Welcome to your first reporting session. Now that we have figured out how we need to place the GA code, where do we need to place the code, let's talk about reporting, the very reason we took up the challenge to implement GA in the first place.
In this post we will talk about 2 major groups of reporting, Real Time and Audience Reports.
1) Real Time Reports: These are the basic reports which are made available to you about the real time traffic on your website/application, where GA is implemented. You get the following reports in the Real Time reports section:
i) Overview: It gives an overview of the current traffic
ii) Location: Where traffic is coming from on your site, it is based on the IP location of the visitors.
iii) Traffic Sources: How people are coming on your site, direct traffic, search engine, email etc
iv) Content: What pages are being viewed, along with page titles.
v) Events: To Showcase if any events are being triggered (Yet to talk about events, so don't worry)
vi) Conversion: The conversion rate on your website, again something we will talk about soon.
Now, that we have talked about Real Time reports, let me give a strong warning to you all. Resist the urge of making decisions, at least important decisions, on the basis of Real Time data. I am saying this, not because you can't trust the Real Time data, but untill unless there is some major break down, which is easier to identify through real time reports, there is no practical way for any human being to take decisions on the fly. As an analyst you need to remember that we thrive on details, till the time we are not able to identify clear reasons for some actions, please do not take decisions on the fly. Rather, let the data settle down, do your complete analysis, and then take informed and analytically sound decisions.
After Real Time reports, we can see the Audience Reports.
2) Audience Reports: This section gives us the insight about the visitors on the website, not real time though. Normal Google Analytics has a lag time of around 24 hours, therefore fully processed visitor reports are available to you only after full processing is done, these are much detailed reports which have been processed by Google algorithms. Within this group you will find the following reports:
i) Overview: Again this will give you a brief overview of the health of your traffic.
ii) Demographic and Interests: Age, Gender, Affinity Categories, In-Market Segments, and Other Category reports are now available in GA. Information for these new reports is derived from the third-party DoubleClick cookie and device identifiers. When that cookie is not associated with a user, Analytics cannot conclude demographics and interest categories, and so these reports may represent only a subset of your users and not the overall composition of your traffic.
iii) Geo: It shows the location and language specific reports, which version/language of your website application attracted how many visitors. Where visitors are coming from to your site, etc.
iv) Behaviour Reports: These reports contain information like new Vs Return visitors. Note that GA identify visitors on the basis of cookie, not IP address. It gives you reports like how many days since last session, how long visitors wait to visit your site again. We also can see how much time people spend on our website through engagement reports.
v) Technology Report: It will show which kind of browser is most popular among your visitors. What kind of mobile device is popular among visitors.
vi) Benchmark Reports: Analytics users can now compare their results to peers in their industry, choosing from 1600 industry categories, 1250 markets and 7 size buckets. All you would need to do is check on option to share data with Google anonymously, and you will be able to see these reports.
vii) User Flow Reports: Here you can see how users move about your website, on the basis of dimension that you have selected, campaign, source etc. You can click on the right side to add steps and increase the level details.
In the further posts we will discuss about other reporting sections available to get a good view of the visitor online behavior.
In this post we will talk about 2 major groups of reporting, Real Time and Audience Reports.
1) Real Time Reports: These are the basic reports which are made available to you about the real time traffic on your website/application, where GA is implemented. You get the following reports in the Real Time reports section:
i) Overview: It gives an overview of the current traffic
ii) Location: Where traffic is coming from on your site, it is based on the IP location of the visitors.
iii) Traffic Sources: How people are coming on your site, direct traffic, search engine, email etc
iv) Content: What pages are being viewed, along with page titles.
v) Events: To Showcase if any events are being triggered (Yet to talk about events, so don't worry)
vi) Conversion: The conversion rate on your website, again something we will talk about soon.
Now, that we have talked about Real Time reports, let me give a strong warning to you all. Resist the urge of making decisions, at least important decisions, on the basis of Real Time data. I am saying this, not because you can't trust the Real Time data, but untill unless there is some major break down, which is easier to identify through real time reports, there is no practical way for any human being to take decisions on the fly. As an analyst you need to remember that we thrive on details, till the time we are not able to identify clear reasons for some actions, please do not take decisions on the fly. Rather, let the data settle down, do your complete analysis, and then take informed and analytically sound decisions.
After Real Time reports, we can see the Audience Reports.
2) Audience Reports: This section gives us the insight about the visitors on the website, not real time though. Normal Google Analytics has a lag time of around 24 hours, therefore fully processed visitor reports are available to you only after full processing is done, these are much detailed reports which have been processed by Google algorithms. Within this group you will find the following reports:
i) Overview: Again this will give you a brief overview of the health of your traffic.
ii) Demographic and Interests: Age, Gender, Affinity Categories, In-Market Segments, and Other Category reports are now available in GA. Information for these new reports is derived from the third-party DoubleClick cookie and device identifiers. When that cookie is not associated with a user, Analytics cannot conclude demographics and interest categories, and so these reports may represent only a subset of your users and not the overall composition of your traffic.
iii) Geo: It shows the location and language specific reports, which version/language of your website application attracted how many visitors. Where visitors are coming from to your site, etc.
iv) Behaviour Reports: These reports contain information like new Vs Return visitors. Note that GA identify visitors on the basis of cookie, not IP address. It gives you reports like how many days since last session, how long visitors wait to visit your site again. We also can see how much time people spend on our website through engagement reports.
v) Technology Report: It will show which kind of browser is most popular among your visitors. What kind of mobile device is popular among visitors.
vi) Benchmark Reports: Analytics users can now compare their results to peers in their industry, choosing from 1600 industry categories, 1250 markets and 7 size buckets. All you would need to do is check on option to share data with Google anonymously, and you will be able to see these reports.
vii) User Flow Reports: Here you can see how users move about your website, on the basis of dimension that you have selected, campaign, source etc. You can click on the right side to add steps and increase the level details.
In the further posts we will discuss about other reporting sections available to get a good view of the visitor online behavior.
