Google Analytics (GA) is an extremely valuable but also complex tool. This guide is designed to help Silverchair clients get started in navigating GA's different areas, discovering useful metrics and data, and learning where to go in GA to answer your content and user questions. Below, you will find information and visual guides about how to access specific metrics, as well as links to further training.
Contents
Realtime
Real-time allows users to monitor activity on a specific site as it happens. It is updated continuously and activity is reported within seconds after it occurs. In Real-time, you can find what locations have active users, how many users are currently on the site, the sources of active users, and more.Audience
Audience gives insight into all aspects of users. With the most sub-categories of any of the reports, any data that is available on users of a site will be found here. Here, you can find data on locations, devices, interests, demographics, behavior, user flow, and more.Acquisition
The Acquisition section tells where users originated from, such as search engines, social networks, or website referrals. This can be especially helpful when determining online marketing tactics or campaigns. In Acquisition, you can see all traffic, data on Google Ads, campaigns, socials, and various other metrics.Behavior
The Behavior section gives information about what users do on your website. In Behavior, you can see what pages people visit, what they do while visiting, and you can also find information about your site speed, site content, and more.Conversions
The Conversions report can provide various useful pieces of information, however, it largely depends on your own customization. You can set specific conversion goals and then continue to evaluate them using this report. Once you have established goals, Conversions reports show information about your goals, data on ecommerce, and multi-channel funnels.Audience > Geo > Location
Sample Query: What country has the highest number of new users?
Audience > Mobile > Overview
Sample Query: What is the bounce rate for mobile devices?
Audience > Overview
(Users, New Users, Bounce Rate, Sessions, Pageviews, etc.)
Note: Exit rate is the percentage of visits that were the last in the user's session whereas bounce rate is the percentage of visits that were the only one of the session. In other words, bounce rate indicates a single-page session where the user took no other action on the site.
Sample Query: How many users have been on my site in the past month?
Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels
A channel is a grouping of traffic sources that groups several marketing activities together. The Default Channel Grouping is a rule-based grouping of the most common sources of traffic, such as Paid Search and Direct.
Sample Query: What number of new users have come to my site through organic search?
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium
Source: the origin of your traffic, such as a search engine (for example, google) or a domain (example.com). Medium: the general category of the source, for example, organic search (organic), cost-per-click paid search (cpc), web referral (referral).
Sample Query: What is the bounce rate for users who come to my website through a direct search?
Audience > Users Flow
Sample Query: What page do users drop off from the most?
Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals
Referrals reference the primary domains from which visitors came to your site. This category excludes advertising visits and organic search.
Sample Query: How many sessions originated from Facebook?
Behavior > Site Speed > Overview
Sample Query: What is the average page load time?
Behavior > Site Content > Exit Pages
Sample Query: What is the page with the most number of exits?
Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages
Sample Query: What is the landing page with the longest average session duration?
