Google Analytics Insights: Nine Metrics You Need To Understand
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when we talk about a business’s online presence? More the traffic, more the leads! With the marketing tools increasing rapidly, one thing has remained constant with marketers: Google Analytics. It is a powerful tool that lets you track around 200 metrics ranging from conversion, to the acquisition, and much more.
If you have a new website, and you want to track its success, you need to understand Google Analytics and its metrics. It helps you understand the shortcomings of your business, and know your customers better. Google Analytics has a lot of options to keep track of the actions of every website page; it is an excellent tool to track and improve performance.
It is also the best tool to help you achieve quality on your website and fulfill the audience’s needs. In this article, we will share 9 Google Analytics metrics that can help your business. These are:
Website Traffic & Source of Traffic
The most essential and fundamental metric is Website Traffic. In simple words, it tells you how many people have visited your website in a certain period. It also lets you analyze how your business is performing in terms of visitors and potential customers. You can increase your traffic through a content blog or Google ads.
Another important metric connected with this is the traffic source. If you are using multiple mediums or strategies to create visitors for your website, you need to know which strategy is working best. The Traffic source metric shows you exactly where your traffic is coming from and lets you devise your strategy based on which channel is getting you the most fruitful results.
Bounce rate
This metric is one of the most important indicators that something needs to be changed on your website. In simple words, bounce rate means users who leave your website without converting, that is; bounce after checking out a single page or leave the website without making a sale. It also tells you which pages have the highest bounce rate. A high bounce rate means that people leave your website quickly because of either lousy content or because you are not targeting the right people to your website.
You can use the insights gained from this metric to improve the content and develop more targeted strategies, etc.
New vs. Returning
Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? It means that 80% result comes from 20% effort. In other words, 80% of your business stems from 20% of customers. To put it simply, 20 % of customers are repeat customers of your brand, it is more cost-effective to retain these customers than attract new ones. This metric lets you keep an eye on who is returning to your website, and who is a new customer. It also provides a baseline on how many people come back to see more content.
User Behavior Flow
The behavior flow data tracks the activity of the users on your website and tells you how people are currently using your website. It tells you how users navigate your site; the number of pages they visit, which pages they land on, what do they visit next, what pages do they visit last, and leave from. It allows you to make strategies accordingly based on what it is that they want to see the most, and what will encourage them to make a purchase.
Top Landing Pages
If you have your website, there’s a chance you have incorporated everything related to your product on the website. But how can you figure out which page works the best and which does not? That’s where this metric comes in. It gives you just the right information in terms of how your pages are doing in terms of duration, traffic, bounce rate, and more. It helps you understand better which pages are performing well, and what is it that you need to optimize. For instance, if your website is about cables, you need to analyze which page attracts the most audience; fiber optics or coaxial cables. Whichever attracts less, make a new strategy for that product.
Pages per Session
Before the digital platforms took over, stores used to measure the customer’s interest in their product based on how long the customer stayed. The same goes for your website now, if your customer stays on one page more than the others, it is an indicator of their interest. This metric gives you an insight into that. It shows how many pages did your customer visit before purchasing or leaving the website.
Goals and Conversions
At the end of the day, your business has business and marketing goals that must be met within a specific duration. For example, you may have a goal of attracting 10% of new customers in one quarter. The Goals and Conversions metric lets you track your actual performance against your goals. If you see low conversions, then it is probably time to reevaluate your strategy and focus on different sources. You can also run some experiments to create more conversions.
Session Duration
This metric shows you the average time a user spends on your website. Now, this is an important measure to see how engaging your content is. If you think the average time spent is less than what you would want, maybe it is time to rethink your content strategy and come up with something that would fit your audience’s interest.
Location
As the internet is a much wider space than your stores, you can easily reach a customer base in different areas, rather than one. This critical metric lets you expand your reach by telling you exactly where your customers are coming from. It tells you in which part of the globe your users are located. You can leverage this data, and use the demographics to your advantage in future campaigns. You can also devote more marketing budget to the areas with more customers and so on.
Wrapping it Up
The above-stated information will enable you to use Google Analytics to improve your business and reach your marketing goals. Let us know how you are going to use it for your business. Cheers!