Google analytics is a very powerful web application that every business with a website should have implemented in their website. The next step is understanding the often complex Google Analytics (GA) report. This is the first in five articles which will walk you through the various elements of the GA report.

A GA report is split into one overview section, the dashboard and four detailed sections: visitors overview, map overlay, traffic sources overview, and a content overview. This article will outline the key aspects of the dashboard section. It has been written to correspond to a PDF exported version of the GA report your web design company should forward to you on a monthly basis*.

*If you don’t currently have GA installed on your site, click here to download a demo GA PDF file. If you are interested in having Google Analytics installed on your website, feel free to contact DLC for assistance.

The header and line chart.

The first thing you should notice is in the upper left corner of the report is your website’s address and the word ‘Dashboard’. In the top right is the date range the data in the report represents.

Below the header is a line graph, which by default, charts the number of visits to your website on a daily basis. The graph will begin to show you if certain days of the week generate more traffic then others and can also be used to monitor online marketing campaigns.

Spikes occurring in line with marketing initiatives are normal. Spikes occurring randomly are things to be looked into. A healthy website should have a fairly consistent daily average (or relatively straight line) that will grow in numbers over time.

Site Usage Overview.

The site usage overview section is a snapshot of information that can be gained by accessing more advanced information in the detailed overview sections. For the sake of this article, the dashboard pulls out six key pieces of information that are helpful at a glance.

The six elements are: number of total visits, number of total page views, number of pages viewed per visitor, the bounce rate, the average time each visitor spends on the site and the percentage of visitors that are first time visitors. The number of total visitors and number of total page views are straight forward and to the point. The other four are discussed below.

The number of pages viewed per visitor or ‘Pages/Visit’ is measured by dividing the total number of pages viewed by the total number of visitors. The higher this number, the better.

The ‘Bounce Rate’ is the number of visitors leaving from the same page they landed on, or single page visitors. A high bounce rate usually means that the pages your visitors are first seeing are not relevant to the search they used to find that page. Knowing what pages visitors are landing on will be raised in the content overview section.

Average time on site is just that, an average of the total time all visitors spent on the site, divided by the number of total visitors. It is generally perceived to be a useful tool in determining if visitors are actually spending time browsing your website. An average time on site figure higher then one minute is a good starting point; keeping in mind consumers will generally make up their mind about whether to browse your site within five seconds of visiting.

The final element, percentage of visitors that are new is a percentage representation of how many of the visitors to the site are unique within that month. If your website relies on having visitors return, a high number isn’t great; if your site relies on a single visit to get its message across, then a high number is showing good unique exposure.

Visitors Overview.

Within the dashboard page, the visitors overview is a snapshot of data that represents absolute unique visitors, or visitors that have never ever seen your site before. Firstly, there is a similar graph as the default header graph, except only tracking absolute unique visitors. The second bit of data is the number of absolute unique visitors to the site.

Map Overlay.

The map overlay is a feature that visually represents where your visitors are geographically originating from. The darker the green, the more clicks that you are receiving from a particular country. This section might surprise you as you may not have realised that, potentially, a large portion of your website’s visitors are from overseas. This is health and serves as a good starting point for deciding whether your business is exportable.

Traffic Sources Overview.

The traffic sources overview is perhaps the most relevant section when it comes to analysing the marketing of your site. The overview shows a pie chart representation of three to four areas where visitors are linking into your site from: referring sites, direct traffic, search engines and other. Each of these four sources have information on number of links from each respective source and a percentage representation of total links.

Referring sites are websites that have a link that links back to your website. For instance, if a visitor clicks on a link from truelocal.com.au or yellowpages.com.au that links back to your site, they will show up as a link in the referring site data. Links back from social networking sites are also reported in the referring sites information.

Direct traffic information represents visitors that have typed your domain into the address bar and navigated directly to your site. This traffic information is good for reviewing the effectiveness of your traditional marketing efforts as you will likely have your website address included on all print material (ie business cards and signage).

Search engine traffic is generally speaking the largest portion of the ‘pie’ and is perhaps one of the most important pieces of information in the GA report. As most people use search engines like Google to find information, having a strong search engine traffic base is important. If this number is low, you should consider a six month Google marketing campaign (SEO). If you have a SEO campaign in place, the search engine traffic is a great indicator of how effective your current SEO campaign is.

Other traffic will encompass other sources of traffic that GA can’t classify neatly. For instance, if you have implemented a email marketing campaign and are sending out monthly newsletters, links back to your site from the newsletter will appear in the other category.

Content Overview.

The content overview is a summary chart of the top five pages that visitors have looked at on your site. Other data included is the number of page views per page and a percentage breakdown in comparison to the total number of page views.

You will most likely notice a page called ‘/’, this is your sites www.domain.com.au page. The rest of the pages listed should be self explanatory. The content overview will give you a good idea of what pages of your site that visitors are actually looking at.