Google Analytics - 5 metrics that give real value to your business

Marketers are divided into those who want to measure the results of their actions and those who believe it is immeasurable. Regardless, it is worth considering Peter Drucker's thought: "what gets measured gets managed" which we could translate as "you can't manage and improve something you don't measure". If we want the products we create to be better and better - it is worth measuring how close we are to this goal and how we can be even better at it.

One of the most important and widely available free tools which can allow us to track relevant metrics is Google Analytics. Thanks to it we can obtain the most important information regarding users' activity within our point of interest (website, mobile application, web application and others)

Therefore, it is worth knowing which metrics are the absolute basis for monitoring the effectiveness of the content placed on the website or the correctness of its operation in terms of the user path. After reading this post, you will learn which metrics you should constantly monitor and what they really mean for your business.

What are Google Analytics metrics?

Metryka Google Analytics to jednostka informacji, która mówi o tym, jak jakiś aspekt Twojego biznesu radził sobie w określonym przedziale czasowym.

Chociaż istnieją tysiące metryk, które możesz śledzić, oto kilka przykładów zasługujących na szczególną uwagę:

• Ilość nowych odwiedzin na stronie

• Ktraffic generation channels: Indicates from which channels the highest number of visits to the site comes, allowing you to adjust your traffic generation activities.

Average session duration: Measures the amount of time (on average) that users spend on your site.

Rejection rate: Measures the percentage of sessions that leave your site without taking any further action.

User Location: Determines the location of the users who most frequently access your site.

Let's now focus on each of the metrics indicated above to learn how to interpret them and take meaningful actions for your business based on them.

First of all, before you start analysing the collected data, make sure you have properly configured your Google Analytics panel with the right views, filters or goals. About this, you can find out how to get started with Google Analytics in this blog post.

Number of new visits

With the help of this report, you can find out the percentage of users who visited the website for the first time in a given period. This means that if a given user has visited a page before within a specified period of time (which the report does not cover), his/her next visit will be classified as a new visit. The new visit rate works well in determining user loyalty. Very high levels may indicate problems with maintaining commitment and loyalty. The opposite is true when the objective is to acquire many new readers/customers.

The average duration of sessions

The average session duration ("average session duration") in Google Analytics tells you how long users stay on your website on average. It is the total duration of all sessions (in seconds) divided by the total number of sessions. You can find the average session duration data by going to "Audience" > "Overview". By analyzing this metric, you and your team can evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts in terms of engaging and capturing your audience's attention with quality content.

Bounce rate

This is one of the most commonly tracked metrics. In Google Analytics, the "Bounce Rate" (from Bounce Rate) shows what percentage of your site's visitors triggered only one request from the Google Analytics server - such as a single page view - without triggering any other request from the server (subsequent page view, conversion, etc.).

Your site's rejection rate is simply the number of sessions with a single page (rejections) divided by the total number of sessions.

What questions does a "rejection rate" analysis provide us with answers to? First and foremost, whether the selected subpages are properly designed and their content meets the expectations and needs of the users visiting them.

Traffic acquisition channels

Generating traffic to a website is one of the biggest concerns for any organisation that carries out internet marketing activities. The methods and channels used should be regularly measured, which is why Google Analytics allows you to measure the number of visits to your website through channels such as

• direct

• Social media

• referrals from other sites

• organic search

Analysing your website's visitor channels helps you find out where the most users are coming from and which channels are struggling or simply the least effective. By knowing which channels are most effective, you can better plan your content production and outreach efforts to those channels that bring the most high-quality traffic to your site.

Location of users

Traffic from a given geographic area tells us whether our activities (marketing) are generating interest in a given territory. If, for example, you run paid activities attracting traffic to your website in order to acquire clients from the USA who are interested in services of dedicated software development, you are able to actually measure the effectiveness of such a campaign. In addition, those responsible for content creation, by having access to such information, are able to optimise communication and delivery even better. This is possible by taking cultural factors into account depending on which geographical region the most traffic to your site comes from.

SUMMARY

The 5 metrics presented above are, in our opinion, the absolute basis for analysing the effectiveness of marketing activities conducted in companies developing dedicated software. Awareness of how many and from where visitors come, or the average duration of a session allows for optimisation of not only the content published on the website but also its appearance or communication in social media. Using these 5 metrics is a starting point for exploring more advanced indicators offered by Google Analytics.