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Google Analytics: Viewing Traffic Reports

Analyze tons of data about your ministry website visitors

After you add your Google Analytics account number to your iMinistries website, you'll need to wait 24 hours for data to accumulate on your GA profile. When your data is complied, you can view any of the dozens of Google Analytics reports by clicking the View Reports link at the top of your Analytics screen.

Types of Reports

Important reports in the Content section:

Overview: lists pageview volume and lists the pages (Top Content) that were most responsible for driving pageviews.

Top Content: Which are the most commonly viewed pages on your site, and how are they used? The table lists all of the pages which were viewed on your site. A high "Time on Page" may indicate content that is particularly interesting to visitors.

Top Exit Pages: From which pages do people exit your site? It may be common for visitors to exit your site from a receipt or "thank you" page because they have completed a conversion activity. But a large number of exits from a news item, blog, or event pagemay indicate that the page is confusing or uninteresting.

Important reports in the Traffic Sources section:

Overview: Shows the different kinds of sources that send traffic to your site. The graph shows traffic trends. The pie-chart and tables show what is driving the trends. How did your website visitors get to your site: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, or Search Engines?

Direct Traffic: How do the people who clicked a bookmark or typed your site URL into their browser to visit your website compare to the "average" visitor to your site?

Referring Sites: How do the people referred from other sites compare to the "average" visitor to your site? The graph shows the overall trends in traffic volume from referrals while the table lists the sites driving the trends.

Search Engines: How does search engine traffic compare to traffic as a whole to your site? The graph shows overall trends while the table lists the search engines driving the trends. (Read our blog entries on how to improve your Google search results.)

Keywords: How does traffic from search keywords compare to traffic as a whole to your site? The graph shows overall trends while the table shows the keywords driving the trends.

Important reports in the Visitors section:

Visitors Overview: How many new and returning visitors came to your site and how extensively did they interact with your content? This traffic overview allows you to drill down into aspects of visit quality (i.e. average pageviews, time on site, bounce rate) and visit characteristics (i.e. first time visitors, returning visits).

Visits: The number of visits your site receives is the most basic measure of how effectively you promote your site.

Pageviews: Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed on your site and is a general measure of how much your site is used.

Average Pageviews: Average pageviews is one way of measuring visit quality. A high Average Pageviews number suggests that visitors interact extensively with your site. A high Average Pageviews results from one or both of:

Appropriately targeted traffic (i.e. visitors who are interested in what your site offers)
High quality content effectively presented on the site.

Conversely, a low average pageviews indicates that the traffic coming to the site has not been appropriately targeted to what the site offers or that the site does not deliver what was promised to the visitor.

Time on Site: If visitors spend a long time visiting your site, they may be interacting extensively with it. This can sometimes be misleading because visitors often leave browser windows open when they are not actually viewing or using your site.

Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors.

New vs. Returning: A high number of new visitors suggests that you are successful at driving traffic to your site while a high number of return visitors suggests that the site content is engaging enough to keep visitors coming back. You can see how frequently visitors return and how many times they return in "Recency" report and the "Loyalty report," both under "New vs. Returning" in the Visitors section.

Map Overlay: Use this map to visualize visits by geographic region, country, and city.

Length of Visit (Visitor Behavior): Length of visit is a measure of visit quality. A large number of lengthy visits suggests that visitors interact more extensively with your site. The graph allows you to visualize the entire distribution of visits instead of simply the ‘Average Time on Site’ across all visits.

Depth of Visit (Visitor Behavior): Depth of visit is a measure of visit quality. A large number of high pageviews per visit suggests that visitors interact extensively with your site. The graph allows you to visualize the entire distribution of visits instead of simply the average pageviews per visit.

Terms Used By Google Analytics

Visits vs. Visitors

Analytics measures both visits and visitors in your account. Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site. If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session.

The initial session by a user during any given date range is considered to be an additional visit and an additional visitor. Any future sessions from the same user during the selected time period are counted as additional visits, but not as additional visitors.

Pageviews vs. Unique Pageviews

A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview will be recorded as well.

A unique pageview, as seen in the Top Content report, aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique pageview represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.