Have you ever received a marketing report and thought “what on earth is a bounce rate?”, “What does it mean!?”

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help businesses track the performance of their website. However, it can often be difficult to understand all of the terminologies that are used in the reports, and there is a lot of data too! It can be overwhelming to digest and understand what metrics are showing the business growth that you’re looking for.

So grab a cuppa as we debunk the most common Google Analytics terms and explain what they mean for your business!

• Pageviews: This is the number of times a page on your website has been viewed. If you have a blog post that’s been viewed 500 times, then it has had 500 pageviews.

• Session Duration: This is how long, on average, someone spends on your website during one session. A session is defined as the period of time a user is actively engaged with your website, from the moment they land on your page to the moment they leave.

• Pages/Session: This is the average number of pages viewed during a session. If someone views four different pages on your website during one session, then the pages/session metric would be four.

• Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of people who leave your website after only viewing one page. A high bounce rate could indicate that your website isn’t providing the information that users are looking for, or that it’s not user-friendly.

• Sessions: This is the total number of sessions (as defined above) during a given period of time.

• Users: This is the number of unique visitors to your website during a given period of time.

• New Users: This is the number of new visitors to your website during a given period of time.

• Source/Medium: This tells you where your traffic is coming from. The “source” is the website that referred the visitor to your site, and the “medium” is the type of referral. For example, if someone clicks on a link to your website from Facebook, the source would be “facebook.com” and the medium would be “social.”

• Referral: Anytime someone clicks on a link to your website from another website, that website is considered a referral.

• Direct: This is when someone types your URL into their browser or clicks on a bookmark.

• Search: This is when someone finds your website through a search engine like Google or Bing.

• Paid Search: This is when someone finds your website through a paid advertisement, like a Google Search ad. If you’re running Google ads, this is an important metric to keep an eye on!

• Organic Search: This is when someone finds your website through an organic search, meaning they found it without seeing any paid advertisements, just purely a Google, Bing or other search engine search.

• Goal Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of people who take the desired action on your website. For example, if you have a goal of getting people to sign up for your email list, the goal conversion rate would be the percentage of visitors who actually sign up. You can set up many goals in Google Analytics that can be tailored to your data needs!

• Transactions: This is the total number of transactions that have been completed on your website.

• Revenue: This is the total amount of money that has been generated from transactions on your website.

• % Exit: This is the percentage of people who leave your website from a specific page. A high % exit rate on your home page could indicate that people aren’t finding what they’re looking for, or that your website isn’t user-friendly.

What Metrics Should I Be Focusing On?

So, which of these stats should you be worried about?

As you can see, each metric above can help paint a picture of how certain elements of your website and marketing are performing. So, depending on your marketing goals, determines which of these will demonstrate and help you work out the ROI, and success of your marketing efforts.

For example, if your focus is on paid search ads, then you’ll want to keep an eye on your transactions and revenue metrics to see if those ads are actually generating sales. Or, if you’re focused on organic search traffic, you’ll want to look at your goal conversion rate and % exit to see if people are taking the desired action on your website.

The takeaway here is that Google Analytics can be a powerful tool for understanding how well your website and marketing are performing. And, by understanding these key terms and metrics, you can learn how your target audience is using, behaving and if they’re actually taking the actions you intend them to while they’re on your website!

More often than not, it’s easy to get lost in Google Analytics data, there’s so much to track and understand, try to not get too sucked into that Google Analytics rabbit hole!

Now that you understand some of the key terms and metrics in Google Analytics, you can start using this data to your advantage! For example, if your bounce rate is high, experiment with new content or clearer call to action buttons, understand what your target audience will be looking for and make sure all of it is easily answered and displayed nicely on your website.

Learn and Optimise From Your Google Analytics Reports With Rebellion Marketing!

If you need help making sense of your Google Analytics reports or want to ensure that your website is optimised for users and search engine ranking, our team at Rebellion Marketing can help! We’re experts in digital marketing and web design/development, so we know how to get the most out of your website. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you grow your business online!

Hopefully, this has helped clear up some of the confusion around Google Analytics terms! Do you have any questions about your reports? Send us an email or give us a call, we’d be happy to help out!