Top Three Google Analytics Reports

Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that gives you a lot of in-depth data about how people use your website. The problem, of course, is that Google Analytics has a wealth of different reports and it is not uncommon to experience "analysis paralysis" when you first open up Google Analytics.

Despite the volume of reports, the good news is you don’t need to look at all the reports all the time. While many of the reports are useful, there are three key reports you need to check out on a regular basis that will give you a clear idea of what is happening with your website and, more importantly, what changes you need to make to your website and online marketing.

Traffic Sources

One of the more helpful pieces of information to collect is finding out where your traffic is coming from. When viewing this report, the first question to ask is if this data tracks with the marketing and promotion work you've done lately. Did you invest heavily in sending out emails or offline marketing? If so, you should see an increase in traffic labeled as "Direct" (for people who typed your URL in the address bar). If you blogged more frequently or worked on getting more sites linking to you, traffic from organic or social channels should be higher.

You also want to look at these numbers to see if there were any big decreases. If your direct traffic or organic traffic plummeted, for example, you want to know why. Did you stop spending money on an ad or make other changes to your site? Or, is the decrease a seasonal trend? If a drop isn't a seasonal trend or a change explained by a marketing activity, you may have a problem and need to figure out the cause.

How to View Traffic Sources in Google Analytics

Landing Pages

Another useful report to review are the landing pages, of entry points to your website. This is a report you should watch over time to get a read on what content is responding with people and capturing their interest to draw them into your site. As you start to get a sense of what pages bring people into your website, you can make better determinations about what new content should be added to your website.

As well, this report also helps you focus your website updates on the key pages. The landing pages are the first page people will see from your site and with all of your landing pages, you want to be sure to put your best foot forward. While a lot of time and energy usually goes into your website's home page, the reality is that your website's home page is rarely the only page bringing people into your website. For most websites, the majority of people arriving on the site see some other page than the home page first. You want to know what those pages are and focus on continually improving those pages.

How to View Landing Pages in Google Analytics

All Pages

Now, we don't want to just look at what brought people into our site, we also want to look at where people went when they got here. Along with reviewing Landing Pages, you also want to review the All Pages report in Google Analytics. This report tells you all the pages people looked at while visiting your website.

Like with the landing pages report, this is helpful to get a sense of what people are interested in when viewing your website. Where the landing pages should provide ideas of what new content to create to bring new people into the site and how best to connect with those newly arrived visitors, the All Pages report provides an idea of what content will hold a visitors interest after arriving on the website.

How to View All Pages in Google Analytics

More About Google Analytics

For advanced tips or tricks about Google Analytics, check out our free video series on YouTube. Or, if you need help setting up and Google Analytics on your website, learn more about our Google Analytics setup and training services.