If you are marketing your business aggressively through Digital Marketing, it’s important to measure the efforts and the ROI derived from your marketing channels, Google Analytics is a tool which will help you do that. 

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free tool by Google which helps us to understand the user behaviour and traffic patterns on our website through various sources.

Google analytics further deep dives and gives us insights on the time spent on the site, bounce rate, top landing pages, conversions, attribution models and more!

In order to read all data through analytics, we need to first set up Google Analytics for our website

Advanced Google Analytics Course by Rahul Gadekar – Access Now

How to Set Up Google Analytics?

There are two ways to set up Google analytics for your website:

• Directly installing code on the website
• Using Google Tag Manager

So let’s understand step by step, how to set up Google Analytics using the first method which is by directly installing code on the website.

Step 1

Login to Google Analytics – Login

Step 2

Once you are on Google Analytics click on admin option on the bottom left and then click on create account. 

Step 3

Once you click on create account, the first thing is to define the name of your account, this would be the name of your website or business name. I have added Demo, to show you.

Next thing is to select from the option, what do you want to measure. There are three options to choose from 

Web – You can select this if you are looking to track your website data

Apps – You can select this if you are looking to track your mobile apps data 

Apps & web – This is right now in beta stage, which will help to track users across the web and mobile platforms.

Once you select web, the next thing you will observe is property setup option as below, here you need to set up 

Website Name – Website name is the name of your website

Website URL – Website URL is your website URL 

Industry Category – It’s the business category of the website eg: travel, shopping etc 

Reporting Time Zone – Select the time zone as per the country you are in.

Now say create. Once you say create, you will see a tracking code on the dashboard, something like this. 

You need to add the tracking code in the head section of your website. Once you have added the code, the data will start populating on your Google Analytics dashboard. 

If you are using wordpress, you can follow the below set up process to add the code.

How to add Google Analytics Code on WordPress site?

Go to your wordpress account and click on editor under appearance, post that click on theme header on the right and then before the closing head paste the analytics code, refer below.

Now say update, the data will now start populating on your analytics dashboard from today. 

How to share Google Analytics Access With Team Members?

Once you have created the account, you would like to share the access with your team members, so that they can read and download reports from analytics. In order to share access, click on admin option and then click on user management as below

Once you click on user management, you will come to see the below screen, now click on the add button to add users.

Once you click on the plus button, you will see the below screen, where you can enter the email id of the user, to whom you want to share access to. 

You can also define the permission levels to the user from edit and read & analyze. Now say add, the user will receive an email, and post accepting the request, the user will be able to view the data of the analytics account.

Now before we start understanding different data points and reports in analytics, let’s first understand different terminologies used in Google Analytics which will help you to read the reports effectively. 

Different Terminology In Google Analytics

Session – Session is a visit to your website with more than one page view including an ecommerce transaction or any interaction. The default session time is 30 minutes, which means that if a user visits your website after 30 minutes, it would be considered as a new session. 

Users – Users are total number of users who have visited your website for a specific time frame, it also includes repeat visitors

New Users – New Users are unique users for a specific time frame on your website. 

No of Sessions Per User – It is the total number of sessions by per user who visited your website

Page Views – Page views are total number of views generated by the total number of users, it also includes repeated page views.  

Pages Per Session – Pages per session are the total pages viewed in a particular session. 

Average Session Duration – Is the average time spent by a user in a session. 

Bounce Rate – Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who left the website without viewing more than a single page. 

These are the key terms used in all the reports of Google Analytics, there are few other which we will understand while we are reading specific reports. 

So now let’s move ahead on the dashboard and start reading data & reports. If you don’t have a Google Analytics account to view data, then you can use Google analytics demo account, click here for DEMO ACCOUNT which is set up for Google Merchandise Store

The first report in Google analytics is audience report, let’ deep dive in audience report.

Understanding Audience Report

Under audience report, the first thing you will see is the overview report.

Overview Report 

Overview report is the summary report for the time frame you have selected to view data. It helps you with the summary of Users

• New Users
• Sessions
• Number of sessions per user
• Page Views
• Pages / Session
• Avg. Session Duration
• Bounce Rate 

Active Users Report 

Active users report will help you to understand the number of users who visited your website in past 1, 7 days, 14 days or 30 days for the date range selected.

Next report is audience, under audiences the first report is demographics. The demographics report helps you to understand the age group and gender of the users visiting your website.

You can further break down the report by clicking on age from the right hand side option as below. For each age group range, you will be able to view different metrics including users, new users, sessions, bounce rate, pages per session, avg. session duration, transactions, revenue and ecommerce conversion rate, which gives you a detailed understanding of the users for a specific age group.

You can further break the report by gender as below. This gives you all the metrics data by gender, which helps you to understand the most engaged gender on your website and the revenue generated from them (revenue will be only shown, if the website has a payment gateway)

Interest Report

Interest report helps you to understand the interest of the audiences who visited your website. The first option under interest report is overview, the overview report gives you an overview of three different interest categories of the report, which includes 

• Affinity Categories 
• In-Market Segments 
• Other Categories  

Let’s understand each of them.

 Affinity Categories 

Affinity audiences are audiences basis their lifestyle, passion and habits. Eg: travel buffs, business travellers etc. You can view the entire report by clicking on affinity categories on the left hand side and view all metrics for each affinity category. 

By understanding the affinity audiences, you can use the same audience to target users through Google ads on Search, Display & Video.

In-Market Segments

In-market segment audiences are the audiences who are in the market, which means they are actively looking and researching for your products and services. You can view the In-market segments report by clicking on the left hand side option, which will help you to understand different metrics for in-market audiences.

In-market audience is stored by Google using AI and is available to advertisers to market their products and services through Google ads, you can use the in-market audiences segments to advertiser users through Google ads. 

Other Categories

Other categories are more granular categories compared to affinity and in market audiences eg: Sports news, air travel soccer etc, follow below screen for more details.

Geography Report 

Geography report is divided into two sections, language and location. 

Language Report

Language report helps you to understand the language settings used by the users in their browser. You can view the report by clicking on the language option below geography report and get data for all metrics as below.

This is very useful if you have optimized your website for multilingual SEO, through this you can understand the language users are using in their browser setting and then you can use those language specific communication in your ad sets in specific regions. 

Location Report

Location report helps you to understand from where users are coming to your website, how much time they are spending and how many transactions are happening through specific locations. You can break down the report by county, city , continent and subcontinent as below to deep dive in location report. 

By learning through this data, you can define location specific campaigns on Google ads & Facebook ads, considering the locations from where maximum revenue is generated.

Behaviour Report

Under behaviour report you can understand 

• New vs returning visitors report
• Frequency & recency report
• Engagement report
• Session quality report 
• Conversion probability report 

Let’s understand each one of them.

New Vs Returning Visitors Report 

With the help of new vs reporting visitors report, you will be able to understand how many visitors are new and returning, plus you would also be able to understand other metrics including bounce rate, transactions and revenue from them.

If you see high conversions from returning visitors, you should define an effective remarketing strategy. 

Frequency & Recency Report

Frequency in Google analytics refers to how often your website visitors return to your site within a specific date range. 

Recency refers to the length of time (no of days), since the user last visited your site. Once you click on frequency & recency option on your analytics account, you will be able to view the below screen. 

Count of session is the order in which the sessions associated with one visitor occur. For Eg: the first session instance are the sessions that occur with no prior session recorded in analytics, second second instance are those sessions which occur with first prior session recorded in analytics and so on.

Engagement Report

Engagement report helps you to understand how much time visitors spend on your website. You can also view the pageviews generated for specific session duration.

Session Quality

Session quality gives you an idea about how close a particular session was to do a transaction. You can see different values on the dashboard including 1, 2-5, 6-20, 21-50 and 51-100. Value 1 indicates a low session quality or it was far from doing a transaction. Similarly value closer to 100 indicates a high session quality being very close to do a transaction.

Conversion Probability Report

Conversion probability report predicts the probability of a conversion. The probability is defined between 1 to 100 for each user, 1 being low probability and 100 being high probability for a conversion. 

Conversion probability is defined basis transaction data and the likelihood to convert during the next 30 days basis Google’s algorithm. If you are a website like an ecommerce or e ticketing or a booking engine, this report is very useful to understand the conversion probability

Technology Report

Technology report is divided into two parts browser & OS and network. 

Browser & OS Report 

Browser & OS Report will help you to understand the different browsers users have used when they visited your website. It will also give you other metrics as below.

By understanding the browser which is driving maximum visitors and conversions, you can check the compatibility of your website on that particular browser to keep the user experience intact and make necessary changes as required. 

Network Report

Network report will help you to understand the internet service provider network users are using while browsing your website. This data is not that important as we are not able to understand the persona of the user browsing our site.

Mobile Report 

Mobile report will help you to understand the device report and mobile specific device report. 

Overview Report

Overview report gives you a report about different devices including desktop, mobile and tablet. It helps you to understand from which devices more users are coming to your site and how many are converting. If the bounce rate is high for mobile, you should optimize it because most of the users these days come from mobile as a device.

Devices Report

Devices report will help you understand specific device which the user used while browsing your website. This is an interesting report as it helps you to understand specific devices which users are using, you can then use these devices in the targeting parameters while advertising through various channels on Digital.

Custom Report

Custom report is divided into two options, including, custom variables and user defined. Let’s understand each one of them.

Custom Variables

With the help of custom variables, you can create a custom report and view data under custom variable. You should pick at least one dimension and one metric. Dimension could be city, geo, mobile etc and metrics could be bounce rate, sessions, page views etc. 

User Defined Report

User defined report helps you to understand the value provided when you define custom user segments for your site. To know more, refer article – Data Management Guide

Benchmarking Report 

Benchmarking report compares your data with the industry data in your specific business category for different metrics and dimensions. This helps you to understand where are you compared to industry benchmarks. There are three options under benchmarking including, channels, location and devices.

User Flow Report

User flow report helps you to understand the paths users took while entering your website, different pages they visited and from where they exited your website. The report in analytics in presented in a graphical form as below. 

You can also change the dimension from the top and view the user flow.

The user flow report gives you a detailed guide of the user behaviour on your website and the pages where they exited. This also helps you to define a strategy for exit pages and drive engagement on the website. 

Next reporting in analytics is about acquisition. 

Let’s understand in detail about acquisition reports. The first option under acquisition report is about all traffic. 

All Traffic Report

All traffic report is one of the important reports to look at, it helps you to understand the channels report, source/medium report and referral report. Let’s understand each one of them!

Channels Report

Channels report helps you to understand the traffic from different channels including organic, direct, paid search, referral, display, social, email etc. It further helps you to understand different metrics including bounce rate, transactions and revenue generated from each channel.

By looking at the channels report you can easily understand which channels are performing for you and which are not, and basis performing channels you can start optimizing them to drive more results. 

You can further understand more details about a specific channel by clicking on them. For eg: I have clicked on organic search and I am able to view the keyword report as below.

Treemaps Report

Using treemap report you can view a data tree for primary and secondary metrics. Refer below where I have kept sessions as a primary metric and ecommerce conversion rate as secondary metric, this helps to understand the channel vs it’s conversion rate, you can similarly change primary metric and secondary metric on the dashboard to view the treemap.

Treemaps helps you to get a quick view of primary and secondary metrics. 

Source/Medium Report 

Source/Medium helps you to understand the source & the medium for different sources of your website visitors. This is an interesting report to look at, as you can understand breakup of organic google, organic bing, referral and so on. Learn from the report which are performing and then optimise them to improve performance.

Referral Report

Referral report helps you to understand the traffic generated from the backlinks which you have created on third party sites. It gives each backlink report which is driving traffic, you can also view if these referral links are helping you to convert or not. If few links are helping to convert, you can define a backlinking strategy on similar websites.

Google Ads Report 

The next report under acquisition is Google ads report, under Google ads report there are multiple reports to view from including campaigns, treemaps, sitelinks, bid adjustments, keywords and so on. 

Though you are reading reports from Google ads dashboard, it is important to view report from analytics because it helps to understand how many clicks are converting to users and how many users are generating how many sessions. So let’s understand each report!

Note: To view Google ads report in analytics, you need to connect your Google ads account with your Google analytics account, to know how to connect, refer article – Connecting Google Ads to Google Analytics 

Accounts Report

If you have a Google MCC account and there are multiple accounts in your MCC, you would be able to view all the ad accounts under accounts report as below. You can select the one which you want to for more details about the account.

Campaigns Report

Through the campaigns report, you can view all the campaigns which you have created in your Google ads account. You can view different metrics for all your campaigns, which will also help you to understand how your campaigns are performing. You should also look at bounce rate metric as one of the important metrics, because that also defines the quality of traffic which you are driving to your website. 

Sitelinks Report

Sitelinks report helps you to understand the data for the sitelinks which you have used in your ad campaigns.

Bid Adjustments Report  

Bid adjustments report helps you to understand the reports for different bids you have made for different devices.

Keywords Report

Keywords report helps you to understand the different types of keywords driving clicks and performance for your campaigns. By understanding keywords report you can further optimize them. 

Search Queries Report

Search queries report help you to understand the search queries searched by users and it’s different metrics. By reading search terms report you can understand the relevant search terms which you can add as keywords in your campaign, plus you can exclude those keywords which are not relevant to your business.

Hour Of The Day Report

Hour of the day report gives you data for different metrics for different hours of the day. Through this report you can understand which hours are performing and which are not and accordingly switch budgets.

Final URL Report

Final URL report helps you to understand the data for different landing pages you have used for different campaigns. If you are using different landing pages, you can easily understand which one is performing and driving results.

Display Targeting

Display targeting report helps you to understand how your targeting parameters are performing including display keywords, placements, topics, interests and remarketing, age and gender. 

By reading this report you can start optimising your display campaigns to drive more efficiency. 

Video Campaigns Report

With the help of video campaigns report you can view your video campaigns data and understand how many views it generated, sessions generated, bounce rate and revenue generated.

Shopping Campaigns Report 

With the help of shopping campaigns report you can understand how your shopping campaigns are performing. Also you can deep dive into your shopping campaigns by clicking on category level 1, product type level 1 and shopping brand.