If you are just starting to use Google Analytics, you may feel overwhelmed with the stats, graphs, data and new terms that pop up before you. To help ease you into Google Analytics, here are some key terms to know to make the most of your analytics:
Bounce rate
If you are looking at your bounce rate and it’s above 70 percent, you need to make some changes. A bounce is when someone looks at a page on your site and quickly “bounces” away. Ideally you want to have your bounce rate between 35 and 55 percent. If you have a high bounce rate, it might mean that your title tags and meta descriptions aren’t communicating your content well. Make sure your content is relevant to your keywords.
Engagement
The engagement report lets you know how much time people spend on your site and how many pages they view. The visit length is tracked by counting the time between page views. The pages you want your readers to engage with depends on your type of company. If you are a law firm, you might want the visitor to view a specific lawsuit page, and end up on the contact page. If you are selling a product, you would want the visitor to find a product and purchase it with ease.
Conversions
Through Google Analytics, you can create customized goals of what you would like your visitors to do before they leave your site. Once the visitor completes one of your goals, you have a conversion. Your goals might be for the visitor to fill out a contact form or purchase an item. The purpose of your site is not to just be clicked on, but to have as many of your goals met, or conversions, as possible.
Page Views
To help you determine which of your pages are the most popular, it is helpful to look at your page views. Page views are the number of times a viewer lands on each page of your website. Page views don’t count the number visitors, but how many times one visitor might go back to a page, or reload it.
Unique Page Views
Unique page views is different from page views in that it’s more specific. It helps you know how many people saw a specific page, instead of how many times that page was viewed. In your analytics, if the same user looks at the same page four times it will be counted as four page views, but one unique page view.
We hope this helped clear up any Google Analytics confusion. To learn more about Fahrenheit Marketing and how we transform clicks into conversions, contact us today.