What You Can Learn About Your Restaurant from Google Analytics

With data coming in from seemingly all over — your POS, social media, Yelp, loyalty programs, etc. — do restaurant owners even need to spend time analyzing the activity and customer analytics from their website? After all, aside from maybe selling gift cards through the site or offering reservations, how much does it matter what customers do when they’re there? You need them in your restaurant, not sitting at home online.

Or do you?

While the ultimate goal is to get guests to come through your front door (even if it’s just to pick up a takeout order), your restaurant website can play a major role in getting them there. And Google Analytics is the key to leveraging those insights to increase business within the restaurant.

A Guide to Using Google Analytics to Increase Restaurant Sales

Google Analytics isn’t necessarily the most user-friendly of data collection platforms. As you can see, there is a lot of data collected here, which can be overwhelming if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for:

That said, restaurant owners need this information. It’s just as valuable to understand what consumers think about your restaurant and how they interact with it on the web as they do when they visit your dining establishment in person.

Here is how you can use this tool to your advantage:

Who

If you’re doing any marketing online, it can be frustrating trying to figure out who to target and where. It’s not like you can survey your guests and ask them how old they are, what neighborhoods they live in, and so on. That’s why it’s always nice to have a way to sneakily get this information.

Google Analytics includes some of this data under the Audience > Demographics tab.

Specifically, focus on:

• Demographics: age and gender will tell you if your offering is targeting the right group
• Geo: language and location (especially helpful if you find that you’re getting a lot of business from people visiting from out of town)
• Behavior: new visitors are nice as that means fresh eyes are discovering your restaurant; however, returning visitors indicate a continued interest from loyal guests

Where

As mobile devices more and more become the primary device through which people search the Internet, it’s important to have a website that caters to those screen sizes. To confirm that this is where your visitors are coming from, look at your Mobile > Overview tab:

This will tell you what the breakdown of visitors is based on desktop, mobile, and tablet visits. You can then adjust your web design and layout to cater to the majority of visitors.

How

You should also be interested in how you got your website traffic. In other words, who was it that referred them there? By identifying the referral source — even if they directly inputted your URL into the address bar — you can get a better sense for how well your marketing efforts outside the site are working.

You can learn all about this under the Acquisition tab:

Did they find you in organic (local) search? Are they seeing your posts in social media? Do reviews from Yelp actually drive traffic there as well? Figure out what the big drivers of traffic are and use them to your advantage.

When

Although it’s difficult to use Google Analytics to find out granular details about visitor activity — like the time of the day Visitor A made a reservation — you can get information on those engagements from other integrated tools, like social media, CRMs, and feedback systems. What Google Analytics will let you do, however, is discover trends on when people most often visit your website. By day, week, and month:

You can also use the comparison feature (when you set a date range) to identify trends in website traffic. This will help you ensure your site runs attractive specials, event announcements, and any other eye-catching details when people are on the site.

Why

Google Analytics can let you know a lot about why visitors came to your website, or what eventually compelled them to keep looking at it once they got there.

Under the Behavior tab, you’ll be able to learn about the content ( pages) that attracted the most visitors. You can also review the Behavior Flow to get a sneak peek into what they did once on the site. Do they go from the home page directly to the menu? Do they use your contact forms to make inquiries or leave feedback? Are you surprised what attracts them there in the first place?

What

This is where you will get the most bang for your buck from Google Analytics: you understanding of how to read what all these other data points mean. Because it’s not enough to know how many total visitors there were on Monday or which device is used to make the majority of reservations. There are other statistics you need to pay attention to as you dig deeper:

• Pages per session: the number of pages, on average, your users viewed while on the site
• Avg. session duration: how much time visitors spent perusing your site as well as individual pages
• Bounce rate: the percentage of people who left the site on a specific page

You can use these values to determine where the highest quality of traffic is coming from and what to do with them to get them interested enough to visit your restaurant:

• Which pages are of the most interest?
• Which pages are of the least interest or need improvements to be of more value?
• Are visitors missing critical information on your site?
• Are referrals from search, social media, and other sources finding your site worthwhile?
• What percentage of visitors are taking action when and where you want them to (e.g. reservations, order ahead, submit feedback, etc.)?

Lesson Learned

Reviewing website data isn’t just about logging in and being satisfied with the number of visitors each day. In your restaurant, you’re not solely focused on the number of people who fill your seats during each shift, right? You want to know what their experience was, if they’ll return, and what was so good that they couldn’t help but rave about it later.

You website might not directly provide anyone with food or drink, but, if done right, it can give them a reason to actively seek out your restaurant for that purpose.