Tasty data about your website!Tasty data about your website!

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B E G I N N E R S G U I D E T O U S I N GB E G I N N E R S G U I D E T O U S I N G

GOOGLE ANALYTICS | A beginners’ guide

GooGle ANAlYTICS overvIew

Understanding yoUr website visitors’ behavioUr is a key factor in online sUccess. where did yoUr visitors come from? what are they looking at on yoUr site? how long did they stay? did they make a booking?

Google Analytics can provide the answers, thus arming you with the ability to tailor your

website and marketing strategies to your audience, and exponentially increase your site

traffic and conversions.

To use Google Analytics effectively you need to have a solid understanding of the reports

and how that information can be used to your benefit.

This guide covers the basics of Google Analytics, outlining what each of the primary

reports mean, in order to get you started on the path to understanding and improving

your website traffic.

a beginners’ gUide to Using google analytics

Written and Published by Cabbage Tree Creative™

July 2011

NeW ZeALAND: ISBN 978-0-473-19280-8

www.cabbagetree.co.nz

TRADeMARKS: Google, Google AdWords, Google Analytics and YouTube are registered trademarks of Google, Inc. Twitter is a registered trademark of Twitter, Inc. Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc. Flickr is registered trademark of Yahoo, Inc.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS | A beginners’ guide

INTERPRETING YOUR dASHBOARd

The following widgets may appear on your default dashboard.

1. TABLE

This table shows the top 10 countries from

which visitors to your site came. It also

displays the number of visits to your site

from each country, and the Bounce Rate for

each country over the selected timeframe.

2. VISITS BY COUNTRY

This metric shows the same information

presented in the table, but as a pie chart.

3. VISITS

This metric shows the number of visits

to your website during the selected

timeframe.

4. BOUNCE RATE

This metric shows how many people arrived

and left from the same page of your site, or

‘bounced’, as a percentage.

5. TIMELINE

The timeline is a graph of your chosen

statistics over your selected timeframe.

The dots in the timeline graph each

represent a day. To quickly view specific

information for a day, you can hover over

one of the dots as seen in the image below.

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GOOGLE ANALYTICS | A beginners’ guide

2: Traffic Sources: Incoming Sources

An Incoming Source is a website or search engine that directed a visitor to your site,

or refers to someone who typed your web address directly into their address bar and

arrived at your site.

A. ALL TRAFFIC

This section provides data on the different sources and mediums from which your site’s traffic came. This information is useful as it points out which incoming links are valuable, how well you are doing in search engines, and how many people know and remember your website address.

Tip: The overview section is particularly useful to determine where to put revenue for paid advertising. If a paid banner placement or online listing is not providing a large amount of visits, then it can help you determine the cost per visit on these placements and if they are continued for next year.

The line graph provides visitors stats, per day, for your selected timeframe. As with other graphs in previous reports, you can select alternative data across the top of your graph.

The table below the graph automatically displays the top 10 incoming sources to your website for the selected timeframe, and their medium (e.g. if the link was a referring link

or an organic search result, etc.)

Use the Viewing menu across the top of the table to change the primary metric to

just Source, just Medium or another option. As with other tables, you can also select a

secondary dimension to add to your table.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS | A beginners’ guide

B. USAGE

This report outlines how many visits to your site included a site search by the visitor,

and how many visits to your site did not include a site search.

C. SEARCH TERMS

This report provides a list of all the search terms that have been entered into your site

search for your selected period, in order of prevalence. The report automatically shows

the top 10 most popular searches, but you can browse through the list using the arrows

at bottom right.

The graph on this page shows the number of unique searches on a per-day basis.

d. PAGES

This report provides a list of which pages your visitors conducted their search from.

The report automatically lists the top 10 pages with the most searches, but you can use

the arrows at bottom right to browse other pages.