How many people came to your site and how extensively did they interact with your content? This traffic overview allows you to drill down and view the characteristics of different visitor segments and examine the different factors that make up visit quality (i.e. average pageviews, time on site, and bounce rate). Visitors Overview provides baseline information that is particularly helpful when viewed in the context of another time period. While checking a comparison date range, you can see whether traffic and site usage has increased or decreased from one time period to another.

 

This map visualizes volume (visits, pageviews) and quality (pageviews per visit, conversion rates, per visit value, etc) metrics by geographic region.Identifying promising regional markets will help you effectively target your marketing and site. For example, you may wish to purchase advertising in specific markets or create local AdWords search campaigns for high-traffic or conversion regions.

 

A high number of new visitors suggests that you are successful at driving traffic to your site while a high number of return visitors suggests that the site content is engaging enough for visitors to come back. You can see how frequently visitors return and how many times they return in Recency report and the Loyalty report.

 

Which languages do your visitors prefer to use and how do these groups of visitors differ with respect to site usage, conversions, and other metrics? This report captures the preferred language that visitors have configured on their computers. Understanding who your visitors are is crucial to developing the right content and optimizing your marketing spend. Many times, geo-location is not enough. Many countries have diverse populations speaking different languages which present important market targeting opportunities. You may wish to create separate landing pages, splash pages, or micro sites tailored to the languages listed on this report.

 

The number of visits your site receives is the most basic measure of how effectively you promote your site. Starting and stopping ads, changing your keyword buys, viral marketing events, and search rank are some examples of factors that influence the number of visits your site receives. By setting a comparison date range, you can see how much traffic has increased or decreased for each day.

 

How many people came to your site? This report graphs people instead of visits. By setting a comparison date range, you can see the number of people who visited your site increased or decreased for each day.

 

Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed on your site and is a general measure of how much your site is used. It is more useful as a basic indicator of the traffic load on your site and server rather than as a marketing measure. By setting a comparison date range, you can see how much traffic has increased or decreased for each day.

 

Average Pageviews is one way of measuring visit quality. A high Average Pageviews number suggests that visitors interact extensively with your site. A high Average Pageviews results from one or both of the following factors: (1) Appropriately targeted traffic (i.e. visitors who are interested in what your site offers and (2) High quality content effectively presented on the site. Conversely, a low Average Pageviews indicates that the traffic coming to the site has not been appropriately targeted to what the site offers or that the site does not deliver what was promised to the visitor. Average Pageviews (also called "Depth of Visit"), along with Time on Site, Visitor Loyalty, and Visitor Recency, can be used to assess how well brand lift campaigns engage your visitors.

 

Time on Site is one way of measuring visit quality. If visitors spend a long time visiting your site, they may be interacting extensively with it. However, Time on Site can be misleading because visitors often leave browser windows open when they are not actually viewing or using your site. Time on Site ("Length of Visit"), along with Average Pageviews, Visitor Loyalty, and Visitor Recency, can be used to assess how well brand lift campaigns engage your visitors.

 

Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors. You can minimize Bounce Rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy. For most sites, the Bounce Rate corresponds to the percentage of "lost" prospects. It's important to isolate the source of your bounces. Are they from paid search? From referrals? Once you have identified the ads for which you are "losing" prospects, you'll be able to tailor landing pages specifically for these ads.

 

Loyal visitors are usually highly engaged with your brand and a high number of multiple visits indicates good customer and visitor retention. A high number of new visitors (i.e. those at the top of the table) indicates strong visitor recruitment. Visitor Loyalty, along with Average Pageviews, Time on Site ("Length of Visit"), and Visitor Recency, can be used to assess how well brand lift campaigns engage your visitors.

 

The frequency with which visitors return to your site can indicate their level of engagement with your brand and their readiness to buy. On this histogram, visitors are categorized according to the number of days that have elapsed since their last visit. Visitor Recency, along with Average Pageviews, Time on Site ("Length of Visit"), and Visitor Loyalty, can be used to assess how well brand lift campaigns engage your visitors.

 

Length of visit is a measure of visit quality. A large number of lengthy visits suggests that visitors interact more extensively with your site. The graph allows you to visualize the entire distribution of visits instead of simply the Average Time on Site across all visits. Keep in mind that Average Time on Site is skewed by visitors leaving browser windows open when they are not actually viewing or using your site. You can see whether a few visits are skewing your Average Time on Site upward or whether most visits to your site have a high average time. Time on Site ("Length of Visit"), along with Visitor Loyalty, Average Pageviews ("Depth of Visit"), and Visitor Recency, can be used to assess how well brand lift campaigns engage your visitors.

 

Depth of visit is a measure of visit quality. A large number of high pageviews per visit suggests that visitors interact extensively with your site. The graph allows you to visualize the entire distribution of visits instead of simply displaying the average pageviews per visit. You can see whether a few visits are skewing your average pageviews per visit upward or whether most visits to your site result in a high number of pages being viewed. Average Pageviews (Depth of Visit), along with Time on Site ("Length of Visit"), along with Visitor Loyalty, and Visitor Recency, can be used to assess how well brand lift campaigns engage your visitors.

 

Which browsers do your visitors use? Optimizing your site for the appropriate technical capabilities helps make your site more engaging and usable, which can lead to higher conversion rates and more sales.

 

Which operating systems do your visitors use? Optimizing your site for the appropriate technical capabilities helps make your site more engaging and usable, which can lead to higher conversion rates and more sales.

 

Which browsers and operating system combinations do your visitors use? Optimizing your site for the appropriate technical capabilities helps make your site more engaging and usable, which can lead to higher conversion rates and more sales.

 

How many screen colors can your visitors see? Optimizing your site for the appropriate technical capabilities helps make your site more engaging and usable, which can lead to higher conversion rates and more sales.

 

Which screen resolutions do your visitors use? Optimizing your site for the appropriate technical capabilities helps make your site more engaging and usable, which can lead to higher conversion rates and more sales.

 

Which versions of Flash do your visitors have installed? Optimizing your site for the appropriate technical capabilities helps make your site more engaging and usable and can result in higher conversion rates and more sales.

 

Is Java supported on your visitors' platforms? Optimizing your site for the appropriate technical capabilities helps make your site more engaging and usable, which can lead to higher conversion rates and more sales.

 

Which internet service providers do your visitors use? This report allows you to track the internet service provider (ISP) domains to which the user resolves. The domain is determined by the internet service that owns the user's internet protocol (IP) identifier.

 

If you have multiple domains with the same website content, which domains do visitors visit? This report shows the total number of pageviews that each domain received. If a domain appears on this report that is not one of your domains, the domain in question points to a website that has your urchin.js link (and possibly other content owned by you).

 

Which connection speeds are your visitors using? Optimizing your site so that it loads quickly for most visitors can result in higher conversion rates and more sales.

 

This report provides an overview of the different kinds of sources that send traffic to your site. The graph shows traffic trends; the pie-chart and tables show the traffic sources driving the trends. "Direct Traffic" is visits from people who clicked a bookmark to come to your site or who typed your site URL directly into their browser. "Referring Sites" shows visits from people who clicked to your site from another site. "Search Engines" shows visits from people who clicked to your site from a search engine result page. Use this report to understand where your traffic comes from. Does the mix of traffic between direct visitors, referrals, and search engines fit your objectives and marketing plan? By setting a comparison date range, you can see whether the top referrals and/or top keywords have changed.

 

How do the people who clicked a bookmark to come to your site or typed your site URL into their browser compare to the "average" visitor to your site? Direct traffic can include visitors recruited via offline (i.e. print, television) campaigns. Segmenting Direct traffic according to City can be a quick way of determining whether people in specific markets are responding to your offline campaigns.

 

How do the people referred from other sites compare to the "average" visitor to your site? The graph shows overall trends. Advertising fees vary significantly from site to site. What allows one site to charge two times as much as another site is asking regarding a similar listing? Look for a low bounce rate, a high Pages/Visits, and a high average time spent on the site. If you have an ecommerce site, you can evaluate these links based on the number of transactions and the total revenue generated from the referral.

 

How does search engine traffic compare to traffic as a whole to your site? The graph shows overall trends from search traffic. You can see how any metric (e.g. bounce rate, conversion rates) performed over time for your search traffic.

 

This report lists all of the kinds of traffic your site receives. You can see your traffic grouped by Source and Medium. Use this report to compare different kinds of traffic. For example, you can determine whether unpaid search referrals from a specific search engine are more or less profitable than referrals from a specific site. By comparing this metrics, you can determine how much you should pay for ads on different referrals.

 

The graph shows overall trends from this keyword. You can see see how any metric (e.g. bounce rate, conversion rates) performed over time for this keyword.

 

Campaigns listed in the table are AdWords campaigns, campaigns that you have created by using the utm_campaign custom tag, and "not set" which includes all other traffic to your site. Campaign performance can be a useful high-level view of the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives. This report includes all traffic to your site and you can segment this traffic in different ways. You create a new campaign each time you use a new utm_content tag in a referral link. For example, if you add "utm_campaign=mynewsletters" to all of your newsletter links that point to your site, you will see a "mynewsletters" entry in the list of campaigns. You will also see your AdWords campaigns listed in this report. You can also create campaigns to track offline campaigns such as TV or print ads.

 

How do your AdWords ads (and other types of ads that you have tagged with the utm_content tag) compare against each other? AdWords ads, ads you have tagged, and "not set" (all other traffic) appear in the table. Ads with high clickthrough rates show that the copy is effective at getting the user to click, while high bounce rates, for example, indicate a need for landing pages that are consistent with what the ad promises. You can monitor conversion rates for each AdWords ad you run, regardless of which Ad Group or Campaign it's in. As long as the headline (the first line of text in each ad) is unique for each ad, you'll see a line item for each ad in this report.

 

How do the people referred from your AdWords Campaigns compare to the "average" visitor to your site? This report includes all visits from AdWords. Use this AdWords Campaign report to see its component Ad Groups and Keywords. It displays the AdWords cost, impression, and ROI data useful for monitoring the profitability of your AdWords Campaigns and keywords. You can organize your AdWords campaigns around geographic regions and, as a result, track ROI by geographic market. This can be helpful as you tailor your keyword buying for each market. For example, if you target advertising to diverse markets like California (U.S.) and Mexico, you might consider setting up a separate Campaign for each one. You can even select a target language for each Campaign. Note, however, that you'll need to write your ads in the language you've selected for that Campaign.

 

Where do your AdWords ads appear on Google search results pages and how much influence does search position have on visits, conversions, and other metrics? Use this report to determine your optimal search position for each keyword and plan your bidding accordingly. Click "view result" next to any keyword to see how search position correlates with Visits, Time on Site, Conversion Rate, etc.

 

This report provides an overview of pageview volume and lists the pages (Top Content) that were most responsible for driving pageviews. Entrance Points allows you to monitor the bounce rates for your most important landing pages. Consider redesigning any of the pages listed here that have a high bounce rate.

 

Which are the most commonly viewed pages on your site, and how are they used? The table lists all of the pages which were viewed on your site. A high bounce rate indicates a landing page that should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it. A high Time on Page may indicate content that is particularly interesting to visitors. The significance of Exits varies according to each page. For example, it may be common for visitors to exit your site from a receipt or "thank you" page because they have completed a conversion activity. In contrast, a high number of Exits from a non-goal page (from a funnel page, for example) may indicate that the page is confusing or that it generates user errors.

 

Which are the most commonly viewed groups of pages on your site (grouped by title), and how are they used? This report provides the same information that is in the "Top Content" report, but aggregated by title tag value.

 

How popular is each page on your site and how important is the page to your business? A high Bounce Rate indicates a landing page that should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it. A high Time on Page may indicate content that is particularly interesting to visitors. The significance of Exits varies according to each page. For example, it may be common for visitors to exit your site from a receipt or "thank you" page because they have completed a conversion activity. In contrast, a high number of Exits from a non-goal page (from a funnel page, for example) may indicate that the page is confusing or that it generates user errors.

 

How effectively do your landing pages entice visitors to click deeper into your site? You can lower bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to their associated ads and referral links and placing a clear call-to-action on each landing page.

 

From which pages do people exit your site? The significance of Exits varies according to each page. For example, it may be common for visitors to exit your site from a receipt or "thank you" page because they have completed a conversion activity. In contrast, a large number of Exits from a non-goal page (from a funnel page, for example) may indicate that the page is confusing or that it generates user errors.

 

Every site usually has several goals. Examples of goals include requests to be contacted by a sales representative, email registrations and views of a product specification page. Assigning values to your goals allows you to compare the per-visit-value of referrals and keywords. To value a goal, consider how often the visitors who reach the goal become customers. If, for example, your sales team can close 10% of people who request to be contacted, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to your "Contact Me" goal. In contrast, if only 1% of mailing list signups result in a sale, you might only assign $5 to your "email sign-up" goal.

 

For non-ecommerce sites, goal conversions are the primary metric for assessing how well a site fulfills business objectives. Use the graph to identify conversion trends for any one of your goals or for your overall conversions and conversion value.

 

For non-ecommerce sites, goal conversions are the primary metric for assessing how well a site fulfills business objectives. Use the graph to identify conversion trends for any one of your goals.

 

For a non-ecommerce site, Conversion Rate is the primary metric for assessing how well marketing, site, and content work together to achieve business objectives. Conversion Rate is the percentage of visits that result in the visitor taking an action that you have defined as important to your business.

 

This report shows the pages that count towards the goal and the number of times each of these pages was viewed. This report is useful for verifying the specific goal pages that were logged, since a goal may be defined as a directory or a collection of pages. You can select a goal from the pull-down menu. Make sure that the page you set as a goal can only be reached by completing a conversion activity. Otherwise, you will have inflated conversion rates. Use this report to see which pages actually counted towards conversions. If you see pages listed in this report that you don't consider to be goals, you may wish to set a more specific goal.

 

How do visitors actually arrive at your goals? This report lists the navigation paths to the selected goal and shows the number of conversions that each path represents. This report is different from the defined funnel reports because it shows the different navigation paths that were used to reach a goal, instead of tracking entrances to and exits from funnels you have defined. This report is particularly useful for sites that are heavily cross-linked because it can help you gain insight into "required" content that visitors need to see before they are comfortable with converting.

 

Goal Value is the total revenue realized from ecommerce or goal conversions. This report shows the monetary value produced by goal conversions on your site. This value is derived by multiplying the number of goal conversions by the value that you assigned to each goal. A good way to value a goal is to evaluate how often the visitors who reach the goal become customers.

 

Goal Abandoned Funnels shows the number of times a visitor started a conversion activity without completing it. The funnels tracked for this report are those that you established when you defined your conversion goals. You can minimize abandoned funnels by designing easy to complete conversion steps that will be accepted and clearly understood by your visitors. The easier it is visitors to reach their objective, the more likely it is they'll convert. Make sure the next steps are always clear and that you aren't asking for too much from your visitors.

 

At what point do visitors who begin a defined funnel process abandon it? You can see number and percentage of visitors who continued during each step. You can also see how many people abandoned each step and where they went or how people arrived into the funnel and where they came from. The easier it is for visitors to reach their objective, the more likely they'll convert. Consider carefully how much information you need to ask for. Do you need to ask your visitors to select a city from a form when they already give you a zip code? Use this report to identify steps where visitors lose interest. Go back and tighten up these critical pages. Make sure the next steps are always clear and that you aren't asking for too much from your visitors.