Essential metrics in Google Analytics

If you have a digital business, it is essential that you understand how the users who visit your website behave, the traffic you have, the quality of the visits, etc.; and one of the most reliable tools to do this is Google Analytics.

Google Analytics generates reports that track important metrics with which you can identify the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of your site. It is recommended that you evaluate and compare them weekly regardless of the industry you are in, as this way you will be able to measure if the changes you are implementing are working .

Below we share 5 basic metrics that you absolutely have to monitor, since they are those with which you can evaluate whether the traffic to your site is quality or not:

Users

Analytics distinguishes between two types of users, new users (who have never visited your site) and returning users (those who already know you). This tracking is done through cookies. Consider that this measurement is not 100% accurate. If a user uses different devices or browsers or rejects cookies, they could be counted as separate users.

Sessions

Sessions are different from users, a single user can visit the site several times, for example, if a user sees an ad from you on Facebook , they go to your page, check what your products or services are, close the window and then go an ad to Google and come back in, it is generating two sessions.

Pages per session

Pages per session are the number of pages visited by a user in each session. If you see that the pages per session are high, you could conclude that users are highly interested in seeing more of your products or services; That is, they are browsing your site and not simply viewing the page you direct them to.

Average session duration

As the name implies, this metric averages the time users spend on your website. Here it is worth evaluating how much time you consider is necessary to read or view all the information on your landing page.

If you estimate that it is 30 seconds and the average session duration is 5 seconds, it means that users are not staying to see everything you want to show them, so you should make adjustments to make your page more attractive and generate content of higher value.

Bounce Rate

This is one of the most important and interesting metrics that Analytics provides. The bounce rate indicates how many users are entering the site and leaving without generating any type of action, they literally “bounced”.

Depending on each website there are “good” or “bad” percentages; If the page you are directing to has the intention that the user learn more, register, or buy, you could consider a bounce rate of 70% as “bad.” This means that there are many areas for improvement or that the traffic you are bringing is not of good quality, since it is not interested in interacting.

You can access all these metrics in the Audience > Summary section and all you need is to create an account and connect your site through a plugin, or in more advanced cases, by inserting it into your site's code or using Google Tag Manager.

Remember that these metrics have to be interpreted together to reach solid conclusions that allow you to make improvements to your site, know the quality of visits, the performance of your campaigns and in more advanced cases, identify conversion paths and the funnel. your business.