Complete information for using Google Analytics

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As we had already discussed before the subscription and installation process of Google Analytics on our website, its time to know how to use it properly and effectively. Now that Google Analytics is installed correctly on your site, you should receive the first data on the audience of your website (provided of course to have visitors). The use appears to be very simple. The views are consistent. Once you have mastered a view, you will not have problems understanding others views of the application. The various reports are grouped into several groups:

• Scoreboard: Resumes the key data from other reports for an overview of the site
• Visitors: Contains all data from visitors to your site.
• Traffic Sources: Contains data on the different sources that brought you the traffic
• Description: Contains detailed information on the contents of the site
• Alerts & Objectives: To set goals and check whether these objectives are achieved. We will not discuss these reports in this article, it is already advanced use of Google Analytics

Home:

The home page of your Google Analytics shows you the essential information on your different sites:

• Status: Indicates if Analytics is receiving data from your site
• Visits: Indicates the number of visits over the period set
• Average time spent on the site: The average time of a visit to your site
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of visits to a single page. That is to say the percentage of visits during which the person left your site from the entrance page.
• Objectives achieved: The number of goals achieved
• Change (%): The evolution from the previous period. You can change the period with the buttons in the top right.

These are really basic information, but they are proving very useful to have an overview of the different sites analyzed. You can access the detailed report of a site using the link "View Report" which is available for each site.

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Dashboard:

The Dashboard is the view that is displayed when you view the report of a site. It gives an overview of statistics for a given site. You can change the period displayed in the upper right. You can also change the granularity of graphs, per day, week or month in the top right.

The dashboard is adjustable so you can add it or delete data. To delete a block of data, simply click on the little X in the upper right of the module. To move a module, simply click on the small square in the top left of the title of the module and slide the module to the desired location. The module "Site Usage," is not changed, only rectangular modules that follow are editable. To add a module to the table, simply use the button "Add to Dashboard" which is available in the upper left of each page of data.

Visitors:

The tab "Visitors" provides information about visitors to your site. The default page is an overview of all visitors to your site. Here are all the reports available from this view:

• Overview: Displays the main data about visitors to your site.
• Comparative Analysis: Compare visitors to your site with visitors from other sites. For this, we must have agreed to share your Analytics data with other Google services in the settings of your account.
• Map Overlay: Allows you to locate your site visitors. This view shows a world map showing the countries from which the most visitors with dark colors and clear for sites with fewer visitors come from. You can also click on a country to have a more precise localization of individual visitors.
• New vs. Returning: Analysis visitors and distributed among the visitors who have visited the site and visitors, is the first visit.
• Languages: Languages Analysis of visitors to your site
• Visits: Report containing all the hits on your site.
• Absolute Unique Visitors: Report containing all the unique visitors to your site.
• Views: Number of page views on your site
• Average page views
• Time on site
• Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of visits to a single page in relation to total visits
• Precision: Indicates the trend of the number of visits by visitors. For example, you can see that 0.95% of visitors visit your site from 26 to 50 times.
• Last seen: last visit analysis of each visitor
• Visit time: Specifies the length of visits.
• Number of pages visited: Indicates the trend of the number of pages viewed per visit.
• Browsers: Report on visitors' browsers.
• Operating Systems: Report on the operating systems of visitors.
• Browsers and operating systems: Report on browsers and operating systems of visitors.
• Screen Colors: Report on the color screen visitors.
• Screen Resolution: Report on screen resolutions of visitors.
• Flash Versions: Report on the Flash Support of visitors.
• Supports Java Report Java support visitors.
• Providers
• Hostnames: Indicates which host names are used to access your site.
• Connection Speeds: Indicates the bandwidth of visitors
• Values Custom Variables: Report on the distribution of visitors based on custom variables that you defined in the tracking code with the value utm_setvar.

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Traffic Sources:

The tab "Traffic Sources" allows you to list the sources of traffic to your site. Again, you have access to a first overview on the different sources and recent developments. Here are all the reports available from this view:

• Overview: This view shows the main sources of traffic and the distribution of different sources into 3 groups: direct access, search engines and referral sites
• Direct access: Counts visits by direct access.
• Referring Sites: Counts and Referral List
• Search engine: Counts access by search engine and class access by type of search engine.
• All Traffic Sources: Summary of all traffic sources
• AdWords Campaigns: Views generated by your AdWords campaigns
• Keyword Positions: Position your site in the keywords with AdWords Campaigns
• Keywords: Keywords you related visits from search engines
• Campaigns and Ad Versions: Allows you to track your non-AdWords campaigns

All these reports will help you to monitor traffic sources and facilitate monitoring of the evolution of different sources.

Contents:

The "Content" tab allows you to analyze the content of your site. Essentially, it allows you to check which pages generate the most visits. Once will not hurt, you are entitled to an overview page showing you the number of page views and consultations as well as the pages most visited. Here are all the reports available from this view:

• Overview: Provides key information on the site content
• Popular Pages: Presents the pages most visited site
• Content by Title: Detail page by page title
• Content by URL: Content by URL. Presentation page structure and statistical record.
• Top Landing Pages: Pages site entry.
• Top Exits: Exit the site. That is to say, the pages from which readers are leaving your site.
• Site Overlay: Provides a summary of the clicks from your site. This will show the number of clicks on each link to a site.

This can be very interesting to see what could be changed on your site to increase the number of clicks on certain links. The view "Content" as a whole you can see what content is most valued by your readers. This may allow you to highlight links more than others and then develop content that is most able to engage your readers.

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Advanced segments:

In the upper right of each page, you can see an advanced text segments followed by a button "All visits. This button allows you to specify which group of users, content or hearing (a segment as defined in Google Analytics) are the current statistics. There are a dozen segments preconfigured Google Analytics, for example "search traffic" or "Guided by iPhone." You can also create your own advanced segments. To do this, either you use the button "Create an advanced segment" present on the screen of choice in the segment. Either you go to management page "Advanced Segments" accessible via the left menu.

The selection of tours is available through a set of rules associated with "and" and "or". A possible rule would be: (Time of day Time of day 15 or 17) and like-us language. Of course you do not have to type the rule so it's all done visually. Simply drag items from the list on the left and the fields via configuration choices that appear in the right view. You can also add or delete rules "or" or "and" using the buttons on the right.

These segments can target a very specific part of your visitors to see the evolution.