“Detective” is a feature that tracks almost everything about a specific visitor, as well as their behavior while on the site.

For example, it will tell you the following attributes about a specific visitor:

• Referral site
• Landing page
• Device used
• Screen size
• Incoming UTM parameters (for advanced marketing campaigns)

It will also tell you the following about their behavior:

• The date & time of each visit
• What pages they visited, in sequential order
• What products they viewed, shared, added to cart, and purchased

What About Google Analytics?

So, why is this information so important? What sets Detective apart from the data you can already get in Google Analytics?

The key is that everything in Google Analytics is anonymous and aggregated.

You get broad information, but you learn nothing about your specific visitors.

And having a level of specificity to your analytics can be critical. Here’s an example:

Let’s say you get a new customer today who placed a $3,000 order.

That’s a big order, so you think, “What can I learn about this buyer that I can use to find more of them?”

Let’s find out where this customer came from. Opening up Google Analytics, or our basic Stats tool, you discover they came from a Google search.

Good to know, your SEO must be working.

But that’s not the full story. In many cases, it’s not even the accurate story. There is a ton going on behind the curtain that you can’t see.

Using Detective, you’ll see that the visitor did indeed come from a Google search. But you’ll also see a trail of your pages they visited, and it looks something like this:

• Day 1: They click on the link from one of your Instagram posts.
• Day 9: They click on another Instagram post.
• Day 22: They click on another Instagram post.
• Day 29: They click on another Instagram post.
• Day 30: They search for your business name in Google, click to your site, and make a purchase.

In Google Analytics, you only saw the final action, leading you to falsely attribute the sale to SEO.

With Detective, you see that it was actually Instagram that was 99% responsible for this sale.

Without the full picture, you’d be left wondering whether your Instagram efforts are even worth doing!

The Big Picture

It all comes down to time.

Between creating your art, running your online art gallery, traveling to art fairs and exhibitions, and all of the other daily tasks that go along with the life of the artist, you want to spend your time marketing as efficiently as possible.

Using Detective, you can investigate where a new customer came from, and use that information to bring in more customers just like them.

You can even look at what other images of yours they viewed before making a purchase. This is your up-sell opportunity. For more on this tactic, make sure you hear our podcast interview with Kim Vergil on how she turned 1 sale of an original painting into 5.

Google Analytics is a good start, but it’s not made for the artist. You may know who your best collectors are, but you have no idea when they visit your website, what brought them there, and exactly what pages and images they view while they’re there.

With Detective, now you do.

Learn More About Detective

Read the full Knowledge Base article to learn how to access Detective in your Site Manager, as well as an overview of all the data you can get from Detective.

Stay tuned to the blog for follow-up video content on how to make the most of Detective.