3 main groups of page analytics metrics
Group 1: Traffic metrics
Traffic metrics can tell you how many people are visiting your site, where they’re coming from, and what pages they’re viewing.
#1. User
Google’s user metric shows how many unique people have interacted with your site. To find your site’s users, select Audience from the left menu, then select Overview. You’ll see a number that shows how many people visited your site within the selected date range. If the same user visits your site multiple times within the specified date range, they are counted only once. However, if a user clears his/her cache or accesses your site via a different device or browser, he/she may be counted as a new user.
#2. Access session
Every time a user visits your website at any time during a certain period of time, that counts as a session. A session can include multiple pageviews and interactions and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity, or at midnight, or when a visitor re-enters the site from a search, referrer, or other tagged URLs.
#3. Pageviews
Pageviews metrics tell you which pages are the most popular and the least popular on your Website. When one of the pages on your site — the homepage or any other — is loaded by the browser, that counts as a pageview. If the same user reloads the same page, that counts as a second pageview. To see the total number of pageviews on your site, select Audience from the left menu, then select Overview. To see which pages get the most views, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.
Group 2: User behavior metrics
User behavior metrics can tell you how visitors access and interact with your site and tell you whether your site is providing a good user experience.
#4. Bounce rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who landed on a page before “bounce” without taking any other action or viewing any more pages on your site. In general, if you have a low bounce rate, you can infer that your website is providing good experience to visitors and they are finding your website content useful and engaging. A high bounce rate often indicates that people aren’t finding what they’re looking for, and your site’s content isn’t doing a good job of capturing people’s interest.
Tips: A bounce rate below 50% is a good one. When you want customers to stay to read useful information to increase conversion rates, help users have a better experience.
#5. Channels of information access
Knowing how people get to your website can not only help shape your marketing strategy, but it can also tell you which of your marketing efforts are working and which might need to be reviewed. In Google Analytics, channels refer to the type of digital entity that sent traffic to your website i.e. organic search, direct, referral, social, paid search or email. To see which channels are bringing the most traffic to your site, go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels and Google Analytics will display a list of ranked channels, along with key visitor behaviors. Visit the website from each of these channels so you can see if a certain type of behavior (contact form submissions, time on site, etc.) corresponds to the channel.
#6. Referrals and suggestions from 3rd parties
One of the ways people can get to your website is to click a link on another website. This type of website visit is called a vote. Knowing the top referral sources on your site, the sites that bring you the most “customers,” is a great opportunity to understand your customers better and identify link building opportunities, Digital advertising and guest-driven blogging. Select Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals to see the amount of referral traffic during the selected time period, along with a list of domains that referred traffic to your site during that time. For each referring domain, you’ll see how many people visited your site using that referral, and more details on how they interacted with your site.
Group 3: Readership metrics
Understanding your Readers is the foundation to help you create everything from marketing campaigns to product development, and Google Analytics can provide you with a wealth of information about the people who visit your website.
#7. Demographics
To learn more about your website visitors, choose Audience > Demographics on the left menu. You’ll see a breakdown of your users by age and gender. Click Age or Gender to see how different ages and genders interact with your site.
#8. Access location
Are you a local business? Are you looking to expand or reach new markets? The Geography section of Google Analytics will tell you the location of your website visitors. Select Audience > Geography > Location to see a list of countries, and keep clicking on the region you want to learn more about to see ever smaller groups.
#9. Mobile experience
Statistics show that over 60% of internet traffic is now on mobile devices, which is a statistic for the whole world, not your specific website. Knowing the type of device your visitors use can help you decide if you need to prioritize a mobile-friendly format. To see the percentage of your website visitors on desktop versus smartphones and tablets, choose Audience > Mobile > Overview.