If you have Google Analytics set up for your business website (which you should), you know the vast amount of information the platform provides. You can see anything and everything that happens on your website, but without proper direction and understanding of the data, it can be easy to get lost down a rabbit hole. If you’re feeling confused or overwhelmed by your Google Analytics data, here is a breakdown of the best Google Analytics metrics to track.
Total vs. New Users
When looking under the Audience Overview, you will see a breakdown of both “all users” and “new users”. While each of these metrics is interesting to analyze on its own, comparing new users to the number of total users can provide you with valuable insights into the amount of traffic that comes from cold audiences vs. warm. If you see high numbers of new users, you’re drawing a lot of new eyes to your page, but these people may not be ready to convert. If you see high numbers of returning users, you likely have a strong client base, but may need to increase your brand awareness efforts to grow your audience. Analyzing these numbers can guide your strategy to target both of those audiences and lead them towards a sale.
Acquisition Channels
Acquisition channels are important to track, as they help you identify where your website traffic comes from. Measuring paid search, organic traffic, and traffic from sources like social media and newsletters can help you determine which areas of your marketing efforts are working, and which areas may need more love. This can also help you break down which channels offer the highest quality audiences – if users from paid search have lower bounce rates, longer time on site, and higher pages per session than organic traffic users, you can determine that people from that source are higher-quality leads.
Page Views
The Page Views metric offers a measure of your website’s effectiveness. Likely, your homepage will always be at or near the top of this list, but the analysis of the other top pages viewed can help you identify which aspects of your business prospective customers find the most interesting, and can guide your marketing efforts to drive traffic to the pages that are the most effective.
Behavior Flows
For a novice, the behavior flow tab of Google Analytics can be menacing. It doesn’t present itself in a pretty, easy-to-follow table that many other metrics do, and can be intimidating for some. However, the behavior flow chart is one of the most valuable metrics in Google Analytics. Follow the chart one step at a time – it offers some perspective on how a user navigates through your site and can help you identify any pain points that may exist in the process of working through your site from landing page to conversion.
Learn about the 3 most important metrics in Google Analytics!
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