I keep track of Analytics for some clients, but others -- including Myra -- want to do it themselves. While I do trainings for local people (like the folks at BabySmart Travel, who made cookies for the occasion yesterday), Myra isn't close enough for me to sit down with her at her computer.
So for Myra, and the owners of BabySmart Travel, and for you too, if you're wondering what all this talk of Google Analytics is about, here is the first in a series of lessons on using Google Analytics for absolute beginners.
Before you start, you have to have Google Analytics installed at your website, and you have to have access to your analytics. Ask your web master to do this for you.
#1: Get into your account. Here's the familiar Google homepage. In the top right-hand corner, you may see the words "Sign in." If so, click on them and sign in, or register. Chances are, you already have an account and you see the word "Settings" up there. Click on "Settings," and you'll get a drop-down menu. Choose "Google Account Settings."
Next you'll see a page like this one:
You'll have a list of stuff you use at Google. Your list may be longer or shorter than this one, but it's in alphabetical order, so "Analytics" will be near the top. Click on it, and you'll see your webpage (or webpages). Click on "View Report."
Now you'll see the dashboard:
#2: Get to know your dashboard. Myra is kindly allowing us to check out her dashboard, so let's look at one particular part of it. Here is the "Site Usage" section.
The blue line shows how many people came to see Myra's website. when you first open the screen, it's set to show you how many visits you've had in the past thirty days. Myra's site hasn't been live for thirty days, so she has a flat blue line until the day her site launched.
Actually, she had a few visitors in the days before it launched, while people were working on it and eagerly checking to see whether it was live and things like that. But on the first day it was live, she has a mountainous peak.
This is where she told all her friends and family to go look at her way cool new website. She announced it on Facebook and stuff like that.
Since then, she has had between 1 and 10 visitors each day. In fact, if we leave out the initial tell-everyone-to-go-look stage, she has an average of 5.5 visits a day, a fact she can discover by clicking on the word "Visits." It's in the upper left below the big blue line graph.
Here are some other things she can learn from the "Site Usage" section:
- Visits This counts the number of visits the site has received.
- Pageviews Pageviews counts the number of times someone looked at a page -- not individual people, necessarily, just the action of looking at a new page.
- Pages/Visit The average number of pages per visit shows how many different pages people checked out, on average, when they visited.
- Bounce Rate When someone comes, looks, and leaves without exploring your site further, they're said to have "bounced." The bounce rate shows the percentage of visitors who have bounced away.
- Avg. Time on Site Average time on site measures the length of time, on average, visitors stay and read. People often spend just a few seconds (12 is the widely-quoted number) deciding whether to stay or go.
- New Visits This metric tells you what percentage of your visitors were new people, and what percentage were coming back to see you again.
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2 comments:
This is great information-- I was just puzzling over my google analytics info yesterday.
Thanks much!
I'm so glad it's useful to you. I'm doing a series on the subject.
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