What is Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free Web analytics service that provides statistics and basic analytical tools for
search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes. The service is available to anyone with a
Google account

Google Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions, but also gives you fresh insights into
how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site and how you can keep them coming back.

There are millions of websites out there, and tracking how people are getting to your site and what's
performing well is a must for being competitive in the online market
 Why Google Analytics ?
Knowing your audience and what they want is an important success factor for any website. The best way to know your audience is
through your traffic stats and this is exactly what Google Analytics provide for FREE

It Shows you

● Who visits your website – user’s geographical location, which browser did they use, what is their screen resolution, which
language they speak, etc.

● What they do when they are on your website – you can see how long users stay on your website, what pages they are visiting
the most, which page is causing the users to leave most often, how many pages an average user is viewing etc.

● Where did they arrive on your website from – you can see how the user found you. Whether it was through a search engine
(Google, Bing, Yahoo etc), social networks (facebook, twitter etc), a link from another website, or a direct type-in. Google
Analytics also shows you the breakdown of each traffic source, so you can focus on specific ones if you like.

● How users interact with your site’s content – You can see how many users clicked on a specific link.
Analytics Account Set up
Copy the JavaScript code from Analytics
and paste it just above the </head> tag in
your page or template. Adding this code
will not affect the look of your site.
 Key Statistics
● Sessions:A session is the period time a user is actively engaged with your website, app, etc. All usage data
(Screen Views, Events, Ecommerce, etc.) is associated with a session.

● Users:Users that have had at least one session within the selected date range. Includes both new and returning
users.

● Page Views:Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

● Pages/Session:Pages/Session (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages viewed during a session.
Repeated views of a single page are counted.

● Avg. Session Duration:Average length of time a user spends in your community before leaving.

● Bounce Rate:Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from
the entrance page without interacting with the page).

● % New Sessions:An estimate of the percentage of first time visits.

Understanding the Audience Reports in
Google Analytics
The Audience Reporting section of Google Analytics is used to identify the types of visitors coming to a
website. Specific reports are used to break down visitors by age, gender, geographical location, device
type, browser, operating system, and much more.
Audience Reporting
There are nine separate reporting sections under Audience in your website’s Google Analytics profile.Below is a
brief description of what data you’ll find in each reporting section, based on the reporting period you define in
the date range drop-down menu.

● Overview—A top-level view of user metrics

● Demographics—The age and gender makeup of your website audience

● Interests—User behaviors segmented by affinity and marketing categories

● Geo—The languages and locations of your website audience

● Behavior—Comparisons of new and returning visitors, how often return visits occur and how long
visitors spend on your site

● Technology—The browsers, operating systems and networks of your website visitors

 Overview
The Audience Overview is generally what you see when you first log into your website’s Google
Analytics. At the top of the Overview tab is a graph of the number of sessions performed by website
users.
Beneath the graph are top-level session details showing you the number of users who have performed
sessions on your website, page views, pages per session, average session duration, bounce rate and the
percentage of new sessions.
At the bottom of the Audience Overview are quick links to top demographic, system and mobile data,
along with a chart showing the number of sessions on your website from visitors speaking a particular
language.

You can click on each of the links to see the first ten rows of data from each of the referenced reports, or
you can access the full reports from the corresponding section on left sidebar menu under Audience.
 Demographics
The Demographics Overview breaks down your visitors by age and gender.
 Interests
Curious what your website visitors are interested in? The Interests Overview will show you just that.
There are three reporting categories under the Interests section.

● Affinity Category—Affinity categories are used to reach potential customers to make them
aware of your brand or product. These are users higher in the purchase funnel, near the
beginning of the process.

● In-Market Segment—Users in these segments are more likely to be ready to purchase products
or services in the specified category. These are users lower in the purchase funnel, near the end
of the process.

● Other Category—These are more granular categories than Affinity or In-market, and let you
identify users who are not in those other categories.
 Geo
The Geo section covers the language and location of your website visitors
 Behaviour Report
The Behavior section includes detailed category reports New vs. Returning Visitors, Frequency & Recency and
Engagement. These reports tell you more about how often a visitor comes to your website, how many days on
average it is between sessions for repeat visitors, how long visitors stay on your website and how many pages
they visit while they’re there.
 Technology
If you want to learn more about the browsers, operating systems and Internet service providers your visitors use when
visiting your website, look through the Technology reports.
 Mobile
Not sure if you should optimize for mobile? This is the area you need to visit. The Mobile Overview
shows you the number of desktop, mobile and tablet users who visit your site.
Do you want to know how people are finding
your website?

When you know your biggest traffic sources,

you have a better idea of where to spend your
time and money?

Do you want to learn more about Acquisition

reports in Google Analytics?
Locating Google Analytics Acquisition Reports
There are 10 separate reporting sections under Acquisition in your website’s Google Analytics profile.

The Acquisition section tells you where your visitors originated from, such as search engines, social
networks or website referrals. This is a key section when determining which online marketing tactics are
bringing the most visitors to your website.
 Overview
The Acquisition Overview gives you a quick view of the top channels sending visitors to your website,
as well as the associated acquisition, behavior and conversions details for each channel.
Below is a list and short descriptions of the top channels Google Analytics uses to track
your traffic sources.

● Organic Search—Visitors who come to your website after searching Google.com and other search
engines

● Paid Search—Visitors who come to your website from an AdWords or other paid search ad

● Direct—Visitors who come to your website without a traceable referral source, such as typing your URL
into their address bar or using a bookmark on their browser

● Referral—Visitors who come to your website from another website by clicking on a link

● Social—Visitors who come to your website from a social network

 Channels
The Channels section is similar to the Acquisition Overview, except it gives you a graph to go along with
the acquisition, behavior and conversions details.
 All Traffic
All Traffic lists your top traffic sources from all channels combined. Instead of separating search engines from
social networks from referral websites, they are all listed based on the number of visitors they sent to your
website.
 All Referrals
All Referrals leaves out search engines and direct traffic, and only shows website domains (including
social networks) that have referred traffic to your website.
 Campaign
Campaigns (the Other acquisition channel) tracks visitors who come from campaigns you (or a third-party application) have set up. Campaigns,
as we discussed before, use UTM parameters appended to the end of a URL a visitor would click on.

The three required parameters needed to track campaigns in Google Analytics are the campaign name (utm_campaign), the campaign/traffic
source (utm_source) and campaign medium (utm_medium).

For example, when someone clicks on a link shared by the Buffer app, they’ll see the following in their browser’s address bar:

http://iqtell.com/2014/02/are-we-managing-our-to-do-lists-all-wrong/? utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

In that UTM, ‘buffer’ is the name of the campaign. When you look at your Campaign report in Google Analytics, you’ll see the campaign name
listed in the left column.
 Adwords Section
These sections are similar. The Cost Analysis section allows you to measure sessions, costs and revenue
performance for paid advertising campaigns. You can connect your Google Analytics to Google AdWords to
see AdWords reporting, or upload data from other advertising sources.

The AdWords section shows you data about the visitors who click through your AdWords campaigns. Like
the Cost Analysis section, you can connect Google AdWords to this section as well.
 Social
The Social section gives you more in-depth details about social activity related to your website. The Social
Overview starts by giving you a summary of conversions linked to social networks and traffic from specific
networks.
 Network Referrals
The Network Referrals report shows you the top social networks driving visitors to your website.This can show
you whether visitors from one network are more involved with your website than visitors from another.

In the example above, StumbleUpon sends a lot more traffic than other social networks, but those visitors
typically only spend an average of 9 seconds on the website, which means the likelihood that they’ll be
meaningful for your business is slim.
 Landing Pages
Want to know which pages on your website receive the most traffic from social networks? You can find that in
the Landing Pages report.
 Conversions
If you want to take a quick glance at which social network traffic is leading to the most conversions on
your website, you can find that data in the Conversions report.
 Plugins
By default, Google Analytics tracks any clicks to the Google +1 button and Google+ profile/page badges on your
website and shows that data in the Plugins report.

If you want to track other social buttons in Google Analytics, such as the Facebook Like button, you have to add
some custom code to your website.
 Search Engine Optimization
Last but not least is the Search Engine Optimization section. Here you’ll find a set of reports with data from Google Webmaster Tools, which is
a free Google product that lets you monitor your website’s health in Google search.

When you click on one of the three reports in the Search Engine Optimization section (Queries, Landing Pages or Geographical Summary),
you’re prompted to setup Google Webmaster Tools data sharing.

If you haven’t used Webmaster Tools before, be sure to use the same Google account you use for Google Analytics when you set it up. When
it’s ready to go, return to this section to connect your Analytics to Webmaster Tools.

You’ll have to do this for each website you own that’s using Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.
 Queries
As mentioned earlier, Google Webmaster Tools can uncover some of the keywords that people use to find your
website in Google search. The Queries report brings that information into Google Analytics for you, along with
the number of impressions, clicks and click-through rates for each keyword.
 Landing Pages
The Landing Pages report shows you the pages that receive the most impressions and clicks from search,
along with their click-through rate and average position in search.
➢ Do you want to know what content performs best on your
website?

➢ Have you heard of Behavior reports in Google Analytics?

➢ Knowing how visitors move through your website and

interact with your content lets you optimize your website
performance and conversions ?

➢ In this article I’ll share how Google Analytics Behavior

reports let you assess the performance of your content and
the actions visitors take on your website ?
 Google analytics behaviour reporting
➢ The Behavior section reveals what your visitors do on your website. Specifically, the reports tell you what
pages people visit and what actions they take while visiting.
➢ You can access Behavior reports using the menu in the left sidebar of your Google Analytics dashboard.
 Behaviour of flow
The Behavior Flow report lets you see the path visitors commonly take on your website—from the first page they
view to the last page they visit before leaving your site.
 Site Content
The Site Content section contains the following reports about how visitors engage with pages on your website

All Pages:

You can use the All Pages report to quickly see your top content along with the average amount of revenue each
page generates. This report helps you determine what content performs best on your website.
 Landing Pages
The Landing Pages report lets you see the top pages on your website where visitors enter
 Site Speed
Want to know how your website performs in terms of speed? The Site Speed section has crucial reports
that identify areas of your website that you may need to optimize.

Site Speed Overview

The Site Speed Overview report displays a graph of the average load time of all pages throughout your
website.
 See below for a brief description of the metrics you’ll find under the Site Speed graph.

➢ Avg. Page Load Time—The average amount of time (in seconds) it takes for pages to load from initiation
of the pageview (e.g., a visitor clicks on a page link) to load completion in the browser.

➢ Avg. Redirection Time—The average amount of time (in seconds) spent in redirects before fetching a
page.

➢ Avg. Server Response Time—The average amount of time (in seconds) your server takes to respond to a
user request, including the network time from the user’s location to your server.

➢ Avg. Page Download Time—The average amount of time (in seconds) to download a page.
 Page Timings
The Page Timings report displays how long your most-visited pages take to load compared to the overall
average load time for your website.
 Site Search
The Site Search Overview report displays the overall metrics for visitors who use the search box on your
website. Beneath these metrics, you can view quick reports for the terms searched, categories and the
pages where visitors initiated a search