As you probably know membership sites are becoming more and more popular. They are a great way to offer your readers and followers extra value and attention. At the same time, running a successful membership program compensates you for all the hard work you\u2019ve put into growing your site and level of expertise over the months and years. All that great content you\u2019ve produced, and the relationships you have nurtured, are finally paying off financially.<\/p>\n
Once you have converted your readers and fans into paying members, you might be tempted to let them roam free, enjoy themselves, and stop worrying about tracking their behavior. After all, your members have already been converted, right?<\/p>\n
This is a common mistake that a lot of new membership site owners make and it can cost you dearly. Although you might want to focus fully on your marketing pages to attract and convert new members, it is crucial to not drop the ball on tracking your membership site analytics, too. After all, you want to make sure your members stay happy and don\u2019t unsubscribe.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, the ever powerful Google Analytics has some tricks and tools up its sleeve that can help you.<\/p>\n
However, tracking traffic is only useful if you know what you\u2019re looking for. Mark Twain once famously said: \u201cMost people use statistics the way a drunkard uses a lamp post, more for support than illumination\u201d. In the case of Google Analytics, many users keep track of their stats because they have read how important it is to do so, but often don\u2019t actually know how to use the data they are collecting properly and to their advantage.<\/p>\n
Here we will give you 5 ways you can use Google Analytics to better understand your membership site and your members\u2019 behavior.<\/p>\n
One of the most common mistakes made when tracking traffic on membership sites is not segmenting your users. The data you collect is nearly useless if you don\u2019t distinguish between visitors and members. The demographics and behavior of the two groups can be drastically different. For example, you might find that your average visitor is between 30-45, whereas your members are, on average, 45-55. This can give you insight into how you can tweak your content and marketing strategy to the needs and preferences of your visitors in order to improve conversions.<\/p>\n
Google Analytics doesn\u2019t only segment members and non-members. You can even track the different behavior of different membership levels. Let\u2019s say you offer bronze, silver, and gold membership statuses. Wouldn\u2019t it be awesome to know how these sub groups engage and interact on your site? Maybe you find out that some of the bronze content is your most popular. It might make more sense to offer it to silver members to encourage more upgrades.<\/p>\n
Segmentation can also help you improve your SEO. Your most popular and engaging posts might only be available to members and not to visitors who have yet to sign up. You could take a couple of your most popular posts and make them available for free to improve SEO (Google doesn\u2019t index content hidden behind a pay wall<\/a>) or add a strong call to action and offer the post for free in exchange for a newsletter sign up. This quality content could be just the incentive that is needed to convert your readers into members.<\/p>\n One of the most powerful functions of Google Analytics is the Goals feature, which helps you keep track of your conversions. Traditionally, these might be conversions on landing pages or for email newsletter sign ups, but the Goals feature can also be used to track other conversions that are relevant specifically to membership sites, such as upgrades between different membership levels. You could even use the A\/B testing function to compare two different upgrade pages and see which one is more effective at converting silver members to gold members and so on.<\/p>\nGoal Conversion Tracking<\/h4>\n
Analyzing Site Searches<\/h4>\n