Part 2 of the Google Analytics guide for small business owners.

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ABOUT GOOGLE ANALYTICS (PART 2)
DOCUMENT CONTROL
Document title About Google Analytics (Part 2)
Version 1.0 Status Release Reference M1Goo-002
Author Tara Wilson Date 24 April 2009
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CONTENTS
1. About this Document ............................................................... 3
2. Analytics Reports .................................................................... 3
3. The Breakdown ....................................................................... 4
3.1. Left-hand navigation menu .................................................... 5
1.1.1. Dashboard.............................................................................. 6
1.1.2. Visitors .................................................................................. 6
1.1.3. Traffic Sources ........................................................................ 7
1.1.4. Content.................................................................................. 8
1.1.5. Goals ..................................................................................... 9
3.2. Reports switcher ................................................................ 10
3.3. Date Range ....................................................................... 10
1.1.6. Calendar .............................................................................. 10
1.1.7. Date Comparisons ................................................................. 11
1.1.8. Timeline ............................................................................... 11
3.4. Overview graph .................................................................. 11
3.5. Site usage ......................................................................... 12
3.6. Other data boxes................................................................ 13
4. Next time... ........................................................................... 14
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1. ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT
This instruction document is the second in a series about Google analytics. It is design to give you an
in-depth introduction into using Google analytics. Each document in the series will focus on a certain
section of the Analytics
This document is an introduction to the basics of reading and analysing your Analytics reports – how
to find all the data you need and use it to determine the performance of your website.
2. ANALYTICS REPORTS
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This is the main page you will see when you log in to view your report – the dashboard. The boxes at
the bottom of the page (from Visitors Overview to Content Overview) are fully editable so you can
display here almost any element you wish.
3. THE BREAKDOWN
I have split the dashboard into 6 sections to focus on. These sections are as follows:
1. Left-hand navigation menu
2. Reports switcher
3. Date range
4. Overview graph
5. Site usage
6. Other data boxes
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3.1. LEFT-HAND NAVIGATION MENU
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1.1.1. DASHBOARD
This link takes you back to the dashboard – the first page you saw when signing in to view the report.
1.1.2. VISITORS
The Visitors link takes you through to an overview of your visitors’ activity:
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The visitors section of your analytics report contains a vast amount of information on the visitors that
visit your site. It shows how many new and/or returning visitors you have and how long they spent on
your site, along with the number of different pages they visited. All this information is incredibly
important for determining how your site is doing in keeping interest up, and also how effectively you
are promoting it. You can use Analytics closely with Adwords to see how well an Ad campaign is
performing (but let’s save that matter for a little later).
You can also determine many other facts about your visitors from these pages which may prove vital
in fine tuning your website. For example, you can see the location and language of your visitors – if
you have overseas customers, you can find out which countries are the top visitors to your site and
find out if you need to implement any/more accessibility in order to keep those visitors. Another
example is that you can see which web browser the majority of your visitors are viewing the website
in. It is important to check that your website looks the same and performs identically across all
browsers. Knowing which browsers your visitors use helps determine an order of importance in the
browsers you should check the website in.
1.1.3. TRAFFIC SOURCES
The Traffic Sources link takes you through to an overview of the origin of your visitors:
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This section provides data on the sources which send traffic to your website. These sources could be
anything from direct traffic to search engines or referring sites.
Knowing where your customers come from is invaluable knowledge and can be key for the marketing
of your products. Say the direct traffic to your website is generally constant at 50% of your traffic each
month (this will be those who have you bookmarked, or have typed your address directly into their
web browser because you have an amazingly memorable URL!). If you decide to start an advertising
campaign in a newspaper or on TV you will be able to see the success of this placement both by how
much your overall number of visitors increases, and also how the percentage of direct traffic
increases. Of course, if there is not a significant raise in either of these then you know your marketing
techniques are not doing the trick...
This again is useful in conjunction with any Adwords campaigns you may be running as you are able to
see which Ads are performing the best, and also which keywords are summoning up the most
interest.
1.1.4. CONTENT
The Content link takes you through to an overview of the performance of your website content:
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Here we come to a section all about the pages within your website and how they are performing in
relation to the way traffic acts when visiting these pages. Performance of a page is based on a number
of factors: pageviews, time on page, bounce rate, % exit, and more.
N.B. Here are some definitions for you:
PAGEVIEWS – the number of times the page has been viewed within the specified
time frame
TIME ON PAGE – the average amount of time each visitor to the page lingered for
BOUNCE RATE – a bounce is measured when a person views a webpage and then
immediately navigates away by clicking the “back button”. The bounce rate is
measured as the percentage of visitors who bounced from the page
% EXIT – this is the percentage of visitors who navigate away from the website
entirely after viewing the page
If you have any pages on your website which are not pulling their weight – that do not have enough
information to capture visitor imagination – you will be able to spot these here and set about doing
something to improve the content on those pages. A key factor to look at when determining poorly
performing pages are those with high bounce rates and % exits
1.1.5. GOALS
This section will only be accessible if you have created Goals and made sure that they are active.
This follows the performance of the goals you set up (see Mercury1 Google Analytics Part1) – how
many visitors completed your goals. You can also use this section to see where visitors who started
but did not complete you goals bailed out, a helpful insight to which part of a process you wish
visitors to follow is weakest. Once the weakest part is discovered, you can refine that page in order to
ensure the maximum amount of visitors possible finish the process.
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The Goals overview page looks like this:
3.2. REPORTS SWITCHER
If you have more than one report on more than one website under the same account, you can easily
switch between them by using this dropdown.
3.3. DATE RANGE
Changing the date range here will affect all the data that you view on the report – if you set the date
range for the whole of March, the only data you see in all sections will be data that was collected in
March of the year that you select. You can also compare two date ranges.
There are three ways to select your date range – typing in manually, visually increasing the range or
selecting dates on a calendar.
1.1.6. CALENDAR
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The desired date range can be selected here by clicking the start and end date sequentially on the
calendar, or by typing the dates in on the right-hand side.
1.1.7. DATE COMPARISONS
You can compare two dates by ticking the “Compare to Past” checkbox and then either selecting or
typing in a date in the past. The first range (blue) must be the most recent date, and the second date
(green) must lie before or within (or a mixture of) the blue date.
1.1.8. TIMELINE
Another way of selecting you dates is to click onto the “Timeline” tab (top left of the image) and click
and drag the sides of the coloured boxes on the timeline. The bar chart displayed depicts the number
of visits to the site per day.
3.4. OVERVIEW GRAPH
This is a nice little feature for seeing a quick overview of the site’s performance in a graphical format.
By default, it shows a line graph of the number of visits from day-to-day between the date range that
you have chosen. This can also be viewed by week or by month by selecting the appropriate value at
the top-right of the graph (I’d suggest only using Graph by week or month if you have chosen a
suitably long date range!).
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You can also change what the graph depicts by clicking on the “Visits” tab at the top-left of the graph
and selecting your desired value in the box which appears:
3.5. SITE USAGE
The site usage section of the dashboard is also a nice overview of your site’s performance – this time
in numerical format.
Clicking on any of the data types displayed, i.e. visits, will take you through to a day-by-day bar chart
breakdown:
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% New Visits is displayed as a pie chart:
3.6. OTHER DATA BOXES
These are small overviews of different sections of the report – visitors, traffic sources, content etc.
These boxes are editable – you can choose which ones you see and which order they are displayed in.
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If you wish to add additional boxes to the dashboard, you must do this from the appropriate page
within the report. Use the left-hand menu to navigate to the correct page (let’s say the top landing
pages) and click “Add to Dashboard” at the top of the page:
The Top Landing Pages Overview box will then have been added to the bottom of your dashboard
page.
N.B. You cannot add more than 12 reports to the dashboard.
4. NEXT TIME...
Look forward to more in-depth instructions on using each section of the report. We
will break down each section and show you how to find any data about your website
performance you wish to analyse.
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