How to Use Google Analytics to Get Meaningful Insights?

I’ve Created My Google Analytics Account, Now What?

Now that you have created your Google Analytics account, it’s time to dive into some of the main features that appear on your homepage. Each of these features allows for total customization and the collection of valuable data for your business. With your account up and running, let’s jump right into the next steps.

Customization

The Customization tab gives you access to your dashboards, custom reports, saved reports, and custom alerts. Dashboards will take you to any previous dashboards you have either created or imported. You will have the option to create a new dashboard, or search for helpful dashboard templates that have already been created by other users! From here, you have the ability to customize just about everything on your Google Analytics account.

Checkout Realtime to Take a Quick Look at Your Recent Email or Campaign

Underneath the Reports tab, you will see an option for Realtime Reports. The Realtime Section provides insights and data on your website overviews, user locations, traffic sources, content, events, and conversion rates.

Realtime allows you to monitor this activity as it happens on your site or app in real-time! Here is an example of what some of the Realtime Overview reports can provide you. For example: You can go to your Realtime report just after you send out an email to see the initial results or mointor the campaign that you recently launched.

Who is Your Customer?

The Audience reports provide essential data on who exactly is viewing your content. Here, you can track active users, demographics (age, gender, etc.), their interests, geographic location, what they are accessing your website on, and one of the most important features, benchmarking. This is very powerful to get a better idea about your customers and tailor your marketing message.

Benchmarking allows you to compare your property’s performance to that of your industry peers. This provides valuable context and will help you set targets, key performance indicators, and goals.

Where Are Your Customers Coming From?  

The acquisition reporting section provides data such as user acquisition and traffic acquisition to help you identify how users arrive at your website. You can sort traffic coming from many different channels including all traffic, Email traffic, Social Media traffic, Google Ads traffic, and traffic by certain campaigns. You can even see the keywords that your customers use before landing on your page.

The campaigns section helps you manage your different content campaigns and even provides you with a cost analysis option! Here is an example of some of the valuable insights that the Acquisition Reports will give you!

Are There Any Issues on Your Website?

The behavior flow reports help visualize the path that users traveled from one page or event to the next. This report does an excellent job of helping you discover what content is driving user engagement within your website. With options such as site content, speed, events, and published reports, these reports play a huge role in helping to identify potential content issues.

Let’s Talk About Conversions

Finally, conversions provide information about established goals, eCommerce metrics, and multi-channel funnels. These reports give the user metrics to evaluate the value of your online business, whether it is revenue or other valuable events such as signups, leads, or subscribers.

Conversion reports are necessary for a business of any size, as they tell you exactly how well your site is performing! Here is an example of the Goal Conversions Report, where you can see just exactly how important this information is to any business.
 

If you would like to learn more about Google Analytics, our consultants are here to help! Complete the consulting form here or email us at duqsbdc@duq.edu.

The Duquesne University Small Business Development Center (SBDC) offers no-cost, confidential consulting services and educational programs in Southwestern Pennsylvania to empower entrepreneurs and small business owners with the knowledge they need to start, grow, and prosper.