Many hotels are using Google Analytics, but it's easy to get lost in numbers that you cannot act on.

Here are the top ten reports I like to run for hotel websites – and how I use the information to improve their marketing:

Site overlay
What do people click on the most upon arrival? Identifying the most popular elements of your homepage is a crucial first step to website optimization.

Demographics
What type of people are most likely to visit your website? This can be useful in determining the types of promotions you run, and where you want to increase your visibility.

Visits by geographic region
Where do your visitors come from? Again, this helps with advertising planning. It also can help you determine if you should translate your content or provide localized versions of your information.

New vs. returning visitors
Getting people to come back to your site is usually important, and so watching this number trend over time can valuable.

But don't take this recommendation without your own testing. Compare metrics like pages per visit, time on site, and most importantly, sales, across these two visitor types

If returning visitors generate more profits for you, optimize your website to keep people around longer. (More content, a blog, email subscriptions, etc)

Top content
What do people find most interesting? Can you publish more of it? Should you make your most popular content more prominent in the website design?

Top landing pages
Where do people enter your website? Are these pages optimized for sales – or whatever action you want the visitors to take?

Top exit pages
Why are people leaving these pages? Is there a flaw in the information, the way it's presented…or is this page just a natural point for people to leave?

Top referring phrases and websites
What keywords are most important for you? Can you do further search optimization around these? How will this affect your internet advertising?

Again, what decisions can you make based on this information?

Mobile usage
What percentage of people access your site on a mobile device? Is the volume large enough to necessitate creating a dedicated mobile website?

Ecommerce tracking
Finally but most importantly, use the ecommerce functionality from Google to tie all these metrics to a specific monetary value. If you know which referring sites, for example, provide the greatest returns, you can optimize your ad spend.

You also need to know when and where potential guests are giving up in your booking system. If you have ecommerce tracking enabled in Analytics, you can configure funnels to see where people are dropping off. This information can be a goldmine – if you act on the information to fix the leaks.

What website analytics reports are you watching?

Original article: www.hotelmarketingstrategies.com/10-reports-for-hotels-in-google-analytics

About the author
This blog is written by Josiah Mackenzie, who enjoys exploring the relationship between emerging technology and the hospitality industry. 

www.hotelmarketingstrategies.com