All metric may not apply to the reality of your website’s experience. It’s important to also try understanding the behavior of your users and introducing some context to gain more insight. Gain some understanding to how this works by listening to the 15 minute interview on UIE.fm Spirits, Claws, and Analytics — A study in superstition and science.
| Insight to Assess | Where to Find Report in Google Analytics or Elsewhere | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Where can I get a general overview? | Customizations>Dashboards<Core Analytics | |
| How many people (users) are visiting the site (sessions)? | Audience>Overview>Sessions Audience>Overview>Users |
Compare to last year. |
| What are the demographics (age, gender) of people visiting the site ? | Audience>Demographics>Overview | This information is not turned on by default but should have been turned on by the web team. |
| Which pages are most / least popular? | Behavior>All Pages | Review Pageviews and Unique Pageviews |
| Are users engaging with the site content? (bounce rate) | Audience>Overview>Bounce Rate | 50% is industry indicator but this bounce rate needs context |
| How compelling is the content and what is the ease of access? | Audience>Overview>Pages per Session | 2 pages/session is standard but this metric needs context |
| How long are users staying on the site? | Audience>Overview>Average Session Duration | 2-3 minutes is industry standard but needs context. |
| What external websites are referring traffic to our website? | Acquisition>Channels>Source | Set the Secondary Dimension to Landing Page |
| What internal webpages are referring traffic to our website? | Behavior>Site Content>All pages | Set the Secondary Dimension to Previous Page Path |
| What is the efficacy of marketing efforts at driving new traffic? | Audience>Overview>Percent of New Sessions | No benchmark but range of 45%-75% is common. Needs context. |
| Are social networks driving traffic to our website? | Acquisition>Social>Network Referrals
Social Media Analytics Dashboards |
Set the Secondary Dimension to Landing Page |
| Are e-newsletter, social media post or other external posts (campaign sources) driving traffic to our pages? | Acquisition>Campaigns>All Campaigns
Social Media Analytics Dashboards |
Requires use of Google’s URL builder |
| What keywords are people using to find our pages? | Acquisition>Campaigns>Organic Keywords | Set the Secondary Dimension to Page |
| How are people moving to and through the site? | Request the Web team turn on a Heatmap.me
Behavior>Site Content>All Pages
Audience<Users Flow |
See above answer to: What external websites are referring traffic to our website?
Switch to the “Navigation Summary Label.” Use Page Groupings or select a specific page to see previous and next pages. |
| Are people clicking on a specific link or button? | Request that the Web team turn on a Heatmap.me
Ask the Web team to track the clickable areas with Google Tag Manager Add the Page Analytics Google Chrome extension to your browser to see how customers interact with your web pages. |
Once Google Tag Manager is enabled, find the data at Behavior<Events<Overview |
| Are people downloading files (PDFs) from the site? | Behavior<Events<Overview<Downloads | Learn more about Google Analytics Events |
| Are people clicking on an external link? | Behavior<Events<Overview<Outbound Link Clicks | Learn more about Google Analytics Events |
| Which browsers are people using to visit the site? | Audience>Technology>Browser & OS | |
| What is the screen size of devices used to visit the site? | Audience>Technology>Browser & OS>Screen Resolution | |
| Where are our visitors located? | Audience>Geo>Location | |
| If I change the address of a page are people still going to it? | If there’s no page at the URL people will end up on the Page Not Found page. |
Please be aware that Google Analytics is frequently reorganized. Please let us know if any of the paths or terms need to be updated.
