In order to help you better navigate through the vast amount of data on google analytics we’ve put together a list of the top 6 reports of Google Analytics.

1. Website Traffic

Audience / Overview

This is where you will find as we like to call them, website vitals. Basically, all the data relating to the well-being of your website. This includes:

Number of Sessions
Users
Page views
Session duration
Bounce Rate

This should be the first place where you go to find out how your website has performed.

This is also a place where you can filter out traffic (by location, AdWords campaigns or even by users who made a purchase). Simply segment your traffic data.

2. Devices

Audience / Mobile / Overview

Here you will see the devices that users use to visit your website (desktop, mobile or tablet). One of the most important things to look at when you’re viewing this report is to pay attention to the Bounce Rate relating to a certain device. For example, if you notice that the bounce rate for mobile is high, it might be useful to review your website and see what is making your users leave straight away.

3. Traffic Channels

Acquisition / All Traffic / Channels

This is a breakdown of your traffic by channels (paid, organic, direct, referral… ). If you’re running a paid campaign through AdWords or Facebook, for example, it’s a useful tool for seeing how many sessions actually came from this channel. Look at how much time the users who clicked on your ad spent on your website. Here at Together Digital we’ve noticed a trend - users coming from paid channels tend to spend longer on the website, which means that you have got your targeting, ad copy and landing page content right and you are meeting the search needs of your users.

4. Queries

Acquisition / Search Console / Queries

This is where Google lists the number of google searches that generated impressions / clicks to your website. These are organic search results. Queries might be a good starting point for pay per click advertising. You can familiarise yourself with terms that people search for to land on your website.

5. Referrals

Acquisition / All Traffic / Referrals

In referrals, you will see the main domains that send traffic to your website. When you click on any of these source domains, you see the specific pages where people found your links and clicked on them. These are the referral paths. Knowing what domains drive traffic, how long they spend and what pages they look at means you can see if you can develop and increase these even more. For example, if you know that your email newsletters or your paid campaign are really driving quality referrals, while your Facebook traffic is low, put more energy into what is working.

6. Best Performing Pages

Behaviour / Site Content / All pages

This is where you can see the top performing pages on your website. This is helpful if you want to see what content is the most popular. For example, you upload blogs, news and insights on a regular basis it would be interesting to see which ones perform the best and what topics gain visitor interest. The search bar is especially useful if you want to narrow down the content data for certain pages.

These tips are only the tip of the iceberg. There is lots more to dig deep on in Analytics, and Google are expanding and adding new features all the time. It’s a very powerful tool that can really provide you meaningful insights but remember that data is only useful if you do something with it!

If you wish to discuss your Google Analytics account in more detail or have any questions regarding the very basics, we’re here to help !