Soapbox Engage Blog

A key reason you’re not converting as many website visitors to donors is due to poor performing website pages. Too often, you’re left feeling like you’re doing everything right, but still aren’t seeing the impact you want. If only there were an easy way to gain powerful insights into your website’s visitors to help you figure out what to improve.

Luckily, that tool exists, and it’s free!

Many organizations successfully use email marketing, blogging, and social media to attract visitors to their websites. Unfortunately, a lot of nonprofits don't use Google Analytics to understand how people interact with their site once they get there.

We get it! Google Analytics can be overwhelming and hard to understand. But, if you know what to look for, it is an invaluable tool for your organization! Here are the basics of what you need to know about Google Analytics so you can get the most out of your nonprofit's website.

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What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free tool that helps you collect all kinds of useful information about your website, blog, and social networks. It provides helpful information about the traffic that comes to your website and what people do or read when they get to your site.

While other tools provide this kind of information, Google Analytics is the most popular and arguably the most effective one on the market--and it's free!

Google Analytics provides valuable information about the people who visit your website. Everything from how many people visit your website and how long they stay to where they came from, and what pages on your site they visited.

Your website should serve as a "hub" for all your online activities. Google Analytics can help you track the real effectiveness of all your digital campaigns. That means you will have real data to determine whether a campaign was successful instead of relying on anecdotal evidence, which can be misleading and easy to misinterpret.

Google Analytics can also give information about what kind of keywords people type in to find your website and whether the visitor is using a mobile device or computer.

What Nonprofits Should Pay Attention To In Google Analytics

Why is this information about the traffic to your website important? It can help you understand what parts of your website are providing your audience with the information they want or need. It can also reveal pages on your site that aren't as effective.

Here are some specific things in Google Analytics that every nonprofit should pay attention to:

1) The three most important metrics on your Analytics dashboard

Google Analytics provides an overwhelming amount of data about your website. The three most important metrics on your Analytics dashboard are average visit duration, pages per visit, and bounce rate.

These numbers reveal how many unique visitors came to your website compared to repeat visitors. It also tells you the average length of time people spend on your site, how many pages they viewed, and the "bounce rate." Generally, you want to increase the first two numbers and reduce the bounce rate.

A "bounce" is when someone comes to your site, only visits that page they landed on, and leaves. Usually, you want to decrease your "bounce rate" over time, unless you have a single-page website, like a blog. (A high bounce rate is typical for single-page sites because there aren't other pages for people to visit.)

When people spend more time on your website and look at more pages, it means people are enjoying the content and finding what they are looking for. Tracking this information will help you identify how to improve your website.

2) Most and least popular pages on your website

Google Analytics information will help you zero in on what is working and what's not working on your website, so you can better engage your readers.

Nonprofits can learn a lot by identifying the most popular pages on their website. Those pages should help you decide what kind of content you create in the future.

On the other hand, you should also identify the "most exited" pages on your website--the pages that people leave the fastest. Look for similarities and differences between these groups of pages. For example, if none of your popular pages have a Call to Action (like a donate button) and your least popular pages do have a Call to Action, that is a potential indication that your readers do not like something about your Call to Action.

Another thing that can cause people to leave a page quickly is the load time. People are impatient and don't want to wait for a page to load, no matter how beautiful the layout is. People also tend to exit pages quickly that are not user-friendly.

3) Donation page analytics

Nonprofits should pay close attention to how people are engaging with their donation pages. If you look in the "Behavior" tab on your Google Analytics dashboard, you can see your user's "flow." It tells you which pages your visitors go through before getting to your donation page.

When you identify which page is most frequently the last one before a reader goes to your donation page, you can start to analyze that specific page. Figure out what is different about that page and try to replicate it as much as possible throughout your website.

4) Information about your audience

It might seem a little like spying, but Google Analytics helps you uncover valuable information about the people who visit your website. The "Audience" section of your Analytics dashboard shows the age, gender, interests, devices, and geographic locations of the people who visit your site.

This type of information has a variety of applications. For example, Google Analytics tells you what kind of devices people use to view your website, right down to what type of smartphone or tablet your audience uses. You can then optimize your website to become more responsive to those devices. If 70% of your site visitors use smartphones, it is more critical than ever for your site to be mobile friendly!

Google Analytics will also reveal the country and city location of your audience. It's helpful to identify areas where your website is performing well, so you can develop fundraising strategies according to the physical location of potential donors.

It's also helpful to make sure the right audience is "discovering" your website. If your nonprofit is a local organization that works exclusively in one geographic area, it's essential to make sure people in that area find and read your site.

5) Referring Sites

One of the most valuable data points Google Analytics provides is how users get to your website. A user who arrives on your site after googling something is going to have a much different mindset than someone who clicked on a link on your social media page.

Google Analytics shows you which sites are driving traffic to your website. For example, if the majority of your website traffic comes from search engines (like Google searches), that means your SEO is on point!

Nonprofits must capitalize on every chance to engage with current and potential donors and use their valuable resources wisely. Google Analytics is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to ensure you are getting the most out of your website.

Learning how to use the information from Google Analytics can help you make better choices about your online content. Providing the right content and understanding how people get to your website can help you get more traffic and potential donors.

Are you ready to improve your nonprofit's website and online presence? Here are three more tools to help you take the next steps.

• 5 Marketing Strategies Every Nonprofit Should Implement: Many nonprofits shy away from the idea of marketing. They think of it as something for-profit businesses do to make more money. No matter what kind of nonprofit you work for, quality marketing is essential. Here are some practical ways to improve the marketing for your organization.
• Powerful Salesforce Training For Nonprofits: Salesforce is a powerful tool for nonprofits. We can help organizations understand how to integrate Salesforce to grow your organization and improve your online presence. Here are some training resources to take your organization to the next level!
• Best Nonprofit Fundraising Software: 6 Awesome Tools: Most nonprofits want their website to bring in donations. It's important to have a quality website that functions well, so people CAN donate easily. We took the time to identify the 6 best fundraising software tools on the market!