Website Metrics: What to Monitor in Google Analytics

You know that you should be monitoring the performance of your site on a regular basis. But what does that mean and what exactly should you be monitoring? In this blog I’m going to assume you’re using Google Analytics to monitor your website metrics. But there are several other alternatives out there that are also free, such as: Clicky, Piwik, Gauges and Mixpanel, to name a few.

No matter what tool you use, the bottom line is that you should monitor your site’s performance for several reasons, including to benchmark against yourself and improve SEO—you’ll want to identify which parts of the site are being visited the most and by whom so that you can then fine-tune your site accordingly. Plus, if you’re running campaigns and promotions, you’ll want to track their landing pages to make sure your efforts are working.

To keep this simple, I’m going to list a few selective and very basic set of metrics to track. By no means are these exhaustive; Google Analytics is a powerful tool and has many bells and whistles, so my list only provides an overview of some of the very basics, which provide a good foundation to start with. If you’re interested in a more extensive list, Google Analytics’ blog has all the in-depth information you need!

Here are some of my favorite basic metrics to track:

Audience > Behavior > New vs. ReturningThis helps you identify if visitors keep coming back to your site, or if you’re visitors are mostly first-timers. Let’s say you ran a promotional campaign to drive traffic to your site. This report will help identify if your efforts worked, and what kind of spike in traffic your site realized.

Audience > Technology & Audience > MobileUnder these two menus—Technology and Mobile—you can see what type of operating system and device your visitors are using. Take a look at these reports to see what percentage of your visitors are visiting your site from their phones—you might be surprised about how high that figure is! And if your site isn’t responsively designed but you have a good percentage of visits coming from mobile, that indicates it’s time to update your site.

Acquisition > OverviewThis report shows how many of your visitors are finding your site organically (such as searching on Google), directly by typing in your website’s URL, from social media sites, or from referral sites (such as a partner’s blog that perhaps mentions your website).

Take a look at the Bounce rate too, it will help you see how long visitors are staying on your site, which can give you insight on how relevant they find your website content. For example, you may be posting on social media a lot, which leads to a lot of visits coming in from social sites. However, if the bounce rate for those visitors is high, you should look into the content you’re posting and promoting. If it’s

not relevant to your audience, they’ll leave that page quickly, increasing your bounce rate.

Acquisition > All TrafficThe All Traffic report lists all the sources sending traffic to your site including organic, direct and referral. If organic traffic tops that list, you can assume that most of your visitors are finding you from search engines—either searching for keywords or typing your company name on their search engine query. If social media tops that list, your visitors have been coming to your site from links they found on social profiles—either from posts, or from “About” pages where your URL is listed. Again, it’s interesting to see what is driving people to your website.

Acquisition > Social > Landing PagesThis report shows the top pages your visitors land on when they click on links to your site via social media. For example, if a certain blog

post tops this list, do a bit more investigation to try to determine why. Is the title alluring? Is the topic controversial? Whatever the answer, this can also help inform future content generation.

Behavior > Site Content > All PagesThe All Pages report provides stats for all of the pages on your website, by all visitors, from wherever they came in from (referral, direct, social). This report tells you which pages on your site are top performing. Let’s say you have a “Management Team” page, which lists your company’s leadership team. If that page tops the list, you might conclude that visitors want to know who is managing your company. Are they looking to see if your team is credible? Have you hired new team members that are bringing in new traffic to that page? Have changes to your leadership team been promoted by your PR team or through social media?

Or say one of your blog entries tops that list. You might then assume that visitors have found that content extremely useful and interesting, which should then affect your content strategy—you should consider posting more about that topic.

When you run your reports, be sure to edit the date range at the top right. One handy feature is that you can compare date ranges, which is useful for benchmarking. For example, you can easily compare Q1 2014 against Q1 2013. Also, be sure to modify your graphs to view statistics shown by hours, days, weeks or months.

The best way to get familiar with Google Analytics is to look through the reports, click through the menus and see what’s available. Even the most basic information such as what I shared above will provide interesting stats that you can draw insights from and then start making some assumptions

about your visitors and their interactions with your website. Login to your Google Analytics and give it a try!

Are there other reports you find incredibly helpful? If so, tell us which ones in the comment section below.