Google Analytics Reports to the Rescue!
Understanding what’s working and what’s not on your website is important to the overall ‘health’ of your website and online marketing goals. Google Analytics reports can provide you with valuable information such as how web visitors found your website and how they interact on it.
If you’re thinking analytics reporting? No, that’s too complicated. I’m here to tell you, it’s not so hard to understand the reports in Google Analytics. All is you need is someone to guide you through the reports. I hope to be that guide, so stay with me.
First, I’m going to put it out there. Google Analytics has a lot of information and yes it can be complicated. There I said it! But, as a busy person (or maybe even an analytics hating person) I want to reassure you that you don’t need to know everything in Google Analytics to get the information you need. You just need to know, what to know to get what you want. Got it?
I’m going to make this real easy for you and concentrate on one report at a time. This post will review the analytics of the All Pages report. I’m only going to focus on the very basics. This will give you what you need to make good decisions about your website.
On the All Pages reporting and analytics dashboards, you’ll see a lot of information. So before we review this report, let’s define the terms used here.
Google Analytics Reports’ Terms to Know
Page
This shows the pages visited on your website by URL.
Pageviews
A pageview represents each time a user visits a page. This number includes multiple views of a page by the same person. For instance, if you viewed a web page, then left and came back later to view the same page again, both visits would be recorded as separate page views.
Unique Pageviews
A unique pageview is when
Let’s see how your Google Analytics reports can help you increase conversions. Follow the steps below to access the All Pages report:
- Sign in to your Google Analytics account at https://www.google.com/analytics
- In the Account list, click on your website name to view your analytics.
This brings you to the Reporting screen. - On the left side of the screen, click Behavior from the menu.
This displays the content reports. - Click Site Content and then click All Pages.
The information you’ll want to know about your website are the following:
- Which of your website pages are the most popular
- Where do people spend the most and least time on your site
- Which pages do people leave your site from (i.e. pages that have a high ‘bounce’ or ‘exit rate’)
Let’s review one of the best Google Analytics reports to get this information.
Which Pages Are Most Popular On Your Website
The All Content report, by default, lists all visited pages in order of popularity. This report can help you see which of your pages are being viewed often on your website. If you are not strategically driving people to that page you can assume they are going to these pages on their own or the search engine results are taking them to this page.
Where Do People Spend The Most and Least Time on Your Site
If the average time spent on a page is unexpectedly low, you might conclude that the page content does not meet the visitors’ expectations. If the time spent is high this may indicate that the call-to-action or next step is not clearly defined or needs to be refined.
Which Pages Do People Leave From On Your Website (i.e. pages that have a high ‘bounce’ or ‘exit rate’)
The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that only viewed one page on your website before leaving. While the exit rate is the percentage of people who exited your website from a page, however, the visitor may have visited other pages before exiting from that page.
What To Do With The Information From This Report:
Once you know your most popular pages, review your top 10 pages and implement the following to help increase lead conversion:
- Optimizing your pages so they correlate better with the search terms that bring users to your site
- Create content that’s relevant to the title of your page
- Write clear and concise information
- Use bulleted pointed to break up long text; people tend to skim content and bulleted text is easier to read
- Use a graphic related to the content, when appropriate; graphics can help correlate the content visually
- Add clear, visible, preferable graphic-based call-to-actions on all your pages; tell the visitor the next step they should take
The ultimate goal is to give people what they want. If they’ve found your website, no matter how big or small the number of visitors if your website gives then the information they’re looking for and you provide them with the next steps you’re likely to convert them into a lead. The Google Analytics reports put you at an advantage to see how you’re doing in meeting your visitor’s expectations. You then have the knowledge as to what’s working and what’s not. Review your Google Analytics report and start making strategic changes to your website.
Try out the tips above and give yourself enough time between changes to evaluate the impact on your visitors, their behaviors and your conversion rate.
Google Analytics reports can provide you with valuable information as we can see with the All Pages report. Now you know what pages are the most popular and what pages need work. Interpreting Google Analytics Reports and using the tips presented in this post can help improve your page for web visitors.
This post was updated on February 15, 2020.
