In this digital age, determining if your marketing strategy is effective is easier now than ever before. From digital media, to print advertising, you can track everything if you put the right metrics in place from the start. The one platform every business should be using to closely track these metrics is Google Analytics. If you are not currently tracking your website traffic, how can you determine if your efforts are paying off? Google Analytics provides hard data that shows where your website traffic is coming from, how long users are visiting your site, what their behavior is while on your site, and so much more! Ready to dive in? Keep reading for our tips on what every business owner should know about Google Analytics.
Setting Up Your Google Analytics Account
Before you can begin tracking your marketing efforts and website traffic, you’ll have to create your Google Analytics account. Luckily, Google has made creating an Analytics account straightforward and user-friendly. Visit google.com/analytics and follow the steps to sign up and create your free account. After you set up your account, you need to set up a property and view so Analytics can begin collecting data. Google has an awesome resource that provides a step-by-step guide to getting started with Analytics.
Key Insights to Look For
Once you have your Analytics account set up and you’ve plugged the tracking code into your website, you’re ready to begin collecting data. Analytics has two different properties (Universal and GA4) you can set up to track your website traffic. For this blog, we are looking at tracking in Analytics through the Universal property. Google will begin compiling your data and filtering it into different categories. Google will automatically fill the data in these categories into reports that you can use to determine who is visiting your website, how they’re finding your website, what they’re doing once they get there, and how you can keep them on your website longer.
When you access your Analytics account, you will automatically come to a home screen that gives you a general overview of your website’s data. The data on this page is sorted into reports that are easy to read, and they’re accompanied by graphs and charts that identify trends in the data. There’s a ton of information housed within this area of Analytics, so we’ve listed a few of our go-to home page reports below:
- The Audience Overview Report, located at the very top of your home page, gives you a snapshot look at the number of users you have acquired over a defined period of time, coupled with the session rate and session duration. This report gives you a visual representation of how many people are visiting your website, how often they are there (session rate), and how long they are staying on the website (session duration). The report will also show you the average amount of time spent on the page, the bounce rate, and the exit rate. Exit rate is the percentage of sessions that ended with that page visit. Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page sessions where the user did not perform any actions on that page. If you see a high bounce rate (above 70%) you’ll know that the content is not appealing to your audience and it needs to be adjusted.
- Directly under the Audience Overview Report is the Acquisition Report, which shows the sources of your website traffic. It also shows you what days of the week are most popular and which referral sources bring peaks in your website traffic. These referrals occur when a different website refers, or directs, users to your website. This brief overview provides data on how you are acquiring users whether it be from direct search, organic search, paid search or display.
- The Pages Report, located below the Acquisition Report, gives an overview of the ten most visited pages for the defined time range that you select. If you click into the report, it will show you the unique pageviews on each page, aggregating pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session.
Key Reports Every Business Can Use
Knowing where your website traffic comes from and what users are doing while on your website is imperative for businesses to understand. When you know how people use your website, you can tailor your content to their needs, keeping them on your site longer and increasing your conversion rate. Analytics provides a ton of great data to help you understand your audience, but with so much data it can become confusing. Don’t worry, that’s why you have us! We’ve broken down the key reports that every business can use to better understand their audience’s patterns. Each of these reports can be accessed from the left navigation bar on the home page, simply click the report name and then select the category’s overview.
- Realtime
- The Realtime Overview gives businesses a live look at activity on their website. You can see how many active users are currently on the site, where those users are located geographically, the keywords and referral sources that brought them to your website, and which pages they are currently viewing. This report is unique because it is the only report that gives you a live look at your website activity.
- Audience
- Knowing the audience you are marketing to is a major component of a successful marketing strategy. Analytics’ Audience Overview gives you a breakdown of who your audience is, what devices they are using to access your website, their geographic location, and more! The audience category also houses sub-reports that provide data on your users’ demographics, interests, geographic location, and the operating system they are using. All these reports help you understand who your audience is so you can target them more accurately with your digital marketing campaigns.
- Acquisition
- Analytics’ Acquisition Overview Report shows how you are acquiring website users. The main referral sources often include organic search, direct search, social, display, referral, and paid search. Let’s break that down.
- Organic Search
- Refers to traffic that comes to your site through unpaid search results on search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing.
- If Organic Search is your highest channel, you’ll know that your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts are working in your favor.
- Refers to traffic that comes to your site through unpaid search results on search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing.
- Direct Search
- Shows users that have typed your website’s URL into their browser to access it.
- Social
- Tracks users that come to your site from social media platforms.
- Keep an eye on this number to measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.
- Tracks users that come to your site from social media platforms.
- Display
- Provides data on traffic that comes in from Google Display Ads. Display ads are ads that are shown on articles, videos or websites that consumers browse.
- Referral
- Reports visitors that come to your website from a source outside of a search engine (i.e. a business partner may link to your website from theirs).
- Tip: The more external links that lead to your website, the better your SEO will be!
- Reports visitors that come to your website from a source outside of a search engine (i.e. a business partner may link to your website from theirs).
- Paid Search
- Comprises all of the traffic sources bringing visits to your site that are attributed as CPC, PPC, or paid search.
- Use this data to track the success of your Pay Per Click campaigns.
- Comprises all of the traffic sources bringing visits to your site that are attributed as CPC, PPC, or paid search.
- Organic Search
- Analytics’ Acquisition Overview Report shows how you are acquiring website users. The main referral sources often include organic search, direct search, social, display, referral, and paid search. Let’s break that down.
- Behavior
- Once you have users on your site, tracking their behavior on your website enables you to know which pages users are responding positively and negatively to. The behavior report gives you a breakdown of the movements people are taking on your site. For example, if they start on the home page and then move to a blog and then navigate to a contact form, those movements will be reflected in the behavior report.
- High bounce rates indicate two possible scenarios. Users found the information they needed and left, or your website experience was uninteresting or unoptimized so they did not want to browse any longer.
- Longer time spent shows that users stayed engaged with the content.
- Once you have users on your site, tracking their behavior on your website enables you to know which pages users are responding positively and negatively to. The behavior report gives you a breakdown of the movements people are taking on your site. For example, if they start on the home page and then move to a blog and then navigate to a contact form, those movements will be reflected in the behavior report.
The Behavior Flow report lets you see the path visitors commonly take on your website—from the first page they view to the last page they visit before leaving your site. This report gives you a visual guide to how long visitors stay on your website and where those visitors end up leaving.
Tracking every step of your marketing strategy is more important than ever before. Google Analytics is an awesome, free tool that tracks very specific movements of your audience, informing your marketing strategy. The amount of data Analytics provides at a glance can be overwhelming. Luckily for you, you have a marketing partner equipped to make sense of the information and create a strategic marketing plan to grow your business. Ready to take the leap? Contact our team today.