3 Content Performance Factors Google Analytics Fails to Gauge

Google Analytics or GA is one of the best traffic assessment tools to measure website performance, but it can fail when it comes to content performance. The tool was designed to monitor traffic for content and e-commerce websites based on the reports around web page views. GA provides some high-end data surrounding page views including the type of customers, how they landed on the website, what action they took, how long they stayed on a web page, and things like that. Then, today you need to understand and measure much more when it comes to content.  
According to an article published on https://www.huffpost.com, today people have more data to determine how their website content is performing and piles up to their competitor businesses.  
It is imperative to know how visitors are interacting with the content once they viewed a landing page. What is their perception about your brand and products? Which content types across different touch–points people are consuming the most in their way to conversion? GA has the potential to answer some of these questions but cannot determine aspects related to content performance. That is the reason why you need to look somewhere else. Read on to learn about these three content performance metrics that Google Analytics cannot measure.  

1. Brand emotional lift 

Google Analytics has some limitations and can monitor web page views on any website. However, it fails to inform you about the effect of the content on your website, earned, and shared media platforms, where you do not have the capability to set up its tracking pixel. Besides, if you manage to use it to keep tabs on content views across every channel, you yet would not learn much about the effect of your content on brand emotion or sentiment, or your brand’s voice in your industry.  
In its place, you employ a social listening tool to monitor and understand what customers believe about your business or brand. These tools help in tracking social media likes, comments, shares, mentions, and responses. When it comes to such information, they have numerous use cases, one of which is achieving a holistic vision of your brand emotion. 
The improved platforms monitor significantly more than the number of times people mention your brand on social networking sites, employing semantic text assessment to disclose the sentiments behind those posts and making a comparison of the signals to that of your business competitors. You need to combine all such trends with your timeline of content promotion accomplishments, and then only connections will start to develop. If you can manage to do this successfully, you’ll be in a win-win situation.  
When it comes to social listening for brand emotion monitoring, you must try tools such as Mention, Talkwalker, Awario, or any other similar tools. 

2. On-page performance

When it comes to GA, it solely monitors web page views and progress on your website. Except you physically integrate layers of incident monitoring, it fails to show what visitors do on particular web pages. You can never know if web visitors understand two lines as far as your content is concerned and then next, distracted by an out-of-the-ordinary link. You can consult with agencies offering SEO in Panama City, FL to learn more on-page performance.  
That is the benefit of heatmaps, which are extraordinarily effectual at disclosing visitor behavior. The tool maps out what areas of the web page receive maximum time and the maximum clicks, and in which part of your website, the mouse does not move. 
When it comes to a heatmap, it indicates parts of the site that get the maximum user attention in color red and color blue for the parts that receive the slightest attention. It shows whether the web user engaged or interacted on the page, or just kept the page open and unread for many hours. You can use a heatmap to find out the most admired areas of your website, the navigation URLS users click the most. Heatmaps also help you understand whether the fundamental components underneath the fold are being unnoticed. You can experiment with heatmaps and try to use Lucky Orange, CrazyEgg, and similar tools. Try this tactic and you’ll be surprised by the outcome.  

3. Points of friction on website forms 

If any web user attempts to fill out an online form and leaves in disappointment, GA will fail to understand why and would not let you know. The maximum GA can do is to let you know about the amount of time all website visitors spent on a web page. Even such information might be quite deceptive and fail to convey the accurate details.  
As far as contact forms, lead capture or sales checkout forms are concerned, it could be difficult to ascertain the number of fields you included. The less number of fields your forms have, the lesser resistance users will have going for, which contributes to increased conversions. 
On the contrary, the increasing number of fields you add, the more information you’ll need to focus on and work with when visitors finish, fill out and submit the forms, which is beneficial for recognizing personas when implementing segmented nurturing sequences. You’ll know more about your targeted customers, and would be in a favorable situation to figure out the importance of your leads.  
To understand at what level the form fields are serving as obstacles on the way to conversions, you should choose the form builder tool’s analytics. The enhanced platforms would show fractional submissions, and to what extent a visitor uses a form prior to discarding the same. Therefore, you could see if one field is too lengthy or a question too puzzling. 
You can start experimenting with form conversion and optimization and use tools such as Formismo, Formstack, and Jotform. 
Conclusion 
Rather than using GA, make the most out of audience intelligence tools that help in providing data related to their likes, interests, dislikes, behavior, and personal information. It will help you to gain a profound understanding of your website visitors. It lets you polish up your content to attract your targeted audience, as well as opens opportunities for account-oriented marketing.