Google Analytics presents an extremely powerful tool for digital marketers. Mastering the GA dashboard may initially take some time. It is a powerhouse of excellent analytical features and offers a lot of possibilities for marketers. It may have an initial steep learning curve, but soon you become familiar with all that it has to offer. GA covers all the bases for digital marketing and is arguably the single most powerful tool in this category.
There’s always a report available to explore, whether it’s SEO, SMO, or anything else. The best part probably is that you can create your custom report. Without further ado, here is a list of the top reports from this master analytics platform.
– 1. Traffic Acquisition Report: This is a standard report that we can find by going to Acquisition > Overview. This report is a good way to start using Google Analytics. It offers you a clear breakdown of the traffic your website is receiving over a certain phase.
The report clearly shows how much direct traffic you are receiving. You can also have a clear breakdown of your organic SEO as it translates to traffic. Other parameters such as traffic from paid searches, social media, referrals, affiliates, and emails are also covered.
If you click on the referrals tab, it shows you the exact pages people use to access your site. You can further enhance the insight by using external tools to identify visitors to your website. These reports eventually help you to develop a powerful marketing strategy to keep increasing your website traffic.
– 2. Mobile Performance Report: This report makes it official that Google takes responsive web design very seriously. Having a mobile website is a must, especially if you are in e-commerce. Google will penalize your site’s ranking if it is not mobile-ready. This report is accessible by following this path: Audience> Mobile> Overview.
You can get the metrics for the number of mobile users accessing your site. Not only that, but the report also tells the type of devices used to access your site. This analysis allows you a chance for granular audience profiling. Use it to improve the mobile performance of your website.
– 3. Navigation Summary: This report identifies the activity of users once they reach your website. You can see the paths taken to access certain pages of your site. You can customize it by specifying the URLs you need to analyze and the applicable date range. It is an incredible site optimization tool helping you to make improvements on your pages. Another cool aspect of this report is that it shows you other websites before and after accessing your site. These insights help you assess the efficacy of your backlinking strategy transparently.
Also known as the behavior flow report, it provides an actionable to-do list on pages that need urgent improvement. You can also identify redundant pages along with the URLs where people spend the most time. Marketers can fine-tune their strategies by streamlining their sales funnel via these key pages. It also helps to capitalize on the opportunities to improve visitor participation. In this process, you can convert a majority of lost leads.
Such a comprehensive mapping of user data eventually helps you to determine the pain points of users. If you notice a clear pattern of most people clicking back and forth on common pages, it indicates the areas of improvement. This report is obtainable by the following pathway: behavior > Site content > All pages > Navigation tab.
– 4. Goal overview: This report is lauded by many marketers as arguably the most important report on the platform. Web admins can set up specific goals for tracking, such as form submissions and downloads. Then, you can follow it up to track conversions on these pages. Setting up goals and tracking them enables you to define customer journeys on your website.
You can review the number of people who have taken desired actions on your website to assess the success of your marketing methods. It clearly shows the pages and channels that have been instrumental in meeting your goals. You can also pinpoint the problem areas that are preventing you from achieving your goals. This report is accessible in the following pathway: Conversion > Goals > Overview.
– 5. New vs. Returning Visitors: This report is a clear indicator of your site’s popularity. Everyone starts as a new visitor at some point. However, when people start to frequent your website, it speaks volumes about the success of your marketing strategy. Employing these tested methods, you can continue your success by converting more new visitors to recurring customers.
Returning visitors have lower bounce rates, and they spend more time navigating the pages. This report is accessible by the following pathway: Audience > Behavior > New vs. Returning.
– 6. Content efficiency report: This custom report is created by Google executive Avinash Kaushik, and this custom report offers incredible insight into content performance. It indicates a wide range of metrics on content performance, including the type of content that has been most engaging.
You can compare images, videos, infographics, and GIFs to determine which works best with your viewers. It also tells you about the content with the most shares and the highest conversion rate. Using this report, you can guide your content creators to carry on the good work and maintain the popularity of your website.
– 7. Compare bounce rate with exit rate: You can compare the bounce rate and the exit rate on your page. You need to follow this path: Behavior > Site content > All pages. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who leave after visiting a single page. Exit rate indicates visitors who browsed more than one page before exiting. The better the exit rate you have, the more are your chances of improving user interaction on your webpage.
Google Analytics is an important tool to identify the different angles of user interaction on your site. The reports outlined here should help you make the most use of this premium platform. You can also find other reports besides these as you grow more familiar with the way GA works.
