Have you ever wondered, where in the world are my clients coming from!? Are they locals, international or from another state or city? Do they buy from my website or do they only look. If they browse online, how do they land on my store? What location drives the largest volume of sales and how do I capitalise on this?
This can be really valuable information for small business and it provides a much needed insight to assist in the performance of your business locally, nationally and abroad. The Location Report in Google Analytics is a valuable tool that can answer all these questions for you. Let’s take a look at the top uses for this data and how you can implement this into your business.
What is the Location Report in Google Analytics?
The Location Report in Google Analytics can be useful for both national and international businesses. It is there to help you understand where your visitors are located. This data can be used to create highly targeted advertising campaigns, understand your profitable markets and identifies the markets you can improve in.
There are some constraints when it comes to using this tool though. The data is taken from the IP address of a persons computer (where their internet connection is located) and not where the person actually is. This data may not be extremely precise, but once you understand this, the Locations Report can provide a gauge into how your product and service performs in a particular market.
Where do I Find the Location Report?
To use the Location Report you need to simply log into Google Analytics and navigate towards the Audience Menu and select Geo. Here you will be able to access visual maps showing the countries, states and cities of your visitors. This starts at an international level and allows you to click on a country to drill down into the cities these customers are coming from. In the example below it’s clear that a majority of the customers are from Australia. We can then look further into where in Australia the visits are coming through by clicking on the country. You can then also click on the city option to look further into specific locations.
How do I use the Location Report?
The location report can be used to determine the amount of visits, revenue, number of transactions or goals per location. This report is similar to the other reports found in Google Analytics and can be filtered down by categories. By using advanced segments you are able to filter your data down to create side by side comparisons of your best states to determine the similarities as to why these states perform. You can then compare your top performing states against your worst performing states to figure out how to improve its performance.
By filtering your data and using the Location Report you are able to discover valuable insight how your customers from different places interact with your brand and how to best target them for improved business results.
