Web analytics data allows you to make decisions about marketing for your practice or your health and wellness company on the basis of data, rather than having to rely on gut feelings. But Google Analytics contains such a wealth of data, you may find yourself feeling overwhelmed. What are the top 5 Google Analytics reports for healthcare marketers? Which are the reports you should look at as part of your weekly routine? Which ones will give you the best ROI?
Here are our recommendations for the can’t-miss reports every healthcare marketer should be checking. The screenshots come from our lab site, FreshPlans.
Audience Overview view report
The Audience Overview report tells you how many visits your website has received, and how your visitors have engaged with your website. By default, it shows you the past seven days, but you can change that. We recommend clicking on the comparison button and checking the previous time period.
The screenshot above shows that our lab site had a 21.30% increase in traffic. We’ll need to look closer to to find out why, but the green text for most metrics is a sign of good news. We have no urgent concerns about this website.
This basic report is like taking your website’s temperature.
Location
If you’re marketing for a doctor’s office or a healthcare facility, gym or a hospital, you probably want to appeal most to people in your physical area. New patients, clients, or students will probably come from your local area. That means that the Location report is an important report for you. It tells you where your visitors came from.
Find this report at Audience> Geo> Locations.
Our lab sit has an international audience, so we’re seeing different countries in the screenshot above. You might want to cast a larger net if you want to find new team members or if you know that you serve college students whose parents might look for a doctor for them from their home town. If medical tourism is part of your marketing mix, you may want to target different places from your neighborhood. And of course e-commerce sales can come from anywhere.
In most cases, however, healthcare wants to focus on local search. If that’s the case for you, you’ll need to click in to see the states and towns that bring you traffic. If local traffic doesn’t make up the bulk of your audience, you’re not communicating well with the search engines.
Channels report
The Channels report tells you how your web visitors find you. It is Acquisition> All Traffic> Channels. You should generally see Organic Search first for a well-optimized website. Next in the screenshot above comes Direct, mostly made up of people who have typed in your URL or used a bookmark. If you don’t much direct traffic, train your team to ask patients, “Have you visited our website? There’s lots of good information there and you can visit the patient portal, too.” Your website might allow people to pay their bills and see upcoming events, book appointments online, or send secure messages; let your patients know the value and they’ll be more likely to visit.
Social media traffic is next for our example, followed by Referrals. You might receive referrals from local directories, sites like Healthgrades, or even area blogs. You may also have paid search, email, or other channels. This report lets you see what’s working and what needs work.
All pages
What content brings people to your website, and what kind of information do they use once they arrive? Visits to your insurance page or your About Us page tell you that your web visitors are at least thinking about signing up with you. Visits to your blog posts or articles show the issues that are of concern to your visitors.
Pages that get less traffic could be more specialized, but they might also be due for a revamp.
Goals Overview
If you have Goals set up in Google Analytics, you should check the Goals Overview report. It will tell you not only how many visitors met your website goals, but also the page(s) where they did so.
Some goals you might have set up include a Thank You page visitors reach when they sign up or book an appointment, a click into your patient portal, or enough time on your pre-op preparation page to read the whole thing and watch the video.
This page lets you know whether the number of visitors doing what you want them to do is increasing or decreasing.
These are the key Google Analytics reports for healthcare marketers. Add these pages to your Monday morning or your Friday wrap-up and you’ll have a good idea of how well your website is performing. If you need help with analytics, contact us.
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