Google Analytics for Localization

When is the last time you extracted information from Google Analytics about which global locations your website visitors came from?  If you're only looking at webpage visits in aggregate, you're missing out on a wealth of information that can help you better target your customers. 

1. Find out where your customers live. 
Are they all from the U.S. or do they come from all over the world? Click on a specific country to determine which region or cities your visitors live in. How do conversion rates differ across regions? Is there an opportunity to create a marketing campaign that targets a specific city, region or country? 

2. Find out whisch languages your visitors speak. 
If your website is only in English, but you have a large number of French visitors, maybe it's time you invested in a French language site. If you have a high bounce rate, could that be the reason? 

3. Learn more about visiting patterns.
How do visitors from specific countries vary by new/return user rates? If you localize your site for a foreign market, how might you want to adapt your content based on those rates? Check out how users from different countries or cities flow through your site. What is similar and what's different? This is another chance to think about targeted marketing campaigns based on user interest/awareness. 

4. How did your international users get to your site?
Did they come directly, through a campaign, a local referral, or a search engine? Maybe you need to significantly increase your use of social media in a particular region or maybe you need different ad words. Thinking about usage patterns can help you be more creative about acquisition.  

5. Use of multilingual sites
If you determine that you need to localize your site for different regions, you should do a little research about how to best set up those sites so that Google indexes them properly. A quick cheat sheet can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en


The point is that by delving into the international data that Google Analytics provides, you can learn a huge amount about your visitors that can help you prioritize the localization of your site, improve the targeting of your marketing campaigns, and determine which local markets to put your advertising dollars in.