Below are some explanations to understand the typical Google Analytics Report metrics. We’ll use the example below to help aid explain each term.
Sessions
A session occurs when someone arrives at one of your website pages, through any means. The session includes all the pages that one person explores on your website during that one session.
In the above example, this website had 89 visits this week.
The bounce rate is a bit more complicated, but simply put it represents the percentage of people who leave after viewing only one page on the website. Google’s definition: “Bounce rate is the percentage of visits that go to only one page before exiting a site”.
It’s important to note that many people visit a website just to get the phone number or address, which adds to the bounce rate. Bounce rates vary widely from industry to industry and web page to web page. Typical bounce rates for business/services websites is between 45 – 55%.
In the above example, this website has a bounce rate of 51.6%, so just over half the visitors to the site only stayed on the homepage.
Pages/ Visit
During any given visit, a visitor might view multiple pages on a website. This shows the average number of pages viewed per visit.
In the example, the average number of pages viewed per visitor is 2.57.
Average Visit Duration
This shows the average amount of time spent on the website per visit. Both average visit duration and the average number of pages visited can be affected because many visitors have a specific goal in mind when visiting your site, for example, to find your phone number, submit a quote request, etc.
In the example, the average time spent during each visit is 1:23. You can discern a lot about engagement when comparing this number to the pages/visit metric. By dividing avg. visit duration by pages/visit, we learn that visitors are averaging 32.3 seconds per page.
Source/ Medium
We break down all the above metrics per source of traffic in descending order. This gives you a good idea of where most of your traffic is coming from.
The 3 main types of traffic are
- Organic: Natural searches from visitors find your site from a search engine.
- Direct: Visitors typing in your website address directly.
- Referral: Links from other websites.
In the example, the majority of the traffic is coming from Google searches, and then from direct visitors.
Get started on simplifying your marketing & growing your business by contacting StructureM today!
