Establish goals for website analysis

After installing the tracking code on your website, it is time to set up goals for website analysis. Setting goals help you understand when something important has happened on your website. For example, when leads are generated, when someone fills up subscription forms, etc. Additionally, you can create about 20 goals for website analysis.

• Click on “Admin”.
• Go to View >> Goals.
• Click on the “+New Goal” button.
• Create a new goal for website analysis

To set new goals, there are three substitutes:

• Template: It is a prefilled configuration with different categories such as Revenue, Acquisition, Enquiry, and Engagement. Each category has a different set of attributes. Depending on how you want to analyze your website visitors you can set goals for all the three categories.
• Custom: Opt for custom goals when you think the template goal categories are irrelevant or the third option Smart Goal is not important for you. Set a custom goal by clicking on the custom option and then press the “Continue” button.
• Smart: Mostly used when you are running an AdWords campaign. Set a smart goal using AdWords optimization tools to track and enhance conversions. To set the goal check it, give it a name, and press the “Continue” button.

The second step is “Goal Description”.

• Describe or name each goal along with its type.
• There are four types to select from Destination, Duration, Pages/Screens per session, and Event.
• website analysis Goal Description

The third and final stage is “Goal Details”.

• Our goal type was the duration. Therefore, select the duration, as if someone stays on a specific web page for more than 10 minutes.
• If you want, assign a monetary value to each goal by toggling on the value button and assigning a dollar value.
• Hit the “Save” button.

Hurray! You just created and saved a new goal for website analysis.

Manage permissions to access website analytics

After adding the tracking code on your website, it might take up to 24 hours to show the analytics data in your Google Analytics account.

• Open Google Analytics Account.
• Go to the gear icon present at the bottom left and hit the “Admin” button.
• Go to Property >> Property User Management — You will land on Property Permissions page
• Click on the Blue Plus button present at the top of the right corner.
• Click “Add users”. Enter email addresses for each person you want to give access to your website analytics.
• You can allow them to either Edit or just Read & Analyze the analytics, by checking or unchecking the boxes available for modifying the permissions.
• Being a page admin, revoke, or modify the permissions at will.
• Bravo! Now you are all set to use Google Analytics.

Website analysis through Google Analytics

The Google analytic interface is designed elegantly to provide useful and actionable data along with some valuable insights. For first time users, the intricate charts and tables might feel overwhelming and hard to navigate. Therefore, here is an attempt to simplify the Google Analytics interface so that you can conduct website analysis efficiently and effectively.

Home Page

The google analytics home page displays everything interesting and important for website analysis.

• The top two cards visible in the below screenshot shows overall traffic and conversions (Users, Revenue, Conversion Rate, Sessions).
• You can change the metric anytime to change the graph.
• The home page shows the number of visitors present on your site at present and the pages they are browsing.
• The left side navigation panel is pretty self-explanatory.

Audience Overview Report

It is the first card you usually see when you log in to your google analytics account.

• The card shows a summary or an overview of audiences.
• At the bottom of the report, you will see a hyperlink that takes you to a more detailed report.
• The report contains, the number of users active on your website, their sessions, page views, pages per session, average session duration, bounce rate, and the percentage of new sessions.
• You can use this report to drill down users’ demographics, the system they used, mobile devices, they used to visit your website, and much more.

Real-time Report

The real-time report allows you to monitor and analyze marketing efforts and technical changes carried out on the website.

• The real-time report of the analytics home page shows the total number of active users, page views per minute, top active pages, and the number of active users on each page.
• At the bottom of the report card, there is a link that will take you to an elaborate real-time report.
• The detailed report shows the number of users active at the moment using desktop and mobile devices.
• It also shows the total number of page views per minute/per second.
• Apart from that, it also shows top referrals, top active pages, top social traffic, top keywords, and top locations.
• Use detailed real-time reports for quick debugging and monitoring.

Acquisition Report

The acquisition report shows you a detailed summary of all the channels sending traffic or visitors to your website. In addition to that, it also shows acquisition, behavior, and conversion details obtained for each channel.

The acquisition report on the home page is a summary of a broader report that can be visited by clicking on the link available below the report card.

• The report shows traffic channels, sources, and referrals for each visit.
• Typically, the traffic channels are divided into Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, Referral, Social, and Other.
• The detailed report shows user history at the top and can be customized.
• Below you will see the traffic divided according to sources in three categories – Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions.
• The report allows you to use the secondary dimension or change the default style into graphs and charts.
• Use the acquisition report to understand marketing strategy and draw traffic to your website. Implement changes and convert the traffic to qualified converting leads.

Cohort Analysis Report

Cohort means a set of characters shared by a group of users. The cohort analysis report remains the single most actionable report in google analytics.

• The report shows cohort time, which is equal to the acquisition date.
• Usually, the cohort size is set to week and the data range is set to last 6 weeks.
• The colored box shows cohort users set as per the time they are acquired.
• A Short cohort analysis report shows groups of people grouped in the vertical dimension and the horizontal dimension shows the time they visited your site for the first time.
• Click on the link present below to get a detailed cohort analysis report.
• Use this report to compare two different user groups and to understand is their business is growing or going down.

Other Analytics

Apart from the reports mentioned above, the google analytics home page helps a lot in understanding and analyzing different fragments of website analysis.

• You can understand at what time of the day your website has the peak traffic.
• You can use it to analyze the countries from where you get the most traffic.
• You can use it to understand what device is majorly used by the users to reach your website.
• One of the cards in analytics homepage cards shows the top pages on your website getting the highest page views and has the highest page value.
• You can also analyze the performance of your PPC or Google Ads campaign through the GA home page.
• If you have set goals, then you also get an analytic card on the home page summarizing how your website is doing against set goals.
• E-commerce vendors can understand top-selling products on the website.

BONUS GLOSSARY

We put together a list of the most common terms in website analysis. Hopefully, it helps.

• Bounce rate – Total percentage of visitors visiting and navigating away from a website within seconds after landing on a webpage.
• Conversion – When a visitor responds affirmatively to a call-of-action fulfilling expected outcome. Example: purchasing a product, filling a contact form, etc.
• Hit – Also called a page hit, the retrieval of any item (image, page) from a web server.e4rchecker
• Impression – the number of times a piece of content (like an online advertisement) is seen; the views.
• Keyword – in search engine optimization, the particular word or phrase that describes the contents of a web page. Keywords serve as clues or shortcuts that summarize the content of a page and help search engines match pages with searches.
• New visitor – visitors who have reached a site for the first time. This is important in comparison with return visitors as an indication of loyalty and site value.
• Organic search – describes a search that generates results that are not paid advertisements.
• Pageviews – the instance of an Internet user visiting a particular page on a site. A pageview is recorded whenever a full page of your website is viewed or refreshed.
• Pageviews per visit – the average number of page views per visit over a given time.
• Returning visitor – a visitor who can be identified with multiple visits, through cookies or authentication.
• Unique visitor –the number of distinct individuals who request pages from a website during a specific period, no matter how many times they visit.
• Visitor – also called a unique visitor; an individual visiting a website during a given time.
• Visits – the number of times a site is visited, no matter the number of unique visitors that make up those sessions
• Web analytics – the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data for understanding and optimizing web usage; the study of web usage behaviors
• Load time – the average amount of time in seconds that it takes a page to load right from page view (i.e. Click on the link) to completion of page-load in the browser window
• Entry page – the first page that a visitor arrives at on a website from another domain
• Exit page – the last page that a visitor accesses during a visit before leaving a website
• Landing page (from Digital Analytics Association) – the page intended to identify the beginning of the user experience resulting from a defined marketing effort. A landing page is a standalone web page that has been designed for a single objective.
• Link referrals – a count of all referrals from links to other websites (that does not include search engines or social networks) during a selected period.
• Minutes per visit (time on site) – the average length of a visit to a website during a selected time.
• Referral – visitors referred by links on other websites
• Session – a record of a single visitor browsing a website during a given time. This can include multiple screens or page views, events, or eCommerce transactions. Sessions end at midnight on the day a session was initiated or after 30 minutes of inactivity.
• Social referrals – a count of all referrals from social networks during a selected period.
• Top viewed pages – pages that were most viewed during a selected time range.
• Visits by country – visits a website over a selected time range, broken down by the country of the visitor

And there we have it. You now are well acquainted with all the Google Analytics tools and terms necessary for website analysis. Although this guide has not covered the advanced or pro features, it’s plenty to get rolling. When you learn Google Analytics, you almost can’t help but have a well- optimized site with nicely improving results.

Please don’t forget to bookmark this glossary and the Google Analytics guides!