Deciphering Google Analytics

One of the most powerful marketing tools available to you is Google Analytics (GA). If you’re not using it already, you should. It’s not only powerful- it’s free! But with all that awesomeness comes some confusing terms and concepts that can be really confusing. Hits, Reach, Bounce Rate, Behavior… it can all be a bit daunting.

For example, there’s this thing called Reach. In the real world that’s a measurement of distance. How far can your arm reach? But for web statistics it has a different meaning. And it’s one you should be familiar with if you’re interested in tracking the success of your online marketing efforts.

One of the main reasons we build a website or promote a product on social media is to generate traffic. Traffic we hope to convert to leads, sales, clicks… whatever your goal is. Hits is the common term we hear related to traffic. Unfortunately it’s probably the most misleading of metrics. That’s because, according to Google, Hits is actually measuring “an interaction that results in data being sent to Analytics.” There are different types of hits, but suffice to say: it’s not a measurement of people or users. Sessions is a much better metric to use. It shows you a traffic count of actual humans (well, mostly humans).

That’s just one samll example. For a great overview of Google Analytics, and what it’s measuring, take a look at this article from Lyfe Marketing:

15 Google Analytics Metrics Explained in Easy to Understand Terms

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