Google Analytics - Understanding the Data

This is the second post in a series to explain Google Analytics and to help you understand 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 are going to talk about the basic data you are presented with throughout the Google Analytics tool and what it means. Understanding these terms will help you understand the reports that we will explore in future posts.

We will be referring to this image during the tutorial:

(If you want to follow along with your own Google Analytics data, find Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels on the left menu bar— #1 in the image.) 

On the Acquisition report, you see the usual graph above the data. Under the graph will usually be a table. The box labeled #2 displays columns of data that you will find throughout Google Analytics, so understanding what these columns mean will make many of the reports much more meaningful to you.

Acquisition - This section provides you with information about visitors to your website.

Users - This is the unique number of users or visitors to your website during the reported timeframe. If someone comes back to your site multiple times during the selected period, they will only be counted once here.

New Users - This is a subset of the "Users" number. So, in the example above, 64 of the 74 visitors during the selected timeframe where first-time visitors to the website. (This is not necessarily an exact number.  For example, if a user clears his/her cookie history, they may be counted as a new user, even though they have been to your website previously. Do you want to know more about cookies and Google Analytics?  This site has a nice explanation!)

Sessions - The number of times these visitors came to the website. The 74 unique visitors came and left the website 111 times. (Again, the cookie issue above can affect this.)

 Behavior - This section provides you information about how your visitors are interacting with your website.

Bounce Rate - This reports the percent of visitors that clicked to a page on your website and left immediately without taking any further action. Generally, the lower the percent is, the more visitors are coming to your site and exploring more than just the first page they land on.

How the structure of your website affects your bounce rate

The structure and goals of your website are an important factor to consider when evaluating whether a high percentage is bad or not. For example, in recent years, one-page websites have become common. There is nowhere else to go on the site. So, of course, the bounce rate on these sites will be very high—probably 100%! Another example would be if you send people to a landing page through social media or an email campaign (maybe a blog post) and everything is contained on that page with no links or encouragement to explore the site further. You would again see a high bounce rate. If your site is full of content, and you are encouraging your visitors to explore the site, you would hope to see this percent much lower.

What is a good bounce rate?

It really depends. Ranges of 25% to 45% have been suggested to be excellent, with ranges up to 75% considered acceptable. Sites with blogs, a lot of content and a more solid customer base are more likely to see a lower percent.

Pages / Session - Pages per session reports the average number of pages visitors are clicking on when visiting your site. The higher the number, the more likely that your visitors are finding content that they find valuable. Two to three pages per visit is considered a good number.

Average Session Duration -  This reports the average amount of time a visitor stays on your site, reported in minutes and seconds. Two to three minutes is considered a good amount of time, but as in the other metrics, it really does depend on the structure and goals of your website. This measure is less reliable than some of the others. Google can only tell how long a visitor is on the site if they visit more than one page. So, if a visitor comes and reads a full blog post, and then leaves the site, the session duration will report 0 -- even if they were there for five minutes! 

In all the Google Analytics reports, you will find the averages for each column at the top, and underneath those, a further breakdown. In this example, in #3, you will see the breakdown for all the various Acquisition Channels that send traffic to your website.  Again, referencing the image above:

Direct - visitors who typed your website address directly into their browser.

Organic Search - visitors who found your website through search.

Referral - visitors who found your site by way of a referral link from another website, for example, a directory where your site is listed, or another website that linked to a page on your website, such as one of your blog posts or a product page.

Email - visitors who visited as a result of an email marketing campaign (this requires tracking to be set up in your email program to be reported).

Social - visitors who followed a link from a post or other activity in social media.

How to take action based on these Google Analytics numbers

Looking at these numbers is one thing, but evaluating what they are telling you is another. Understanding what the numbers mean is the first step in evaluating and taking actionable steps forward.

These numbers by themselves are hard to take action on. However, when you consider your digital activities, these numbers become more meaningful and can help you determine if your strategies are working or not.

For example, in the image above, the Social Channel (Social Media activity) is the lowest channel, responsible for only 3.85% of the traffic.  Just looking at the number, you could come to the conclusion that social media doesn't work. But without understanding more about the actual activity happening with social media, that could be a wrong conclusion.

What is interesting is that, even though the traffic is very low, the bounce rate and the pages/session are good numbers. So, a first question might be, "how much posting is happening on the various social media platforms"?  If the answer is "a lot," the low numbers of visits would indicate that the strategy should be reviewed. A simple strategy adjustment might be as simple as mixing in more posts that encourage people to click through to the website. If there is not much posting happening, this may open up new opportunities and audiences.

Whichever strategy adjustment you make, you want to come back to your analytics and evaluate the results of your changes. Did you get the results you were expecting? Adjust and check, adjust again and check. (Are you familiar with the "Deming Wheel" or PDCA? Plan-Do-Check-Act your way through improvements with the help of Google Analytics!) There is another interesting number for the Social Channel — average session time is 0:02 minutes (2 seconds)! How is the average number of pages 2.5 per session and the average session time that low? There is so little data in that category that the numbers aren't very meaningful. So, thoughtfully take what you are seeing here and plan a strategy!

Drill down into your Aquisition Channels

Aside from this "high-level" view of your channels, you also can drill down further to learn even more by clicking on the name link.

Direct - As mentioned earlier, Direct shows you the pages on your site that visitors accessed directly by adding the page address in the browser. You can see that the columns reported remain the same, so now that you understand what they mean, you can a much better understanding of all the reports. By clicking on the Direct link, you will drill down into more information about the pages that were accessed directly:

Clicking on the Direct Channel drill down link displays the landing pages that were navigated to directly, that is, not through a search or through another link. If you need a reminder of what is on the page, click the small icon and it will appear in a popup window.

In the image above, the top row that is outlined is your home page. The small icon to the left of each page description can be used to display the page in a popup window.

Organic Search - Drilling down is not likely to show you much. The reason is beyond the scope of this post, but you can read about it here.

Referral - When clicking on this link, you will see other websites that referred traffic to your website. Backlinks—or links from other reputable sites—is one of the important ranking factors with Google. The more links you have from websites that Google already trusts, the more they trust your site has good, solid content. What you see here will give you some idea how you are doing in this area. You may also see very unusual looking links (they could be visits from bots) and you may see links from companies trying to "check you out" for their own marketing initiatives. 

Social - Clicking on this link will give you a breakdown of the different social media networks that are sending traffic to your site. This is mostly due to posting you are doing on the various sites. This can be particularly helpful if your goal is to drive traffic to your site. Are you getting the traffic you expect for the time, money and/or effort you are putting into the activity?  Is one social media network working better than the others? Should you refocus your efforts, or try a different tactic? This area can help you start evaluating your social media plan.

Email - This channel will only appear if your email marketing program is set up to be tracked in Google Analytics. Clicking on this will show which of the page links in your email were used to click to your website, helping you know which content was of interest, and how effective your email content is at directing traffic to your site.

You may have additional channels reporting, such as Paid Search, Affiliates, Display or Other Advertising if you engage in digital marketing campaigns.

Time for you to explore Google Analytics

Start tackling all Google Analytics can offer by taking some baby steps. If you haven't already, log into your Google Analytics account and focus just on the Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels reports. Spend a little time exploring and see if you can learn something new about the traffic to your website. And better yet, see if you can apply the "Deming Wheel" — Plan-Do-Check-Act — to make incremental improvements to your website and processes you use to drive traffic to it.

If you need some help getting this far, 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!