If you have not been taking advantage of Google analytics, you just might be missing out on something important. You probably have been running paid and organic ads and not getting results or if you are, the results are probably not as impressive as you would want them considering the amount of money, time and manpower put into those campaigns.
Having no idea where your visitors are coming from, what they actually want or their basic algorithm might just mean you’ve been running ads aloof and wasting time, money and manpower that could have been put in a better use somewhere else; this could be really frustrating.
If you are here, your main objective must be how to better understand Google analytics and subsequently get the best out of it. My biggest guess is you are an entrepreneur, a researcher or a writer. I will therefore cut to the chase and keep the dilly-dallying to the barest minimum. I will be proposing some questions you should be or are probably asking yourself already; thus, giving an opening to my explanation of the basic functionalities of Google analytics as they best apply to online marketing strategies while also using the simplest terms, giving directions on where to find them and how to set them up.
• HOW MANY PEOPLE VISIT MY WEBSITE, PAGE OR BLOG?
There are many reports in Google analytics that you can use to track your website traffic. To avoid repetition or overwhelming you with too many information, I will be making mention of just two:
First method is to check it through acquisition. Go to Acquisition> All Traffic> Channels. You will not only be able to see the number of visitors on your website but also know which channel is driving the most traffic to your site.
The second method is the Page view. This metric will enable you find out the total number of views per page. That means you can know the exact number of people that visited your page by considering how many times the page was viewed. Pageviews are also counted if a user has visited a page more than once; however, unique page views would count those sessions as one. To access pageviews, go to Behavior> Overview
• WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?
Have you ever wondered how some visitors stumbled upon your page? Okay, wonder no more. Google Analytics will not only tell you how your visitors got to your site, but also what they are doing there. To find this feature, go to Traffic Sources> Sources> Click on the source you want to know about from the dropdowns. With this, you would know which keyword mostly lead visitors to your site, which campaign is working and which one is wasting money, and if you should stick to paid or organic campaigns. If you run paid ads, this tool is a must use for you so you wouldn’t be running ads aloof or using advertising channels that are not working for your business or goals and how to better optimize your ads. Here you would know where to intensify efforts and tie up loose ends.
• HOW LONG DO THEY STAY ON MY SITE AND WHAT PAGE DO THEY DWELL ON THE MOST?
Here you can measure the Entrance, bounce rate and Exit rate. From the entrance column, you would be able to know the number of people that visited your site from a particular page which could be your homepage, product page through an ad or a post. The bounce rate and exit percentage tell you where they went to and how long they actually stayed. The bounce rate and Exit percentage could be easily mistaken for the other; however, there is a slight difference. The bounce rate measures the number of users who enter a page and leave without checking out any other page while the exit percentage measures users who leave after getting to the page having checked out other pages then making this page their exit point. A bounce just breezes in and out almost simultaneously while those exiting linger on a bit longer. While the exits are probably interested, bounces are most likely not. To get access to these stats go to Content> Site Content> Content Drilldown.
• WHAT GENDER AND AGE GROUP DO THEY BELONG TO?
Your “go to” tab for this feature is the “Demographics”. Demographics will keep you informed regarding the age and gender of those that interact the most with your site or a particular page or post. This feature will help you identify which age groups are most common and which convert the best; identify which gender is most common and more converting; how these statistics can be used to better market to the most converting audience. For example; if you have been running ads to male and female between ages 18 and 65 whereas, 80% of your traffic and conversion come from Female between ages 25 and 40, then you don’t need a soothsayer to tell you you’re probably wasting valuable money advertising to the wrong audience. You can put that money to a better use by targeting more of those converting audiences in the statistics. Which means you will probably spend less and get more conversion than advertising to the gender or age group that might never be interested in your product or package. To find the Demographics section navigate to Audience> Demographics.
• WHAT INTERESTS THEM?
This is where you find out what motivates or interests your visitors. Here you could understand the kind of things they are interested in which would inadvertently lead you to what they would buy or how to motivate them into buying what you are selling or clicking that subscribe button. To learn about interests go to Audience> Demographics> Interests. Once you take your time to study your consumers, selling to them shouldn’t be a problem anymore.
• ARE THEY JUST GUESTS, READERS OR PAYING CUSTOMERS?
To analyze the behavior of visitors on the site, we use the Behavior Flow. With this function, you can isolate pages, sources, or even keywords and analyze how visitors behave once they get to the website. With this, you can monitor the path of a successful visit and understand why such was successful while others were not. This is where you would know the difference between guests and clients.
Understanding the pattern could easily help you turn guests or cynics into paying customers, clients or subscribers. To configure this report and choose the traffic to segment, follow this pattern from the sidebar in Google Analytics: Behavior> Behavior Flow> Source*> “The Source You Want to Isolate”> View Only This Segment. Now you can see the landing page and the first and second pages your guest interacted with. *To get to the source, click on the dropdown menu at the top of the behavior flow report. Type in “source” and choose the item from the dropdown menu.
• IS CONVERSION HAPPENING OR FEASIBLE?
You probably get a lot of traffic, sadly though, many of them will never convert. Meaning they might never buy that product or subscribe to that package even if it was free because they are simply not interested. However, every visitor would be counted in your conversion data so you can’t rely on that. To understand this metric, you have to filter out users who bounce really fast (Which means you can’t do this without knowing your bounce rate which is covered in the third module above). To do that, go to Acquisition> All Traffic> Source/ Medium> Add Segment*> Behavior> Session Duration (customize to less than 10 seconds)> Save.
Once someone leaves your site within ten seconds of getting there, you can understand that they are probably not interested in your product/ post or realized it wasn’t what they were searching for. This kind of traffic will probably never convert no matter how hard you try. By eliminating them with the above trick, you can agree that you probably stand a chance with the rest.
• WHAT KIND OF WORDS GET PEOPLE MOST TO MY WEBSITE?
This could as well be a sub-section to “Traffic Source”. This feature helps you know the kind of words they typed on the search engine that got them to your site or the most popular keywords that lead people to your website. Once you realize the keyword used the most and the pages visited, you can use that in creating specific content using laser targeted keywords. This will help your Google ranking a whole lot. The more specific your keywords are, the better your chances of getting on the first page in a Google search. If your keywords are in your page title, they will even appear bold on Google rankings. To locate this golden feature go to Traffic Sources> Sources> Search> Organic.
• WHICH STRATEGY IS WORKING FOR ME?
Knowing which campaign or strategy is working has to be one of the most important tools in online marketing; its usefulness cannot be overemphasized. While the source metric refers to where traffic to your site comes from, the Medium metric on the other hand is the general category of how the user arrives to the website. In clearer terms, from the source metric, you find out whether your visitors are coming from a search engine such as Google or they just type in your URL directly while the medium metric will let you know if your traffic is coming through organic search or paid ads. Understanding these metrics is quite important because it will give you an insight regarding your traffic source and how effective your campaigns are.
Therefore, if you are running paid ads and the bulk of your visitors are coming from the organic search engine or you only get a handful of customers from the paid ads, you would understand that the campaign is probably not working as best as it should. You can find out which strategy is delivering and which one to kill. These metrics can be found in Acquisition> Overview> Sources/ Medium.
• AM I DOING BETTER?
Google Analytics let you compare historical traffic trend. This can be an incredibly powerful way to understand what you were doing right or wrong compared to your recent activities, how well your strategies and campaigns are working in comparison with your previous strategies, and how to better improve on whatever it is you are getting right or wrong since the main goal is to keep doing better and what better way to ensure that than by comparing results before and after any modification. It is quite important to do this comparison when implementing improvements. You can do this in the Date Range Dialog Box> Enter a date range> Click on “Compare To”> Enter the date range you want to compare> Apply. You will then see how your traffic stacks up overtime, and in the overview graph, you will notice how the valleys of one plotted line correspond with the other. You will be able to see clearly how the dates compare to the others.
• HOW FAST IS MY SITE LOADING?
As an entrepreneur and a consumer, I am sure you would agree with me that Speed directly impacts your bounce rate. Google found that for every small increase in load time, bounce probability skyrockets. With Google Analytics, you can analyze specific pages on your site to see which ones need improvement, saving you time and money by only targeting the top-performing pages first.
You actually can’t afford a slow site as it kills your conversion potential before people even get to load your page. When certain pages are slow, they are likely causing you to lose valuable customers and even money. To find out how slow or fast your site is loading, go to Behavior> Site Speed> Page Timings. Here you can see all the pages of your site and their respective speed. However, if you go to the “Speed Suggestions” report, you would be able to get the average load times for individual pages and any suggestions for improvement. With this report, you can close up any leaking pages and retain more visitors who eventually become paying customers.
• WHAT DEVICE DO MY GUESTS VISIT MY SITE WITH THE MOST?
There is a metric in Google analytics that actually highlight how many users visit your website on desktop, mobile and tablet devices. Though, evaluating both mobile and desktop websites are important, it also paramount to know which experience to focus your efforts. We all know that mobile browsing greatly affects a site’s overall performance. It’s a shame though that a lot of people ignore this tool and spend more time optimizing their websites for desktop experience. Once you begin to go through your device metrics, you will clearly see what device a greater percentage of your visitors are browsing with and know where to focus your effort.
Apart from this, you can also know how long they stay on the site to understand if there is a problem with the experience. For example, sometimes, elements on the mobile page break. Once you understand the issue, you can better optimize your page for that particular device.
It can also help you find out when, how and why your visitors are utilizing your website. Is it at work, in the morning or after close of work? This is where you will find the device metric Audience> Mobile> Overview and Devices. You can use the Overview and Devices together for better optimization.
• HOW DO I AVOID GETTING OVERWHELMED WITH ALL THESE INFORMATION?
You can get your top reports emailed to you periodically so you don’t have to run to your dashboard every nanosecond. Considering how bogus the Google analytics metrics could be, you can avoid getting inundated by having your preferences set for a copy of your top reports to be emailed to you periodically. This is a gold mine if you are always looking at certain aspects. So instead of going through the trouble of logging into your dashboard and going through numerous reports just to check your traffic, ad delivery and demographics, you can just have them magically appear in your email whenever and however you want it. Cool, right? Yeah, I know (wink).
What’s more? You can have the tool alert you, once there’s a major change or activity in a campaign you are running. So, if you have multiple projects or clients, this tool is priceless. To take advantage of this tool, head to the Admin section of your analytics account and follow this explanation: View> All Web Site Data> Custom Alerts. There you can customize how you want the alert, when you want it, where you want it and specific scenarios you want to be alerted for. You can alert yourself on just about anything and you can create as many alerts as you want; just don’t overwhelm yourself with too many alerts since the essence of this write up is to prevent that.
• CONCLUSION
You have a lot of hidden gems within Google analytics which if analyzed and used appropriately, it will not only help you understand how your business is doing but also how to make it do better. So, analyze, utilize and optimize those amazing metrics for optimum performance. Cheers!
RM.
Sensehub 
