10 Most Essential Google Analytics Reports for Every Digital Marketer
By: Chiranjeevi Maddala
Tags: Marketing, Digital Marketing, Analytics

In the last couple of years, as digital marketers, we have witnessed how the world has embraced digital marketing and the speed at which more and more businesses are adapting to it. This enormously growing popularity of digital marketing is mainly because of the many advantages it has to offer over traditional marketing. To name a few, digital marketing is cost-effective, offers high Return On Investment(ROI), allows to precisely target the audience, get real-time results, provides higher exposure, higher engagement, quicker global reach, it is non-intrusive, etc. The one major element that stands out from the rest of what digital marketing presents is “performance measurement”. As Peter Drucker quote, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” but how do we do it? How do we measure the performance? The answer is, I know most of you would have already guessed it, yes it’s Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is Google’s free and very powerful web analytics tool. In simple words, it is a tool that tells you whether your efforts(SEO, advertising, backlinks, etc) are going in the right direction and fetching results or not. Setting up a Google Analytics account for your website empowers you to track and analyze the data captured by the tool and gain in-depth knowledge of your website’s performance. Google Analytics also facilitates the integration of other products like Google Search Console and Google Ads by adding a small tracking code on the pages of your website which is definitely an icing on the cake.

Every website owner would like to know answers to a few questions like, how visitors/clients/audiences are finding his/her website? Where are they coming from? How often are they visiting? What are they liking most on the website? What are they not liking? What are they doing on the website? How long are they staying on the website? What device are they using to visit my website? The answers to all these questions are available in the data captured by the Google Analytics tool. These questions may not even constitute 10% of what the Google Analytics tool is capable of capturing. This valuable data is presented in the form of reports by the tool which digital marketers can tweak according to their need for data analyzation. Upon obtaining the information the owner/business can take appropriate actions or decisions towards improved performance and business growth.

You might now be thinking, how do I master the Google Analytics tool? Considering the gigantism, it seems really challenging and overwhelming, especially if you are a beginner in the industry. Although this appears to be intimidating, the urge to leave an impression at work or to show the clients your worth, what you need to know are these 10 most essential Google Analytics reports. Analyzation of these reports in-depth can give vital insights on the website and help you to get going strong. Let’s see what these Google Analytics reports are and how they can be accessed and how they help the website/business.

1. The Acquisition Overview Report

Traffic acquisition report is the most basic and essential google analytics report for every digital marketer. Mostly this is the starting point when it comes to the reporting process. This report helps you understand which channels/mediums are contributing to the traffic to your website. Upon analyzing the data if you see that most of the traffic to your website it from social media, you know exactly what to do. Increase your efforts towards social media(Ads, campaigns, etc ) to grab more and more audience as you already know that this is the place your audiences are. If you happen to observe from the traffic overview report that the organic traffic is going down then you know there are problems with the SEO and appropriate actions need to be taken.

To access this report, under reports on the left-hand side panel of the Google Analytics tool, click Acquisition → Overview

The sample above shows the different channels and the percentage of traffic received through them. One can further drill down to know the list of all the links from where exactly the user has found your website. For example, clicking on referral will list all the website links that have provided a link to your website(backlinks). Along with the number of users, this report also gives information on the new users, sessions(active engagement time of the user), bounce rate(user visiting and exiting the website on the same page), etc.

You can also use this report to understand which channel is getting you the maximum conversions. You can then work towards that channel to increase brand awareness reaching more audience and maximizing conversions.

2. The Mobile Overview Report

Today, you have almost everything available at your fingertips and that’s because of the one and only gadget “The mobile phone”. According to CIODIVE, “70% of internet traffic comes from mobile phones”. With this in the picture, you have to consider your website’s compatibility with the small screens along with the desktops.

This report helps you to understand the number of users using mobile phones to access the website. If the number of users visiting from the mobile device keeps growing it means that your website is optimized and very much working on the small screens and being ranked well if it is organic traffic.

You can access this report by clicking on Audience → Mobile → Overview

This report gives you the various devices users are using to visit your website.

Going to Audience → Mobile → Devices report gives you the information on the mobile phones brand, the model, the service provider, etc. If the bounce rate on a particular browser, say iOS is more compared to Android, it can be that the website is not compatible with the iOS but most of your traffic is coming from Apple mobile phone users, you should sense the problem and work on the issue immediately.

You can also make use of segments to know which platform is mostly being used for conversion or goals set by you. If the traffic through mobile phones is higher and conversion rates are lesser then that’s an indication of poor website performance on mobile phones. Minimal average session durations, lower average page depth, etc are also the other indicators.

Sample reports showing mobile device branding and mobile device information

3. New vs Returning Audience Report

This is another important and one of the most essential google analytics report. The main focus of any website/blog owner is to get as many audiences/visitors to their website. After achieving this what is the next step? It will be compelling the already visited user to keep bringing to the website either by offering good products/services or great informational content, etc depending on what you have to offer. This report helps you to understand how successful you are to bring back the old visitors and how successful you are in reaching your goals time and again with the same customers. This definitely talks about your success. For example: If an e-commerce website is successful in bringing back the old customers for purchases, then the products/services offered by the website are impeccable.

This report can be accessed under reports, click on Audience → Behavior → New vs Returning

In the below sample report, if you closely observe the data, the returning users are having lesser bounce rate meaning they are visiting various other pages of the website. Also, higher average session duration indicating they spend more time on the website compared to the new users.

This report also helps you to understand which of your customers either existing or new are contributing more towards goal conversion. You can then shift your focus and build strategies for existing or new customers depending on the outcome of the report.

4. The Landing Pages Report

The page on which a user first land on your website is called a landing page. This need not be a single and dedicated page. It can be a blog page shared on social media, it can be a home page click on the SERP results, it can also be a form page or an email subscription page directed upon clicking a Google Ad, etc. This landing pages report provide valuable insight on which pages of your website landing pages are doing great and which are not. Understanding the poor performing landing pages by their high bounce rate and fixing them will help to retain the users and increases the chances of conversion.

You can fetch this report under reports by clicking on the Behavior → Site Content → Landing Pages.

The image below is a sample Landing Pages Report.

5. The All Pages Report

All pages report provides vast information on the pages of your website. You can get to know how many times users have visited a specific page? What is the average time users spend on the page? How many time users have entered the website through a particular page and exited the website through that same page? How much revenue that particular page has generated? etc. You can use this data to concentrate on the poor performing pages. You can add/modify content on these pages that users are interested to find on your website.

You can find this report under reports, click on the Behavior → Site Content → All Pages

The image below is a sample All Pages Report.

You can further experiment with the data in the “Explorer Tab” by choosing the relevant metrics to analyze the data. Below example shows the visual representation of a page’s entrances vs bounce rates in the form of a graph. This indicates how many times the user entered the website through this page and the percentage of which were bounced.

Below is a screenshot of the “Navigation Summary Tab” which provides a detailed list of the previous page visited by the user prior to this page and the next page visited after visiting this page helping the marketer understand the intention or behavior of the user. This tab also provides information on the percentage of entrances and exits of this page in the specified time duration.

6. Goals Overview Report

The actions you want your visitor to take on arriving to your website, the goal(s), can be set in the Google Analytics tool. The goal can be asking the user to submit a registration form or to subscribe to a newsletter or to download a file, etc.

To set the goal, you click on Admin → View → Goals → New Goal

Whenever a user completes the actions that are set in the goal, a conversion happens and that metric is reflected in the goal conversion overview report. There are many other tools in the market that are used to track these conversions but the advantage of doing it in the Google Analytics tool is you can compare various metrics. For example, you can understand out of how many users that visited in a week have completed the goals that are set? Which goals are achieved faster? These metrics also help you understand how good is your business doing.

You can also use this report’s data to get the conversion percentage(conversions/page views). The higher conversion percentage indicates that the pages are doing exceptionally well. To increase the conversions further, marketing efforts can be put on such pages to optimize them so that they can rank higher in SERP results, they can also be promoted on social media channels, finding more and more backlinks to these pages, etc

This report can be accessed by clicking on Conversions → Goals → Overview

The image below is a sample Goals Overview report.

7. Audience Demographics & Location Reports

These two reports give us information on the age, gender and the location of the visitors. These metrics can be used to tailor the content on the website depending on the majority of the gender and age group of the visitors. For example, the metrics show that most of your website visitors are millennials, creating the content that has internet slangs make more sense. This will make the content more fun to read and can keep the visitors hooked for a longer time. If the age group is above 60+ then probably this kind of content creation makes no sense.

So, the key here is to understand your audiences to take appropriate actions to attract them and keep them engaged.

To get to the demographics report, under reports click on the Audience → Demographics → Overview

The image below is a sample Audience Demographics Report.

Now, let us talk about the location report. This report gives you an idea of where the majority of your audience is geographically located. No matter if you are an international business or local, knowing the exact city/state that is getting you more revenue/conversion/visits that can help you focus more on those geographies.

To get to the location report, under reports click on the Audience → Geo → Location

The countries can be further drilled down to get the states from where the majority of your website visitors belong. Furthermore, clicking on the state will take you to the report you can see which city in the state is on top of the table.

The image below is a sample Audience Location Report.

Additionally, the outcome of these reports can be made useful, if you are planning or when you plan to run Ads for your website. They can help you to aim the target audience appropriately, getting you maximum results from the Ads.

8. Audience Visits vs Day & Time Report

This is a custom report which talks what day of the week and what time of the day your website gets maximum user visits. With this information at hand, you can make sure that your website is always serviceable during those days and hours. You can also make use of this while running Ads. Ads popping up during these active hours or days can help you in further increasing visits to your website.

This custom report can be generated by clicking on the Customization → Custom Reports → New Custom Report

You can further customize this report to get more insights into the data by adding more dimensions to the report.

9. Google Ads Campaign Report

Google Ads campaign report is one of the most essential reports to know if your marketing efforts are thriving positive results and also to rectify where they are not. To access this report, you have to link your Google Ads account to Google Analytics account. If you are successful in reaching the goals, don’t just assume that your Ads are doing great and the completion of goals are the result of it.

This report is your option to verify what actually the scene is. Is it really the Ads that are aiding in the goal completion? Also, if so, which are those Ads that are getting you maximum visitors and/or conversions? In this campaign report, you will get to know how each of your ads is doing, the number of clicks on each Ad and the CPC of the Ads to know which Ad is costing you more and if it is meeting your ROI? After getting answers to these questions you can invest in the Ads that are fetching your required results and meeting your ROI.

Here is how you can get to the report once the Google Ads account is linked. Go to reports, click on the Acquisition → Google Ads → Campaigns

The image below is a sample Google Ads Campaign Report.

10. Keyword Analysis Report

As digital marketers, we know the importance of organic traffic to our website. The SEO efforts have to be at its best to achieve the desired results(ranking high on the SERP). Keywords are one of the key players when it comes to SEO. If you get to know what keywords are getting visitors to the website, it is as good as finding a treasure. You can make use of these details to enhance your SEO strategies and aim to rank higher in the search results.

This report can be viewed under reports, click on the Acquisition → All Traffic → Channels

Once you get the report, you need to do some changes to get to the intended report. Click on the “Organic Search” link in the report. You will then get to see the keywords that bought visitors to your website.

The image below is a sample Keyword Analysis Report.

Conclusion

Google Analytics has tons and tons of information which when used wisely can provide you very valuable insights into how your website or Ads or visitors etc are doing. The above listed are the 10 most essential Google Analytics reports every digital marketer must know. You can further explore the tool and reports based on what exactly you are looking for from the available metrics. Google Analytics Solutions Gallery is a great place for both the newbies and the experts. If you are a newbie or someone who doesn’t like to work from scratch, you can find readymade “Custom Reports” that suits your needs. All you have to do is to import them to your account. If you are an expert, this is a great place for you to contribute your skills and help others.