Episode 97: Optimizing Your Website Using Google Analytics With Brandy Lawson

Brandy Lawson is the founder of FieryFX, a boutique digital agency, and a Chief Online Officer for-hire. Her mission is to help entrepreneurs maximize their impact and success by making the right digital decisions for their business. Brandy's zone of genius is connecting business goals with marketing & technology strategies. Her superpower is analogies. Sure, it's not as impressive as teleportation, but it does help clients grasp new concepts faster than a speeding bullet.  Brandy is a mother, a wife, a native of Montana, a current Phoenician, and a co-host of the Northwest Phoenix WordPress meetup. She is also a lover of ridiculous shoes, a captain of her boat on Lake Pleasant, and doesn't miss an episode of Jeopardy.          Biggest Takeaways You Don’t Want To Miss: Brandy started with a pretty unique position in a large company. She was a product director for GoDaddy, she sat between the consumers and the developers. She had to understand the market on multiple levels in order to produce for both interested parties. What is a heat map? It is basically the analytics tool that looks at where people are actually looking on your page. It’s more than just seeing the link that they click on. You can see how far down do they scroll and how long they spend on your sit. Also, it will let you know what are your hot spots on your site. Jump Consulting has changed so much for the better after seeing the analytics. Looking at the metrics of what is working and what is not. Are you building trust? Measure that! Are you trying to sell items or packages? Then you need to create indicators of trust and what it is people are looking for when they look at your business page. How do you start a conversation with someone that can help you with your analytics? Think of it as a building a house. Each part has a different purpose, just like a home you need an architect, a plumber, an electrician. A website is very much the same. You need the analytical data to back up what you are trying to achieve in your business. It is important to start collecting your data as soon as possible. You don’t even have to understand it at first. But if you are gathering the data, then when you are ready for the next step you will have a base. Once you hire someone or have time to learn, you will already have a place to start.                     Show Highlights: Living at the intersection of Marketing and Technology [1:00] The importance of Google Analytics. Our businesses are online, websites drive business and you need to understand how to make the data work for you. [5:00] Why you need a heat map with on your site. Check out Hot Jar.  [7:00] How does one measure trust? How do you know if people visiting your site trust you as a business?  [10:45] Building your analytics house for your website. [14:30] What is an order taker? And why you need someone who will ask you, “why?” They will add value by understanding your larger technique. [18:00] How to start with improving your website and incorporating Google Analytics on your website. [20:00]   Downloadable Offer: Check out this great offer! Grab Your FREE Custom Visibility & Conversion Report at https://fieryfx.com/jump Links: Check out Brandy Lawson and connect with her online at FieryFX.com Share The Show: Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review! Click this link – Bella In Your Business Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section Click on ‘Write a Review’                                                                                        Transcript: This is episode 97 of Bella in Your Business. Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready—Bella’s got your chute. Let’s jump. Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, your host with Jump Consulting. Today, I have my web developer here with me, Brandy Lawson, and I cannot wait for you guys to get to know her. She is the founder of Fiery FX, a boutique digital agency and a chief online officer for hire. Her mission is to help entrepreneurs maximize their impact and success by making the right digital decisions for their business. Her zone of genius is connecting business goals with marketing and technology strategies. Her superpower is analogies. Sure, it’s not as impressive as teleportation, but it does help clients grasp new concepts, which is why she and I get along so well. I totally speak in analogies all the time. She’s a fellow Phoenician like I am, a wife and mom, a native Montanan, a lover of ridiculous shoes, captain of her own boat on Lake Pleasant—which she still needs to invite me to go on—and she doesn’t miss an episode of Jeopardy! Bella: Brandy, welcome to the show. Brandy: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to chit-chat with you and help your audience understand some more about their websites. Bella: You’ve taught me an enormous amount of knowledge about my own website. I didn’t even know anyone like you existed. You’re not just a developer or a strategist—you’re so uniquely positioned and gifted that I don’t think there’s a name for what you do, which is why you made one up. So, who are you? Brandy: I made up Chief Online Officer because I’m unique. I live at that intersection of marketing and technology. Can I code HTML and CSS and write PHP? Yes. Should I? No. I put together marketing strategies, ran a multimillion-dollar business arm for one of the world’s largest domain registrars, directed developers, done user experience testing, and even UL product testing. I understand technology, how users want to use it, and how to bring those together. The other problem with defining my business is that, yes, we do websites, but they don’t do anything on their own without a marketing strategy. If you don’t know how people will get there or how to turn eyeballs into clicks into dollars, it’s incomplete. I see the whole picture, and I’m a lazy human being—so I’m all about efficiency, effectiveness, and automation. Bella: We had dinner after a networking meeting recently, and you told me about your time at GoDaddy. Can you describe your unique role there and how that translates to helping people like me? Brandy: I was hired as a Product Director for GoDaddy’s website builder. My job was to sit between the people who we wanted to sell the product to and the people who developed it. Technology is fantastic, but it’s useless unless it solves people’s problems. The people who write the code aren’t the ones who understand the problem. My job was to understand the market, the users, and their problems—and then translate that into how technology could solve them and build the business. Bella: When I came to you, I had no data. Now, in our meetings, we talk analytics—Google Analytics, heat maps, and so much more. Let’s talk about analytics. Brandy: When you get to scale, data becomes critical. When we start out, we don’t see it as that important. But if you have any kind of web presence, you need Google Analytics so you know how many people are visiting your site and what they’re looking at. Even if it’s just 50 people a month, you’ll know what they’re doing—whether they’re leaving or taking action. Bella: The first thing you did on my site was add a heat map. Tell us about that. Brandy: A heat map shows where people click, how far they scroll, and where their eyes go. It’s different on desktop versus mobile. It shows where the hot spots are—where users are interacting. I had a client with a landing page converting at 83%. We noticed people were clicking on an image that wasn’t a link. We made it clickable, and the conversion rate jumped to 93%. The tool I use is Hotjar. It’s free for up to three pages and shows user behavior. Just install it on your most popular page—it’s copy-paste simple. Bella: You can even see where people are scrolling and how long they stay. Sometimes you’ll realize you spent 10 hours on a blog people only read for 15 seconds. My top post used to be “Is it safe for my dog to eat tuna fish?”—weird, right? But analytics told me that. Brandy: Exactly. Bella: Tell us about the work you’ve done on my site and the results. Brandy: We meet monthly to review your analytics with a custom report. We look at metrics tied to your goals. First, you need to decide what your website’s job is—build trust, generate leads, or sell. That determines what to measure. Bella: How do you measure trust? Brandy: If users visit your About page and spend time there, that’s one sign. If they give you their email address, that’s another—it means they trust you enough to connect. Engagement on your Contact page, lead magnets, or booking forms also show trust. Return visitors are another strong sign. Bella: That’s a great point. It’s not just about SEO buzzwords. It’s a dynamic strategy. Brandy: Exactly. You want to measure how everything—ads, landing pages, pixels, bots—connects. If you’re using automation, you can even track how much revenue comes from a specific chatbot or campaign. Bella: So how do we find people like you? Brandy: It’s tricky because there’s no single title for people who do what I do. Think of your website like a house—you need an architect (strategist), plumber (developer), and designer (decorator). Your website is one part of a larger online ecosystem. When you talk to potential hires, if they don’t mention data or analytics, they’re not the right fit. Bella: So it’s like hiring a contractor who has data to back up their design decisions. Brandy: Exactly. You want partners who ask “why” and seek to understand your goals. Many people are order takers—they’ll just do what you ask, but that might break something else.