An Introduction to Google Analytics Google Analytics tracks the activity on your website, such as how many visitors you get, which web pages are the most popular, and how your visitors found your website. Like most things technical, Google Analytics can seem intimidating, so we’ve put together a how-to guide of the top 5 reports to save you time and get you started.
Access your Analytics
Your Siteclick website comes with Google Analytics installed automatically. If your website was built by another provider, contact them to have Analytics installed on your site – it’s quick and easy and shouldn’t cost any extra.
To access your Google analytics account: • Visit www.google.com/analytics/ • Click ‘Access Analytics’
1 - Visitors Overview
Ones to watch: •
How much traffic your website gets (Visits)
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How many pages each visitor looks at when they visit your site (Pageviews)
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The average length of each visit (Avg. Time on Site)
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Your Bounce Rate (The percentage of people who only visited one page on your site before ‘bouncing’ somewhere else on the net. Average bounce rates are between 30%-40%)
How to improve: Increase traffic (Visits) •
Do search engine optimisation (to rank more highly in Google).
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Network and tell more people about your website - give out lots of business cards with your website on it.
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Ask your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn contacts to tell their contacts about your website and post a link on their profile.
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Send a monthly email newsletter to your contacts with your latest news, offers and updates – make sure to include links to different pages on your website.
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Increase the number of pages your visitors look at (Pageviews) •
Add links to related content to your website pages to help tempt your visitors to keep browsing.
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Find the most popular pages on your website and consider how you could add similar content to keep people browsing your site.
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Check out the pages where you’re losing the most people and brain-storm why people might be leaving. Make changes and watch your numbers to see if it’s having a positive effect.
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Ask us about A/B testing and how this can help to improve your website statistics.
Increase the length of each visit (Avg. Time on Site) •
Add media to your website. Pictures and video will help to increase browsing time.
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On inner pages of your website, have a list of pages that are related to the current page.
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On inner pages of your website, display a list of the most popular pages on your website.
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If your website is large, add breadcrumb navigation to make it clear to your visitors where they are and how they can easily get back to previous pages.
Reduce your bounce rate •
Make sure your web pages load quickly. We build quick-loading sites, but you can help, too. Make sure you don’t add any overly-large pictures or sluggish third party applications.
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Make sure your navigation is clear and well-laid-out. Confusing structure will drive visitors away.
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Make sure your website works well on tablets and smartphones (like iPad and iPhone). If your website doesn’t work at all, or is too hard to read, this will drive up your bounce-rate.
If you want, you can get a bit more technical and find out much more, so feel free to browse and learn even more about your visitors.
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2 - Traffic Sources Overview
This report tells you where your visitors came from (your traffic sources). You find out whether they found your website via a search engine, via other website, or if they typed your specific URL into their address bar.
More importantly, the report tells you where you’ve been getting the best traffic, and which sources you need to target in order to develop more traffic from them.
Ones to watch: • The top phrases that people are using to find you (Keywords) • How you’re getting your most traffic from (shown as a pie chart) • What sites are sending you the most traffic (‘Referral Traffic’ > ‘Source’)
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How to improve: •
Keep your top keywords in mind when you’re writing new content. Brainstorm other keywords that you might want to consider targeting. These can potentially be used as part of a search engine optimisation campaign.
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Where are you getting most of your traffic from? Search engines? Referrals? If you’re not getting much traffic from a certain source (e.g. Referrals), do some Googling or give us a call to find out how you could improve these numbers.
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Under ‘Referral Traffic’ > ‘Source’, you’ll find a list of the websites that send you the most traffic (websites that link to your website). What are your top referrals? Can you find similar websites and get referrals from them, too?
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3 - Referrals (Found in Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals)
This report tells you which sites your visitors were at before getting to your site. It does not include search engines, and is a useful way to see what websites are linking to your website – and how much traffic they’re sending you.
Find out your best traffic sources and see if there’s anything you can do to get more traffic from the same source or similar sources.
Ones to watch: • What sites are sending you the most traffic (Sources)
How to improve: •
What are your top referrals? Can you find similar websites and get referrals from them, too? Can you get more referrals from sites that are already sending you a lot of traffic?
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4 – Keywords (Found in Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic)
This is where you can get more detailed information that you’ve already seen in the Traffic Sources Overview screen (Report 1, above). The Keywords report shows which words visitors typed into the Google search box, as well as other search engines.
Ones to watch: •
How a keyword corresponds to the length of a visitor’s stay on your site (Avg. Time on Site)
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The number of pages they view during their visit (Pages/Visit)
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The bounce rate depending on the keyword (Bounce Rate)
Ones to watch: Keyword / Avg. Time on Site •
There’s no standard to Avg. Time on Site, it’s more about trends, so watch for peaks or troughs that will show whether your changing website content is having a positive effect.
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Find the keywords that keep your visitors one your website the longest – this means your visitors are probably finding the information they’re looking for.
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Are there also keywords that cause visitors to leave quickly? They’re probably not finding what they’re looking for. Tweak your content and add media to keep your visitors on your website for as long as possible.
Number of page views per visit o
Report 1 (Visitors Overview, bottom of pg2) has a list of ways that you can increase your page views and keep people browsing
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5 – Content Overview
This report is all about finding the most valuable content on your website. See a list of URLs that are the most popular on your website – click on the
symbol to open each page in a new window.
Ones to watch: • Popular pages (Page)
How to improve: • The home page and the contact page are often ranked the highest. Beyond that, this report will show what content is the most successful (or what content is easiest for your visitors to find.) • Use your most popular pages to create more content that you know your visitors will like
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