Google Analytics Standard Reports are the built-in reports available from the left-hand side of the dashboard. These Google Analytics Reports are divided into five segments consisting of Real-Time, Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions. Real-time user reports provide data for top-ten pages about the number of active users on each page with the source. Audience reports furnish user info related to demographics, behavior, mobile usage, and industry. The Acquisition reports inform the source from where your users come from either search engines, social media, or referrals. In Conversion reports, available metrics call for evaluation in terms of value which can be either signup, subscriptions, leads, downloads, etc. Save, Import, and Share your Google Analytics Reports for a particular date range. Check your analytics from time to time using the scheduled email feature. Google Analytics Custom Report assembles data by drawing up dimensions and metrics. The customized data is then displayed in the way you want it.
Set up custom alerts in Google Analytics. The text or email you receive from these alerts let you know about issues that deserve your attention.
Google Analytics Reports: Standard Reports
Google Analytics offers the following standard reports by default.
- Real-Time
- Audience
- Acquisition
- Behavior
- Conversions
Google Analytics Reports: Real-Time
Real-Time Reports records activity on your website in real time as it occurs.
Google Analytics Reports: Real-Time Overview
Real-Time
Location
Location digs into data to show from which geographical location eg country, city etc users land upon your site.
Traffic Sources
Traffic Sources report shows how users are coming to your website. The data is arranged by medium eg direct traffic through email, social media or organic search, source, and the number of active visitors.
Content
The Content report shows which particular pages of your website, users are active at present along with the page URL, the page title, and the percentage & number of active users on that page. It breaks down your user data by device, enabling you to know which percentage of users access your website on desktop, tablet, and mobile.
Events
Events create custom events for interacting with your website eg playing a video or a download, click on Ads, buttons, etc. The data can be used to track events on your website as they take place. They are divided into Event Categories and Event Actions, to show which devices were used when firing the Trigger Event.
Conversions
Conversions report tracks the Real-Time completion of Goals that were set up in Google Analytics. It shows devices used during conversion and shows data by active users or goal hits within the last 30 minutes. Goals track the fulfillment of an activity that contributes to the success of business eg- purchases made, subscribe to the newsletter
Google Analytics Reports: Audiences
The Audience Report consists of the following segments-
Overview
The Overview report fig4 shows you how many visitors visit your website and how engaged they are? It begins with the number of users and the number of new users. The second pair of metrics is Sessions and the Number of Sessions per User. The trust is on the individual user, and on the total number of visits. It shows how many times the average visitor visits the website during the period of time under consideration. Both new users and the number of sessions per user are metrics that can be compared for past & present numbers.
Active Users
The number of users visiting your website for 1 day, 7, 14, and 28 days.
Lifetime Value
Lifetime Value is calculated using the formula- Customer Value X Average Customer Lifespan. It provides user data based on a day, week, or month. Understand the lifetime value of users to your business depending on their performance.
Cohort Analysis
A group of users having similar characteristics sharing a common behavior is called a cohort. In GA users having identical acquisition data are included in the same cohort. They are divided into four segments consisting of type, size, metric, and date range.
Audiences
A group of users that have a combination of behavior and like interests that assist you in your business. eg users who have purchased a product say within a year or within a month.
User Explorer
The assessment is made for individual users rather than group users. Individual behavior can be linked to their IDs. Set the user-ID feature in your properties and view data eg Bounce Rate, Average Sessions, Sessions, Transaction, Revenue, and Goal Conversion Rate,
Demographics
User behavior information pertaining to interest data about age and gender. Gender is either Male or Female. Age is categorized for groups 18-24 yrs, 25-34 yrs, 35-44 yrs, 45-54 yrs, 55-64 yrs, and 65+years.
Interests
Find reports related to interests in the three categories -Affinity, In-market segments, and other categories
Geo
The GEO report targets location and language of users and is relevant for international business.
Behavior
User behavior is reflected in reports such as new v/s returning customers, frequency & recency, and engagement. These metrics help evaluate the time visitors spent on your website and the pages they view.
Technology
Technology provides information about browsers your visitors use to navigate your site.
Mobile
For mobile, desktop, and tablet the reports provides data on acquisition, behavior, and conversion.
Cross-Device
Track your conversions for users who were initially in contact through mobile, but later switched to a desktop or a tablet for making a purchase.
Custom
These are advanced reports you create by the selection of dimension and metrics.
Benchmarking
Compare your data with aggregated industry data shared by other businesses.
Users Flow
Users Flow refers to the path your users follow while navigating through your website.
Engagement Metrics
Below find the common engagement metrics which when combined with other reports can give meaningful information.
- Pageviews tell us about the reach of a page. It shows how many times a page has been seen, either by the same person frequently or new visitors. This indicates the popularity of particular pages and posts.
- Pages per Session tells us whether visitors explore our website when they visit. Do they look at a number of posts/ articles? Do they come to read a single article or to get solutions to their query?
- Average Session Duration tells us on average how long visitors remain on the website.
- Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors that visit only one page.
Google Analytics Reports: Create a new audience
From the Admin tab, under Property navigate to Audience Definitions, and on expanding click on Audiences. Link Google Ads and links to your views to enable auto-tagging for all linked Google Ads accounts. Auto-tagging allows Analytics to automatically associate Google Ads data with customer clicks.
Define audiences based on:
- URLs
- CRM lists
- A fixed -page or an event
- The number of pages viewed or impressions served
A number of audience segment choices are available. They are standard selections as filter choices – All Users, New Users, Returning Users, and Users who visited a particular section of an app or website. A new option called Smart List segments the audience using AI to statistically find out which visitor audience can convert in further sessions.
Google Analytics Reports: Acquisitions
Acquisition Reports show where your visitors come from eg social media, search engines, or website referrals.
Google Analytics Reports: Acquisition Overview
The Acquisition overview fig6 gives a swift view of the top channels that drive traffic to your website along with related acquisitions, behavior, and conversion for each channel. It will show you how each channel drives conversions with respect to the goals that have been set.
All Traffic
All Traffic tracks traffic from all channels put together which could either be a particular search engine or a referral website or a social media site. Source refers to where traffic comes in. That is google or any referral website and medium refer to the traffic type viz paid or organic search etc. The Source/ Medium shows each combination of source and medium separately eg bing or Google organic search is shown separately. With Treemaps, you can analyze the performance of all of your acquisition channels. It can be used to visualize the performance of landing pages on your website and AdWords data & further drill-down into your email, paid media campaigns, or social media, for pinpointing top-performing messages, Ads, or posts.
Google Ads
Google Ads reports are used to optimize spendings on your PPC campaigns. The Acquisition-Behavior-Conversion shows users behaviors when they click on your Ads, with conversions and ROI (return on investment) and RPC (revenue per click). It gives you post-click performance metrics for your paid traffic through AdWords and tracks campaigns, individual keywords’ performance, keywords’ position & placement, bid adjustments, etc.
Google Analytics Reports: Search Console
Search Console reports are possible only if you have integrated it with Google Analytics and set up the webmaster tool account. It tracks how pre-click data is correlated with post-click data. Pre-click data implies impression, queries, etc and post-click data implies impression, bounce rates, etc. *Landing Pages are the pages on which users land by clicking on search results in Google. *Countries show a general view of impressions, clicks, and CTR by country. *Devices show impressions, clicks, CTR, and average position by device type -desktop, tablet, and mobile. *Queries are keywords that a user types in the browser to find your website. It shows the number of impressions of your website in search results, the clicks on these results, the CTR, along the average position of your website for that keyword.
Social
Social gives a summary of conversions linked to social networks and traffic from specific networks. It provides in-depth detail about the social activity on your website offering additional reports for drilling down and finding more relevant data.
Google Analytics Reports: Campaigns
Campaigns use UTM parameters [attached to the end of a URL that a user clicks] to track visitors who come from campaigns that have been set. When you click on such a campaign you can view the source and medium referred in the URLs UTMs parameters which give info about how the visitor has landed on your site from almost anywhere. In fact, check all the campaigns you have added to your website with details of organic & paid keywords and the cost associated with them.
Google Analytics Reports: Behaviour
Behaviour shows users activities on your website and
Site Content
Site Content shows the number of pages viewed, full data interaction across all pages/ segments eg content drill down, landing & exit pages. Behavioral flow can be measured in terms of content. Here exit pages are from where users exit your website, landing pages are the page on which the users land and content drill-down is the break up of data.
Site Speed
Site Speed is the browsers’ ability to quickly parse through the page and give speed suggestions. Page Speed Insights measures page timings, user timings and captures execution speed, performance data, and page loading times indicating where you are trailing behind.
Site Search
Site Search analyzes what users search before landing on your site. It shows what users look for and how they search before landing on a specific page.
Google Analytics Reports: Events
Events show users taking action with respect to content that can be tracked independently eg downloads, subscribe to the mailing list, etc
Google Analytics Reports: Conversion
Goals
Goals– To track conversions you need to have set up goals in google analytics. Examples of goals are subscribed to a newsletter, registering online and purchases, downloads or request for information, etc
An overview shows how your website is converting with respect to the number of goals completed along with their URLs & breakup, rate of conversion & abandonment, value, etc.
Reverse goal path shows the users path by listing URLs of three steps prior to the location of goal completion.
Funnel Visualization shows the percentage of people who proceed to the next step of funnel vs people abandoning at this stage. A high drop-off percentage means that your customers are not engaging which calls for a tweak to your site to remedy the situation.
Goal Flow shows the user behavior and navigation towards the goal in a predetermined manner.
E-commerce
E-commerce tracking in google analytics collects and measures data from transactions. Examples are billing and purchases, performance of various products etc.
Overview report shows an analysis of your website sales in terms of best sellers, conversions & quantity purchased, revenues etc
Product Performance report shows quantity and revenue of products your customers buy.
Sales Performance shows a breakdown of sales performance date wise to
Transaction report shows breakdown for each transaction such as order totals, tax, shipping and quantity.
Time to Purchase report provides insights into the average number of days and visits it takes for your prospective customers to make a purchase.
Google Analytics Reports: Multi-channel function
Multi-channel funnels are a set of reports under Conversions that allow you to visualize which channels resulted in a direct conversion for your site.
Overview- To view these reports you need to have set up goals or eCommerce tracking. From these reports, you can find out where your users arrive and the channel path they pursue prior to a conversion on your website.
Assisted Conversions- Some times a visitor may arrive on your site by clicking on an Ad. Later on the same visitor may arrive on your website through organic search and convert. With Assisted Conversions report any conversion within 30 days gives an assisted credit for the original channel. The report lets you know which channel assisted conversions and which channel provided the last engagment prior to conversions.
Top Conversion Paths, Time Lag & Path Length reports allow you to visualize users’ (top) conversion path for completing a conversion, how long (the time lag) it took to complete (no. of days), and the number of channel engagements (path length) they had prior to the conversion.
Attribution
Attribution measures conversion path to show the prospect journey from the first time they enter your site to the time they convert and become your customer.
The Model Comparison Tool compares attribution models and finds out how they impact the value of your marketing channels. It gives an overview of the success of different channels in promoting probable prospective clients to clients.
Google Analytics Reports: Custom Reports
Custom Reports of website data helps to improve your business by driving more leads, and converting more customers.
Create a New Custom Report
Click on the Customisation —> Custom Reports.
Give a Title for your report “New Custom Report” which is by default.
Give a Name for your report “Report Tab” which is by default.
Select type of report to Explorer. The three report types are
- Explorer is a standard Google Analytics report that includes a line graph and a data table with dynamic stuff such as a search and sort option, and a secondary dimensions.
- Flat Table is a custom report that is static and has a sortable table showing data in rows.
- Map Overlay is a report type that shows a map of the world including regions and countries in darker colors when there is either traffic or site engagement.
Click on +Add metric group and add from drop-down % New Sessions, Bounce Rate, and Average Session Duration fig16.
In Dimension “Drill downs” click on +add dimension and choose Browser Version from
Under Filters click on the +add filter and select Include, Browser Version & for Exact, type chrome in the box.
Click on Save fig18 to view the custom report you have created.
To access your custom report go to Customization and click the report you want to view.
Custom Reports use the metrics and dimensions found in standard reports and modify them to include the important information required for your business. Use Google Solutions Gallery, to choose the many available custom reports. To get results, understand how and why each of the reports was configured. A lot of data is available in Google Analytics and classifying it manually and analyzing it for insights can be a tedious process. That is why custom reports collect the data and present it in a manner that makes it easy for analysis.