Google Analytics - Part 2

In the Part 1 Introduction of our series on Google Analytics we’ve explained how you can work with the statistics data of a website. In this sequel, we’ll become familiar with the first two important indicators. If you’ve already set up the Google Analytics tracking code on your site, the following tips can be applied in practice.

The important parameters on which we’ll focus are as follows:

1. Visits and Unique Visitors
2. The percentage of new visits

After logging into Google Analytics, you’ll see similar data on the first page.

Visits and Unique Visitors

“Visits” is the number of visits to a website for the selected period. When comparing two equally long periods, you may notice that the number of visits between the two periods increased by almost 11%. An important indicator is “unique visitors”. Their number is made up of visitors who were counted only once regardless of the number of visits in the selected period.

Tip: When comparing the two periods, try to show periods beginning and ending on the same day of the week (in our example, each group of four weeks from Monday to Sunday). It is easier to identify cyclical fluctuations by week.

A very useful feature is adding notes to the chart. Click the arrow below the graph (as the green arrow shows in the image above), and then double-click the date on which you wish to add a note. You can add important events, such as published articles in newspapers, sending a newsletter or launching an advertising campaign. In the future, you will have a complete overview of which activity has been effective and which not, and also discover regular fluctuations in traffic to your site.

Tip: You might find it interesting to check where your visitors come from, if you check the column on the left under “Audience” – “Demographics” – “Location”. If you find that many people who visit your site come from abroad, it’s recommended to create a multilingual website.

Click the “Location” button to see more detailed information about the regions which have the highest visits.

% New Visits

The percentage of new visits reflects the percentage of visitors who visited the site for the first time in its entire existence. The higher the percentage of new visitors, the higher the ability of your website to attract new customers.

Tip: Attention! The growth of new visits may be negative. This means that people are returning to the site less often. You put in major effort to bring new customers, but they don’t refer back to your website and don’t repeat the purchase.

In the next part of our series on Google Analytics you’ll discover the powerful bounce rate metric and we’ll show you what you can reveal about your website.

Kateřina Štarhová (7 posts)

Suffers by Google Adwords addiction, loves experiments and innovations, very positive and decisive. She is dedicated to the satisfied users and focuses especially to the Webnode promotion and social networking. She takes care of the italian speaking community.