Quantifiable evidence gives us valuable insights about what is working well, and what could be improved.But sometimes data can be so overwhelming that we might not know what is most important for us and what is not.
Google Analytics collects visitor data from your website that can be used to create reports that provide insight into how visitors are using your website.
Below we have outlined what we feel are the 5 most important metrics to measure about your website and how to make sense of that data in order to improve your business. This guide assumes you’ve already set up Google Analytics for your website. If you haven’t, don’t worry; the process is very simple and straightforward, just click here!
5) Visitor Behaviour
You can easily find which of your posts and materials are better performing by using the Behavior section of Google Analytics. The Overview will give you a pretty good idea if you have a small site, but if you want a full report of all your posts, go to Behavior (Overview), then click on Page Title (under Site Content), then scroll down and click on view full report.
From there, you will see your most viewed content in descending order and you can now see your top-performing pieces of content. Now you can analyze what kind of posts or material gets the most views and tailor your site content to fit the interests of your audience!
4) Landing page
Content -> Site Content -> Landing Pages
Knowing which pages are first visited can help you convert leads into followers. By analyzing which of your pages are the top landing pages, you can optimize them to include calls to action that will encourage your visitors to interact more with your site. Also, knowing what your top landing pages are will show you what your audiences are most interested in and give you insight on how to tailor your content to meet these interests.
Another metric to note is the Bounce Rate from the Landing Pages. A high bounce rate could mean that the visitor just views that one page and does not interact with the site any further before leaving your site altogether. The aim therefore, should be to reduce the landing page bounce rate by having prominent calls to action that will push the visitors to visit other pages in your site. For help with calls to action, check this blog post out.
3) Exit Pages
Content -> Site Content -> Exit Pages
It’s important to note not only how visitors are entering the site, but also how visitors are exiting your site. The Exit Page report shows what pages visitors are leaving the site from. Take a close look at your top ten pages and make sure they’re the pages you want people to be leaving your site from.
Pages you want visitors leaving from:
- Form completion thank you pages
- Order completion pages
Pages you do not want visitors leaving from:
- Your homepage
- A conversion form
- During checkout process
2) Organic Search Traffic
Traffic Sources -> Sources -> Search -> Organic
The Organic Search Traffic report shows what keywords visitors used to find your website. This report will help you measure the success of your search engine optimization.
An important question to ask: Is a majority of my search traffic from non-branded keywords? The goal is to have people find your website for terms they need help with or services they are looking for. For example if you own “Mark’s Shirt Store” keywords that you might target are “Lacoste shirts” or “workout shirts.”
Here’s an Organic Search Traffic report about a post on getting rid of Twitter spam. In this post, keywords like “how to get rid,” “Twitter spam,” and “Twitter virus” were targeted. In the report you can see the different keyword variations that visitors searched that eventually led them to the blog post.
An Organic Search Traffic report from Vital about a post on getting rid of Twitter spam.
1) Traffic sources
Traffic Sources > Overview
This shows how visitors find your site and from where they access your page; this is a key indicator, as it will help you determine just what platforms are best for reaching the majority of your audience.
Search Traffic – Found your website using a search engine (i.e.Google).
Referral Traffic – Clicked on a link from another website that linked back to you.
Direct Traffic – Typed your URL in the browser.
Campaigns – Visits that are tracked through pre-defined campaigns.
