Here’s how.

Google Analytics Overview

Measure your digital presence through website visitor metrics. Google Analytics tracks data on visitor usage and can help you assess how many people are visiting your website at any given time, what percentage of those users are unique or new to your website, the demographics and geographical locations of your visitors, and the types of devices they are using to visit your website.

Why it matters. All of this data provides important insight into your audience. For example, it can help you assess if the audience you are actually attracting aligns with your desired targets. If not, you need to change your marketing approach. By understanding what devices visitors are using, you can determine if your website is optimized for that platform and user experience, and make adjustments as appropriate. These are all key items that should be considered in your marketing efforts.

Measure user engagement with your website. Google Analytics provides metrics that show how your website visitors interact with your website through data points such as pages-per-session, average-visit-duration, bounce rate, behavioral flow charts, top website pages reports, goal completions, and more.

Why it matters. All of these metrics can help you determine the value of your website for your audience. For example, if website traffic numbers are high but you have a very low pages-per-session average, a low average visit duration and high bounce rate, then you can assume that users are initially interested in your website, but the content ultimately did not fulfill their needs. Therefore it may be time to re-evaluate your current website content.

Why it matters. The information you gain by understanding and leveraging these reports can help guide where you should be spending your marketing dollars to receive the best return on investment. For example, if you have a referral domain that is driving traffic to your website and produces high engagement metrics, that source may be worth exploring further to see how you can leverage it for more website traffic. Or, if you are investing quite a bit of time and effort in a campaign, but the campaign isn't yielding website traffic or conversions, then it’s clear that corrective actions are needed.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg with Google Analytics. While it may take some time to master, it is well worth the investment in the long run to drive better educated marketing decisions and improved marketing effectiveness. As marketers in the aviation, aerospace and defense industry already know — time and money are hard to come by, and we need to use what we have as efficiently as possible. That’s why tools like Google Analytics are so important.

Getting Started with Google Analytics

If you are ready to start tracking your digital data, we highly encourage you to install Google Analytics now (if you haven’t already). 

As always, contact BDN and we will be happy to help you get started. If you already have Google Analytics but need help deciphering the data — we can help with that, too! 

Just email or call us at 480.924.0690.