Google Analytics can give you lots and lots if information about your website. This is very useful but can be overwhelming!
In this post, I will point out some of the questions I find useful to ask and show you where to find the answers. This will help you understand some basic information about your website, what you are doing right and what you might choose to change.
1. How many visitors do I get to my site?
It is useful to know how many people are coming to your website so that you know if your content is being consumed.
The Audience report shows you the number of visits (or sessions) for a selected period. Go to Audience > Overview
You can see:
- Sessions: the total number of visits
- Users: the total number of visitors (users). Note that one user could have made more than one visit so it is likely that the number of Sessions is higher than the number of Users.
- Pageviews: the total number of pageviews
- Pages / Session: the pages per visit, i.e. how many pages on average your readers are viewing before they leave your web site
- Avg. Session Duration: how long your visitors stay on the site
- Bounce rate: the percentage of people who left your web site without viewing other pages within your site
- % New Sessions: what percentage of the visitors are new
2. Where are my visitors coming from?
The acquisition report will tell you how people are getting to your site in the first place. This may trigger ideas of new ways to get traffic and tell you if your current efforts are working.
Go to Acquisition > Overview
Here you can find out the number of people that are getting to your site through:
- Organic Search (i.e., from typing in search words into Google),
- Direct traffic (typing in a URL or clicking on a bookmark)
- Referral (clicking on a link)
- Social (e.g., Facebook or Twitter)
- Other
At Carleton, departmental sites tend to get a lot of traffic via referral (links) from other sites (e.g., one of the high traffic sites such as the Admissions site).
3. What are the most popular pages of my site?
This behavior report will give you an idea of your most popular content and what your visitors are most interested in. You can see an ordered list of your most popular pages with most visited at the top.
This can help you figure out if people are seeing what you want them to see. It can also give you ideas about what types of content to create – what are your visitors hungry for?
Go to Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages
4. Which pages do people see first?
The landing pages report shows you which pages people first see when they get to your website. You may be surprised at how often it is not the home page!
It can be useful to consider the experience of a visitor who comes to your site via a page other than the homepage – this is basically their front door and first impression.
Go to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages
5. How many people are on my site right now?
This can be interesting report. It shows you, in real-time, the number of visits. It is less useful for long-term insights but can help you gain insight into what is happening at the moment and who is sending you traffic. (Warning: can be addictive!)
Go to Real-Time > Overview
Tip – Choose Date Range Comparisons
When analyzing your website data and visitor behavior, it is very useful to look at trends. You can then answer questions such as – is performance improving over time?
The date range menu in Google Analytics allows you to do this. You can change a date range (for example the fall term of this year) and compare it to a similar date range (the fall term of last year).