Google Analytics Basics

Ground yourself in the basics on how to navigate the Google Analytics interface, common reports and basic data structure.

Finding Information

Search Bar

If you’re unsure which report contains the data element you need, use the Search Bar. For an example, if you wanted to view the top sources of traffic to your site, you could type in “source” into the search bar and jump straight to that report. In this example, the “source” query matches two metrics in two different reporting sections, Real-Time and Acquisition.

Navigate

If you know what you’re looking for, start clicking on menus to locate the report. There are six main reporting sections that you can navigate to directly to find more information.

Section

Key Question

Key Report

Home

Do a five minute check-in

 

Real Time

What is happening right now?

Overview

Audience

Who is coming to my site?

Overview

Acquisition

How are usings getting to my site?

All Traffic > Channels

All Traffic > Campaigns

Behavior

What did users do on the site?

Site Content > All Pages

Site Content > Landing Pages

Events > Overview

Conversions

Did users complete key digital milestones?

Goals > Overview

Multi-channel funnels > Top conversion paths

Insights/Intelligence Feature

If you’re unsure of the data element or report you need, but understand what you want to discover, the Insights or Intelligence feature is a good option. The more reporting around events and goal conversions you have built into your site, the more relevant this feature is. This search bar will accept natural language questions such as “How many iPhone users did I have last week?” or commands such as “Popular Pages Today.” 

Data Structure in Google Analytics

Data in Google Analytics is built around a large number of metrics plus dimensions by which those metrics can be reported upon.

Metrics

Metrics are the numeric values or measures of things within your web or app experience. A set of standard metrics is included within Google Analytics. Advanced users can create custom metrics within Google Analytics and Google Data Studio. Common or standard metrics include:

  • User: Defined as the owner (by Google Analytics ID) of sessions 
  • Session: Group of user interactions with your website that take place within a given time frame. For example, a single session can contain multiple page views, events, social interactions and e-commerce transactions. 
  • Pageview: A view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a user clicks reload after reaching the page, this is counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview is recorded as well.

Dimensions

Dimensions are descriptive qualifiers to understand more about your metrics. A set of standard dimensions is also included within Google Analytics. Advanced users can also create custom dimensions to utilize for further analysis of their data. Common dimensions include:

  • Source: the origin of where your website traffic is coming from
  • Geography: the IP address of your user – can be viewed by countries, regions/states, metro areas and cities
  • Device Category: if the device used by the user was a desktop, tablet or mobile device – drill to find device types and browsers

Get definitions and a list of all available dimensions and metrics from Google.

While top-level metrics like users, sessions and pageviews are useful for quick check-ins, they aren’t as helpful in trying to understand paths toward desired actions. In order to gain a fuller understanding of these paths, goals and events must be implemented.

Events

Events are unique to an organization and measure activities within your pages on your content. Common events to track include scroll tracking on pages, video plays and clicks on outbound links. You can also use events to “create the path” to the ultimate goal and identify what activities are leading to a goal.

Goals

Goals are unique to an organization and measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives. A goal represents a completed activity, called a conversion that contributes to the success of your business objectives. 

The university has established a standard set of goals that represent common business objectives at the university. You can discover how your websites contribute to those goals by using the Roll Up Property if you’ve installed the Ohio State Global Container on your website. You can also establish your own goals and events to support your business in your Zone properties.

Using Reports

Included on the left side of the Google Analytics interface is a nested list of reporting views. Review the list of common questions below for guidance on which GA report to use to find answers.

Realtime

The Realtime section is different from the others because it shows what is happening right now on the site. While the Realtime section is helpful for seeing a quick snapshot of current performance, it has limited reporting capabilities. This is the only section that show real-time data and typically records the past 30 minutes of activity.

This section works well to understand some of the following:

  1. You have a campaign that launches and want to see if it’s currently active and driving traffic
  2. An external event occurs and you want to understand how it’s impacting traffic right at the moment
  3. You send an email to a target audience – see how long it takes landing page visits to spike after a send
  4. Find out relationships between sources of traffic and device categories by watching quick trends
  5. Identify potential questions for deeper analysis

Audience

Use the Audience reports to learn more about who your users are and how they access your site. This could be things such as demographics, location or device category. Google Analytics also dabbles in demographics and can provide baseline information about age, gender and interest categories. This is a great place to understand new and returning visitors and general behavior of user engagement.

This section works well to understand some of the following:

  1. Discover how many users visit your site on a regular basis
  2. Understand differences in site engagement by device category
  3. Explore basic demographics and how those demographics impact site engagement or conversion goals
  4. Determine what devices and browsers you should optimize to reach the majority of your audience

Acquisition

The Acquisition reports provide a window on your user cycle: how you acquire users, their behavior on your site after acquisition and their conversion patterns.

This section works well to understand some of the following:

  1. Discover how sources of traffic impact your overall results
  2. Review your campaign performance
  3. Understand differences in bounce rate or conversion goals by platforms within a given channel (e.g. Do Facebook posts outperform Twitter posts for on-site engagement?)
  4. Understand keywords inbound visitors from Google Search utilize to discover your content

Behavior

Reports available in the Behavior section tell you more about the content of your website. They include a mix of diagnostics, content evaluation and user behavior from page to page. This is where events are located as well as your landing page reports.

This section works well to understand some of the following:

  1. Understand how segments of your audience move from page to page
  2. Learn about your top visited pages and their page performance against established KPIs
  3. Discover which landing pages support the highest goal conversion rates
  4. Use site search information to diagnose what people can’t find through your navigation

Conversion

Conversion reports illustrate your success at generating conversions and show results. Attribution reporting also exists here.

This section works well to understand some of the following:

  1. Which pages your goal conversions take place on
  2. What your top conversion paths are for your goals
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