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An Introduction to Using Google Analytics

Learn how to use Google Anayltics to better understand your visitors and improve your website

30.5.2022

This is a brief introduction into Google Analytics and how it can help you improve your website.

We discussed it in one of our Sanctuaries call, and a recording from this can be found on Stream, below: 

Watch the video from our Google Analytics tutorial

You can also take a look at this Dashboard Overview Page (once you receive access), which shows you page views and number of users. You can see peaks (higher number of visitors/page views), which generally would correlate with things like, linking a social media post to our website, the launch of a new campaign, posting new pages, etc. Sanctuary Editors can also use this Sanctuary Dashboard Overview. 

How to Use Google Anayltics

First, you need access. If you do not yet have access, please reach out to Chuck. You will need to create a Google Acount with your FOUR PAWS email address. 

If you have access to GA, you can navigate to your outlet by changing to it in the top left drop down menu. Use the original GA view (not GA4).

Please note you can always change the time frame in the top right corner, to see data for a week, a month, a few months, or over the entire last year.

overview of the Sections and Terms in GA

You can take a look at the following helpful sections in Google Analytics. We will explain each section a bit further.

  • General Overview: How long are people staying on your website? Where are they coming from?
  • Top Pages: What are your most viewed or top pages?
  • Audience Overview: General Demographics
  • Acquisition: Where did your visitors come from? Social media, direct google search, etc.
  • Behaviour: Search Terms. What did they search for on your website?
  • Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors that leave a page without taking a single action on the page. (If it is high, maybe the page took too long to load. Maybe the page wasn't what they were looking for, so they clicked 'back' to the Google search results.)

The sections in more detail: 

Home Overview section

GA HOME OVERVIEW: Here is where you can see general stats about your page. Where your visitors come from, what are your top pages, which devices are visitors using etc.

Search bar in GA

SEARCH BAR: You can use the search bar at the top of GA to quickly find helpful stats. I.e. Top pages, pages with the least time spent on page, top cities etc. 

Source medium

ACQUISITION: Where do your visitors come from? Did they search directly in Google, or come from a social media post? Click on Source Medium. You can also add a Secondary dimension, like 'Page', to see how people arrived at a specific page.

Audience Demographics

AUDIENCE OVERVIEW: In this section you can see the demographics of your website visitors. This can help you determine the type/style of content you are adding.

GA Behaviour

BEHAVIOUR: This section is where you can find important information about how your user is interacting with your site. For example, you can see which search terms they are searching on your site, which can give you some insight into what kind of content or topics they want to see.

Here are some questions you can go through and find answers to while exploring Google Analytics: 

  1. What percentage of your website visitors do you think use desktop/mobile?
  2. What do you think are the top 3 Countries where your visitors come from?
  3. Guess what your top 3 pages are, and think about why they might be the top ones.
  4. Find out which page has the highest average page session. (Longest time spent on page).
  5. Which page has the lowest bounce rate? (Bounce rate is percentage of people who land on the page, and do not take any action/scroll.) Sometimes, users will land on a page and click on the 'back' button right away. People 'bounce' for many reasons (sometimes this is out of our control. I.e. a slow internet connection, means the page can take a long time to load. They might arrive on the page because we ranked high in Google, but it's not what they are looking for.)
  6. Look at the opposite: which ones have the highest bounce rate? Why could this be? (Sometimes it is out of our control). Are the pages.. 
    1. informative? 
    2. using a lot of popular keywords/answering keyword questions? 
    3. easy to read?
    4. displaying interesting content?
  7. Where do you think most of your visitors come from? (Acquisition --> organic search, social media, etc?)

Want to learn more? 

Visit the free Google Anayltics Academy for helpful tutorials 

Head back to the Editors Support Overview 

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