3. How to work efficiently with GA
3.1. Set-up the Segments
If you want to see the statistics just for your country, first of all you need to set up your segments for the blog and the homepage.
To set the segments you need to click Advanced Segments.
In a. here you can select the the segments which are allready created. In b. you can create a new one and here we go.
Create your own segment by clicking on Advanced Segments and +New Custom Segment.
In the Name insert ex: Blog IT or Webnode IT (I recommend to you to insert this for your best orientation). Then in the green field you need to select Landing page, leave Containing and in the free field insert the domain path ex: blog.webnode.it or webnode.it. Scroll a little bit down and save your segment. Now you can start using it and see the stats only for your domain.
3.2. Set-up the right Period
Do not forget to choose the right period. Everytime you change it, also the graph changes. Here are some general recommendations for you.
- You may need to compare the periods. Click on the time in the right top corner and check Compare to previous. At that time the graph will show two lines of two periods and down you will see the overall changes between these two periods. It is a great thing to see, what changed since the last time.
- Select the same length and the same starting and ending date period – to understand better why – it is good to select from Monday to Sunday in 4 weeks to have one period. It is just 28 days, but when you compare it, you nicely see if there are some regular events ex: every weekend the visits on the e homepage drop down, or on Wednesday we receive the highest number of the visits or conversions.
3.3. Check the Conversions (Registrations)
Goals (registrations) – you know that every activity you do, should finally lead to the conversion of the visitors to our users. This metric is already set up in your account. You just need to find it in the confusing interface of GA. The conversions, of course, you will see only in the webnode homepage account, you will not find it in the blog account!
- The places where you can check the registrations, is in the menu – Traffic sources –> Overview –> All traffic. Then you just click under the graph on Goal Set1. Now you will see the Conversion rate in the table below. You cannot see directly the number of the conversions, but it is possible to count from the number of the visits the percentage of the people who converted to our users.
- The Goal Set1 you can check also on the – Search –> Organic and Paid, where you can see the keywords from the organic search, which have the real and direct impact on the number of the registrations.
Under the blue arrow you will see the sources and the percentage of the conversions.
3.4. Control the Bounce Rate
This metric you can easily find in the tables below the general overviews in the Traffic Sources menu item and also in the Content – Site content – All pages. In general the high bounce rate means the percentage of the visitors, who abandon your site immediately after they enter. So they don’t click more deeply in your website. And this is naturally bad. The average and normal bounce rate is about 40-50 %. You can use it especially in blog articles, where you can then decide which article you could optimize better to be more attractive, useful or engaging.
Here more tips about why is it important to measure and control the bounce rate and about how to lower the bounce rate.
3.5. Insert the Annotations
It is very useful to make notes about big events, changes, activities to be able to get back in the past and recognize the event that could have possibly made some impact on the results. For example – you create a new Landing Page and it can have a big impact on the registrations (positive and negative). Any note you can insert under the graph in the little arrow. First clic on the small arrow under the graph and then Create new annotation.
3.6. Track the visitors by adding Tracking Codes
The Adwords and the GA accounts and functions are very connected. You can use the tracking code and inser tit to the link in blogpost but also in our Webnode ads in the Adwords campaigns.
Then you are able to see the number of conversions in GA from the particular source. Use for it the URL builder.
See also the rules how to create the correct and unified URL’s.
https://www.zippykid.com/2012/07/30/tracking-visitor-behavior-with-google-analytics/
