Google Analytics is one of the leading platforms for tracking and analysing your website traffic. It provides important information about who is visiting your website, as well as providing important data such as what the visitor saw on the site and how they arrived on the site. It is provided free of charge by Google provided your website receives no more than ten million visits per month.
It is a key tool for marketing executives and especially digital marketers because it offers detailed data on the performance of the website, the advertising campaigns that may be running, the audience that visits it and other information that can significantly improve its performance.
For businesses that want to grow through the internet, the use of Google Analytics will help to draw the right conclusions regarding the performance of their investment, but also the actions that need to be taken to improve these actions. The most important problem we face today as Digital Marketers is that entrepreneurs cannot “read” Google Analytics data even in basic reports. That’s why the Digital Marketing team at Astrolabs prepared a short guide to Google Analytics to help you take your first steps in this amazing tool.
To get started, we will look at the basic tabs that appear in the left column of Google Analytics except for the “Customize” tab which is for more experienced users.
Home Page
By logging in to Google Analytics you will be taken to the Home Page / Home. There you will find a summary of basic statistics of your website such as total visits (in a specific time frame), active users currently on the site, how users are acquired, what geographic regions your users are from and some other statistics. The homepage is probably the simplest and most basic thing in Google Analytics as it gives a quick overview of the site’s performance.
Reports
Google Analytics Reports are divided into 5 main categories:
1. Real Time
2. Audience
3. Acquisition
4. Behavior
5. Conversions
Each category includes a group of individual reports that go into greater depth and provide more specific analysis of the data. In this article we will present what you can see in each category, so that you can more easily find the data you are looking for.
1. Real Time
This report shows you real-time data. So you can see at a given moment how many users are on your site, which pages or articles they are reading, which country they are from, how they entered your website, which keyword they used in Google and found the site. In most cases the data shown in these reports is for the last five minutes and in some special cases it can go up to thirty minutes.
Let’s take a look at the individual reports that appear in this category.
i. Locations
In this report, you can see which users are currently on your website and how long they have been there. On the map by clicking on the country you can also see which regions of the country the website visitors are from.
ii. Traffic Sources
Traffic sources tell you how users found your website. Did they click on a link you posted on Social Media? Did they type in your URL directly?
This report can be extremely useful if you want to see in real time how much traffic a new post you upload is generating or to see the performance of a new page with amazing content you uploaded.
iii. Content
In this report you can see which pages the visitors of the site are currently on. More specifically you can see the page title, URL and the percentage of active users on a particular page.
iv. Events
Real-time events allow you to track in Google Analytics the customized interactions you have created and users have with your site. This can include clicks on ads, file downloads such as e-books, video views, etc.
You can further customize the data by viewing “Events (Last 30 minutes)” to see events in the last half hour or click on an event category to see the activity specific to that category.
v. Conversions
With this report you can see in real time whether the goals you have set are being met. The goals can be for an e-shop to place an order or can be for a website to complete a contact form. In any case, here you can see how your money interacts with these goals and if they are being achieved.
2. Audience
Audience feedback can give you important information about your website visitors. Through the individual reports you can see the demographics of the users, their interests, what geographic region they are from, etc.
You can use this information to better target specific sections of your audience. There are two key features to remember:
• You need to define the types of audiences you want to monitor.
• Google has introduced an audience report that allows you to see how your audience responds to repeat marketing campaigns.
i. Active Users
This report allows you to track users who have visited your website in the last 1, 7, 14 or 30 days.
This information helps you measure audience interest.
For example, if you have a high number of active 1-day users but notice a drastic decrease at 7, 14 and 30, this may indicate a disconnect with your audience.
ii. Life Time Value
With the “lifetime value” report you will get data on the audience that has been generated through actions such as Google Ads campaigns, Email marketing, etc. It basically calculates the long-term value of users acquired through different actions .
You can then sort each acquisition audience and see average goal completions, page views, revenue and so on.
iii. Cohort Analysis
A cohort is a group of users bound by a common attribute, for example, users acquired on a particular day.
This report shows you all the users who have something in common with each other. For example, you could define a cohort as the day a promotion such as a giveaway was started. You could then view data about the users who interacted with that action such as where they live, whether they used a tablet, whether they made a purchase, and so on.
iv. Audiences
This report allows you to break down your audience into more specific audience types and apply them to other analytics reports. For example, users who view products from a specific brand in the e-shop can be defined as a specific audience.
You can create and apply up to 20 types of audience at a time.
v. User Explorer
The “Explore Users” report analyses the behaviour of specific users and not a group of users with a common characteristic as is done with “Cohort Analysis”. Data on specific users provides information on what led a particular user to make a much larger than average purchase or the actions a user took before abandoning their cart. In more detail, you can see data for each user such as average session length, abandonment rate, revenue and target conversion rate.
vi. Demographics
In this report you will find demographic data of the audience visiting the site such as age and gender. For example, you can see the average time spent on the site by men aged 35-44. This data will be of great help in understanding who the target audience is for products or services and will help you set up more targeted advertising campaigns.
vii. Interests
This report will help you target users who have specific interests, such as users who love technology products.
In order to access this data, you must first enable the repeat marketing and advertising features in Google Analytics. Once enabled you can view data about the user base:
• Relevance categories e.g. Food / Cooking Enthusiasts / 30 Minute Chef
• In-market departments e.g. Clothing & Accessories / Women’s Clothing
• Other categories e.g. Arts and entertainment / Celebrities and entertainment news
viii. Geo
In this report you can find data on the location and language of your users.
ix. Behavior
From this report you will be able to tell if new users are returning to your website and if they are actually engaging with your content – the well-known engagement I have mentioned in many previous articles. You can see information such as: New vs. returning, Frequency and visibility and Loyalty.
x. Technology
The “Technology” report gives us data on the browser and operating system used by the users who visit the website and from which network – provider (Cosmote, Vodafone, Wind) they connect to the internet.
xi. Mobile
This report provides you with data on what kind of devices (computers, mobile, tablets) are used by users visiting your website. You can also see even the model of the device e.g. Apple Iphone X.
The data obtained from this report will “show” if you have a loss of audience visiting you from mobile devices and help you understand if your website needs to be optimized for responsive design.
xii. Custom
In this report you are given the opportunity to select and compare user segments for which you want to draw conclusions. For example, you can see how many of the new users who visited your website came from search engines.
Data classification can be based on custom variables or user-defined variables.
xiii. Benchmarking
This report is very important as it enables you to compare your website data with aggregated data from another site in your industry. Compare yourself to the rest of the industry based on subcategories such as channels, location and devices. You can use this data to find missed opportunities.
xiv. Users Flow
In this report you have the possibility to see in a graphical presentation the flow of users within your site based on a variable. The default variable is country, so you can see by country how users navigated through your site. Similarly, you can select the variable “Social Network” and see how users who visited the site navigated by social network.
3. Acquisition Reports
The “Acquisition” reports are very important as they give us data on how the traffic to the site has been generated, i.e. from which channels and also how the users “moved” to the site as they give us information on how long they stayed, how many pages they viewed and whether they completed a conversion / purchase from the visit.
i. All Traffic
In “Traffic Total” you can see which traffic channels bring visits to the site. With the individual indicators you can understand which channels perform best on the site. The indicators are as follows:
• Acquisition
o Users
o New χρήστες
o Connection periods
• Behavior
o Abandonment rate
o Pages / login period
o Average duration of the connection period
• Conversions
o E-commerce conversion rate
o Transactions
o Revenue
ii. Google Ads
If you’re running campaigns in Google Ads, this section will give you the data you need to see which campaigns are performing and which need improvement. To access this data, you must first interface Google Ads with Google Analytics.
iii. Search Console
Another important report for your website as through here you will see the performance of the site in relation to the organic results of Google Search. To be able to see the relevant data, the Google Search Console must be activated for your website and then the Google Analytics Account must be connected to the Google Search Console of your website.
iv. Social
In this report you will see data about the audience that visits your site through social media platforms. The individual indicators present the data in more detail and will help you to draw conclusions about which Social Media work best with your audience.
v. Campaigns
The “Campaigns” report analyses the data of visits and results against the goals set by the advertising campaigns you are running, whether they are Google Ads, Facebooks Ads or SEO campaigns.
4. Behavior reports
Behavioral reports provide data about the actions users take on your website, including site search, the content they view, page load speed, etc.
This information can help uncover areas where your site is not working as intended.
i. Behavior Flow
The Behavior Chart is similar to the User Flow, except that the default variable is the Destination Page, so you can see the user’s journey through your site based on the page they landed on. This report will help you evaluate whether the landing pages you are driving users to helped you fulfill the goal you had set.
ii. Site Content
The “Website Content” report will save data about the pages of your website and more specifically the individual indicators will inform you about the following:
• All pages: loyalty metrics for each page of your website.
• Content analytics: loyalty metrics for directories and pages on your website.
• Landing pages: acquisition, behavioral and conversion metrics for your website’s landing pages.
• See if the landing pages are attracting users and contributing to conversions in the way you expect.
• Exit pages: exit metrics for the last pages users open on your site.
iii. Site Speed
In the “Site Speed” report you will find information about the time it takes for your site content to load. It is possible to sort the traffic by the type of device the user is using and see if, for example, longer loading times result on mobile devices.
iv. Site Search
In this section you will see what users are searching for in your site’s search engine. This data will help you see whether the targeted campaigns you run increase searches for specific terms on your site.
v. Events
The “Events” report shows the results of user interaction with specific behaviors you want to record. For example, filling out a form, downloading a pdf file, viewing a video.
vi. Publisher
This report is for websites that have Google advertising spaces, so it is necessary for Google Analytics to be linked to Google AdSense or Ad Exchange. If this link is in place, you will be given access to data about how your website generates revenue, including impressions and clicks.
vii. Experiments
The Experiments report is no longer available in Google Analytics, it has been replaced by Google Optimize, which provides better results and reports.
5. Conversions Reports
The last category of Google Analytics reports gives you information about the effectiveness of your website in terms of the conversions achieved on it. Conversions can be defined as completed purchases in an e-shop or completing a registration form on a site.
i. Objectives
In the “Goals” report you can see data on the achievement of the goals you have set. For the report to be functional, you must first have set the corresponding goals such as completing a registration form, downloading a file, placing a product in the cart, and more. The process is done through the Google Analytics settings and is for users with more experience, so if you need to set goals it is advisable to ask the company that has built your site or handled the digital marketing for your business.
ii. Electronic commerce
In this report you can see the data that have to do mostly with the transactions made in your e-shop, such as sales, turnover either per product or per category. The individual categorization of the report can give you additional data on the following:
• Buying behaviour
• Transaction completion behaviour
• Product performance
• Sales performance
• Product list performance
In order to record the data and to be able to view it in your Google Analytics account, the e-commerce code must first be added to your e-shop.
iii. Multichannel Piping
Traffic to your site comes from many channels, respectively, and users can find your site through various channels. So a user may have visited your e-shop through a Facebook ad, but ultimately completed a product purchase thanks to a Google Ads remarketing ad that followed them.
The “Multichannel Channels” report will give you data on the path between the channels of users who completed a purchase.
As in the “E-commerce” report, the e-commerce code must also be added to your e-shop for this report.
Google is constantly enriching Google Analytics with new reports to provide the most targeted data possible and help you draw better conclusions about your website’s performance. If you want to delve deeper into Google Analytics you can take the free online courses* at Google Analytics Academy by following the link below.
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/
Courses are in English.