3 Basic Analytics Metrics Everyone Should Know

3 Basic Analytics Metrics Everyone Should Know (and watch)

You can have a great business: Awesome product, well planned email campaigns, brilliant marketing and a great community of social media followers BUT what does it mean if you aren’t measuring anything?

It means that you are probably doing good business, however it also means you won’t reach your full potential. Analytics can help you understand how your site is doing as well as how well both online and offline campaigns have worked. They are important for any business because analytics allow you to see what’s working, what’s not working and more importantly what can be improved upon. We use Google Analytics so the terms we use are GA terms, however most analytics have equivalent measures.

Here are some basic analytics terms to get you started:

Bounce Rate: Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).

New Users: The number of first time users during a defined date range.

Average Session Duration: Average amount of time spent in a session.

Entrances: The number of times a person has entered your site through a specific page.

Exits: The number of times a person has exited the site from a specific page.

Exit %: The number of times a person exits a given page divided by the total number of pageviews of that page.

Acquisition Channels: Google default channels are organic search, paid search (SEO), direct traffic, referrals, and social. These are the channels that are sending people to your site.

Three Basic Metrics to Know:

New Users/Returning Users:

Many sites will recommend Visitors (Sessions). The problem with looking at sessions is that google has created many rules regarding the actual definition of a session. Sessions may not be an accurate reflection of who has been on your site. New and returning users will give you a more accurate reflection of active visitors to your site. If your profitability is driven by repeat users or purchasers then knowing your returning users is very important.

Find new users in your acquisition overview and find the total number of users in the audience overview. Do the math and you have new vs returning. Make sure to watch your visitors for big dips and peaks. If you have a huge peak, look through your campaigns to see what drove traffic that day. Google Analytics is a great tool however you will become very frustrated if you are looking at sessions and new/returning users and worrying about exact numbers. Look for trends.

Acquisition Channels:

As you have already seen, Google default channels are organic search, paid search (SEO), direct traffic, referrals, and social. The Acquisition overview provides you a good high level insight into your audience. The beauty of this view is that it allows you to understand which of these channels is sending you the most traffic and where you can improve. You can then click into each one to drill down and find more specific data.

The two you should start looking at on a regular basis are Referrals and Organic search.

Referrals are other websites outside your own that people have been on and then from there, entered your site. It’s good to know who is sending you traffic and how often. If there is a referral that send traffic to your site and those visitors have a low bounce rate and a long time on page, that's a win! You may want to see how you can get more referrals.

*For Events: If you attend an event and want to see how the event drove traffic to your site or increased sales, make sure that you give people special campaign links or promo codes. On Social media make sure the links you share have tracking codes so you can segment them out in GA. Special landing pages that only attendees will know about is another way to see if your efforts were successful.

Many people say having an equal balance of paid, organic and referral traffic is good. Organic traffic means you are doing SEO right! If your SEO is done properly Google Updates won’t create a massive drop-off in traffic.

Site Content:

This is a bit more than a single metric. The site content section (under the Behaviour Tab) of Google Analytics allows you to see how the individuals coming to your site are interacting with the pages on your site. Start by looking at Landing Pages. Landing Pages tells you which pages the most people are landing on when they have just found your site. If the most frequent landing pages have high bounce rates you should learn why and lower the bounce rate. If it has a low bounce rate and a high average session duration maybe it’s worth promoting that page more…it’s working!

The second section you’ll want to look at is Exit Pages. Look for pages that have a large number of page views and a high exit %. Those are the pages you’ll need to fix. Sometimes fixing a large exit % is as simple as adding a link to a page that relates to the topic and sometimes the page will need a redesign. Lowering exit % on pages other than a transaction page means your users will become more engaged.

Conclusion

Understanding the metrics above will help you make better business decisions. The user metrics will help you get your head around whether or not your website is working in general and when/why you get traffic. Acquisition channels help you understand where to put your dollars with traffic driving campaigns. You can also see what keywords are working and begin to optimise the site for them. The site content section of analytics will help you realise which parts of your site are working best and where you can improve. These metrics are just the tip of the iceberg so make sure you play with your analytics and do research online to learn even more about your business. If you are using Google Analytics look at the Google Analytics Training Resources.

If you don't have the time or know how to optimise your digital marketing think about getting help from experts in the field.