Making Sense Of The Metrics In Google Analytics
Google Analytics can be super confusing when you first start out with a website/blog. This is especially the case if you aren’t tech savvy. There’s a lot of great information that can help you grow your site if you understand how to make sense of the metrics in Google Analytics.
Where is your audience coming from?
Top sources/Mediums: This metric shows you what channels clients found you through and where.
Regional data: Where they are from regionally.
How many people are visiting the site?
Sessions
New Visitors
What are they viewing?
Landing pages
Popular Pages (page views)
Breaking Down Google Analytics A B C’s
Google Analytics can also be broken down into pieces by looking at the ABC’s. Acquisitions, Behavior, Conversion.
Acquisitions
Acquisitions- This measures the traffic to your site and tells you how your audience got there.
Sessions & Users– This shows how effective your marketing/promotion is in generating new traffic.
% of New Sessions– Shows how many of your site’s visits are from first time or returning visitors.
New Session– First-time visitors
Channels– Here you can find the path that visitors use to get to your site.
Traffic– Traffic to your site
Entrances– Occurs when a visitor enters your site and a new session starts
Pageviews– This shows you how often visitors access your web content.
Behavior
Behavior- This set of metrics shows you how effective your site is at engaging your audience. Here, you can see what pages they view and the actions that they have taken on the site.
Bounces– This is the number of visits to your site that contain a single image/page request.
Bounce Rate– A percentage that reflects on the engagement and quality of the content on the site.
Page per Session– Shows how the visitor flows through your site content
Average Session Duration– Length of the visit on your site.
Exit Rate– Percentage of visitors that land on the page and leave without accessing another page
Conversion
Conversion- This tracks the effectiveness of your site’s ability to get your visitor to take a desirable action. This may be signing up for an email list, clicking on more than one blog post, etc.
Goal Conversion Rate– The percentage of visits that resulted in a conversion
Goal Completions– The events on your site that are most important and how many are completed
Goal Value- The worth of each conversion. This is set by you, you can have more than one goal
and set a value for each
Want The A to Z Guide On Google Analytics?
Check out this site they have a full downloadable pdf glossary they do a fantastic job of giving the meanings of everything you’ll find in Google Analytics.
More Definitions and Descriptions of Google Analytics available here.
Are you confident with Google Analytics or is it something you’re still working through?
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