Berkshire Hathaway is an American multinational conglomerate holding company that owns many companies. It has stakes in some of the biggest brands in the world, like Coca-Cola and Apple. It is also famous for having the most expensive share in history, with the current price hovering around 350,000 thousand dollars, as of 2nd February 2021. 

With all those credentials, you must be thinking of a stellar web presence for the company with a website that is rocking. Take a look at the website’s screenshot and see for yourself. 

Shocked? Amazed? Confused? You are not alone. It looks like something straight out of the mid-90s when HTML websites with plain text were the norm. Surely, not many people would like to revisit this website, apart from investors or people having a keen knowledge of the company. 

Web design blunders like these make us think why companies don’t invest in their online presence. A website is the face of a company and a rich design can make it engaging. Design is the combination of dozens of decisions as each of them can impact the final outcome.

The goal of any website is to get quality leads that can translate into sales. The content and design are important but tracking the visitors is a critical aspect that needs to be examined in detail. A taut strategy must be implemented, but before that, you must know exactly the factors you need to cater to. 

Any discrepancy getting the data through analytics or wrong/incomplete stats can be lethal for businesses to move in the right direction. The following are four such factors related to web design and development and how any such decision can help or hurt the analytics. 

1. Thank You Pages Vs. Thank you Messages

After filling out a form on a website, what do you expect? After clicking the submit button, many websites offer a simple message thanking you for your time. Is this enough to engage the visitors as some of them even forget how many forms they have filled? So how to keep them engaged? Thank you page and messages can do the trick, but businesses need to track which one is more effective. It is easier to track the pages’ performance rather than a simple text message as the traffic on the pages can be easily tracked.

There is nothing better than welcoming a new lead in this fashion. The more content they will go through after signing up, the more chances will be converted into a lead. Event tracking is the key here so that you can get the stats in this regard. For non-pageview interactions, this strategy is the best. But it needs analytics setup through Google Tag Manager, which is not easy to use. If you think you need this stat too, this is the way to do it. 

2. Contact Page Form and Email Addresses 

Never underestimate the power of a seemingly simple or basic page. From now on, you will also praise how the Contact us page can offer you valuable insights and stats to track your visitors. A contact form on the contact us page or having the email links can be a blessing in disguise for you. Goal tracking in this scenario can be bountiful for the website. 

Never forget to add the contact form, and don’t go for the email address so that visitors can contact you. Email addresses are often ignored by visitors even if you put them on multiple locations across the website. For conversion data, email addresses will leak a lot of data. Take a look at the following table and see for yourself. 

There is no need to use event tracking contact forms will do the trick for you. 

3. Tracking Pop-Ups, Tabs, and Expandable Content Areas 

Here we go again; non-pageviews interactions spell trouble when you need to track them. You cannot force a visitor not to click on a particular design element like rollover content, filters, anchor/jump links. I have mentioned these aspects for a reason as you will know about it in a while. Visitors try various actions to find the information they need and intentionally or unintentionally click on many parts of the page that are hard to track. 

For instance, a click by the visitor on a PDF file won’t be trackable if it doesn’t bring them to another page. Pop-up windows are one example as visitors get the information they are looking for, but they remain on the same page. Several non-pageviews interactions are not tracked automatically. Please take a look at the following picture to know all of them. 

So, how can you fix this issue for good? Change your site structure so that there are fewer of the above- mentioned elements present. 

4. The Use of Integrated Email Sign-Ups Forms 

Finally, in the end, email sign-ups can be beneficial for businesses that are looking for a boost in their leads. Goal tracking is not that straightforward as connecting your sign-up form to your email service provider is one way. However, all new subscribers go into your list, which can cause problems later on. 

Even the thank you page may be on another domain, which can cause analytics to give erratic results. 

There can be other problems, too, so that even the messaging and marketing aspects can suffer. Take a look at the following table to know the pros and cons of integrating a website with an email marketing provider or capture on the website and then import new subscribers later. 

Over to you 

The four aspects mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg as to what can be done to make a website aptly track its visitors. From the simple Berkshire Hathaway website to highly sophisticated and comprehensive websites, businesses need to ponder several aspects for tracking their website traffic. 

If you think that you can add something valuable to this blog or want to ask a question, you are more than welcome. For any feedback too, please use the comments section below.