How do you check your architecture practice website analytics?
Last week - after I posted the Origin Story that Tunisian architect Fatma Kobbi wrote and shared with me - my website experienced a traffic spike.
As well as publishing Fatma’s story on my website, I shared it across my social media channels - Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn - and Fatma shared it with her network too, which resulted in a deluge of website visitors from Australia and Tunisia, as well as across Europe and the USA.
The idea of writing your architecture #OriginStory (see this blog for the question prompts!) to connect with more future clients is one that transcends borders, and everyone loves reading a story about a person’s inspiration and motivation, so I wasn’t surprised that this was a popular piece of content.
I was however taken aback by the scale of the traffic spike, which was way higher than the usual peaks over the past three months (these co-incide with my weekly emails that I send on Wednesdays, and that’s why you should write regular blogs and send a newsletter to your list of subscribers).
Last week’s traffic spike looked like this:
Traffic spike on the Sounds Like Design website, 2 June 2021
To be fair, this wasn’t the highest number of visitors my website has experienced on a single day, since I started tracking my analytics in Google in February 2020. That ultimate spike occurred in August last year - when I presented a Lean In session for the Australian Institute of Architects - but this one came very close as you can see in the graph below:
Sounds Like Design traffic, Feb 2020 to June 2021
Because my marketing is built around an interdependent system of channels, these traffic spikes to my website usually translate into new subscribers joining my email newsletter list, so they help to grow my overall audience of ideal customers.
This kind of data - about your website performance - is a gold mine that you can use to inform your future marketing activities, and to ensure that you’re investing your time and money into marketing activities and channels that deliver results.
And the purpose of all of this activity? In a nutshell, the aim is to reach new audiences, who may become prospective clients who may become clients, who will bring new projects into your practice. That’s what I mean when I talk about building a steady pipeline of clients for your architecture services.
With that in mind, I’ve put together a few questions for you to consider about your own website analytics:
Do you have access to this kind of data and analytics, which can alert you to traffic spikes on your website? And if you do have access, do you actually monitor it?
Do you know what kind of content attracts your ideal customers to your website - like bees to a honey pot - so that you can replicate that kind of content again in future?
Do you deliberately create digital content - including social media posts, videos, testimonials, lead magnets and others - that is likely to drive engagement and be shared by your ideal customers, to help you extend your reach and grow your audiences?
If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, or you have only a vague inkling that you need to look into your analytics but you’re not sure where or how to access the data, you might like to download my free Marketing Metrics tracking spreadsheet. The spreadsheet contains instructions and links to help you set up your Google Analytics Tracker and to download the Seeking Digital dashboard that I used to capture the graphs pictured above.
This tracking spreadsheet is available now via my Online Portal and I’ve also included a 25 minute video which describes how to use the spreadsheet, and which channels are best suited to marketing your architecture practice. And if you’d like more info about the Marketing Metrics tracking spreadsheet, you can read this blog post.
If you’re already up to speed with your analytics - but you’d like to know more about shareable content, including what it is and how to create it - this blog post may be useful.
If you’d like to learn more about modern marketing for architects - and learn and implement my system that was designed specifically for architects - you can turbo-charge your marketing by doing our CPD course: Architecture Marketing 360. You can purchase access and get started today, here.
And if you’d like to tap into my knowledge and experience about architecture marketing in a one-hour Zoom meeting, you can book an Acupuncture Session here.
And if you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to send me an email.