Website Analysis

Google Analytics

Confidential & Proprietary

Welcom The Google Merchandise Store
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Google Merchandise Store

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Welcom The Google Merchandise Store
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Orientation View Reports
Audience > Overview

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Orientation Dimensions & Metrics

Dimension
A row in reports. Represents a variety of labels
applied to the data, such as where a user came from,
the page they viewed, etc. Dimensions are mutually
exclusive.

Metric
A column in reports. Represents a measurement made
on a session, such as Time On Site or Bounce Rate.
Metrics are either: count, currency, calculation, or… clock.

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Orientation Dimensions vs. Metrics

Dimensions Metrics

Dimension & Metrics explorer

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Orientation Dimensions vs. Metrics
DIMENSIONS

Label

Example

What Page /product/shoes

Where City Dublin

How Medium organic

Who User Type Returning User

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Orientation Dimensions vs. Metrics
METRICS
Label

Example

Count Sessions 545

Percentage Bounce Rate 75%

Average Avg. Pages/Session 2.54

Time Avg. Session Duration [Link]

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Orientation Dimensions & Metrics

Remember, Metrics and

Measurement both start with
an “M”!
Metrics
Dimension
s

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Orientation Sessions

Sessions
The number of distinct visits during which someone interacted
with the site. Think of this like the number of times people enter
the front door of a store.

• By default, a session ends if they are inactive for more than 30 minutes
• Changes to traffic source end a session – important for cross domain
tracking

Your understanding of GA sessions is directly related to your ability to analyse

GA data.
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Orientation Users

User
An individual person who visited your site

User
An individual set of cookies; that is, a particular web browser on a
particular computer.

“User” is only as accurate as the cookies. If a person visits from the office and then
from home, or from Internet Explorer and then from Firefox, they’re counted
twice.
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Orientation What Other Kinds of Metrics Are There?
There are many metrics but the most important one has to do with
measuring goals for success (whatever our definition of “success” is):

Conversion Rate
(# of conversions/# of sessions)
What % of the time did they do that thing that we wanted
(fill out a form, buy something, etc.)? Did we “convert”
them from a mere visitor into a customer?

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Orientation Site Usage Metrics: “Good” & “Bad”
There are only three things we care about as analysts:

Trends Over Segmenting Identifying

Time Users Opportunities

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Orientation Site Usage Metrics: “Good” & “Bad”

• Mostly, we’re interested in comparing different

groups of users or trends over time… not so
much in absolute numbers

• “What’s a good bounce rate?” or “What’s a

good conversion rate?” Both are dependent on
context and what type of site you have.

• But, there are some rules of thumb, and ways

to compare with the competition.

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Orientation “Good” & “Bad” Metrics: An Example
Here’s a “rule of thumb” about bounce rate:

But there are many, many exceptions that

depend on the context.

For example, consider a blog home page.

Visitors may come, view the home page to
As a general rule of thumb, a
bounce rate in the range of read the latest posts, and then leave. From
40% or below is good, 60% the visitor’s perspective, they got exactly
and up is bad. what they were looking for, but the bounce
rate will be high.
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Orientation Choosing Success Metrics
§ Think about the different types of sites (ecommerce, lead generation,
content, service) and the questions you asked about your site.

§ What metrics have we talked about that might help you measure
that success?
§ Ecommerce and Lead Generation sites: Conversion Rate (for purchases or
form signups)
§ Content sites: Time on Site, Pages/Session

§ Remember too that there can be intermediate steps to success, such as:
§ Did they stay on the site after the landing page? (Bounce Rate)
§ Did they view a key page of information (Conversion Rate)
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Orientation What Does GA Measure?

What did they look at? Who came to our site?

§ Which pages? § Where geographically?

§ Where did they enter and § Have they been here

leave? before?
§ What did they search for? § How often do they
come back?
How did they get here?
Were they successful?
§ Bookmark, link, search
§ Did they complete our goals? engine (keyword? paid or
organic?), email marketing,
§ Did they complete a transaction?
etc.
§ If not, where did they drop out?

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Acquisition
How Did They Get Here?
Reports

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Acquisition Acquisition: How Did They Get Here?
Why do we care about how people find the site?

Marketing people care about how marketing

and advertising efforts bring visitors to the site
Search engine optimisation (SEO) people
care about how their site optimisation gets
visitors to the site through search
engines.
Partners and affiliates care how much
traffic they channel to your site.
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Acquisition Acquisition Overview
Acquisition > Overview

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Acquisition Sources of Traffic

Referral Traffic
Followed a link from another site.

Search Traffic
Searched by typing in a keyword and clicking on a result (organic
or paid).

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Acquisition Sources of Traffic

Direct Traffic
URL typed directly into address bar,
used a bookmark.

Direct Traffic Just remember:

Traffic that arrives on your website
without any information about its DIRECT
previous page. means
WE DON’T KNOW

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Acquisition All Traffic: Source/Medium
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium

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Acquisition All Traffic: Source/Medium

Medium
A general bucket describing how
someone got your site: search (organic
or cpc), referral, direct, others

Source
Where they came from: the site with the
link, the search engine

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Acquisition All Traffic By Medium
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium (Primary Dimension: Medium)

You can select what you want to see in the dimensions of the report

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Acquisition All Traffic Medium: Goals & Ecommerce
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium (Primary Dimension: Medium)

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Acquisition Comparing Success Metrics
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium (Primary Dimension: Medium, Goal Set 1 Tab)

Views

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Acquisition Comparing Success Metrics
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium (Primary Dimension: Medium)

Performance View

Choose a Metric

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Acquisition Comparing Success Metrics
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium (Primary Dimension: Medium)

Comparison View

In Google Analytics,
in general green is
good and red is bad.

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Acquisition Channels
Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels

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Acquisition Channels
Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels

• Channels are a rule-based grouping of

the most common sources of traffic.

• Groups together similar types of traffic

that show up separately in the
Source/ Medium report

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Behavior Reports
What Did They Look At On The Site?

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 Behavior Behavior Reports

Why do we care about what people look at on the site?

▪ Content creators care about what content is popular, both to

judge the success of existing content and to decide on new content
to add to the site.

▪ Merchandisers care about what products visitors are exposed to.

▪ Marketers care about landing pages for campaigns and whether

they draw visitors into the site.

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Behavior Behavior Overview
Behavior
>
Overvie
w

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 Behavior Viewing Pages in Google Analytics

1. All Pages report

▪ Only shows URL path by default (the part after the hostname)

2. All Pages report (Primary Dimension: Page Title)

▪ Shows the Page Title on the page that was loaded

3. Content Drilldown
▪ Rolls page metrics up by subdirectories

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Behavior Some New Metrics

Unique Pageviews
The number of sessions during which the page was
viewed. (Pageviews, de-duplicated within
sessions.)

Entrances
The number of times users entered your site through a
specified page.

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Behavior Exits vs Bounces

Exits
The last page that a user visits before they leave your
site. Can be the only page in a session or can be part of a
larger session

Bounces
The number of single-pageview sessions. The user
landed on a page and “bounced” – viewed only
that single page before leaving.

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Behavior Some New Metrics

% Exit
The portion of pageviews for which this page was the
last page viewed.

% Exit isn’t always a useful metric (everyone leaves the site

somewhere). But for navigational pages that are designed to
lead users down a certain path, it can be useful.

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Behavior Some New Metrics

Page Value
The average value of this page or set of pages. Page
Value is (Transaction Revenue + Total Goal Value)
divided by Unique Pageviews for the page.

Look for pages outside of your checkout process or goal

funnel with high page values. These are the pages that
are commonly viewed before users
eventually convert.

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Behavior Find Your Page!
Behavior > Site Content > All
Pages

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Behavior Landing Pages & Exit Pages
Behavior > Site Content >
Landing Pages

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Behavior Which Pages Matter Most?
Behavior > Site Content >
Landing Pages

▪ Common entry points (highest entries) – NOT JUST YOUR

HOME PAGE

▪ Landing pages for marketing (paid search, email campaigns,

etc.)

▪ Landing pages for important organic search keywords

▪ Landing pages for referrals

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Behavior Landing Pages: Reducing Bounce Rate
Behavior > Site
Content > Landing
Pages

Pay as much attention to top entry pages as you would to your home
page. Put cross-promotions, news, etc. on top entry pages, not
just your home page, to keep visitors on the site.

Consider testing multiple versions of the page to see what you can do
to reduce bounce on landing pages.

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Behavior Landing Pages: Sources
Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages (Primary Dimension: Source)

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Behavior Landing Pages: Sources

▪ Do the pages you are targeting with search engine optimisation draw traffic from search
engines? What are the trends over time?

▪ Could the content of the landing page incorporate other content to better serve visitors who
land there?

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Behavior Sort Type
Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages

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Behavior Other Behavior Reports

▪ Site Speed helps optimise page load times

on your site

▪ In-Page Analytics (extension only) gives a

visual representation of the how users
interact with your web pages.

▪ Publisher shows data from your AdSense

or Ad Exchange accounts

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 Behavior Other Content Reports: Events

Meant for tracking non-pageview interactions

▪ Downloads (and which file)
▪ Video players (play, stop, reached the end)
▪ Flash (any kind of interactive activity)
▪ Almost any occurrence or click on your you want to track
site

Can organise and report on by categories and distinct actions

Requires some extra tracking code on the things you want to

track
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Audience Reports
Who Are These People, Anyway?

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 Audience
What Google Analytics can tell us:
▪ Where they’re from (geographically)
▪ Whether they’ve been to the site before,
▪ and how often they come back
Technical information about their browser,
▪ screen resolution, etc.
▪ Possibly, what organisation they work for
Some (assumed) demographic information

What Google Analytics can’t tell us:

▪ IP addresses, exact locations
▪ Personally-identifiable information (PII)
▪ (Unless you know that information outside
of Analytics and label visitors with an
ID)*
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Audience Audience Overview
Audience > Overview

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 Audience Users

User
An individual person who visited your site.

User
An individual set of cookies; that is, a particular web
browser on a particular computer.

“User” is only as accurate as the cookies. If a person visits from the

office and then from home, or from Internet Explorer and then from
Firefox, they’re counted twice.

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 Audience Hourly Trending
Audience >
Overview

One thing the Audience Overview report allows you to do is set

the graph to Hourly in addition to Daily, Weekly and Monthly.

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Audience Demographics
Audience > Demographics > Overview

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Audience Demographics

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Audience Demographics - Age
Audience > Demographics
> Age

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Audience Demographics - Gender
Audience > Demographics
> Gender

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Audience Demographics – Interest Categories
Audience > Interests > Overview

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Audience What Does Google Think About You?

Visit [Link]/settings/ads or do a Google Search for

“ad settings” to see what Google thinks about you!

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Audience Location: Where Do They Come From?
Audience > Geo > Location

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Audience Location: Where Do They Come From?
Audience > Geo > Location

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Audience Location: Where Do They Come From?
Audience > Geo > Location

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Audience Location: Where Do They Come From?
Audience > Geo > Location

Geo-location data
comes from IP
addresses and ISP

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Audience Some Technical Reports
▪ A variety of reports about things such as what
browsers, operating systems, screen
resolutions, and mobile devices your visitors
have.

▪ Primarily useful when you are redesigning a site

and you need to know the technological
parameters to design and test for.

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Audience Mobile Overview
Audience > Mobile >
Overview

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Audience Data Scavenger Hunt

Find the following:

▪ What is the bounce rate of your 2nd-most popular page?

▪ What percentage of sessions view your site from a mobile device?

▪ Which channel drives the most new users to your site?

▪ How many referring sites sent traffic to your site?
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