If you missed part one of this blog series, click here!
Like we said in part one, Google Analytics is the gold standard of web analytics. It’s free and robust. It offers analytics that any business can leverage for growth. Of its many uses, one of the more underrated uses of Google Analytics is its role with your knowledge base.
Google Analytics’ features provide vital information that can be interpreted for growth within customer success. These five reports in Google Analytics will help your team pinpoint information about your visitors’ behavior. This, in turn, allows you to grow your knowledge base with the given data.
In part two of two blog posts, we will address some of the key places to go to build your knowledge base with the assistance of Google Analytics.
When you’re taking a look at your various landing pages and the different content visitors are looking at, there are a few standard KPIs to think through.
Overall traffic is self-explanatory and often the first metric everyone looks at. It simply tells us how many people have visited the site. In itself, it’s not an entirely revealing metric. It’s like if you ask a lecture hall of 100 students to raise their hand if they like pizza over hamburgers and 63 people raise their hand. You know that people like pizza better, but you don’t have any more information about why. That’s what the web traffic metric is like. But what it does tell us is where to start looking.
The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who visit one page, and only one page, and then “bounce” right after. They don’t visit another page on your site, they’re off to another website entirely. Consider why visitors are bouncing from these specific pages. Is it the design? Is your content not meeting the expectations a visitor has coming in?
Lastly, the average time on the site. It’s a strong indicator of the quality of your traffic. The higher the average time spent on the page, the more valuable the visit. It’s hard to pinpoint what a good average time on site is since your content has a lot to do with it. Generally speaking, less than 30 seconds isn’t a good sign, while over two minutes is great.
Now let’s use these three metrics to analyze the traffic on your site, including landing pages and specific pieces of content in the content drill down. Is there a question that’s getting a lot of visits but people are leaving right away? Why is that? Are people spending an inordinate amount of time on one article compared to others? Pay particular attention to pages like your product tour. Is there a feature that people seem to be spending more time on? How can you edit your knowledge base to reflect the confusion/interest visitors have about that feature?
Your data is telling you a story. What that story is, depends on how your team analyzes the data. Traffic, bounce rate, and average time on site might seem like basic metrics, but they’re very helpful to your quest of uncovering the relevant data you need in your knowledge base.
Site Search Terms
While Google has disabled the option to see what search terms visitors are using to find your site, you’re still able to track what terms are being searched for within your site.
First, make sure you’ve set up Site Search in Google Analytics. Otherwise, you’re not going to receive any data. Navigate to the Admin tab, on the far right is a column labeled “View.” Select “View Settings” just below. At the bottom is the option to turn on Site Search Tracking.
The Site Search report will now offer you valuable information about your visitors’ needs. You’ll be able to see what terms visitors are searching for within your site. You’ll be able to quickly pinpoint problems and come up with solutions to add to your knowledge base.
Behavior Flow
Setting up your knowledge base is important. You’re designing what people see right away and how they navigate through the information. The Google Analytics Behavior Flow report is a great way to visualize the visitor’s journey through your site.
On your left menu, in the Behavior section, just above Site Content is Behavior Flow. You instantly see a flow chart of different visitors path through your website. It lets you choose where your traffic is coming from and then maps the order of pages the visitors go to and where they drop off on your site.
This report is excellent at discovering the roadblocks on your site. It gives you insight on how your visitors think when they’re navigating the site. If you’re constantly seeing the same questions, is it because your visitors never see your help article? Can you better design to solve this problem? Is there a popular article that could naturally lead to another help article if you just linked it?
A knowledge base isn’t a page on your site that you set it and forget it, like an About Us page. It’s a part of your site that’s constantly evolving and must be maintained with up-to-date information. Every new feature your engineering team builds, adds a new layer to your knowledge base. Your knowledge base is critical to your success. Great customer service can separate two different products in the eye of the customer. Take advantage of the data Google Analytics offers your customer support team and translates that into a beautifully designed, wonderfully helpful knowledge base.
At HappyFox, we know a lot about building a successful knowledgebase for your customers. Click here to learn about everything we can do to help you get your knowledge base set up for success. Request a one-on-one personalized product demo now!
