Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics application, and for good reason.It allows anyone the opportunity to review their own website traffic in so many different ways. It’s great to be able to look at statistics regarding where people are coming from, how long they are spending on your site, what pages are most important to them, and whether or not you are meeting your goals. However, it can be hard to know what to look at and what all the information means. Let’s take a quick look!
Emerged from and based upon the analytics-package developed by Urchin Software Corporation (which was bought by Google in April 2005), the tool has become publicly available for free under the new flagship of Google Analytics. Over years Google Analytics managed to gain on popularity because of its simplicity and many advanced features for curious site owners and professional marketers. Below are some quick guides on how to get started and what you’re looking at, courtesy of Google.
Guidelines to interpreting GA Reports
In this presentation you will learn the best practices for analyzing data, how to analyze data trends and how to use the data visualizations in Google Analytics.
Pageviews, Visits, and Visitors
Learn where to find Pageviews, Visits, and Visitors metrics, how Pageviews, Visits, and Visitors are calculated, the difference between Pageviews and Unique Pageviews and the difference between Absolute Unique Visitors and New vs. Returning Visitors.
Time Metrics
How Time on Page and Time on Site are calculated, how Avg. Time on Page and Avg. Time on Site are calculated and learn about the Length of Visit report from this presentation.
Traffic Sources
Learn about the different kinds of traffic sources, how to identify quality traffic, how to identify revenue and conversion drivers, what kinds of information to look for in keyword reports, how campaign attribution works in Google Analytics
Content Reports
How to use and interpret the Top Content, Content by Title, and Content Drilldown reports; how to use the Top Landing Pages report; how to use and interpret the Navigation Summary report; how to use and interpret the Entrance Paths report.
Analyze Traffic Sources, Content, and Navigation
Use your Google Traffic Sources, Content, and Navigation reports effectively. In this video you will see the different sources of traffic, tracking content performance and analyzing visitor navigation.
Google Anaytics is a great tool to look at with regards to website traffic. Hope this has been informative!