Have you ever wondered why people keep harping on about analytics? They don’t display emotions like Facebook can and they certainly demonstrate shares like Twitter either. It’s only agencies and big companies that need these right?
Well actually, no. Even the little guy (SME or Sole Trader) can benefit from these insights. They do make them pretty hard to understand though in fairness.
The most “popular” analytics we at Fusebox suggest you learn about would be Google Analytics – which frankly mystifies a lot of people! It’s mighty hard to open and enter in the first place and it uses phrasing that most people would be very unfamiliar with as well, so that’s why we got together and decided to make this simple guide for you.
So let’s start from the beginning and see where we can help you.
You don’t need to be a master with this free tool to take advantage of it’s insights. If you’re unsure how to open it then open a Google search page and type in “Google Analytics Login”.
Google Analytics
First and foremost, these are only accessible to people who have a website and have asked that their Webmaster add Google Analytics. We’ve found it’s not always the norm to have it included on the commission of a website.
Most people don’t realise they have access to their Google analytics already. If you have a Gmail account you have it as part of your login. It’s called the “One Account” for a reason, that it gives you access to so much. Including YouTube, Google Docs, Google My Business and lots more. Once you login there are several areas we would like to draw your attention to. So you simply enter your email and password as normal to open your analytics.
Audience
Audience Overview
This gives you an insight of hours, days, weeks and months of when your audience was on your website.
It explains how many visited and where new or returning visitors and how long they spent on a session on your website.
There is also an important section called Bounce Rate. This marks how people have visited your website but then realised it’s the wrong one and “bounced” almost immediately away. The lower the figure this is, the better.
Acquisition
Overview
This initially outlines how you have gained people to your website through organic search or perhaps direct linking through social media channels perhaps.
You can then drill down deeper in the next sub section “All Traffic – Channels” and see exactly how many people visited your website from a link you shared on a Facebook post.
Source / Medium
This section gives you quite a thorough indication of where people have come across your website and numerical results, again you can measure these daily, weekly etc.
google / organic
2. m.facebook.com / referral
3. (direct) / (none)
4. t.co / referral
5. missinglettr-twitter / social_link
6. bing / organic
7. facebook.com / referral
8. missinglettr-facebook / social_link
9. pinterest.com / referral
Referrals
This section is seen more as an overview of the above section!
Now click out of Acquisition and click into:
Behaviour
Overview
This is where you can see your audience has visited over the last time period and see which posts, pages are the most visited.
Behaviour Flow
This would be an important section to visit. This is your customers journey through your website. It shows you where they arrive and where they go through your website and “drop off” or leave.
You can quickly ascertain from here what pages are working for you and what aren’t.
Site Content
Within this tab is a Landing Page and an Exit Page sub tab. These are where your audience has arrived and left.
By understanding your customers journey arriving through to leaving you can see what triggered them to move through the pages. Was it there was a obvious section like you responded to a question and then suggested they hit the Contact page? Or perhaps you have a special offer mentioned on the Home Page and you then had them click through to the offer?
We hope this helps you through the initial start up of your journey through Google Analytics, as ever, do contact us if we can help!
