When you log in to your Google Analytics, are you just seeing a bunch of numbers that make you scratch your head in bewilderment? Google Analytics can be confusing and overwhelming for beginners.
It’s not just a bunch of numbers and random information though. If you know what to look for, it’s valuable data that can be used to increase your website traffic, boost user engagement, and even generate sales. So, if Google Analytics is confusing to you, let’s break it down and make it easier to understand.
Here are 6 important Google Analytics metrics you need to track.
1. User Demographics and Interests
The more you know about your target audience and your customers, the better. When you know who your website visitors are, you can create content that’s more of interest to them, send them messages and offers that are personalized to their exact needs and wants, and more. So, it’s important to use Google Analytics to learn about your user demographics and interests.
Google Analytics will show you valuable information about your users such as location, age, and gender under Insights Reports Publisher. Also included is user interests. User interests are a result of data taken from Gmail, internet browsing habits, app messages, and YouTube videos watched. This data can give you a full picture of what truly interests your website visitors.
2. Traffic Sources
Another important metric to look at is your traffic sources, which can be found in Acquisition All Traffic Source/Medium. By looking at your traffic sources, you can see where the majority of your website visitors are coming from. Using this data, you can grow your website traffic. For instance, if you notice that most of your website visitors are discovering you via Pinterest, you can amp up your Pinterest marketing to get even more results.
Alternatively, if you have put some effort into marketing your business on Twitter but see that you’re not getting any traffic from it, you can tweak your Twitter marketing strategy to improve it.
3. Most Popular Content
As mentioned earlier, you can look at user demographics and interests to find out what type of content your website visitors are interested in. But another way to come up with content that users will love is by looking at what the most popular content on your website is currently.
Under Insights Reports in Google Analytics, you’ll find a list of the top posts and pages of your website. With this information, you can see what posts your website visitors like most and create more of the same type of content in order to continue giving them what they want.
4. Exit Pages
Finding out what your website visitors like most on your website is important, but just as important is finding out what pages and posts they like the least. Under Behavior Site Content Exit Pages, you can find out what pages or posts users exit your site on most often.
If a particular page on your website has a high exit rate, it may be because it’s a dead-end page, it has too much information or disorganized information, or it’s missing a call-to-action. You can do some A/B testing on that page to find out how you can keep users on your site longer.
5. Google AMP Reports
Many of your site visitors will be using their mobile phones to access your website, so it’s wise to enable Google AMP on your site to improve the mobile experience. Google AMP will make your website load faster for mobile users, which will help you increase engagement and conversions on mobile.
You can view AMP Google Analytics reports by going to Behavior Site Content All Pages. Then, type /amp into the search bar to view traffic reports for AMP pages only. With the insights you get from AMP reports, you can continue to improve the mobile experience for your customers.
6. Conversions
Of course, the goal of most websites is to increase conversions, whether it’s to get subscribers to your email list or to make sales . So, don’t miss out on the opportunity to skyrocket your conversions by analyzing them in Google Analytics.
In order to track conversions, you first need to set up conversion tracking for your website. This takes a number of steps but luckily you can follow a step-by-step guide from Google to make it easier. After you’re set up, you’re able to track several types of conversions so that you know exactly what’s working on your site and what isn’t.
Over to You
Tracking your Google Analytics metrics doesn’t have to be so complicated. With these tips, even complete beginners can easily discover and understand valuable data that can help you improve your website and your business overall.
Article source: https://it.toolbox.com/blogs/johnturner15/6-important-google-analytics-metrics-you-need-to-track-092519