Does your website have Google Analytics? If your answer is no, stop what you’re doing right now and get it set up.

Why, you ask? Because you can use Google Analytics to understand exactly how people use your website. For any recruitment business, you want these key actions to happen; web forms are completed, people call in. Using Analytics will help you visualise a users experience with your website and identify high-converting and weak points.

 

Why Would I Want to Use Google Analytics?

Well, there’s three pretty simple reasons:

  1. It’s free to use – so you’re not adding to your business costs by using analytics
  2. It’s really simple to get to grips with, giving you in-depth insight for minimal effort
  3. It gives you invaluable data about your marketing and your customer activity

Your main objective is to is get candidates to apply to jobs on your website not job boards, which are costly. Using Google Analytics will show you how many people visit your jobs and how many applied (if your track page conversions as goals).

Here’s how you can use Analytics to measure success and do more business:

 

Technology

60% of job seekers use mobile devices to search and apply for jobs: that’s 3 in 5 people. Out of that 60%, almost half are applying for those jobs via mobile apps. So understanding the technology your digital audience is using is important. Google Analytics gives you access to this knowledge, so you can make a more informed decision of where and how to advertise.

If your audience are accessing your site via mobile devices, you can focus your marketing energies on mobile-centric advertising. You can also use this information to ensure that your website is responsive and works flawlessly as mobile site (because there’s nothing worse than trying to navigate a site on your phone that still looks like a desktop webpage).

As shown below, you can see what browsers are being used, as well as what the most popular devices are:

 

Source

Analytics lets you keep track of how people get to your website, and what page they end up on. Setting up UTM codes for each link you share online, whether that’s on an ad or a post written by one of your recruiters, allows you to see where your clients and candidates are coming from.

The are a lot less complicated to create than you may initially think. You can access a lot of apps and browser extensions that do the building for you, so you just need to enter in a few pieces of information. This article from Google provides useful links to setting up different kinds of tracking.

Click here to use Google’s own link builder and start tracking how people get to your website. We would advise shortening the URL so that it takes up less space on your LinkedIn posts:

 

Average Time on Page

How do you know if the copy you have on your landing pages is actually worth reading? Using the Average Time on Page field on Google Analytics you can see which pages are losing you business, by the amount of time your audience spends on them.

Here’s a quick guide on how to find out whether you need to update your web content:

  1. See how long it takes you to read the copy (no skim reading!)
  2. Compare with the average time your audience spends on that page
  3. If it’s a lot less, it’s time to update the copy

 

Conversion

One of the most useful elements of Analytics is being able to see what converts on your website. Whether that’s someone downloading a piece of content or reaching out to you via an online form.

The benefit of this is clear. Being able to see what works for your business allows you to analyse and rework other, less successful content. It also allows you to evaluate your marketing budget, push more traffic towards the converting content and do more deals.

To track your website conversations, you will need to set up a feature called Goals. We’ve found a useful guide on how to do this for you.

 

Date Comparison

Analytics gives you the ability to compare how your marketing has performed, and the flexibility to compare over whatever date range works for you. You can look back over its performance over the previous 12 months, the last week or in the last 24 hours.

You can use this feature to help you in the following ways:

  • Track whether an amend to our website as caused an increase in traffic, conversions, and deals.
  • See which marketing channels are bringing in the most business.
  • See what day and time are best to send out email communications and social posts.
  • See what day and time people search and apply for jobs.
  • See how they’re applying for jobs (mobile or desktop).

The possibilities are endless. You can read more about how to take advantage of the feature here.

 

Make the Most of Google Analytics

You don’t need a Google wizard on your team to use Analytics. There is a huge encyclopedia of advice, guides and training available for you online – and much of it is free. Google themselves even offer a free course on how to use their platform.

Use Google Analytics correctly and you’ll have the knowledge you need to improve your marketing and grow your business.