3 Things to Look For: Basic Metrics for Google Analytics Beginners

Google Analytics is a great tool for anyone with a website. Rather than hoping that your website is doing “OK,” you can actually track details about your website’s performance and make updates and changes accordingly. Good metrics are vital to attracting traffic to your site, and converting that traffic into customers, because without good metrics, you can’t tell whether or not your site is effective.

When you first look at your Google Analytics account, it can be intimidating. That dashboard is full of all kinds of clickable links and reports and data. It can be hard to know what to look for if you’re just starting out. Once you become more adept at seeing the patterns and trends, you’ll be able to figure out exactly which metrics are the most important to your business. Here a few key metrics that beginning users should look at first.

VISITORS

It all starts with your visitors. Your website is for them, after all, isn’t it? Figuring out how your visitors are using your site is a key to optimizing the visitor experience. In the visitor overview report, you should look at these key stats:

Visits – the total number of visits to your site
Unique visitors – the total number of different visitors to your site (If you click the site 1,000 times, you’re still just one unique visitor)
Pages per visit – the average number of pages viewed by visitors
Average time on site – how long they are usually there
Bounce rate – The rate at which visitors come to your site and “bounce” without clicking any deeper into your site. Lower is better, generally…

Keep in mind, every business is different. There’s no “magic” number of pages your users should see per visit, or an ideal bounce rate (unless it’s zero, but that’s not going to happen!) These numbers will vary, but you should mainly watch your visitor numbers for major dips or peaks, and figure out why they occurred. Perhaps you changed your site design and your bounce rate skyrocketed. You may need to rethink your redesign. Tracking your visitor metrics closely can help you catch trends (positive or negative), so you can adjust your website and web strategy accordingly.

SOURCES

You also need to pay attention to the source of your visitors. This is very important because it helps you figure out how users are getting to your website. If you’re using paid online advertising, you can judge the effectiveness of various ad placements or referring sites and adjust your strategy. Likewise, you can see whether your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts are paying off in improved organic search results and visitors (by the way, here’s a great SEO starter guide from Google).

Check out the traffic sources overview report and its pie chart to see the distribution of how traffic is entering your website. There are different theories as to what the percentages should be, and it may depend on your business, but a good balance between sources generally doesn’t hurt.

LANDING PAGES

A landing page is the first page where visitors are directed when they click on your link or ad; think of it as your chance to make a good first impression. This is also known as the ‘entrance page.’ Does the information you’re delivering on your landing pages match the needs of the visitors you receive? This is important because you want visitors to come to your site and find what they were expecting to find. This will improve click-thru rates, decrease bounce rates, and hopefully help you convert more traffic into business.

Organic search traffic that has a high bounce rate might mean the ideas you’re optimizing your page for don’t match what visitors are looking for, while high bounce rates on paid advertising landing pages mean you need to improve the user experience.

High exit percentages and bounce rates on landing pages are a great indicator your landing pages may need improvement. By keeping tabs on how your traffic performs once it hits your landing page, you can improve landing pages to help visitors get what they are looking for from query to landing on and navigating your website.

Overall, these three metrics are a good place to start, and can help you get more comfortable on Google Analytics. They also provide valuable feedback on your website, its design and its optimization. Acting on the insight that Google Analytics provides can allow you to improve your site, grow your traffic and convert more visitors into customers.

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