Data analysts and data scientists are some of the fastest growing occupations in the world, and for good reason. As the world continues to advance technologically, more information is being processed and stored in online databases, servers, and clouds. For marketers, some of the most impactful information available is the internet browsing data from a website or e-commerce platform. This robust set of data, often accessed through platforms like Google Analytics, can give you access to critical information that will allow you to make data-driven decisions in support of your overall marketing efforts and ultimately lead to greater sales, lead generation, brand awareness, or any other key business goals.
While there are many analytics platforms on the market, Google Analytics is the most widely used. A robust web-based analytics platform, Google Analytics can seem daunting at first glance, especially if you’re not familiar with digital marketing. The sheer volume of data points and information housed in the platform can make it extremely difficult to see the forest through the trees. In order to gain insight from your website data you need to know which data sets provide you with key performance indicators (KPIs) that are important to your business. The following metrics are some basic KPIs to keep track of:
Pageviews
Pageviews are the most basic element tracked in Google Analytics. Pageviews are the amount of times pages on your site have been viewed. You can look at how many pageviews an entire site has, or you can see the number of times that a specific page is viewed on your website. Pageviews are pretty self explanatory, but they are a simple way to track the growth of a website and gain insight into what types of content are resonating with visitors. Tracking pageviews over time allows you to view changes in your website activity on a broad or granular scale. The more pageviews on a site or page, the more attention that page is receiving from users, indicating growth in your website, brand, and business.
Users and New Users
Users are unique users who visit your site in a given time period. This is another fairly simple metric that, like pageviews, gives insight into your site’s activity. Looking at New Users is slightly different, as they are individuals that are interacting with your site for the first-time. Although very similar, these two metrics can be used to evaluate different objectives. For example, if you have a marketing plan with the intention of reengaging past customers or clients with your website, you would want to focus on the amount of users you have during that time period. On the other hand, if you have an objective focused on bringing in new customers, then you would want to focus on the growth of new users.
Sessions
A session is similar to a pageview in that it is a measure of website activity. The difference between a pageview and session however, is that a session takes unique users into account while pageviews look at how many pages were viewed even if it was by the same person. Sessions measure a group of interactions on your website completed by a single user in a given period of time. One session can include multiple sequential pageviews from a user, making it a very helpful barometer for website growth by consolidating both user and pageview data into one metric.
Pages Per Session
As previously stated, there can be multiple pageviews per single session, and the pages per session metric allows you to view the average number of pages your users are viewing while navigating your website in a single session. This is a helpful metric because it gives an indicator of how interested and engaged your users are with the products and content on your website. The greater the number of pages per session, the more interest is being shown by your website visitors as a whole. Although, this depends on the contents of your website and the specific pages you are investigating. Pages per session should be used alongside and compared with the average session duration in order to get a more accurate reading of how well your site is keeping the attention of users.
Average Session Duration
Average session duration is another metric that can be used as a benchmark for the interest and engagement of your website users. This metric takes into account the average amount of time that users spend on your site. Although it can be assumed that the more pages/session a user has, the greater their session duration, this is not always the case. For example, if one of your website pages is dense with text, product images, videos, etc., an individual may have a long session without navigating to many pages on your site. Because of cases like this, the average session duration and pages/session should not be evaluated independently, but in conjunction.
Age, Gender, & Location
Google Analytics allows you to view demographic information about your website audience that can help you strategize from a marketing and sales perspective. Age, gender, and location are all extremely useful when planning out strategies for retaining customers and clients or searching for new ones. By using analytics to identify the ages and genders of your website users, you have the ability to formulate retargeting strategies that are specific to your largest audience demographic, or to create plans that are focused on targeting the ages and genders that are not as engaged with your content. Additionally, location information helps to identify your strongest geographies in terms of website activity and conversions, allowing you to make promotional decisions based on this information.
There are so many opportunities for your business to make more data-driven decisions. Are you interested in learning more about how to dive into Google Analytics? Well-Oiled Marketing is here to help. With our years of experience in data and analytics we are prepared to help you make the most of the data your website has to offer.
