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WebStrategies CEO, Chris Leone, discusses GA4 with Mike Lawson on CU broadcast and a summary of the changes is below.

Ready or not, GA4 is replacing UA platform in Google Analytics on July 1, 2023.

If you use Google Analytics, you've heard GA4 is replacing the Universal Analytics (UA) platform. Users will adapt to a new interface and website data that is reported differently. There will not be a direct comparison between the data we've been tracking in UA and the new GA4 so becoming familiar with the new format should start soon; the old system will sunset on July 1, 2023. Based on the popularity of our webinar on GA4, it's a topic that credit union marketers want to learn more about so we're breaking that session out into several bite-size portions for easier consumption. But you can always watch the GA4 for Credit Unions full recording.

When it comes to site engagement metrics, one factor that many marketers tend to overlook is how quickly their website pages load. In today’s edition of the WebStrategies benchmark blog post series, we are going to take a look at the average load time of a credit union website and discuss why having an optimized website is critical from both a user experience and SEO point of view.

Google Analytics offers a huge amount of data, and an almost endless array of options for analyzing that data. That's a great thing for data-driven marketers such as ourselves, but for many businesses, that can be overwhelming and is frankly more information than they will ever need. There are a handful of critically important metrics that every business should be reviewing to identify the overall health of their website, and our recent broadcast focused on those.

As the world becomes digital, more marketing budgets are moving from traditional channels to online channels. Most traditional channels don’t allow you to accurately track the return on your investment. Fortunately, the online world offers a detailed level of tracking and measurement that helps us better understand the return on our digital investments.

Executing an effective inbound marketing requires three things: 1) patience, 2) commitment, and 3) good decision making. It could take months, or even years, to see a significant payoff from inbound marketing. This is where patience and commitment come into play. Good decision making is less straightforward. It requires a level of expertise to do the right things the right way. It also requires good data to make educated, informed decisions about what to do next. Our Guide To Measuring Inbound Marketing showed you how to measure your inbound marketing efforts across a variety of platforms. Now it's time to go deeper. Most marketing automation platforms provide only a modest level of web analytics. This is adequate for a high-level view of what’s taking place, but it’s not enough for extensive analysis. Google Analytics is considered the gold-standard in free web analytics platforms, and it should be used in conjunction with any inbound marketing campaign. While Google Analytics provides hundreds of different reports and metrics, only a few are essential to the modern day inbound marketer.

If your organization is concerned about monitoring marketing efforts and wants to continuously improve results, then developing a digital marketing dashboard should be a priority. Dashboard reports can provide at-a-glance clarity around current digital marketing efforts with a focus on how digital marketing efforts are contributing to meaningful business results.

Metrics Drive Decisions

This post is all about ideas that will help you create good blog posts. Most of us know the value of blogging and most of us experience "writer's block" at one time or another. So, when I read an article recently that offered some ideas about creating blog content, I was so inspired that I had to share some of the ideas. To be fair, the original content came from someone who writes for Search Engine Watch. Following are 5 easy ways and ideas about where to go for inspiration to write blog posts.