5 Important Google Analytics Metrics You Should Track
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free Google product you can install that collects visitor behavioral data from your website. This data is used to create reports that provide insight into how visitors are using your website.
All the data that Google collects can be overwhelming, but Google provides some powerful out of the box reports that are easy to set up and even scheduled to be auto-compiled and sent weekly to you.
If you dont already have one, create a Google account and sign into Google Analytics to follow along.
First Metric: Acquisition Overview
Find this report by going to Acquisition -> Overview. The Acquisition Overview report details how many people visited your site and where that they came from. The most important number to look at is search traffic. A good search traffic rating should be above 50%.
- Search Traffic(Organic) – Found your website using a search engine like Google.
- Referral Traffic – Clicked on a link from another website that also linked back to you.
- Direct Traffic – Typed your website’s URL right into the browser.
- Campaigns – Visits that are tracked through pre-defined campaigns, either coming from Mailchimp email campaigns or or platforms.
TIP: Your business needs an effective keyword strategy (SEO) and its goal should be to show up on the first search page for specific keywords associated with your business. This is goal is important because 75% of Internet users never scroll beyond the first page of search results.
Second Metric: Social Overview
Navigate to this report through Acquisition -> Social -> Landing Pages. Your business might spend a lot of time and energy on social media, Google Analytics’ Social Overview will help you determine what social networks are providing the most return on investment. Remember when it comes to social media and your website, it’s all about traffic and conversions. Once you’ve identified your top performing social networks, you’ll be able to drill down into each network and see what content is performing the best and driving the most traffic.
Third Metric: Bounce Rate vs. Exit Rate
Bounce rates (the rate of people who leave your site soon after landing on the first page) and exit rate are metrics that tell us a lot about the performance of specific pages because they let us know when pages aren’t performing well. It’s important to interpret these metrics based on where the visitors came from.
Exit Rate measures the percentage of visitors to a single webpage that click away and completely leave the website. For a visitor to be measured in the Exit Rate they must have come to your website, visited multiple pages, and then left.
Fourth Metric: Top Landing Pages
Find this report through Behavior -> Site Content -> Landing Pages. We’ve looked at how people are finding your site, but this report tells us the exact pages visitors are landing on. Knowing how visitors are entering your site is key for creating a successful sales funnel.
Take a look at your report. Are your top landing pages optimized to convert leads? Do they have calls to action? They should because having an engaging CTA on a popular landing page will improve your website’s lead generation. Another number to look at is the Bounce Rate for each landing page.
TIP: If your landing pages have a Bounce Rate that is above 50% it’s probably a good time to take a close look at the page and either improve the messaging or design.
Fifth Metric: Exit Pages
Find this report by going over to Behavior -> Site Content -> Exit Pages. Now that we know how visitors are entering your site, let’s take a look at how visitors are exiting your site. The Exit Page report will show us what pages visitors are leaving the site from. Take a close look at your top ten pages and make sure they’re the pages you want people to be leaving your site from.
Pages you want visitors from:
- Form completion thank you pages
- Order completion pages
Pages you do not want visitors leaving from:
- Your homepage
- A conversion form
- During checkout process (if we’re talking about an eCommerce or sign up page)
We hope these reports empower you to make improvements on your website. If you have any questions leave a comment below!
