Google Analytics Terms You Should Know for Your Car Dealer’s PPC Campaign

If you know anything about search engine marketing (SEM),  you’ve probably heard of Google Analytics.

What you see in Analytics is a whole other world from Google Adwords, and includes useful information for marketers.

Following up from our last post on common pay per click (PPC) terms, here are some common Google Analytics terms that are useful for you to know in the context of advertising for your car dealership.

A

Average time on page

Self-explanatory and very useful in conjunction with other metrics. A low average time on a page combined with a high bounce or exit rate may indicate that what is being shown on the page is not appealing to the user. In terms of vehicle dealership sites, this suggests that there may be a better way to sort the listings so that more alluring vehicles appear first.

B

Bounce rate

The percentage of users who left your website without visiting another page on the same domain. There are many factors that may cause a high bounce rate:

• Having a single-page website or a landing page that does not link to anything on the same domain

In this case, there is nowhere for the user to go but back to the search page or to exit their browser. If your goal is a lower bounce rate, try to have more links on your landing pages.

• A missing tracking code on one or more web pages

• A less-than-optimized site design

• User behaviour in response to site content

If unqualified traffic is sent to a landing page it will increase bounce rate, which is why it’s important that your pay-per-click campaigns properly filter traffic. This makes bounce rate a good indicator of a PPC account’s overall performance.

Why is bounce rate important? By flagging pages where users are most likely to drop off and leave your website, you can pinpoint where you need to improve. If a particular vehicle inventory page has a high bounce rate, you can evaluate that page’s product description, images, or even see if the price is competitive enough.

E

Exit rate

The percentage of users that leave your web page to visit a page on another domain. This is not to be confused with the bounce rate!

It’s perfectly normal for some pages to have a high exit rate, such as a confirmation page for a form completion. However, if a page that wouldn’t ordinarily have a high exit rate does indeed have one, it deserves a closer look.

G

Goals

Google Analytics’ version of conversions.

Goals are useful as measurable targets that can be used to measure objectives not covered by a traditional AdWords conversion.

There are four types of Goals:

• Destination – the loading of a specific location, such as a thank you page. This most closely resembles an AdWords conversion.
• Duration – a visit of a specific length of time
• Pages or screens per visit – the number of pages or screens that a single visitor views
• Event – the triggering of a specific action. For example, downloading Strathcom’s handy e-book on how to Winterize Your Car Dealership – check it out!

This is not, by any means, all that Analytics has to offer. From demographics to traffic sources, Google Analytics provides a far deeper insight into user behaviour than Google AdWords.

While AdWords performance metrics show what happened in a pay-per-click campaign, Analytics can indicate why it happened.