Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools for understanding how your website or web app is performing. However, it can become a time-consuming, complex tool to work with and can be very difficult for non-technical roles to understand.
To make the process of reviewing reports easier for non-technical roles, we generally recommend that you use the following five metrics as a base to start from. Remember, these are a starting point and there will probably be others metrics that also suit your needs and the level of analysis required. But as a baseline to start understanding your site or app’s performance, these are good all-around metrics.
These 5 key metrics are:
- Sessions
- Bounce Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Source/Medium
- Site Content
1. Sessions
What is a session?
Sessions are the starting point for understanding the size of your audience online. A session represents a single visit to your website by a user that has come to the site for the first time or returned after one or more visits.
How to access from a property view
Audience > Overview
Also accessible from the Google Analytics homepage
Why are sessions important?
Sessions are a good baseline metric because they show very quickly change in the number of users visiting the site (or alternatively the same users coming back more frequently).
What would I be looking for?
- Steady growth, decline or stability over a number of months, indicating the effects of marketing and the natural cycle of user interaction.
- Spikes in line with key marketing activities e.g. EDMs, social media, etc.
2. Bounce Rate
What is the bounce rate?
Bounce rate is a measure of how ‘sticky’ your content is. The bounce rate represents the percentage of users who visit a page on your site and then leave without visiting an additional page (they ‘bounce’ off your website).
How to access from a property view
Audience > Overview
Also accessible from the Google Analytics homepage
Why is bounce rate important?
In almost all cases, keeping users on your site for more than one page shows higher engagement and should lead to higher conversion rates.
What would I be looking for?
- Sudden increases in bounce rate can indicate a spike in traffic to a news article, from a social post or marketing activity. This should be mirrored by a corresponding increase in sessions.
- Gradual changes over many months (positive or negative) are commonly a reflection of the quality of your navigation, content and website design, and require a more considered and extensive approach to improve.
3. Conversion Rate
What is the conversion rate?
Conversion rate is a measure of how many users take action (e.g. a purchase) versus those that do not. Conversions are manually configured in Google Analytics – depending on your organisation, you may see conversion as a donation, e-newsletter sign-up, an enquiry or even spending a certain amount of time on site.
How to access from a property view
Conversions > Goals > Overview
Also accessible from the Google Analytics homepage
Why is conversion rate important?
Conversion rate is the core metric determining how effective your site and content is in getting people to take action once they are there. Arguably it is the key metric for determining how effective the user experience of the site is.
What would I be looking for?
- Conversion rate should ideally remain constant or improve over time. In reality, change to website design, seasonality and other factors can cause this to change, in some cases quite drastically.
- Conversion rate has no magic number, and will vary depending on your site and what you are tracking.
4. Source/Medium
What is Source/Medium?
Source/Medium is an aggregated view of where your users are coming from.
How to access from a property view
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium
Why is Source/Medium important?
Source/Medium gives you an understanding of which digital marketing channels are working for the organisation. In more advanced setups you can also gain greater feedback about other marketing channels.
What would I be looking for?
- What sources provide the highest number of visitors, and how this changes over time.
- There is always an important distinction of organic traffic vs paid traffic vs direct vs social – this helps separate the effectiveness of each channel and determine how the mix is working.
5. Site Content
What is Site Content?
Site content is a breakdown of the key content on the site.
How to access from a property view
Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages
Why is Site Content important?
Understanding the key areas of the site that are performing and under performing give insight into the content that users are drawn to, both due to the on-site experience as well as through other channels.
What would I be looking for?
- Which pages are the most visited; the user’s path to these pages, why they perform well, and how this success can be improved or emulated across other content.
- What pages are the least visited; determining the factors why these pages are less-visited, and whether they are useful or not.
How we use these metrics in our work
As an initial starting point in working with our clients, we regularly ask for these metrics. Once the project has started, we use them as an initial point of investigation for how to best improve or rebuild the site.
For clients that also want to have a handle on how their site is performing, it helps to start with understanding and monitoring these metrics.
If you’d like to know more about going beyond these base-level metrics or improving the experience of your website or web app, get in touch with us.
We’d be more than happy to help you create a better digital experience for your online supporters.
