How To Use Google Analytics | Beginners Guide

On the Home page of Analytics, you see all the website properties which you have added. In front of the property, the number of Sessions, Average Sessions Duration, Bonus Rate and Goal Conversion Rate click on any website property to see all the data about the selected property.

Reporting Tab of Analytics

Reporting Tab of Analytics

Reporting Tab shows you an overview of your selected property. This overview includes a graph which shows the New Visitors and Returning Visitors, a table including Demographics, System, Mobile and Language etc.

Customization Tab of Google Analytics

Customization tab has information about the custom reports which you create. When you create a report the report is called custom report.

Click on the +New Custom Report button, enter a title for your report.
Select the type of report from Explorer, Flat Table, or Map Overlay.
On Metric group field click on +add metric button choose your metric type here I choose the Goal which I had created for my site.

Report Name, Metric Group in Google Analytics

In the same way, select the Dimension Drilldowns
If you want to limit the report of your custom report then you can add the filters.
Select All views associated with this account under the view option.

Filters and Views in Google Analytics Customization Tab

Admin Tab of Google Analytics

Admin Tab of Google Analytics

Click on the Admin tab to get access to administrative features. You can use these tools to create new tools, change user permission and much more etc.
This page has three columns one is ACCOUNT second is PROPERTY and third is VIEW.
This was a little about the top menu of Google Analytics.

Reports of Any Analytics Property

Now come back to the Home page of your Analytics. Click on any property and you will see a new menu at the left side of your selected Analytics property. These options are as follow.

• Dashboards
• Shortcuts
• Intelligence Events
• Real Time
• Audience
• Acquisition
• Behavior
• Conversions

Dashboard

Dashboard

Here you can create small scale reports using Analytics apps. Users can also save cards on the dashboard. You can create as many reports as you want but these reports cannot be shared and are only visible on the mobile app.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts

Using this option you can create shortcuts to different parts of your Analytics account. For example, you often see some reports you can set the shortcuts of these reports here so that you can easily access them. It is same as we create different shortcuts on Windows to access them easily.

Intelligence Events

Intelligence Events

This option is further divided into four sub options which are Overview, Daily Events, Weekly Events, and Monthly Events.

• Overview: It shows the summary of different alerts triggered for active date ranges.
• Daily Events: Data changes day to day due to automatic and custom alerts triggered
• Weekly Events: Data changes week to week due to automatic and custom alerts triggered
• Daily Events: Data changes week to week due to automatic and custom alerts triggered

Real Time

Real Time

In my view the real time is the best option in the Analytics there are many but the real time is the best one as it allows us to monitor the activities as they happen on our site or blogs. It also tells which posts or pages users are interacting with. It also allows us to monitor the goal conversion in real time.

Audience

Audience report provides us about 50% information about our audience in whole Analytics. It provides reports insight it the characteristics of our audience. It has also many sub options like to follow;

Audience

• Active Users: Lets you track the active users of your site for 1, 7, 14 or 30 days.
• Lifetime Value: You can understand how different users are valuable for your site based on the lifetime performance.
• Cohort Analysis: Cohort is a group of users that share identical characteristics and this information is identified in this section.
• Demographics: Using this option you can understand about your visitors or users various information such as Operating System they are using, Age, Gender, Language, and country etc. this information is very useful for increasing the revenue of the sites using AdSense by targeting the ads according to this data.
• Interests: Makes it easy to understand the interests of the visitors. So that you can write contents according to the interests and also useful for targeting the Google Ads based on visitors interests.
• Geo: Geo tells the Language and location of your visitors. When you understand the language of visitors then you can target your ads more effectively, for example, your ads are in English but most users of your site use Italian you can use this option to improve the language of your site while the location describes from where you get most of the visitors.
• Behavior: Behavior means the how you impact on your visitors so that they come again to your site. For example, I visit on your blog what will you do on your site which makes me go again and again on your site.
• Technology: Tells you what your users uses to read to your sites I mean are they using computer or mobile? What is the browser your visitors uses? Etc. This will make you ready to change your site according to your visitors. As now people are moving from computers to mobiles so that you can design your website according to the mobile browsers and apps.
• Mobile (Devices): You will be aware that users are migrating from computers to mobile devices. This option tells you what device they are using what is the resolution of the screen of their devices etc.
• Custom: If you want to extend the scope of your different segments then you can use the Custom variable for this purpose.
• Benchmarking: This option lets you compare your Analytics data with other site or companies who share their data, by doing this you can get many benefits and knew something which you should do to improve your site.
• Users Flow: User flow mean the movement of users on your site. For example, if you want to know what visitors or users do on your site then you can use this tool.

Acquisition

Acquisition

The acquisition is just available for the website properties it cannot be used for apps. It can be used to find the sources of traffic on your site, for example, you can find either visitors have used a search engine to reach your site or they are directly reached at your site. How your campaigns are successful in attracting the visitors.

• Behavior: This report tells you how users use your site, how they interact with your site etc.

Conversions

Conversions

If you have created Goals on your Analytics account then you can find how many conversions your website has received. The path that was used to complete the goal. You can also see the number of conversions made from a specific country.

Viewing Data from Google Analytics

Once you have signed up for Analytics you will get started getting data from your Analytics account in next 24 hours. To see the data of your site login to your Google Account and go to the Google Analytics you will the Audience overview report. This report will be shown every time you log in to your analytics account but if you have many websites under one account all of them will be listed there from there you have to choose one.

Switch between different websites in Analytics

To switch between sites click on the arrow sign at the right top corner and select the site whose Audience overview report you want to see or click on the Home tab at the top and select the website whose audience overview you want to see.

Comparing Data of different days, week and months

If you want to compare data from different dates, weeks or months then you can do so easily. Click on the drop-down sign beside the dates. Tick the “Compare to” button and select dates to compare the data you are viewing.

Changing the Overview Duration

If you want to change the duration of the Overview you can change it to Hourly, Week, Month or Year. Hourly will show you the hourly reports in the same way Week will show the weekly reports, the month will show the monthly reports and year will show the yearly reports.

Getting Data from Graph and Metrics

You can also view data from the Graph and metrics by just hovering the mouse pointer over the graph and matrices. Hover the pointer over the Graph line will show you some details like a number of session on a specific date and day while hovering the pointer over the metrics will describe the simple definition of that metric.

New & Returning Visitors

On the right side of matrices, there is a round graph which will tell you the number of visitors which are new on your blog and the number of visitors which are returning to your blog. This can be helpful for finding the value of your site.

Demographics, System, Mobile

• Demographics describe the Language, Country and the City of the visitors.
• The system describes Browser, Operating System and Service Provider of the visitors.
• Mobile describes the Operating System, Service Provide and Screen Resolution of the visitors.

Select anyone from the above and click on the view Full Report link to view full report of the select item. In the full reports, you can get too much information such as the city from where you get the maximum number of visits the country from you get the maximum number of visitors in the same way the Operating system of PC and Mobile devices which your visitors uses.
Select the Screen Resolution under the Mobile option and click on the view full report link there you can see the most used resolution of the screen for the mobile device. You can edit your template or theme in the way.

Final Words

Google Analytics is must for every site. Especially for new sites because Google understands that this site is real and providing value to users. It also helps Google to understand better about the site stats. Keep in mind whenever you published your 1st post on your site, you’ll connect your site to analytics. It also helps you to check out your site progress. You check each and everything about your site progress. Its so easy to use for everyone just you have to understand all the above options and your job is done. Google analytics checks your site 24 hours and tells you real time stats.

There is no any best alternative then this one. It is Google’s property so we can say that it is safe and secure to use. No matter what is your site topic, it can analyse all the topics or niches. We almost mentioned all the features of this tool above. You can check them all carefully and can better understand your site. It tells you what user is experiencing on your site and how user behaving with your site. If you see any negativity of users, you can correct it and provide more value to users.

The main options are visitors and bounce rate. Basically these two features are enough to understand your site. But you’ll must check other options as well. Because sometimes, other options can also help you to boost your site in search engine. So, this was our guide about what is Google analytics and how to use it. We hope you definitely like it and appreciate our efforts. You can share this post with your friends and co-workers and help them to understand it. If you have any question left in your mind, you can ask from us in the comment section.