Learning the marketing skills relevant to ... now
"If I had only known this back then…” That was Jen Sharp’s initial thought when she reflects on the first half of her experience as a student in GreenFig’s Digital Marketing Science course.
Kent Schnepp | CEO, Odysys, Inc., GreenFig Instructor
In my previous post we reviewed the importance of Google Analytics. Today, I would like to cover a few metrics that are critical to digital marketers.
Google analytics (GA) is arguably the most popular web analytics platform to date. It's free, easy to setup, and packs robust reporting features. However, I'll be the first to admit, the GA can be intimidating. Hopefully, this post will help identify some of the most important reports and metrics.
GA is organized into 5 categories of reports:
All GA reports consists of two types of data: Dimensions and metrics.
Dimensions are an attribute of a website visitor. For example the browser they are using, what search engine they used, or even their age.
Metrics are quantitative measurements of each dimension. Examples of metrics include sessions, bounce rate, pages per session, and average session duration.
Let's review these dimensions and metrics to help give your reports more meaning.
When reviewing your analytics, it is important to understand what metrics are relevant and actionable. The following are some of the most important:
Sessions
A session is the period time a user is actively engaged with your website within a given time frame. For example, one session can include multiple page views, events, or interactions. A session lasts until there is 30 minutes of inactivity, although this can be adjusted in GA's settings.
Users
Users are individuals that are actively engaged with your website. Each website visitor is assigned a unique anonymous identifier so that GA can determine what traffic belongs to each user.
Pageviews
Please, please, please do not refer to these as "hits" (what exactly are we hitting ;). Pageviews are simply the total number of users that visit a page on your website. Why is this important? The Pageview metric can provide insight into which pages of your website generate the most traffic.
Number of Pages Per Session
The pages per session metric provides the number of pages per session visited by a user. Reminder: Sessions expire after 30 minutes of inactivity (although this can be adjusted in GA's settings). This metric is a good way to gauge how engaged your audience is.
Average Session Duration
Average session duration measures the average length of time of each user session for a period of time. There are no hard and fast rules for average session duration. In general, the longer the session the more engaged your users are.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate may be one of the most misunderstood metrics. This metric measures users who entered and existed the same page without interacting with our website. Bounce rate is very important to uncovering pages that underperform, user interface or technical issues, and content problems.
Goal & Ecommerce Conversion Rate
Is the purpose of your website product sales? Or maybe collecting email addresses for lead generation? If so, you will want to keep an eye on goal or ecommerce conversion tracking.
As you can see, Google Analytics is a powerful tool that provides almost any metric you want. And, to top it off, it's free!
With this overview, you will be able to identify, understand, and act on the metrics that matter.