Improve your report writing, get more user data, find your top performing channels, and much more with this all-inclusive Google Analytics guide.
Whether you run a small business, an online store, or a website offering a service, Google Analytics is a tool you need. In addition to being completely free, it gives you a wealth of information about your website’s visitors and whether or not they are converting to your business-relevant goals.
Because there is always traffic going to your website, this tool is beneficial regardless of whether you are running advertisements or not.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics, sometimes known as GA, is a no-cost analytics tool that provides detailed information about the performance of your website or app. Google Tag Manager, Google Optimize, Google Search Console, and Google Ads are all products that it works with. It’s an effective method for studying visitors, demographics, and actions taken by users.
Benefits of using Google Analytics
Using GA to examine data from your website has many advantages. These are the best ones.
Learn where your traffic comes from
With Google Analytics, you may see a concise report that details all of your traffic sources in one place. Direct traffic, traffic from social media, traffic from Google Ads, referral traffic, and traffic from social media are all potential sources of traffic. If you’re looking for expert strategies to boost your social presence, consider partnering with a Social Media Management Agency.
For any source, you could view a plethora of data, such as traffic volume, conversion rate, bounce rate, visit duration, device category, and a whole lot more. By breaking out your traffic sources, you may find out more about your consumers’ demographics, the devices they use, and how to improve your digital marketing strategies.
Improve your content marketing and search engine optimization
No content marketing effort can be considered successful without Google Analytics. You can monitor how many people are visiting each piece of content and obtain all the information about your users that you need to make your content even better.
Mitigate iOS 14.5 changes with offline tracking
The improvements made by iOS 14 had a significant impact on all industries and online enterprises. These changes severely limited Facebook’s ability to track conversions and shortened the conversion window of Facebook ad campaigns.
Importing a list of sales data and matching it to clicks on Facebook advertisements is the only option to use offline tracking in Google Analytics to reduce the impact of this issue. This will improve your tracking and help you acquire more precise data on your campaign conversions.
Connecting all of your omnichannel data sources and viewing them in one place with an eCommerce analytics platform is another fantastic strategy to deal with the reduced data availability.
Understand user behavior on your site
Google Analytics allows you understand how users, visitors, and customers engage with your site. You can use the behavioral data it reveals to fine-tune your marketing strategies, your website, and your outcomes.
User metrics include things like:
- Bounce rates
- Pages per session
- Devices or screens per session
- Sessions per user
- Exit rates
- Top pages & their performance
- Custom events
- Goal conversions
- Site search (your search bar)
- Desktop vs mobile users
Features of Google Analytics you can’t live without
Powerful reports
To help you make sense of your website’s data, Google Analytics offers a plethora of report options. A few examples of basic reports are traffic, real-time, audience overview, mobile overview, and acquisition. Furthermore, you are free to design any kind of custom report you can imagine, including reports with advanced analytics.
The process of monitoring conversions
By utilizing event tracking, Google Analytics enables you to monitor several types of site conversions. collect important information about your consumers by setting up events for every conversion you have. You can then collect data on where users are converting and what pages they are visiting.
Graphing the flow
Google Analytics also has flow visualizations, which are very useful. You can view the complete user journey, including the pages they viewed, in this report. You can see at a glance how they are interacting with your material and where they might be clicking away.
Getting started with Google Analytics
If you already have an account with Google for anything, including Gmail, Ads, Tag Manager, or any other Google product, then it should work for logging in. Once you log in you will have to set up the GA tracking code on your website to start seeing the data. If you own a website, you should follow this excellent tutorial on installing Google Analytics.
The “Admin” page should be your initial stop on Google Analytics (as seen in the screenshot above). In this section, you can find all the controls, settings, and user management options for your Google Analytics accounts.
How to add a user
You most likely have a full marketing team behind you; it’s quite unlikely that you’re operating solo. Sharing access with other users is a breeze with Google Analytics—and actually, the whole Google product suite.
User Management is where you can add a new user. Here you can manage the users that are associated with your company. The “+” button allows you to add users by email. Moreover, you can decide how much control you want a user to have by choosing between several access levels like Read & Analyze and Edit.
After then, make sure Google Analytics is synchronized with all the pertinent data sources. Now, we will address the two primary ones.
How to sync your Google Analytics with Google Ads
Your integrations may be found in the Admin tool, namely in the Product Linking section. You can view the associated accounts by selecting All Products. Using your ten-digit Account ID number, you can choose your Google Ads account when you’re running ads on Google. If you’re using the same Gmail account for both Google Analytics and Google Ads, you should be able to see the option to link your two accounts.
How to sync your Google Analytics with Google Search Console
Product Linking also allows you to connect to Google’s free SEO tool, Search Console. The free listings that show beneath Google’s search advertisements are measured by Search Console. Be aware that you need to verify your website before you can link your “Search Console” account.
After your site has been verified, you will be able to link to it in the Search Console tab, specifically under the Product Linking section. Keep in mind that in order to connect the two, you’ll need to utilize the identical email address that you used to validate your website in Search Console.
How to create audiences
Under the Admin menu, you’ll find Audiences, another helpful tool for audience definitions. In Google Analytics, you can see who is achieving your goals, and in Google Ads, you can construct audiences to target.
You have the option to view all visitors, visitors within a specific time range, or users who have already accomplished a goal. You can also build an audience of people who have visited a specific page or who have made a purchase (in the case that you an online store).
To maximize the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing efforts, you need to build as many distinct audiences as possible that are relevant to your company’s needs. This will allow you to divide your users into different groups based on their actions, which will show you which ones are achieving your goals.
How to create goals
You can locate the “Goals” flag in the Admin tool’s far right column. Make sure your advertising and promos are running as smoothly as possible by establishing the goals you wish to track here.
The best way to find out which channels and campaigns are paying off is to set measurable goals. Make sure to set a variety of goals, just like you would with an audience. To find out which advertising are producing the best results and how to best use your time and resources for growth, you need to set enough targets.
How to define qualified users
“Qualified users” and “contact us” were the focal points of my personal objectives (as seen above). Those that spent over a specific period of time on a website or viewed multiple pages are considered Qualified Users. In particular, first-time visitors to your site are valuable users. Checking if a user is a “qualified user” when they click on an ad might help you determine if your advertising and promotions are reaching the best possible audience.
For example, I can tell that my ads are working if new visitors to my website view multiple pages or spend more than a few minutes without completing the contact form. The user may have been in the wrong mindset when they saw that ad; maybe they’ll be in the right frame of mind to buy the next time they click.
It would also be helpful to define qualifying users based on other trackable actions:
- Video views
- Newsletter signups
- Location searches
- Button clicks
It is crucial to define benchmark goals so that way you can optimize each campaign to target those people who accomplish the proper goals along the road to your main goal, which is a sale or contact to the business. Objectives change according to the website you’re using.
Ecommerce settings
Keep in mind that the Ecommerce Settings menu option is located in the far right column if your brand is an eCommerce one. To find out which channels and advertisements are bringing in the most money, you may set up tracking here to monitor the real revenue from each channel and campaign.
View your audiences
“Audience” is another tab category that can be imported. Here you may analyze the demographic and behavioral data of your website’s visitors. To gain a better understanding of your website’s traffic and make further adjustments, you can utilize the goals and audiences that you put up under the “Admin” page.
The Overview tab gives you an overview of your website traffic as well as users’ involvement with your page. You can learn the percentage of unique visitors compared to repeat visitors, the average number of pages viewed by each user, and the average time spent on your site.
Someone should look at your present website, advertisements, and promotions if they see that the average number of pages per session is close to 1 or if the average duration of a session is less than 30 seconds. Whether it’s their first, second, or even fifth visit, you want users to interact with your content and spend time on your site in the hopes that they’ll make a purchase.
Several reports are listed at the bottom:
- Demographics – language, country, city
- System – browser, operating system, service provider
- Mobile – operating system, service provider, screen resolution
You may view the data for a particular variable by clicking on it.
Use the audiences you made and see how they’re doing under the Audiences menu option in the left-hand menu.
In the screenshot below, for instance, you can observe that 72 percent of the time, those who returned to my website within the last 60 days accomplished at least one of my objectives. In addition to spending more than a minute on my site, those visitors also averaged two pages per visit.
Can you tell me what this means? As a result, I now understand the value of remarketing and know to make the most of my remarketing advertising budget.
To view them all, I went to Conversions and clicked on All Goals. Select the precise goal you wish to examine by using the dropdown menu under All Goals. This will allow you to isolate each goal and study it independently.
Study your user demographics
Subsidiary to Audience, you’ll find Demographics. In this section, you can find information about the gender and age of your website visitors. Use “Google Analytics” to examine demographics for insights on ad targeting.
Like, most of my users are between the ages of 25 and 34, and there aren’t even many people beyond the age of 55. Consequently, I can direct my advertising budget toward paying attention to the people who are actually using my website by excluding those above the age of 55 from the demographics I select to target.
Discover the interests of your users
The Affinity and In-Market divisions can be found under the Interests tab.
Site visitors who are unfamiliar with your brand can have their interests broken down in the affinity category. If you want to know what else a potential consumer is interested in, these will give you a clue.
People who are interested in health and fitness and enjoy sports, for instance, can be entrepreneurs who are in need of my services.
Users that are in-market for your goods or services are those who are actively seeking them out at this very moment. These are people who Google has determined are ready to make a purchase for a particular category. They must be looking for “Advertising & Marketing Services” because that’s what my company offers. Having said that, not all businesses have so obvious in-market segmentation.
Exclusionary segments are another factor to think about. People looking for services that you don’t provide or that go against your marketing goals could sometimes show up on your website.
For example, I have no intention of advertising “Employment” on my website. Since I am in the market for new clients, I should probably block anyone who is actively seeking employment in the advertising or marketing industries from seeing my ads.
Caution: these categories are designed to align with Google Ads, even if they encompass all website visitors. Although the names of the affinity and in-market categories will differ, you may still use them for social media advertising.
Acquisition overview
Under the Acquisition tab, you can view the impact of each channel on your overall or specific goals.
Above, you can see the acquisition overview report, which is the first place you should always check. You may view all of your channels here and discover which ones are helping you achieve your goals the most. I examine this data from the perspective of both users and the accomplishment of goals.
To see how your time and money were spent most effectively, click on each column in the chart. This will allow you to view the data from highest to lowest.
The Google Ads tab
Campaigns and Keywords can be found under Google Ads. There you can see which ads are doing the best and which keywords are yielding the best results. Better remarketing campaigns and more effective keyword targeting are both possible with this data. Additionally, you may track which campaigns are underperforming and cut funding for them.
The Search Console tab
You may learn a lot about the various search phrases (or queries) that people use to find your site under the Search Console area. You can find this on the Search Console, specifically under the Queries tab.
You won’t be able to view conversion or sales numbers, but you can check what other phrases you’re showing up for that you aren’t bidding on for sponsored search advertisements. Once you know the search phrases people are using, you can add them to your “Google Ads” account. This will increase your visibility in both paid and organic search results for those terms.
By sparking ideas for new articles and blog posts, these can also aid with search engine optimization and content marketing. You can use this information to see what your audience responds to most effectively.
Social media traffic & conversions
To find out which social media platforms bring in the most visitors, go to Social > Overview. You can use this information to prioritize your time and resources.
The total number of conversions from all channels can also be viewed. Check the number of “contributed social media conversions” as well. This indicates that the user’s social media presence was one of the channels that contributed to a conversion, but that the user used multiple ways to access the website.
One definition of “last interaction social conversions” is when a user becomes a paying customer after completing a purchase after interacting with your brand through a social media platform. This could mean that the user is seeing your site for the first time, or that they had previously visited your site via another channel, like Google Ads, and have now converted after seeing it on Facebook.
See the entire customer journey
Behavior Flow is the option you’ll find under the Behavior tab. You may view a graphical depiction of the client journey here. With this, you can see the specific actions that visitors are doing on your site.
Page errors, low conversion rates, and high bounce rates can be identified with the help of this data. If you see that a specific page is causing users to leave your site, you might want to consider removing or revising that page’s content.
You may also monitor the performance of individual pages and decide whether to add more material or advertisements to those that are doing well. Compared to the “about” and “clients page” examples, the “services” page in the given example had better engagement and lower bounce rates.
If that’s the case, I should probably attempt increasing the number of ads that appear on the “services” page or at least try to enlarge the content there so that my prospective clients can find more useful information.
Site speed
Site Speed is another crucial heading under Behavior; it provides information about the loading times of your pages.
If you want your site to succeed, you need to ensure sure it loads quickly on desktop and mobile devices. Do this at least once a month. Make sure that no page takes more than two seconds to load.
People have short attention spans so the longer your pages take to load the more prospective customers you are losing. Your organic search engine rankings will take a hit if your site is slow because Google’s algorithm uses site speed as a major ranking factor.
Take a look at the big picture to get a feel for how many seconds it typically takes for a page to load for you. My example shows that it’s at an absurdly lengthy 13.16 seconds. There is room for improvement.
Even if your site isn’t loading quickly enough, you may easily identify the source of the problem and forward it to a web developer for resolution. Under Site Speed > Speed Suggestions, Google Analytics removes all room for guesswork by providing a helpful list of recommendations.
For each page, locate the column with blue lettering and click on Page Speed Suggestions. When you do this, a popup will appear with some recommendations for how to speed up your website.
Overview of goal conversions
Conversions is the last crucial tab; it sheds light on the steps someone took to reach your objectives. In order to accomplish one of your goals, a user may visit your website multiple times, using multiple channels. To better target your visitors on each channel, you can gain insight into that journey by utilizing the conversion tab.
Conversions > Overview will provide you a high-level picture of your site’s conversion rate. When looking at my data, you can see that 190 (or 22%) of the 849 total conversions were helped conversions. This suggests that almost 25% of my website’s conversions came from visitors who used more than one channel to reach my site.
You may also view the percentage of the conversion path that was influenced by a channel. For instance, more than 30% of conversions were influenced by organic search. So, even if search isn’t the first or final channel individuals visit, they are still actively seeking and converting from search results.
Recap
With its many helpful features, Google Analytics is an excellent tool for every website. It can assist you gain vital data on your users, on your site performance, and on which channels are top converting for your organization.
Utilize it as a foundation for your marketing strategy and don’t hesitate to contact us if you require assistance with data analysis, tracker installation, or campaign improvement. We have over 600 incredible marketing experts at our disposal.