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Google Analytics - Learn More About Your Audience

Google Analytics - Learn More About Your AudienceThis is the third post in a series to explain Google Analytics and to help you discover how it can be used to understand traffic to your website, how visitors use your site and provide you some insight into improvements you may consider to increase the effectiveness of your digital activities.

In this post, we will explore some of the more useful information in the Audience Reports section.  Since this series is meant to help introduce Google Analytics to those who don't know much about it, I will be skipping over a lot and talking about reports that could be most useful to the widest audience.

Before we get started, if you need a refresher on accessing your Google Analytics account, check out this article. If you need a refresher on understanding the terms (what does a bounce mean, what are pageviews, etc.), take a look at this article.

Ready to get started! Refer to the image - we will be learning about selected reports available to you in the outlined Audience Section.

Google Analytics - Part 3 - Audience OverviewGoogle Analytics - Audience Overview

After you "open" this section by clicking on the caret, you will see there are quite a number of reports to be explored. The image above is displaying the Overview. This may or may not be useful to you. The line chart certainly might alert you to a spike in traffic that you might want to investigate (or might thrill you because of some activity you performed, like a marketing campaign, that coincides with that spike).

Geo - Where in the world is your traffic coming from - really!

Jump down to the Geo section and expand that. Then click on Location. You will first be presented with a map of the world, indicating where in the world your traffic is coming from—and how much traffic. Underneath the map is a table showing the actual data from each country. For many small businesses, this is more of a curiosity piece than something that is very useful. However, by clicking an area of the map (or a country from the table), you can drill down into the data—and continue drilling down into states and cities.

Google Analytics Part 3 - Location DrilldownGoogle Analytics - Location Drilldown
Country, State, City and Towns

So how can this be useful?

Hopefully, you will see the most visitors coming from the areas you want to target. If your business markets to all of the United States, the U.S. Country map can help you find those states where you may need to increase your marketing efforts. Or, maybe an area will jump out at you that you didn't think you had much of a presence. You can drill down again right to the city and towns in the state. These maps can give you some idea about how to target your advertising—or help you know if your targeting is successful.

Behavior

The Behavior reports in Google Analytics can be useful in detecting a change in the way visitors are interacting with your site. I have found it most helpful when comparing with the year before to see if changes I'm making are changing the activities of my visitors. (As a reminder, you can add comparison dates by clicking the down arrow next to your date selection in the top right of your screen.)

New vs. Returning

Google Analytics Part 3 - Behavior report - New vs ReturningGoogle Analytics Behavior Reports - New vs. Returning
Comparison to Prior Year

In the report above, it's easy to see there has been an increase year over year. In this case, there were specific strategies put in place that were expected to encourage a known audience to return to the website more frequently. At least for the month reported, it appears successful, with over a 36% increase in recurring visitors. New visitor traffic also increased by over 18%.

Another interesting observation is that returning visitors are staying longer and viewing more pages per session. For the strategy described, these are good indications that it's working.

Frequency & Recency

Google Analytics Part 3 - Behavior Reports - Frequency & RecencyGoogle Analytics Behavior Reports - Frequency & Recency
Comparison to Prior Year

This chart can be a bit confusing. The first column indicates how many times the same person visited your website in the selected time period. The second column indicates how many unique sessions (or visits) were made, and the third column reports how many pages were visited.  

In the example above, there was a large number visiting just once, and that number increased slightly from the year before. However, in the third column, the pageviews increased significantly (from an average of under 2 pages per visitor to almost 5 pages per visitor.  That seems to indicate that the content on the site has become more valuable.  Looking down through column 3, that pattern repeats.

Near the bottom of this chart, you can see that a number of people have visited more than 9 times each, while a year ago there was only one visitor frequenting the site that much. Additionally, the pageviews are significantly higher. Once again, it appears that efforts to improve the value of the content on the site for visitors are working.

Engagement

Google Analytics Part 3 Behavior Reports - EngagementGoogle Analytics Behavior Reports - Engagement
Comparison to Prior year

The last Behavior report in Google Analytics is the Engagement Report. This tells you how long people are staying on your site and how many pages they view during that time. The time is broken down in seconds. (For the math challenged: 60 seconds = 1 minute; 180 seconds = 3 minutes; 600 seconds = 10 minutes; 1800 seconds = 30 minutes. And, if you are that math challenged, congratulations on sticking with this!)

What should you expect here?  It's hard to tell. It depends a lot on what type of content is on your site, what you encourage people to do, how frequently your content changes, etc. It's also important to note that this data is not exact because Google can't tell how long a visitor spent on the last page viewed. So, some of the people who viewed only one page, might have spent several minutes reviewing a post (like this one) and left your site.  Google can't report that time unless they moved to another page.

When you are considering this report, also think about your activity on the web. I've seen it suggested that you have 10 seconds to capture a person's attention. Count out 10 seconds: one mississippi, two mississipi, three mississippi, four mississippi, etc. How often do you stay on a website for the 4 seconds we counted out? You probably jump after a second or two until you find what you are looking for. Keep that in mind as you view your engagement numbers.

In this example, the number of sessions for those who are staying longer on the site is not growing much, however, the number of pages they are visiting is growing significantly. Actually, the number of pages is growing in every category, indicating that even those who have very short visits are exploring the site more. However, the low session time might indicate they aren't finding what they expected.

Technology

I won't spend a lot of time on this set of reports. These are most useful for the person working on your website.

Browser & OS

This report shows which Internet browsers your visitors used to access your website. Clicking on each browser displays the versions that were used. This can be useful for your developer when testing that your website works in the various browsers. This helps identify which are most important (because making everything work everywhere is, well, a tough project).

Network

The Network report shows you which networks were used to access your site. While much of this might not tell you anything, some larger businesses and colleges have names that you may recognize. You might notice something here that is helpful to you.

Mobile

Like the Technology reports, the Mobile reports are most useful for the person working on your website. However, it can be useful for you to keep awareness of some of this data.

Overview

We are all hearing that our websites should be "mobile-first."  Well, that is at least what Google is trying to convince everyone of. This report can be very helpful to inform you about which types of devices your website should to be optimized for.

Have you been to a mobile website that doesn't have the same functionality as the desktop? That happens to me plenty of times and can be very frustrating. If this report shows you that most of your traffic is coming from mobile, it's probably important to make sure that on mobile, your website offers most, if not all, the same functionality.

On the flip side, what if you go ahead and construct your site with "mobile first" in mind (which by necessity, is not as content-dense and can't always have the same features as a desktop). You don't put as much effort into the desktop version, yet most of your traffic comes from desktop. How might that be affecting your business?

The report below will help you keep a handle on how you should be focusing your functionality.

Google Analytics Part 3 - Mobile OverviewGoogle Analytics - Mobile Overview

Watching the bounce rate on mobile can also give some insight. If the numbers are significantly higher than on desktop, and the pageviews are significantly lower, it MIGHT indicate there is a problem with viewing your site on mobile.

Devices

The Devices report, again, is most useful for the person who is testing your website on various devices. This report shows a list of the mobile devices used to access your website. It can be used to be sure your site works on those that are most frequently used.

Users Flow

The last report we are going to look at is the Users Flow report. As it sounds, this shows how your visitors are moving through your website.

Google Analytics Part 3 - Users FlowGoogle Analytics - Users Flow Report

In the example above, you can see which country the visitors came from and the first page of the website they visited. The red bar indicates how many visitors "dropped off" at that page. You can then see the next set of pages the remaining visitors moved to, and again, how many dropped off.

Clicking on the Country name (#1), gives you some more options, such as highlighting only the traffic that started there. The Green box just above this provides many different options to use as the starting point, such as social media, behavior, acquisition, etc. Check it out and experiment a bit!

The report can be extended to the right by clicking the "+ Step" arrow (#2). You can "drag" the report to the right and left with your mouse. This particular report continues for 12 Interactions. (I don't know how many Interactions are supported. Google's documentation says 8, but I was able to go much further—oh well!)

Phew, we made it through the Google Analytics Audience Reports

Congratulations if you stuck through this all the way. Hopefully, you found some new tricks and tools to evaluate your online activity. This can be especially useful when you start a new campaign, are investing in Facebook or Google Ads, or are attempting a new strategy.

If you need some help or clarification on anything covered, feel free to contact us.

Have you tried this out on your website? Did you learn something about your website you didn't know? Are you considering changing something? Share your comments below!

 

Do you have a question or suggestion for a future post? Leave it in the comments!

 

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