Are you aware of Google Analytics full potential and the importance of using it to track your site? Read on to learn more.
Google Analytics is a great platform to use to understand your customer's behavior and analyse not only how many people are visiting your website, but also where they are coming from. Google Analytics is also very helpful for determining which marketing campaigns worked and which didn't by tracking the performance of the campaign.
Below are a few common terms that will help you understand Google Analytics.
Bounce Rate - Bounce rate is one of the key health-check indications for your website. It shows how many people visited a single page and then left the site without interacting with any other pages. A high bounce rate may indicate that the content on the page might not be relevant or engaging. As a benchmark we try to aim for 35% but expect up to 40% if you're running paid advertising.
Sessions - A session is the period of time a user is actively engaged with your site. It can also be a key success measure that shows people are doing more on your website.
Page View - A page view is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked. If a user clicks reloads after reaching the page, this is counted as an additional page view. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second page view is recorded as well. This information can be useful to see if any changes made on the "page" (such as the content or the way it is presented) results in more page visits.
New vs Returning - New visitors are those users that have not visited your site before the time period you specified, while returning visitors will have made at least one visit to at least one page on your site previously. This is a great way to measure if your site is attracting the correct target market as ideally you want to turn new traffic into returning customers.
Location - Location lets you see where the traffic to your site originates from (Continent, Sub Continent, Country, City etc).
Mobile Devices - Mobile devices refers to the use of data collected as users access your site from a mobile device. It helps to determine which aspects of the website work best for mobile traffic. Understanding mobile traffic to your site can give you an indication of whether you need to design your site to accommodate both mobile and desktop traffic. Across all of our websites we are seeing a large growth of mobile users, in some cases a 10% increase in the past 6 months.
Organic Search - Organic search, commonly known as natural search, is a free listing that appears in Google Search because of its relevance to the search terms opposed to paid advertising.
Google Ads - Google ads are an online advertising service that places ads at the top, bottom, or beside the list of search results.The ads reach people the precise moment they are searching for what your business can offer. This is a very powerful tool to use and we have seen some great results for both small and large businesses.
Referrals - Referral traffic is used to describe visitors that come direct to your site from another website that’s not a search engine.
Social Media - Social media is the social interaction among people in which you can create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities. Social media is a marketing tool that allows you to connect with your customers and improve brand awareness. It is a benefical tool for all businesses, no matter how big or small.
For those of you who were not familiar with the terms, I hope you found the newsletter beneficial and informative. To everyone, remember the importance of using Google Analytics and be sure to keep an eye on your website's activity to get the most out of it!
Please get in touch with me if you have any queries or would like to discuss the Google Analytics opportunities for your website in more detail.
