Tracking website visitors is important for a number of reasons, from helping to establish your target audience to developing a targeted sales strategy.
Luckily, tracking website visitors is probably much easier than you think, and Cookies are one of the simplest and most popular methods.
In this article, we will explain what cookies are and how webmasters can effectively track who has visited their websites using Google Analytics.
Website Cookies Explained
There are multiple options to help you keep track of your website’s visitors, however, using cookies and Google Analytics is the most popular method.
With Cookies, you can see what pages users land on and which pages they exit on, which is key for monitoring page performance. However, this just skims the surface of what data Cookies can provide.
What Are Cookies?
Cookies are the data files that users allow websites to collect. This permission is granted when a user enters a website and selects ‘allow cookies’ when prompted.
These settings are also remembered by the user’s browser for each website visit. Of course, users are under no obligation to provide any data if they do not want to.
What Are Cookies Used For?
This data can relate to things like the number of pages a user visits, whether they entered the website directly or via a referring website, and much more.
If a user enters a website while logged into their Google account, then Google Analytics is able to track even more useful information such as gender, age range, and location.
Therefore, Cookies can provide a wide range of benefits for web developers and marketing teams.
Cookies even help Google to decide what adverts and search results are relevant to individual users.
How To Know Who Visited My Website
In this next section, we will explain how to use Cookies and Google Analytics to see who has visited your website.
Setting Up Google Analytics
Setting up Google Analytics is relatively straightforward and the key steps are outlined below.
- Create a Gmail account.
- Set up a Google Analytics account using your Gmail login.
- Complete the form about you and your website.
- Add the measurement/tracking code to the <head> </head> part of your website.
- Now you are all set to track your website’s visitors.
Once your Google Analytics count has been set up and the measurement/tracking code has been added to your website, you will want to create filters to access relevant data quickly.
Filters help to arrange different user behaviors into specific groups which can be easily accessed from the GA Dashboard. This helps to ensure you can quickly browse important data in just a few clicks.
Using filters you can group together users based on how they were acquired. Separating users who discovered your website organically via a Google search and ones who were referred from your social media pages, for example.
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Using Visitor Data To Achieve More Conversions
Now we understand how data is tracked and how it can be accessed, let’s take a look at how it can be applied to generate conversions.
1. Custom Landing Pages
Based on the insights provided by Google Analytics, you can assess what type of audiences use your website.
With this information, you can build custom landing pages that target specific audiences and provide a personalized experience, including features such as suggested products, special offers, and content snippets that may be of interest to the user.
2. Paid Ads
Your visitor data can be effectively used when setting up paid ad campaigns on social media platforms and search engines.
Using the information provided by Cookies, such as age, location, and even job/ career-related insights, you can better tailor your ads to target specific demographics.
⚡Check also ➡️ How Many Ads Do We See a Day?
3. Email Campaigns
Thanks to the data provided by Cookies you can create email campaigns that have been segmented for different user types.
For example, if you have a lot of visitors from a specific region or city, then you can build a campaign focused on that location. You could even include a discount code unique to anyone receiving the email.
This type of personalization is proven to generate more leads and conversions.
We hope this short guide has helped to give you an understanding of how website visitors can be tracked and how this information can be used effectively.
Browse the rest of our blog for more useful information regarding web development and digital marketing.
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