I think analytics get a bad rap (bad rep?).
When people hear “data” or “statistics” … their eyes can start to glaze over, and their minds wander back to what they had been eating earlier that day.
But there are so many nuggets of great info hidden in your analytics that stepping out of this part of your business is you doing yourself a disservice.
You don’t have to have a masters in statistics to understand an analytics report. You also don’t have to analyze every.single.piece of data that your particular program throws at you.
Start small and simple by focusing on these 3 must-track data-points as you revamp and refine your customer experience strategy. Working these 3 data-points into your tracking will ensure you stay, well, on track.
Since transitioning away from Universal Analytics in 2023, Google has since launched GA4 in the hopes of returning privacy to web traffic while still allowing website owners a glimpse into how their sites are used. GA4 is not perfect by any stretch, but it is a free option and it’s typically what I suggest business owners begin with. The recommendations here are all based on GA4 reporting.
#1 – Demographic
Google doesn’t collect as much demographic information as it used to, but what it does collect is useful for understanding who exactly your content is reaching. This is especially helpful as you deepen your understanding of your core audience … who ultimately will become your actual client or customer.
Demographic information is found under User > User Attributes. When you open the User Attributes menu, you’ll see a few options of reports you can explore.
- Overview – This report gives you a snapshot of the most basic demographic information you’d want to know about the traffic landing on your page like location, age, gender and interest groups. Looking at this helps you refine your understanding of who is accessing your site, which helps you write the copy that appeals to this audience. Even decisions about theme, aesthetic, whether to use humor, etc… can be determined based on the information here.
- Demographic Details – this report dives deeper into traffic by country. You can filter in other views to get additional pieces of information to bring a greater level of context to this report. If you reach an international audience, this is a good report to reference to understand just how far your reach is.
- Audiences – this report will default to “all users” which isn’t very useful on its own. If you add in a filter like age, gender, etc it gets more interesting and helps you understand how certain groups interact with your website.
- Tech Overview & Details – the next section down contains information about the type of tech users use to explore your website. You want to understand if you have primarily mobile or desktop users and make sure your website is optimized based on that information. It also tells you what type of mobile devices, and even what browsers are used. This is all very helpful from a technical standpoint when it comes to usability of your site (in other words: how easy is your site to use?).
#2 – Website Information
Under the Acquisition tab, Google Analytics will reveal the ways a visitor has arrived at your site as well as specific queries that brought them there.
In this section, Google has given you 3 reports, but the Overview is the best place to begin. Within the overview report, you can access the deeper levels of data that may interest you. What you’ll most want to pay attention to are the channels used to arrive at your website – how many people come organically? Directly? Via social?
Knowing the numbers behind these channels helps you better understand where to focus your efforts. For example, you may be spending hours of time on social media… only to find out it isn’t really bringing that much traffic. You have the option then to refine your social media strategy to get more traffic OR double down on a different channel that is bringing a lot of traffic.
#3 – Content Information
In GA4, the content reporting is less robust than it once was but under the Engagement area of the reports you can find what you need to know about the way your content performs.
Specifically, focus your attention on the Landing Page report. This report gives you the top pages and shows you how they’re being used. A huge part of content marketing success is having a deep understanding of where traffic goes on your site to consume content. The data in this report will help you refine your strategy, and also understand if your strategy is actually working.
Bonus #4 – Conversion Information
If you’ve set up conversion tracking in GA4, that information will be layered in to some of the above reports mentioned. This is very useful data because it provides meaning behind the numbers – it shows where you’re actually seeing a return on your investment of time and energy.
“Conversions” don’t just have to be money-makers. They can be email sign ups, contact form submissions, registrations, etc – any action that’s meaningful to the success of your business and provides value to your client or customer is a marketing conversion.
GA4 does include a Monetization section for those businesses using ecommerce. Otherwise, I’d recommend setting up conversion tracking in GA4 for your business so you can get the conversion data you need. Here’s a helpful tutorial.
Let’s Recap
So, to recap, you should be focusing on demographic, website, and content metrics within Google Analytics in order to round out the total picture of your customer experience strategy. Bonus – add in conversion data to provide a deeper level of context to the numbers.
If you had to choose only one metric to track, or if you needed an awesome starting point, it would be the Website reporting because this report will give you a snapshot of the overall health of your site and where you currently stand with customer experience. It will tell you how traffic arrives and what happens when they get there. This information is critical to understanding how well your website works to help you achieve your goals.
If you’re overwhelmed by this, have no fear! The “Overview” reports in each section of Google Analytics give you the perfect snapshot of that category of reports. Start there and begin analyzing what you see, building a habit of tracking week by week. Consistent tracking will help you identify trends, potential problems, and definite wins.
Do you think I missed anything? Let me know in the comments!
