Getting Started with Google Analytic Reports

Hello Friends,

There are always a lot of questions on selling venue community forums about how to use the stats provided by Google Analytic Reports.  I, too, find it confusing.  GA provides so much information it is overwhelming but it does have useful reports.

I am far from an expert and find myself floundering around trying to gain some insight on the data they gather for my sites. But I wanted to share a few of the reports I have been able to locate and use regularly.  I suggest you start with just one or two reports and get comfortable with them; then explore to find others that are helpful to you.

These all start from the home page, click the "reporting" link near the top left of the page:

 Then you use the menu on the left:

  

1.  Here is a report to find out the KEYWORDS that were used by visitors to your site:

Go to:

reporting

acquisition

campaigns

organic key words

All reports can be set for the month, week, year etc. and I change it to show 500 at a time.  This is what I see for my ArtFire studio - the keywords that were captured.  There are a lot that are not provided.  From what I understand, these are from users who have their privacy settings to block google from tracking their browsers but there are still plenty provided to make the report worthwhile.

You can click on each keyword and see more details, here is one of mine - it shows how long they spent on the site, bounce rate, pages viewed etc. for that particular keyword and period of time I chose.

2. These two reports show you REFERRING PAGES AND SOURCES for your traffic;

reporting

acquisition

overview

referrals

you can click on those links to see details - for example to see the actual pin that brought the view you click on the little icon and it opens to the page.  I circled the icon with a red circle. Anytime you see that icon on any report, click it to see the actual page in the link.

reporting

acquisition

overview

source/medium

Click on the links for each source to get more info for each source so you can see if that particular source has a good bounce rate, or number of pages or time on site. For example, this one shows me the value of a blog post that I did over 5 years ago - it still drives a lot of traffic with a good bounce rate, page views and time on site.  This proves to me the value of quality long term back links - they continue to provide positive traffic which is nectar for the Google gods.

4.  This report shows you the popular CONTENT/PAGES on your site:  

reporting

behavior

site content

all pages

same area click on landing pages to see the landing pages.

There are a myriad of ways to customize each report if you choose to do so. I do need to spend more time exploring the vast array of data provided by Google Analytics but, of course, time is always at a premium.  At least I tap into those resources for some good information that I can utilize to grow my internet presence. 

I also like the real time feature where you can see live action visitors to your site in real time. You can see how many people are on your site right now, what they are viewing, their location, their movement around your site etc.  You find that by clicking the "real time" link on the left side then pick content, location, overview etc.  Somehow, I find this a fascinating feature to watch how a visitor experiences my shop or blog pages.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for visiting,

Bonnie