If you know you're supposed to be checking your Google Analytics but don't actually know what you're supposed to check, this post is for you.
While looking at data might not be the sexiest business task, knowing what’s actually moving the needle in your biz will help you grow way faster than trying to guess what's working and what's not.
I personally have it set as a recurring task in ClickUp to check in on these metrics at the end of every month.
In this post, I'm going to break down (in plain English) the Google Analytics stats that you should be paying attention to in your business so you can know if your website (and marketing) is working for you or not.
1. NEW USERS VS. UNIQUE USERS
Are your new users going up each month? If they are, that’s great news! That means your marketing efforts are paying off and you're getting a ton of new eyes (and potential new clients) onto your website!
But since the majority of people need to build trust over time before converting from a first-time visitor into a new client, they probably won't be digging around your site too much. That's where checking your returning visitors comes in.
A returning visitor is someone who has visited your website before and is probably already familiar with you and all the helpful content you’ve put out already! An increase in returning visitors is likely to be those future clients who are that much closer to working with you (or buying from you) and are now poking around the other pages of your website too.
Basically, if both these numbers are consistently going up, you’re on the right track.
To view this report, head to audience > behavior > new vs. returning
2. PAGE VIEWS
You probably guessed this by the name, but page views are the total number of times a page has been viewed on your website (duh).
This metric gives us an understanding of how popular a page is. The important thing here is to understand why it’s popular. Is it linked somewhere that causes a lot of people to land on that page? This can help understand how your marketing is going.
To give a personal example, currently the most popular page on my website is actually a blog post I wrote months ago. This means that most of my website traffic comes from organic search (aka Google) and not Instagram like I had previously thought. This bit of helpful info has allowed me to rethink and tweak my marketing strategy (not to mention has made me feel sooo much better about the time I spent writing that post lol).
3. REFERRING SOURCE
This shows you where your site visitors are coming from. It can give you an idea of where you should be investing your time and energy when it comes to marketing and also how effective your current marketing strategy actually is.
For example, if you’re a web designer, you’ve probably left your site credit in the footer of a client’s website. As a result, you might see that you’re getting traffic from that client’s website.
To view this report, head to acquisition > overview
4. BOUNCE RATE / ENGAGEMENT RATE
“Bounce Rate” just means the number of people that leave your website after viewing a single page. Note: If you have Google Analytics 4, “Engagement Rate” has replaced “Bounce Rate”
Typically speaking, a bounce rate of 40% or below is considered good and anything above 70% is considered high. But certain pages (like blog pages) have a higher bounce rate than others.
A high bounce rate is a red flag that there’s something not-so-great happening with your page. For example, maybe the buttons don’t work or the page load speed is too slow.
Recommended reading: 6 QUICK DATA-BACKED CHANGES TO MAKE MORE $$$ WITH YOUR WEBSITE
To view this report, head to acquisition > overview (or search “engagement rate”)
5. CONVERSION RATE
What are your main goals for your website? Is it to get visitors to book a consultation call? Sell a digital product? Get them on an email list?
You can tell Google Analytics what those specific goals are and it will track and measure it.
This directly shows you how well your page is set up for conversions and shine a light on any improvements that can be made.
On average, conversion rates usually fall between 2-5%. If your conversion rate is lower than this, some tweaks in your design or messaging might be in order!
To set up your goals, head to conversions > goals > overiew and click set up goals.
6. EXIT PAGE
Okay so obviously, no one is going to stay on your website forever, but if you notice a large amount of people seem to exit from the same page, you might want to check out that page and find out what’s causing them to leave.
Maybe they don’t know where to go next and you need to add a clear action step for them to take (eg. a button). Or maybe you linked to an external resource but forgot to select the “open in a new tab” option so now people are accidentally being sent away from your website.
To view that report, head to behavior > site content > exit pages.
I hope that helped! Let me know if you have any questions or anything to add. :)