Sebastian Perrier

General Information

• GA tracks data from 3rd party cookies
• GA tracks data through a JavaScript code
• You can benchmark your data only if you choose to share yours
• Levels: 1 Acc (profile a / profile b) 2 Acc (profile a / profile b)
• Two metrics graph can show you correlation between variables
• To check that you have placed the tracking code either go to GA and search if all content appears on the reports or go to your site and view its source code using the internet browser.

1. VISITORS

• VISITOR: uniquely identified person.
• ABSOLUTE UNIQUE Visitor Report: if a visitor came 5 times, you will count him as only one visitor.
• NEW vs RETURNING Visitor Report (to compare acquisition vs retention).
• VISITS: every session in which the person is in your site, i.e. 30min.
• PAGEVIEW: every time a page is viewed during a visit by the visitor.
• UNIQUE PAGEVIEW: pageview during one visit (i.e. if during a vistit your visitor views the home two times, it is 2 pagesviews but only 1 unique pageview); only appears in the CONTENT Report.
• Important to see how many unique visitors you have and compare to last period.
• Important to see how well you’re how you’re acquiring and retaining visitors.
• Interesting to see the Loyalty reports and length of visits.

2. TRAFFIC SOURCES

• DIRECT TRAFFIC: they typed your url or have it in favorites.
• REFERRING SITES: came through another URL (i.e. LinkedIn).
• SEARCH ENGINES: through keywords in organic searches or paid search ads.
• Important to understand the quality of the traffic sent by each source; this is seen through the BOUNCE RATE; click on link “All Traffic Sources” (in this report note that direct traffic always comes with /none).
• Note that Bounce Rate for blogs may not be relevant because people search, read the specific post with the information they needed and then leave, that has 100% bounce rate but accomplished the goal though.
• The same analysis can be done to the “Keywords” Report, to see if those keywords met readers interests. For Keyword, it is very interesting to see what was the landing page for that keyword. To do so, click on the keyword and then select the ‘dimension’ Landing Page from the drop down menu.
• These analyzes can be done in more details if you also have GOALS and eCommerce set-up in your system. For these cases it is important to know more about “Campaign Attribution”.

3. CONTENT REPORT

• Top Content (list each page) / Content by Title (by title tag) / Content Drilldown (by directory) -> all show the same information organized in a different way.
• A high bounce rate indicates a landing page that should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it. A high Time on Page may indicate content that is particularly interesting to visitors. The significance of Exits varies according to each page. For example, it may be common for visitors to exit your site from a receipt or “thank you” page because they have completed a conversion activity.
• Remember to put in Profile Setting your default page as your home page to avoid showing only “/”.
• The next report on the list is “Landing Pages”, meaning the pages where people land after a keyword.
• NAVIGATION SUMMARY (see link on Content Overview Report). Note that if previews, current and next page seen are all the same, it is because the visitor clicked on the refresh button or there were images in that page that he was viewing.
• ENTRANCE PATH: is also a powerful tool because can show you if the page you want to analyze has driven you to the result it was design to (i.e. if from Home people actually went to see My Profile).
• See also ENTRANCE SOURCES and ENTRANCE KEYWORDS reports.