Google Analytics has been in the run for over a decade now. This popular tool became famous for its cutting-edge website analytics and fantastic ability to help owners with insights about their websites, which was once a dream.
Here, will have a detailed discussion about Google Analytics for beginners. However, before we begin, you should know that users are always significant. They are those assets that help you earn through your online services.
They are the backbone of any online business. So, it is essential to know about them and track them to provide the best possible user experience and gain credibility for your business. That is where Google Analytics comes in.
Google Analytics is a free web analytics service provided by Google. It offers the basic tools for analysis and statistics used for marketing and SEO (search engine optimization.) The information and performance of a website about the visitors are analyzed and monitored with the help of Google Analytics.
Along with providing the most popular and important sources of user activity, it also includes important information about the effectiveness of the initiatives and the marketing campaigns the company is taking, as well as keeps check on how a customer completes tabs.
It tracks what customers have in their carts, what they are purchasing, or what they are looking for on your website. Moreover, it identifies the patterns and trends in a customer’s behavior and gathers demographic data.
The latest version of Google Analytics is GA4 and came into action in October 2020. Google Analytics 4 is an upgrade over the previous iterations. Machine learning is used now instead of third-party cookies to improve data accuracy. Moreover, this provides an entirely new user experience. Here are some of the features of GA4:
Even though GA4 is the updated form of Universal Analytics, there are a few differences between the two. After the update there have been changes in some aspects which are quite significant.
| Matric | Universal Analytics | Google Analytics 4 |
| User | Total number of users | Total number of active users/who triggered an event |
| Session | When a user is engaged 30 minutes timeout The session again restarts at midnight Restarts when a new campaign is triggered | The session-start event triggers it 30 minutes timeout |
| Preview | Total pages seen | Number of pages the user viewed This combines the app screens and the pages viewed |
| Conversions/Goals | Admin-determined user actions define the goals One conversion per goal per session | Admin defines the conversion events Every instance is counted and considered |
| Bounce Rate | Single page sessions | Uses “engagement rate” to figure out no-active sessions |
| Event Count/Total Event | Total events are calculated after counting event action, event category, and event label | Event count is for every action the user took on the site, including page-view events |
If you are looking into Google Analytics for beginners, then start with what it is and how it works. It is a platform that collects data from websites and different apps and creates a detailed report to provide insights about your business. You can track all the on-page SEO and off-page SEO tasks in Google Analytics as well.
If you want to measure a website, you need to create a Google Analytics account first. After that, you must add a small JavaScript measurement code to all the pages on the website. Whenever a user lands on your page, the tracking code collects pseudonymous information regarding how the user interacts.
For the Google Store, the measurement code can show the number of users who visited a page that sells households over a page that sells drinkware. Moreover, it can also tell us how many users are buying an item after tracking whether the user made it to the purchase confirmation page.
The measurement code also collects information from the browser. For instance, setting the language, the kind of browser you are using, the device and the operating system in which the browser is running.
It collects the traffic source that brought users to begin with in the first place. It could be from a search engine, email marketing campaign, or a simple advertisement that they clicked on.
When this code collects data, it collects all the information together and then sends it to Google Analytics, then processes it into a report. When analytics collects data, it organizes and aggregates it depending on specific criteria, like whether it is a desktop or a mobile or which browser they use.
There are also configuration settings, which allow you to customize how you want to process the data. For instance, you can apply a filter and ensure that the data does not include any developer or company traffic.
A metric is a quantitative measurement unit, and it is universally accepted. Google Analytics lets customers monitor up to 200 metrics to assess their website’s performance. Some of the measures are more beneficial for some firms than others. Here are the most used metrics.
1. Users: A first-time visitor, or a unique website visitor, is known as a user.
2. Bounce rate: Bounce rate is the number of visitors who just look at one page of the website and do not get into the website anymore. The servers of Google Analytics get just one request from each visitor.
3. Sessions: This is a record of visitor reaction over 30 minutes on the website.
4. Average Session Duration: A visitor’s average time on the website.
5. Percentage of New Sessions: The proportion of visitors visiting the website for the first time.
6. Pages Per Session: The most frequently a visitor sees a page in one session.
7. Goal Completions: How often does a visitor perform a desired activity? It records that. Moreover, it is referred to as conversations.
8. Pageviews: The number of pages a user visits.
Dimensions are categorical or deceptive qualities or labels that Google Analytics uses for organizing and classifying data. For example, if you want to find out the average session duration over various areas, then you must use the dimension “Region.”
When you want to elaborate on the concept of metrics, you must use measures such as “average session length.” You can rearrange the dimensions in Google Analytics. Some of the typical examples of dimensions are:
Businesses often use Google Analytics to collect different data types for promotional purposes.
This provides a better insight into how the visitor landed on the website. There could be several ways through which the customers arrive, like sponsored search engine results, social media links, organic search outcomes, or simply putting the URL in the browser. It is important that you understand the user acquisition data to maximize your website traffic.
This data explains how the user interacts with the website and their level of engagement as well. This includes the time they spend on every page, the number of pages they visit, whether they interact with the posts and videos of the website, and everything in between.
This data is later used to develop web layouts that link users more effectively with the information they want and provide a better user experience. When you optimize user experience depending on the user behavior data, it is going to increase conversions and sales.
There are various benefits of Google Analytics. However, that does not mean that there are only advantages of Google Analytics and no disadvantages. In General, customers like this platform because it is flexible, cost-free, and powerful. Moreover, here are some of the advantages listed:
Certain weak points of Google Analysis potentially affect the accuracy of the data. Those are:
This was a precise demonstration of Google Analytics for beginners. However, it works just fine with other partner products and Google Solutions for helping users improve their performance and marketing process.
For instance, you can connect Google Analytics with Google Ads. This way you can gather data from Google Ads through Google Analytics. They can seamlessly connect with other data sets to support decision-making and business analysis.
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A self-proclaimed Swiftian, Instagram-holic, and blogger, Subhasree eats, breathes, and sleeps pop culture. When she is not imagining dates with Iron Man on Stark Tower (yes, she has the biggest crush on RDJ, which she won’t admit), she can be seen tweeting about the latest trends. Always the first one to break viral news, Subhasree is addicted to social media, and leaves out no opportunity of blogging about the same. She is our go-to source for the latest algorithm updates and our resident editor.
