Google Analytics is Google’s free software that gives incredibly valuable information about a website and its visitors. Regardless of how big your site is or how much traffic you receive, installing Analytics to understand your audience is a must!
Analytics is a powerful tool that can seem daunting at first, but that’s why we’re here to help! Most importantly, how do you know which metrics to focus on in order to gain actionable insights? Below we’ve listed what we think are the most important metrics, and what they could mean for your site.
- Audience overview: The analytics dashboard gives you a broad overview of the number of visitors you have received over a certain amount of time, usually over a week or the whole month. The chart can also help you look at trends in your viewership over that time.
- Absolute unique visitors: One of the most vital statistics, this shows you how many people visit your site in a month. Unique visitors are distinct, different users who have visited your site that day.
- Bounce rate: Another crucial statistic that shows how many users landed on your site and immediately left. You can compare this number with your overall traffic increases – ideally, you want your bounce rate to decrease and overall traffic to increase.
- Referral and traffic sources: This metric shows what site your users came from in order to get to your site. Did they go through social media, a website ad, an organic search, or did they possibly type in the address? This metric can give you a clearer picture as to which of your methods to advertise and draw people to your site are working.
- Top landing pages: Typically, the top landing page is your website’s home page. But keep in mind that users can land anywhere on your site. This metric shows where your users initially land on your site, and can help you determine if your site navigation is easy and intuitive.
- Goal tracking: If you have set a goal or conversion, this section shows the percentage of conversions out of total visitors, the path visitors take to complete the conversions, percentage of conversions from each traffic source, and a whole host of other vital metrics.
Want to analyse your audience with Google Analytics, but don't know where to start? Salt & Fuessel is a digital agency with proven track records in web development, strategy, and SEO, and can use your site's metrics to understand your users' behaviors and increase conversion rates. From there, initiatives can be developed and implemented to optimise your website, to ensure the best performance and happy users.
Check out Salt & Fuessel's past client projects, which span a diverse range of industries, and get in touch to see how we can make your site a success starting from today!
