What you track and the reports you pay attention to within Google Analytics depends on the goals of your site. Google Analytics has over 80 reports, and only a small percentage of those reports provide truly relevant information and give value for your site. Every site has a unique set of goals based on the main function of the site, and these goals will help you to pick the reports that really matter for your specific website. If your site is a retail site, then one of your main goals might be to increase your conversion rate of visitors to customers from 1% to 2%. That might not sound like a big difference, but that would be a 100% increase in revenue!
To find out exactly what is important to you, here are some questions that will help narrow it down:
- How effective is your conversion of browser to buyer?
- What site navigation do you want to encourage people to use?
- What attributes describe your best customers?
- How can they help you target other prospects like them?
- How do you measure loyalty?
- How good is your lead qualification process?
Here are some general interests based on the type of site, along with the applicable report from Google Analytics:
ECommerce Site: Sells products or services
- Increase visitor to customer conversion rate
(see “Goal Conversion Tracking”) - Reduce shopping cart abandonment
(see “Defined Funnel Abandonment”) - What is the average time to transaction?
(see “Time to Transaction”) - What paid keywords bring in the most paying customers?
(see “CPC Program Analysis”) - Understanding how do visitors navigate through our site
(see “All Navigation”) - How effective are our Internet marketing campaigns
(see “Campaign Conversion”)
Lead Generation Site: Creates and captures leads
- Increase the ROI from your advertising campaigns
(see “Campaign ROI”)
- Understanding why do people leave from a certain page within the site
(see “Top Exit Points”) - Find out how many visitors are new versus returning
(see “New vs Returning”) - Identify what sources create the leads
(see “Referral Conversion”) - What sources generate the greatest return of investment?
(see “Source ROI”)
Brand Awareness Site: Increases the product or brand awareness
- Discover how many pages people view in our site
(see “Visits & Pageview Tracking”) - Testing different versions of advertisements
(see “Overall Ad A/B Testing”) - What site referral source delivers the most visitors?
(see “Referring Source”) - At what time of day does the traffic on the site peak?
(see “Visits & Pageview Tracking”) - The strength of visitor loyalty
(see “Visitor Loyalty”)
