ABC’s of Google Analytics

Creative solutions are built from knowing the basics to the bone. Every so often, we like to go back to basics for our beginner readers and remind everyone else. Here’s a quick review and infographic of the “ABCs of Google Analytics”.

In the Google Analytics interface, on the left side there is the Google Analytics reporting menu. You’ll realize they’ve done a great job of organizing things based on intuitive marketing strategies.

A is for Acquisition: What brought visitors to your site?

These items in GA essentially show you what’s driving traffic to your digital properties, website, mobile site, mobile app, etc, telling you where your visitors coming from. Some examples of what kind of traffic you are getting are paid, referral, organic, and direct traffic. Also, the technological world we live in may have visitors coming to your site from multiple touch points several times before converting. Universal Analytics helps you tie all of these things together (including even offline data if you want).

B is for Behavior: What did the visitors do once they got there?

Once visitors get to your website or mobile app, what are they doing? The “behavior” area tells you what your visitors are engaging with on your digital properties. At a higher level, they might be visiting and interacting with the home page or other landing pages, traversing the site, visiting several pages (or bouncing!). Also, if set up correctly, Behavior not only includes what pages they visited, but specifics of how they interacted with your pages and site(s). For example, Events you’ve set up to be triggered by playing videos, clicking links, using the slider button and reading through content, would all be found here, so you can see the details of exactly what’s happening.

C is for Conversion: Did they do what you wanted them to do?

This is what it all comes down to! By setting up Google Analytics goals and enhanced eCommerce, you’ll be able to tell if your online marketing efforts are truly working. After all, who needs a bunch of visitors engaging with your site if they’re not contributing to your bottom line, like becoming leads by submitting forms or buying products. Here is where you can see all your goal conversions, like downloading material, form submissions, add-to-carts, completed checkouts, etc.

For your reference and visual pleasure, below is an infographic to demonstrate these basic concepts and flow in Google Analytics.