Google Analytics: A Podiatrist's Guide to Understanding Website Health

You're listening to Podiatry Marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome to this week's episode of podiatry marketing. With me as usual is my cohost, man of many talents. It is big Jim Mac. How are doing today, Jim?

Just working on those talents. Things are good. Here in Montreal, I got no complaints. Happy to jump on the podcast with you tonight and talk some podiatry marketing.

What I always think is good is when we share a little bit about ourselves with the the people that listen, and they get to know us over over a period of time. So what what is something about you, Jim? What's a talent you have that majority of people would probably be totally unaware that that you do? Other than because we all know you run.

Yeah. I talk about running quite a bit. What's another talent that I have? I would say that I enjoy cooking. Like Okay.

I'm kind of the the kind of I was just working from home. I'm usually the one that's cooking most of the evening meals. So I like getting ingredients together and you know cooking for cooking for my family.

Do you have a certain cuisine?

I mean, like, any kind of Italian food, really. Like, I mean, making kinda like homemade pasta sauces, you know, lasagna, different types of like stir fry. I'm kind of like, I like noodles and pasta and those kinds of things.

Okay. Man, that's alright. Okay. So there you go. Everyone now knows a little bit more about gym.

I might do that every couple of weeks. It's just a little bit more about gym. It'll be the little bit more about gym section.

There we go.

Okay. What are we talking about today?

Yeah. So today we're gonna talk about Google Analytics. I think there's a kind of a baseline of knowledge that not every podiatrist has. So you know, kinda understanding you know what Google Analytics is, how it's used to kinda measure the health of your website. Just getting a baseline of information can be really, really helpful.

So, you know, if you're talking to the person running your website or doing marketing for you, you have a general sense of what it is and, you know, when they bring up the traffic to your website or how they're analyzing the the data that's getting pulled in by Google Analytics, you feel a little bit more informed and you're like not kinda like, you know, feeling like they're speaking in a foreign language or kind of curious to understand, you know, not really understanding what they're talking about.

So do you think like, so everybody has a website, actually has Google Analytics working in the background. There's probably a lot of podiatrists that are totally unaware that they do. So what what what should they be doing if they're going, I have Google Analytics? I didn't know I had that. What what should they be doing?

Yeah. So Google Analytics, you know, to start off with, it's basically like a small piece of software that runs on a website. And, you know, like like you talked about, it has to be installed. So, you know, either it's if it's you that's running the website or, know, if you're if you hired someone to do it, you're learning how to kinda get it installed in your website is kind of the first step. And like I said, it usually requires a small piece of code or some kind of a part of your website where it'll say, you know, input kind of your ID for Google Analytics.

You know, if you go to like analytics.google.com, that's the website where you can kind of, you know, pull you know, kinda get started there. But Yeah. This is something you can usually, you know, talk to your website developer or whoever's doing your marketing for you. But it is really really important because like you said, it has to be installed on the website and for or for it to start pulling that information. It'll only start pulling that information once it's installed.

So if you've had a website for five or ten years and you didn't install the code onto the website, there's no way to, like, you know, turn back the clock and and for you to understand, you know, kinda some of these analytics. And we'll get into some of the you know, understanding what the kind of specific numbers or, you know, what you should be looking at when you're looking into Google Analytics. But just getting it installed is kind of the first step to make sure that you have that information to pull from from now and into the future.

Basically, what is Google Analytics? If someone they know what it is. They know there's a few stats there, but they don't really know what what is it.

Yeah. So basically it's a it's a free tool provided by Google where basically when people land on to your website, if you've installed this software, it's gonna collect data about your website visitors. It can, you know, tell them how tell you how long they're on a page, where they're from, you know, which pages they've been looking at, where they're clicking, where they're leaving. So it's a it's a real helpful piece of software They can start making, you know, data driven decisions sometimes as far as, you know, let's say you what kind of you know, what are people searching for on your website and making sure your that information is present or, know, you find that someone really enjoys reading about that you're doing surgery, you know maybe it's time to build out that section of your website more. So it just provides more information about your website visitors and kind of the actions they're taking on your website.

That's what I found when I've looked at mine. Sometimes I'm surprised at certain pages on my website where you go, why is this one always in the top five pages? Constantly. From the time I write it, it's always there. And and you have another somebody else that you've written, you're going, oh, this is good.

This is gonna do so well. And it just it just bombs. But at least and Google Analytics lets me know who was there, the age, the gender, where they were from. And I remember once I had written something, and it had thousands and thousands of people looking at it, but they were all overseas. There was very few locally, but majority were overseas.

And then I've done other ones where it's majority local and hardly any overseas. So I I find that really helpful.

Yeah. The local relevance is really what we're after. Right? You know? I mean, there's some people that wanna have a national, you know, draw from a national audience and try to get people to come to their practice or their clinic.

But most clinics are local businesses, so you need to make sure that what you're doing is resonating with your your your kind of local patients. And there's kind of two areas when people have a website. You know, we've talked about in the past that your website is kind of your online home or online clinic. It's sometimes the first impression that people get of who you are and what you do. And I think a lot of times, a lot of clinics, they see the kind of the overall design.

They see the the logo and the colors and the layout, and those things are very important. But there's also behind all of the kind of graphic design and the colors and the branding is actually how is it working is it getting the kind of are people staying on the page? Are they clicking around to other pages on the website? You know, are they getting to that contact page and filling out a form and how often does that happen? And what changes can you make in order to to kind of improve and optimize a website when you so when you tie in that that front end or that graphic design and the the website that looks nice that most people see to like some of these software tools that help you make better decisions based on data, that's really the kind of the win they're trying to go for when you use something like Google Analytics.

Okay. So when you're working with a client, you're sitting down going through the analytics with them?

Yeah. So there's different ways. Right? So when I first kinda get to know a clinic if they're like, they've had it installed by somebody else or themselves, you know, that's one of the first things I'll look at is like, they'll give me access to the Google Analytics so I can really see number one, you know, what is the kind of the traffic that they're getting. Right?

You know, this is gonna tell us how many people are visiting the website each day or each month or each quarter each year. You can kinda count the number, you know, of how many what they call kinda conversions, like how many form fills or how many people are going to the kinda contact us page and how do people actually following through and clicking the button to make an appointment. So it gives you a basic idea about, you know, how popular is the website and how is it trending over time. I think sometimes it's not actual numbers, it is these trends. Right?

So, you know, if you're a local website, you're not gonna have you're not gonna go viral. You're not gonna have massive traffic. But are you seeing kind of a gradual uptake an uptick in the amount of traffic that you have coming to your website? And are you building out pages that people are searching for? You know, one of things that I when I build out, you know, clinic websites is that are we these kind of areas we serve pages.

Are you, you know, are you locally relevant to the five or 10 other, you know, suburbs or neighborhoods or places where your best patients are coming from, and making sure that you have pages and relevant content so you kind of increase that traffic over time is really, really important.

Yeah. And and that's why I think it's helpful if you've never looked at it before talking to someone who actually knows what they're doing or listening to this episode as well. Give give you a bit more insight on what you're actually doing. But I think talking with someone who's done it, understands it, sort of just just make it a lot easier.

I'll I'll jump in and say that like along with your point there, it is if you're just kind of looking at it and don't have experience with it, it's just like it's tough to get the context from it. Right? It's just a lot of numbers. Maybe you have three or three years of data and you're looking at it and you kinda get a general sense of what's happening there, but you don't see things that are actionable. So, you know, going over with with the person that does your marketing, you know, setting goals as far as, you know, where there are opportunities for growth, it's a little bit more, you know, we sometimes if you're working with professional, you can kinda get some of that context from those raw raw numbers that don't always you know, you're busy in a clinic while is is is having 50 visits a day good or is a hundred of days visits good, but it it all really depends on where's that traffic coming from.

Mhmm. You know, are they taking action? There's a lot of things you can kinda parse when you're a little bit deeper into some of these tools.

Yeah. So you could have a thousand people visiting your your page a day, but it's 999 of them from Asia. And and and you're in America, it's not really gonna make too much difference. Where you only have 50 people visiting and they're all from your area, then that's fantastic.

Yeah. I'll see that sometimes when people have, you know, a YouTube channel for their clinic. Right? And they're making really nice three to five minute videos. You can tell kind of either they're have they're outsourcing that cost, either somebody to audit, probably to edit those videos and to put them onto their YouTube channel.

But, you know, how many of those people actually watching on YouTube, you know, unless you're making it about let's say you're in Texas, like in Southwest Texas. You know, it's cool that, you know, you have a thousand views of some ingrown toenail procedure, but how many of those people are actually gonna click within the the bio or click in the comments and come to visit your website and actually make an appointment?

Yeah.

You know, so local relevance is really really one of those important things about traffic. So it's not always thousands of visitors to your website. It's like you said, it's those 50 to a hundred of people that are in your local area that can make an appointment to come see you in your practice.

Okay. The Google Analytics also tell you how people found you?

Yeah. So there's different acquisition channels. Right? So when you're looking on Google Analytics, you can see how many people came from what they call, like, organic search. Right?

How many people are searching on Google and then land on your website. Also, can measure different types of social media channels. Right? So if you're on LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook, different social channels, just by someone clicking on a link from one of those one of your kind of outlying channels and it comes back to your website, like Google has the way to kind of check check a box and say that came from LinkedIn or Instagram for example. So you know, understanding both on the organic and paid side.

So if you're doing paid search ads on Google, that will come in and it'll be kind of you'll see that channel. Or if you're doing paid Instagram or Facebook ads, you can get a general sense of what percentage of your traffic is coming from all these different channels. And then also like I talked about previously, which ones are making appointments. It's getting a little more tricky sometimes to drill down that much on the paid channels because Apple and other browsers are starting to, I would say, like not allow the attribution to be quite as clear. Yeah.

You can still get a general sense of where people are coming from.

Well, I know, but I've looked at my own, and you'll see how many actually come through social media channels, through Facebook, LinkedIn that will then come through to say the podcast website. Because you're posting it depending on where you're marketing, whatever it is you're doing, will also be what sort of drives people to your website as well.

Yeah. Exactly. And I think when people are just getting started, you know, if you don't have a lot of organic traffic initially, you know, you can kind of add in the things like those paid ads on the on the on the front end and see how that's affecting the organic, you know, search. Right? So sometimes paid campaigns can lead to more, you know, people with the kind of free organic search.

So you can kinda see those interplays over over time. Right? It it's more about trends than it is like a week or a month or a quarter. It's how things are moving over time in the right direction.

Okay. And then once they're on your website, Google will also track what what they're doing once they get there.

Yeah. You can kinda understand the your patient or your visitor behavior on your website and kinda what they're doing. You know, which pages are they visiting? How long do they stay? And this can really play a part on, you know, how well you're ranking online.

Because if people, you know, search for a topic, they come to your website and they stay for a very long period of time, they either watch a video or they're reading an article, that's what Google Analytics can basically feed back to Google and say, hey, people are spending a lot of time on this site. It must be relevant helpful information. So send more people here potentially. Know that that was the way it kinda worked in the olden days in Google. It still works that way somewhat.

If you're but you do have a bad you know user experience or bad, people just click on, they they you know, there's either they were tricked or what they were looking for wasn't there and they bounce off. That's also a signal to Google saying, don't send any more people here. People only stayed for one or two seconds and then left. Something is not right with this website. So Google Analytics allows that kind of visitor behavior to be tracked, and then things like Google rankings and visibility and search can really be affected.

Yeah. And I think we've all clicked on an ad. We've been searching for something. It doesn't matter what it is, podiatry or non podiatry related. You click on it and it goes to a page, has absolutely nothing to do with what you are actually looking for.

And as soon as you see the pages pop up, you bang your shirt. Within seconds, your brain already knows I'm in the wrong spot, you're off. So you're saying if if you're directing people to certain pages and that page is not related to what they clicked on and they're jumping straight off, Google's gonna go, the page no good.

Yeah. Sometimes it's just that kind of human pattern matching. Right? It's not even a conscious thing. If it if it's you you click on certain words on Google and those words are not on the next page.

And sometimes, you know, if it's a you know, if it's like like a LinkedIn or some other thing and there's maybe just colors. It could just be color differential between, you know, and it just doesn't feel right and people click off. So, yeah, you do have to be aware that people are very happy to to leave your your website if they don't feel like they're having that kind of that that smooth transition or that smooth on page experience after clicking on something.

Yeah. And is it also like on each page, why you'd have links that take them to other parts of your site for like more information? Because the more you can keep them on your site and moving around, the longer they stay there, the more Google understands that your site must be great because they're not just getting straight off and going to a competitor's website.

Yeah. Exactly. It's a strong signal. Like Google's Google Analytics is measuring all these things, and when they see that you're providing helpful content and people are staying on your your website for longer, yeah, they're they're gonna they're gonna help up rank you and you'll you'll kind of show up higher in search.

What do we mean by when you hear the word Google conversions?

Yeah. So conversions is kind of you can set different goals within Google Analytics. So a lot of people will want to have that patient appointment. So you know, maybe on your contact us page, when someone fills out their name, you know, that that that they wanna have an appointment with you, basically, there's ways to track that within Google Analytics. So when they complete that activity, you can kinda tell whether, you're having success with maybe the design or maybe you're doing specific types of ad campaigns or organic campaigns.

But it's really gonna help you track these different actions and activities. And like I said, that because that's obviously what you wanna have going on your website. Know, it's great that they can get information there, but you also want them to to make appointments. Maybe it's something you want them to download, a helpful document about how to treat heel pain. So there's different types of conversions.

Obviously some are a little bit closer to making appointments than others, but there are different ways to kind of, like I said, set these goals and then have Google Analytics track them.

Okay. So even just having a a like a page, any sort of pages on your website stuff where people are requesting more information or, like you said, downloading something. Anyway, where they're giving you their details, Google is actually tracking that so they know that's part of the conversions.

Yeah. That's usually something you'll have to set up, though, right, with either yourself or someone you're working with. It gets can get very granular because it's like, you know, it's the fact that you they click the send this very specific button on this very specific page or they, you know, they took this action on this specific page. So you really have to kind of get into the the kind of the the settings of Google Analytics to get that level of granularity. But it definitely is a helpful way when you're trying to encourage specific actions.

And sometimes these conversions also can be carried off into Google paid search ads as well. So, you know, you can see what's coming for organic, what's coming from search. You know, obviously, when you're paying for those clicks, you probably want to make sure that they're converting. So measuring these conversions with and there's ways that they pass information between Google Ads and Google Analytics to really make sure that you're getting that high ROI spend. And, you know, these two Google Ads and Google Analytics kinda work in concert together.

Okay. And Google also tracking usage like via where it's desktop or mobile phone.

I think that's huge. Right? Like, think that's one of the kind of surprises that people have whenever I mean, I think we're used to it on a daily basis knowing how much we all use our phones.

But Yeah.

You know, a lot of websites and a lot of ad campaigns and those things, when people think about them or try to design for them, you know, they're on their desktop computer. Or maybe people in their clinics, right, when they're doing most of their notes, probably they're I guess people some are people are using a tablet. A lot of people are still using either a laptop or desktop computer. But, you know, you it really helps when I show some of my clients like, hey, you know, 70% of the people that are coming to your website now, you know, are on mobile. So it's it's it's vital that you have a great user experience on mobile.

So it's really, you know, having that information that the Google Analytics is pulling about where those different you know, what kind of devices your website visitors are showing up on can make sure that you're making good calls when it comes to designing the website, designing different things to make, you know, designing ad campaigns to make sure that it does resonate well on mobile devices.

Yeah. Because sometimes I've even done some of my own pages and you'll do it, and then once I've uploaded it, looks beautiful on the computer, and then I'll go to the mobile and I double check what's it look like there. And sometimes you just go, I looked awful. And you gotta you gotta change things because otherwise, the but I know myself. Majority of the searches I do, like, I'm sitting in front of my computer a lot during the day, so I'll just go straight to my desktop.

But if I'm out of the office, always, everything goes on my mobile phone. So I probably do more searches on my mobile phone than I do anywhere else.

Yeah. A %. And like you said, you know, I I did an audit recently of a clinic, and they have a very beautiful website, and there's a kind of a helpful sidebar that kinda scrolls with you as you go down the page. And when you're on desktop, it looks totally fine and it's it's helpful in some ways, but the second you get into your mobile phone it literally takes up 70% of the mobile screen because it doesn't resize down and you know it's just one of those things where like and the doctor I was talking to is like, hey, I didn't never really looked at that. I never looked at my site that closely on mobile before.

And you're right. It takes up about, you know, half of my screen.

I don't I don't know why things I don't know things chase me on screen either. I mean,

you're paranoid chasing you.

Oh, yeah. Like, you're scrolling down. The thing keeps going down with you. I'm going, I know you're there. Bugger off.

If I want you, I'll come back up to you, but just leave me alone. Because I do. I find it interfering. It's a it's a distraction.

Yeah. It can be, for sure.

Okay. What what's next after the mobile usage? What else should we be looking at?

Yeah. The kind of two things to kinda wrap up. I think people really need to understand that, you know, it takes time to, you know, know how to kinda make sense of this data. You know, when you understand when you first kinda get this amount of data, it can be very daunting. Right?

It's a lot of data. There's no you don't have as much context. So just gonna start with the basics. There's some you know, either working with the the marketing provider you're currently working with. There can be some good tutorials both on Google and other online channels to understand, know, to get a general sense of how are you trending when it comes to website visitors.

Is it going up? Is it going down? You know, how are, you know, how how are people kind of bouncing around on your website? Which pages are people searching the most and spending the most time on? You know, when you kind of learn those initial basics, you can kind of start diving deeper into Google Analytics.

But at first it can be a little bit daunting, so just focus on some of these basics to get started.

Okay. And how often should somebody be looking at their data their Google Analytics? Should be every week, every month, every quarter? How when should they be doing it? What's the frequency?

Like I think it's fine for people to look on a monthly basis. I don't think you need to look weekly. And then, you know, really, I think trends are quarter to quarter. You know, you wanna have enough of a large large enough sample size so you can see what's happening.

Yeah.

Also, but, you know, quarter to quarter means like comparing this quarter of, let's say, twenty twenty four to '20 '20 '3 and 2022. You don't you know, sometimes there can be seasonality, right, in your clinic. And, you know, when you can compare, you know, similar time frames, I mean, it's January to March for q one over a couple of years, then you can really get a general sense of, you know, how things are moving, what direction they're moving in. Sometimes you can tell within a year. It can be helpful to look within that calendar year, but I really like to find those kind of year over year trends to see where people are moving.

You know, maybe you've made a big ad spend or you're doing a lot of things where you wanna see some more attribution stuff as opposed to like sheer like numbers when it comes to like page visits or something. Yeah. It can be maybe helpful to look a little bit more often, But that that's kinda how I'd approach it initially.

Yeah. I I do think there's there's seasonality things to take in consideration because coaching client who's in Canada, and they've said, like, the January, February is quieter because there's snow, and it it sort of really dies down. But then once they come out of that and starts heading into spring, everybody starts getting more active. So I assume people then looking at podiatry websites more or or searching for answers. So I expect the amount of visitors is gonna increase.

Yeah. And you can learn different information from that. Right? So if you know that January, February is gonna be slow, maybe it's time to experiment to do something like a paid ads campaign or, you you know, some kind of contest like we talked in a previous con you know, previous

Oh, last week's episode.

Yeah. Exactly. So maybe there's some ways to kind of, like, try to, you know, smooth out those seasonality trends so it is more consistent. But you won't know that until you I mean, obviously, you can kinda feel it in your clinic. You kind of know it, but, you know, sometimes having the website data along with your clinic data and putting those two things together can help you kinda understand why it's important to take some action.

And that's kind of the you know, before I close, that was kind of the next step is like, you know, this data alone is not really helpful when you just kinda don't have contacts with it. So, you know, if you notice that people are kinda have to use it on a consistent basis and know what you're using it for. For example, you if you notice that people are leaving very quickly off your website and to kind of figure out why and attest and do some things to maybe try to have them stick around longer. These are getting this information from Google Analytics along with kind of your in clinic data can really help you decide things about your website, your Google search ads, and help you make kind of good decisions down the road that are data driven. And I think it's helpful for Alpodiatrists to know these kind of basics of Google Analytics.

So either if they're working on the website themselves or they're working with a marketing professional, they feel informed and they can kind of kind of get started in moving this direction. They make sure that they're doing things. They they know what the capabilities of Google Analytics are so they can really benefit their their clinic and their practice and their patients.

Yeah. Just one thing you said in there too about them coming to your website and leaving really quickly. I know for a fact there's been particular services that I've want to use or I've needed. It could be in the health care sector. I know I've needed or say, for example, say it was a physio, and I go to the website, as soon as their homepage pops up, that photo that they have on their main page, if it does not resonate with me, I have I sometimes feel like I've left before it's even loaded up properly.

So if I was a runner, for example, and I'd had a running injury and someone said, hey, maybe you need to see a a podiatrist. They haven't given me a name. I need a podiatrist in my area. And I type in podiatrist in my area. And all of sudden, see a list, and I click on the first one, and there's a foot there with a flower between the toes.

So without even looking through the rest of the website, that main phone has made me wanna leave. And that's how quick someone could leave.

No. They can leave really quickly. So yeah. Like you just wanna make sure you start with the basics, you know, you focus on kind of what's relevant for your clinic and what's gonna, like you said, connect with that ideal patient. You don't wanna have them just click and leave.

So you wanna make sure whatever your the person you're trying to attract in your practice is gonna like it. And then kind of gradually explore, you know, some of the more advanced features of Google Analytics over time. Because, you know, when you have these insights, you're able to make data driven decisions to kind of attract those ideal patients

Mhmm.

To your practice and ultimately provide, you know, better foot and ankle care for for those types of patients that come in. So, yeah, like Google Analytics can be a little bit technical, a little bit geeky, but there's definitely good tutorials. And if you have any questions, you know, feel free to reach out to us. You know, on our website, we've got a form you can fill out if you're if you're curious to learn more about the analytics or the the data that's kinda coming into your clinic website, and we're we're happy to help.

Yeah. And it is. It's one of the things you you could put your head in the sand and just go, well, if I never look I've never looked at my analytics in the past. Everything's going fine. I'm not gonna worry about it.

That's fine. But we've done said on a previous podcast that you've gotta get in the game. Understand as long as you understand it and and put a little bit of time aside and get to know it a little bit better, whether you're doing it yourself or get asking you for help or or or your 14 year old son, getting there to help you do this, it's I don't know. To me, I like, I love getting on there and having a look around. Because sometimes, like I said, I'll see a page that's doing really well and go, why is that doing well, but this one over here is not?

Or why why do people come into my homepage and so many drop out so quickly? What is it about the homepage I need to change? Because, obviously, I don't have a flower between toes on this, so there must be something else. It could just be a photo of me. They might just see me and go, no.

It's enough of that.

That can't be that can't be it. That can't

be it. Yeah. You know I was just making that part up. But no. This has been absolutely any any final words before we wrap up?

No. That's pretty much it for today. I think, like I said, just dig in a little bit, see what it's all about. And if you need any help, Tyson and are here to help you So

Okay. So big Jim. That is fantastic. I look forward to talking again next week.

Sounds great, Tyson.

Okay. See you.

Bye now. Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDonnell. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.