Awesome Things You Can Do With Google Analytics
Google Analytics can be used to track website data.
Google Analytics offers free website analytics that provides insight into visitors’ use of your website. Google Analytics lets you track ROI (return on investment) for online marketing.
Visitors can be sorted using many “dimensions”, including where they are from and which browser they use. You also have the option to sort them with “metrics” such as what page they clicked and how they filled out their forms.
You can integrate Google Products with Ads and Search Console.
All you need is a small “tracking code” to place on every page of your website. Each tracking number will be unique.
The installation process will vary depending on the software you are using.
What data does Google Analytics track?
Google Analytics gathers data by placing a tracking code on each page.
Javascript is combined with the larger JavaScript File of Google Server to collect data about user activities. It provides anonymity and helps to create user i.d.s.
UTM parameters provide additional information on traffic sources. They are added to the URL of your link to allow Google Analytics to gather more details about it. These tags include information about the content source and social networks that brought in the highest revenue.
What does Google Analytics measure?
Measurements and dimensions are key building blocks for Google Analytics reports.
Dimensions are the attributes that your data has, such as source city, page, or social media channel.
Measures are the quantitative measurements for these dimensions. To determine how well your ads do in Paris (the dimension), the Metric would be the total number of sessions you’ve recorded.
Each report in Google Analytics contains dimensions and metrics.
How can Google Analytics help you?
Google Analytics enables you to make data-driven business decisions. Google Analytics enables you to determine where to advertise and what content you should post.
Google Analytics classes data in the ABCs
- Acquisition
- Behavior
- Conversions
It can be used to analyze your audience and real-time traffic.
Acquisition
Acquisition refers to the acquisition of website visitors/website traffic. You can use acquisition reports to monitor how your site is being visited.
Your Google Analytics Dashboard’s Overview tab gives you an overview of top traffic sources and their acquisition behavior.
You will get the most important data right away: how many sessions were purchased and the bounce rates of visitors.
Acquisition reports are a good way to determine which channels work well to get traffic to your website, as well as to ensure that you take the right actions.
For example, let’s suppose you need to determine which search engine generates the most organic traffic. google/organic vs. Bing/organic).
The Referral View can help you see what referral sources are driving the most traffic. If Pinterest drives significant traffic to your site, then you should publish content there.
The Social tab is focused on social referrals.
Google Analytics can be integrated with many other tools. Google Analytics integrates well with other tools.
To find out how keywords are performing and to identify the search queries driving traffic to your site, visit the Ads section.
You can use Search Console to monitor the performance of landing pages. If you integrate your Search Console data with Google Analytics, it will let you see all data from Search Console and help you optimize your website for higher CTR.
You can use the Campaign view to see which visitors visited your campaigns created with UTM parameters. However, these results are only applicable to UTM codes-created campaigns. These results do not apply to automated ad campaigns.
Behavior
You can see the behavior of visitors to your site.
When you go to the Behavior tab, the Overview view will be displayed again. This view displays a graph showing the traffic to your site during the period.
The pageviews, pages visited, time spent on each page, bounce rates, and exit percentages will all be shown.
- Pageviews: Total pages viewed.
- Unique Pages Viewed (Percentage that a person views a page multiple times in one visit)
- The Average Time Users Spend Looking at Pages: This represents the average amount of time users spend viewing a page.
- The percentage of visitors to a single page is called the bounce rate.
- Percent exit: The percentage of users who leave a page/set.
After the Overview tab, the Behavior Flow view can be found. It will display where visitors are likely to leave and then enter your website.
Understanding Site Content
This section tracks visitors’ interaction with specific pages on your site. Google Analytics offers several reports: All Pages, Landing Pages or exit pages, and Content Drilldown/content Drill down.
All Pages report displays the most popular pages of your website based on only traffic statistics. These pages will help you determine which pages perform well.
The Content Drilldown report can be used to locate areas of your website that contain folders like /blog and /news. These will provide you with a more detailed view of how different sections perform on your site.
This report shows you which landing pages are the most popular. The top landing pages are where your visitors land on your site.
Exit pages are what will show you where users are leaving your website.
Understanding Site Speed
The Behavior tab covers site speed. This section deals with slow loading times and can help you identify areas that need optimization.
(Note: All times are in seconds. Note: All times shown are in ).
- Page load time average: This indicates the time it takes for pages to load.
- The average redirection time: This indicates the amount of time required to redirect before a page is found
- The average domain lookup time
- The average server connection time is: This time frame shows the time taken to create a TCP connection for a webpage.
- The average response time for a server (or server response time) refers to the time taken by your server to reply to a user’s request. Hosting companies should consider this important factor.
- Average page download time
The Page Timings Report will tell you how long it takes your pages to load compared with your site’s overall load time
The Speed Suggestions Report is next. The Speed Suggestions Report provides guidance and information from Google on how to optimize pages of your site.
Don’t get distracted by this. Start with pages that are getting the most traffic.
User Timings.
Understanding Site Search
Another feature of Behavior reports is Site Search. This shows the number of people who use your search engine.
The Overview tab shows you all the information about visitors to your website who searched for the keyword. These data can be used in Google Ads.
The Usage Report shows the total number of searches that the search box has been used. You can see whether your search engine is seeing an increase in metrics like bounce rate and conversions.
Search Terms provides information about the most popular search terms people use to locate your website. The Search Terms view shows you detailed information about the search terms people use to locate your website. It includes the frequency with which the term is used and the pages it triggers.
The Pages report, which is the final report, is a copy of the search terms report. However, it does not focus on the keyword. It focuses instead on pages from which the search terms originated.
Understanding Events
Events are used to monitor specific actions on your website, like clicks on a video or external links, downloading of resource files, and so on.
This section must be numbered to work. A WordPress plugin like MonsterInsights will make it work automatically.
The Overview report gives a summary of the interactions you’re tracking. You will also see details about newsletter signups and video plays.
The top events report is focused on those that get the most interaction. Take for example a video that has been downloaded several times. Once you know what your audience wants, you can then create more content.
You can find the Pages report under Events. It shows which pages have the highest event traffic and the top-performing pages. Pages that are performing well should be your priority.
Next will come the Events Flow report. The Events Flow report shows the paths of your visitors when they interact with your event.
Last but not least, Experiments. These experiments are great for determining which pages are performing best and what pages need to be changed.
Conversions
Google Analytics Conversions section is focused on how visitors convert to your website. This information is essential for increasing your conversion rate.
Four sections can be used to break down conversion reports. Now let’s take a look at each of these sections.
Understanding Goals
Similar to the previous sections, the Goals tab begins with an overview. This will provide a quick summary of the website’s goals. It also shows the number of pages converted.
Clear goals are essential to your success. By setting clear and precise goals, you can ensure that you’re setting yourself up for success.
Next, you’ll find the Goal URLs Report. This shows the URLS that people converted. To see the pages leading to the goal, use the secondary dimension dropdown.
Reverse Goal Path is similar to Goals URL, but it shows the previous steps and the number of steps required to achieve your goal.
The next step is to take a look at Funnel Visualizations. To track the progress of multiple conversions you must define a Destination Goal. This will allow you to identify potential obstacles such as complex checkout processes or broken pages.
You can also use the Goal Flow Visualization Report in this way.
Understand the eCommerce Section
This section is intended for companies that sell products via their websites.
This overview report shows you how eCommerce converts and what your average order value is. You can also see unique transactions.
There are also several more in-depth reports. Look out for price trends and seasonality.
You can view your total revenue by using the Sales Performance Report. It provides an overview of how you are performing each day.
The Transactions Report will be next. This report breaks down the revenue and shipping costs of each transaction during the period that you’re measuring.
Time to purchase is another option. You also have Time to Purchase. It shows the time it takes for someone to purchase an item on your website.
A Section About Multi-Channel Funnels
Use Multi-Channel Funnels to get an entire picture of your customer’s path through your website. You can see all the actions taken by a customer to convert.
The Overview Report provides an overview of all channels used to convert traffic to your site. It is possible to spend more time using social media than on paid advertising.
The Assisted Conversions section — This indicates how many people were influenced by a channel. 50 visitors might have visited your blog and then converted later.
The top conversion paths report will give you the best conversion routes. Customers might search for you online and return to your website to buy a product.
You can use the Time Lag report to see how long it takes someone to convert.
The Page Length report, similar to page length and time lag, tracks the number of interactions users make on your website before they decide to convert.
Section on Attribution
Google Analytics only offers one report, the Model Comparison Tool. You can change the attribution for the conversion to see changes in the numbers.
You can see the impact of different marketing channels on your conversions.
Audience
Learn more about the audience of your website by using Google Analytics. The Mobile & Geographic report will be most useful.
Real-Time
You can see the people on your website and their activities in real-time.
Google Analytics: Problem-Solving
Google Analytics can be used to solve problems, but not all. Instead, use problem-solving skills.
You should not go into your Google Analytics account looking for the solution.
Google Analytics could also be wrong. You need to learn how to distinguish important (or simply wrong) information to see what is most crucial.
Next steps
Now you are familiar with the basic concepts of Google Analytics. You are now ready to start using Google Analytics.
- Check that Google Analytics has been properly installed. You can use an analytics plugin to check every setting.
- If there is a problem with your site, please describe it. To determine if people are finding a page through organic search you need to look at organic traffic.
- After you have identified the issue/question, dig deeper into analytics to determine the root cause. Data can be used to discover why users aren’t finding the page through organic searches.
