5 Tools to Help You Monitor Your Web Presence and Increase Traffic

Whether you work for a nonprofit, or a growing, local business, you need tools to measure your impact and increase awareness of your mission. Here are 5 free resources that will help you grow your business.

Your business is running smoothly, but you're not content to just coast along. You want to constantly improve and find new, better ways to engage your audience and find new customers.

Whether you want to measure your existing website efforts, run A/B tests to compare different versions of a page, or get a first hand look at how people are interacting with your website, there are FREE tools and resources available to businesses, churches and nonprofits like yours to help you grow your web presence and measure results.

1. Google Analytics

Peter Drucker, a well-known management expert once said that "What gets measured, gets managed." To know if your organization is being successful at its goals, you must measure the results.

Google Analytics is an industry leading tool to help you gather information on how people are using your website and gives you actionable reports and insights to help you as you grow. Use the information to discover which pages are the most popular, see where your visitors are dropping off, find out which channels are the most effective at driving visitors to your website, and a whole lot more!

Signing up is free, and implementation is as simple as adding a script to your website.

2. Google Webmaster Tools

Your website is one of the primary ways people will interact with your organization before ever deciding to get involved or donate. Knowing how those people are getting to your site and understanding key items to improve your website performance is crucial if you want to make it better.

With Google Webmaster Tools, you can track your site's search performance with Google Search Console and gain access to webmaster resources like site usability issues, sitemap statistics, and more.

3. Hotjar

Hotjar is an analytics platform that provides visual insight into how people are interacting with your website. Record heat maps, actual video of user interactions, conversion funnels, and more to help you better understand your users' intent.

Additionally, you can leverage Hotjar as a tool to capture website feedback, run polls, or send out surveys. From there, analyze which sections your users are interacting with the most, see how far they're scrolling down the page, and take action to convert more of your users to fans of your mission.

4. Google Optimize

You've got so many ideas. But how do you know which ones are the best? How do you know which ones will resonate with your users? Enter Google Optimize.

Google Optimize is a free tool that empowers you to easily run tests on your website's content to learn what works best for your visitors, including A/B, multivariate, and redirect tests.

How does it work? Let's say you have an idea for a tagline for the home page of your business: "The best hair salon in Raleigh" But, you've been exploring the idea of changing it up to something like "At our salon, we don't just style hair—we help you become your best self."

Google Optimize allows you to make a new version of your home page, edit content directly on the page, then create an experiment that shows the new version to 50% of your visitors. You set a goal, let the experiment run for at least two weeks, then Google Optimize will automatically track the results and calculate the winner.

5. Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is a robust data visualization app that allows you to unlock the power of your data with interactive dashboards and engaging reports that inspire smarter business decisions.

• Unite your data in one place: Easily connect from spreadsheets, Analytics, Google Ads, BigQuery and more.
• Explore the data: Transform raw data into metrics and dimensions — no code required.
• Tell impactful stories: Create engaging reports and visualizations.
• Empower your teams: Arm people with knowledge to focus on what matters.

I hope this list made you aware of some of the amazing free tools & resources available to businesses and nonprofits to help your company succeed online.

If you need help or guidance in implementing these tools or simply want advice relating to web strategy, process, or technology, let me know! I'm available for consulting to help you reach more people and grow your business.