The 5 Most Important Numbers to Find in Google Analytics
When you’re staring at your Google Analytics account, it’s easy to feel lost. There are so many numbers and metrics to keep track of, with lots of data jargon that can easily feel overwhelming.
That doesn’t even touch on the different sections or filters you can place on your traffic information — and things are updated all the time.
You know analytics are valuable, but you’ve got no idea where to start or what to look at. It’s tempting to push all that data aside, but I don’t want you to lose out on numbers that can easily turn into revenue and business growth!
But now with years of experience tracking my own numbers and helping my clients to do the same, I have some favourite numbers that I love to dig into because of the massive impact they can have when growing your business.
As an aside, you may have heard by now that in one year, Google is going to be sunsetting Universal Analytics (the current Google Analytics platform) and replacing it with Google Analytics 4. Since most business owners haven’t yet fully made the transition to the new platform, we’re going to stick with Universal Analytics for today’s tour.
Keep reading (or watch the video below) if you’d like to know what these 5 important numbers are, where they are, and how to use them.
Prefer video? We've got you covered!
Metric #1: Users
Do you know how many people are actually visiting and using your site? This metric is going to show you how many people engaged with your site.
To find it, log in to your Google Analytics, look at the lefthand sidebar, and look at the Reports section. Click on “Audience”, then “Overview”.
From this Overview section, I’d like to draw your attention to the number of users to your site during the selected timeframe.
You may have been wondering how many people are actually visiting your site, and this is the perfect place to look to give you that information. The metric “users” is defined as the number of individuals who have initiated a session on any page of your website during the given timeframe.
This number is important because it tells you if enough people are seeing your products or services.
Before you jump to radically changing offers, changing prices, or re-writing sales pages, you need to know that your people are actually seeing what you have to offer.
Metric #2: Number of Pages per Session (and Average Session Duration)
Under the same Audience Overview section, take a look at the number of pages per session and the average session duration.
These numbers tell you a lot about how users are interacting with your site.
For example, if you have a lot of traffic but they leave after 10 seconds, that’s telling you that they likely didn’t find what they were expecting to on your landing page. Time to optimize and ensure congruency between your marketing and your site.
And if the majority of your users are only hitting one page and leaving without viewing more, they likely are not being enticed further into your site. Can you lead them through the customer journey more clearly? Can you put links to other pages that they might find helpful or informative?
The longer someone spends on your site, the longer you have to build that know, like, and trust factor!
Metric #3: All Pages/Posts
Next, we’re going to take a look at the most visited pages or posts on your website. To see this information, you click on “‘Behavior”, then “Site Content” and “All Pages”.
You’ll now see an ordered table that shows you how many page views you’ve received on each page of your website within the given time period.
The first thing that I like to do when I look at this information is asking myself if what I’m seeing makes sense.
Are there any pages that I expected to see a lot of traffic to that I don’t see in this top 10? And are there any that I’m really surprised by? If you see a page or post that’s popped up suddenly into the top 10, look for your opportunity that you have based on the traffic that’s hitting that page.
For example, if it’s a blog post that’s attracting a lot of attention, how can you optimize that page to include a way to move your customers further along in their customer journey? Can you add in a place to sign up for a related lead magnet or include reference on a link to an appropriate product make the most of that traffic that’s already coming your way?
Alternatively, if you have a page that you expected to see frequently look into why it’s not getting hits as anticipated. Are you sending traffic directly there? Is it hard to navigate to that particular page due to the layout of your website? What can you streamline to get more eyes on the page that you’d like increase the traffic to?
Metric #4: Traffic Acquisition Numbers
This is one of the most helpful reports in Google Analytics, as it shows where site traffic is actually coming from. To see that, click on “Acquisition”, then “All Traffic”, then “Source/Medium”.
Since most online business owners today are sourcing their traffic from a lot of different places – including Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, email list paid ads, affiliates, and so many more – it’s really important to know which sources are actually bringing people to your site.
The reporting on website/funnels tools can sometimes be a little bit unreliable, especially when it comes to how many people are actually clicking through to your website, so it’s a really great idea to use Google Analytics alongside those tools to really beef up that data.
This source/medium report pulls up a table that enables you to see the different sources of traffic from referral and direct traffic to organic search, social, email and paid traffic.
So what is source? That’s the actual platform from which your traffic is coming. You might see sources such as Google and Bing, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, your email service, and more.
Medium, on the other hand, is the type of traffic that’s being sent. Types here include affiliate, CPC (which is the equivalent of paid traffic), organic, social, referral, etc.
As you review this data on a regular basis and dig into it, you’ll be able to start to see trends as to which of your traffic sources are actually bringing the most people to your site, how long they’re staying on the site, how they’re interacting with it, and how many conversions are actually taking place as s a result of these particular traffic sources that are bringing people to your website.
You can then start to use this data to inform your marketing ecosystem, learning a lot about which strategies are and aren’t working through your traffic acquisition numbers.
If you have a high volume of leads coming from Pinterest, but an extremely low volume coming from Facebook ads, for example, the data says you should either focus more on building your Pinterest presence, or tweak your ads to ensure that they’re performing better.
Metric #5: User Demographics
Finally, your Google Analytics account also contains some really helpful demographics data. To see this in your own account, you can click on “Audience”, then “Demographics” and “Overview”.
One thing to note here is that you do need a certain threshold of data for this information to show so you might need to extend your date range at the top right corner for you to have enough data points to really be able to dig into this information.
The main information you can collect from here is age and gender. This data is helpful in two ways. First, ask yourself if these numbers are reflecting your target market and are you actually getting visitors to your site that reflect the target audience you’re aiming for? If not, is your marketing attracting the wrong audience?
If it is applicable, and the numbers make sense, you can then utilize this demographic information to help inform the demographics you select in your paid traffic targeting. This is really helpful when you’re trying to select the perfect audience to send paid traffic to you, as it prevents guessing who’s actually interested in your products or services.
Take Your Data Analysis Up A Notch
I know that was a ton of info on how to use Google Analytics, so congratulations for making it to the end. I just know that Google Analytics is invaluable in helping us grow our businesses — with the added bonus of it being offered for free!
It’s time to take the next steps in building out your business and utilizing your data to its fullest capacity!
If you want a boots-on-the-ground partner… that’s where I come in! I can help you strategize and use your data so that it serves you and your business well. I can discuss all of these details with you and talk about how I can help YOU with your data review, dashboards, and analysis on an introductory call!
They key to making your data work for you is understanding how and when to use it. Google Analytics is a great place to start, and I hope this guide helps you.
If you’d like to see other ways that Google Analytics can help you grow, and how data in general can give you a better picture of your business, grab my 5 Questions Your Data Can Answer for You guide. It will help you understand what information you need in order to grow your biz. Grab a copy now!
