Want to use Google Analytics to for your business, but not sure where to start? Relax – here’s a quick and easy start guide to help you understand who uses your website and how they use it.
Let’s Get Started
First, let’s open the Google Analytics account for your business.
Start with these 3 sections: Audience, Acquisition, Behavior
Audience > Overview
Average Session Duration: How long users stay on your website (the longer, the better).
Bounce Rate: % of users who come to your website and leave without clicking on anything else.
% New Sessions: % of users who have never before visited your website.
Date Range: You are viewing the analytics data for the dates selected. Unfortunately, you cannot view analytics data before it’s installed, so the earliest date you view will be the day you install GA.
Acquisition > Overview
This shows the path that users take to arrive at your website.
Organic Search: This traffic comes from the search engines, like Google.
Paid Search (also Display): If you run Google AdWords, you will see traffic from Paid Search. This is paid advertising.
Direct: Users type your website URL into their browser to arrive at your website.
Social: Traffic that comes to your website from a social platform, like Facebook or Instagram.
Referral: These are links on other websites that point to your website. For example, if your website was mentioned and linked to on http://www.vogue.com/, any traffic that came to your website from Vogue would be considered “referral” traffic.
Behavior > Overview
This shows the specific pages that users visit most.
You can click on each page to see the specific analytics data for that page.
This is how you find the most popular – and least – content (or pages) on your website. Check out the pages your users visit most and stay on the longest (and also the pages no one visits or users leave immediately). This will give you insight into what content your users are looking for and enjoy (as well as content that they don’t consume).
Keep It Up & Good Luck!
There are several great resources online to help you understand Google Analytics. The best place to start is with Google Analytics Help, which you can find here: https://support.google.com/analytics#topic=3544906