Understanding your site traffic is crucial to figuring out whether or not the strategies you have in place are working. What works and what doesn’t work online is of utmost importance, it’s all a number’s game. By optimising your Google Analytics, you have a better understanding of the types of people you are reaching and their user behaviour when they land on your website. Here at Gekkoshot, Google Analytics is an important metric for us to understand so that we can deliver the best results for your business.
In this article, we’ll be breaking down the key terms you need to know with Google Analytics as well as understanding your Google Analytics Dashboard. You will be able to determine:
- Pages that people visit, where and when they do and why they may leave the page
- How long they stay on site and site pages
- Traffic sources and the common devices where that traffic is derived from
- Best performing content and how it may influence your sales
Here are the main definitions you need to understand Google Analytics:
- Users:
- The number of people who visit your site at least once.
- New Users:
- The number of first-time users during the selected date range in Google Analytics
- Sessions:
- A session is recorded when a user lands on your website. Every time someone visits your website that is another session created. The number of sessions can be higher than the number of USers/New Users
- Pageviews:
- A pageview is when someone lands on a webpage on your website. For example, if a visitor visits your website and visits 3 webpages, then Google will record this as 1 user, 1 session and 3 pageviews.
- Average Session Duration:
- This is the average length of time that visitors are staying on your website during a session.
- Bounce Rate:
- This is the percentage of single-page view sessions where there is no interaction on the page. Remember, the lower the bounce rate, the better.
- Traffic Channels:
- These are the areas in which people are entering your website. Google categorises them into various “channels” such as direct (URL), referral (External linking), organic search (search engines), social (social media), email (newsletters), paid search (advertisements). This is particularly valuable if you want to know whether or not your SEO efforts are paying off or if your social media strategy is working or not.
Understanding Your Google Analytics Dashboard
The main homepage of your dashboard is where all the data is compiled and summarised. If you want to delve deeper into the details of your analytics, such as traffic data, the visitor behaviour on your website and how they landed on your website, then this section is dedicated to you.
Firstly, you will need to set a date range for the desired period of time. Typically, a good example of this is the previous 30 days – 90 days.
Identify your users by analysing how many users typically visit your website and the average time they spend on your site. Looking at your average session duration, if the number is low (like under 2 minutes), then that might mean that the content you have or information on your website isn’t the search intent that your users are looking for. In order to keep people interested and thus have a longer session duration on your website, you need to have original and high quality information that is valuable to your users.
In order to see what users do once they’re on your website. You can access this data by looking at your bounce rate. If the bounce rate is high, then people are not really interested and not clicking on information on your website. There could be a magnitude of reasons for this; there may not be enough CTA buttons (call to action) that encourages users to click to other pages.
Another important factor to look at is your top performing pages, if you see blog posts that get a lot of traffic, then that post has the right type of information on it. Pages that are not doing as well may mean that users are not looking for this information. These performance indicators are what help you determine whether or not your digital strategy is working. You can use this information to tweak the lower-performing pages and check after another 30-90 days to see if the changes have had a positive impact.
Finally, an important piece of information that is always overlooked is the responsive design of your website. The device in which your users prefer to view your website highlights whether or not your website is tailoring to their needs. For example, if most of your users prefer using their mobile devices, then having your website mobile optimised should be a high priority. Tailoring the user experience of your website helps direct your strategy towards more goals that will result in better conversions.
There you have it! All the information you need for Google Analytics. Data helps drive better business decisions. You can make your business thrive just by looking at your performance indicators. If you want more information on bettering your website, take a look at our other blogs here or contact us today for a free consultation.