Google Analytics is a really cool and helpful feature, if you know how to use it. You may have wondered what all that data really means and how it can help. Understanding Google Analytics may take a little time, but the pay-off is understanding who is coming to your site, how they are using the site, and how that can help us improve the site to maximize your return on investment.
Acquisition: This section determines how visitors are getting to your site, be it through a search feature, typing the URL in, social media, or a referral from another site.
Average Session Duration: The average amount of time a user spends on your site.
Behavior: This section analyzes what users are doing once they reach your site.
Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who came to the site and left without clicking on or engaging in any other pages.
Campaigns: This is an option that allows you to collect more information about your traffic from referrals.
Conversions: The number of times goals have been completed.
Dashboards: Here you can customize which items in Google Analytics you would like to see, all in one place.
Dimensions: Descriptive attributes or characteristics of an object that can be given different values. By default, Google Analytics includes Browser, Exit Page, Screens, and Session Duration.
Metrics: Individual elements of a dimension that can be measured as a sum or ratio. By default, Google Analytics includes Pages/Sessions and Average Session Duration.
New Users: The number of users who come to the site who have not been to it previously.
Pages/Session: The average number of pages viewed per session.
Pageviews: The total number of pages viewed during a given time. If a user visits a page repeatedly, this is counted repeatedly.
Percentage New Sessions: The percentage of your sessions that are by new users.
Real-Time: In this section, view the action of your site as its happening, including seeing how many visitors are currently on the site.
Sessions: A period of time a user is actively engaged on your website. All usage data is associated with a session.
The current data, and ideal data, for each of these analytics will vary depending on the intended audience, scope, and function of your website. At Blue Fire Media, we work with you to understand your visitors, traffic patterns, marketing campaigns, conversion dynamics, and metrics.
If you have additional questions about Google Analytics or are a client that needs help logging-in, don’t hesitate to give us a call.
