We have a saying.
“You can’t growth hack if you don’t track.”
And, that stands true to this day.
Tracking is critical because it shows you where you’re at and if you’re reaching your goals.
Without it, you could easily waste resources, go the wrong direction, and be inefficient with your growth.
In today’s guide, we take a look at Google Analytics metrics that a growth hacker should be tracking on a regular basis and why they matter in your campaigns.
Sessions
If you’re relatively new to Google Analytics, it might be tempting to look at Page Views as your primary growth indicator, but that’s just a supporting indicator. Sessions tell you the real picture of how many people are actually looking at the pages on your site.
A session is an interactive exchange between a user and your website. It could be the result of them looking at more than one page, clicking on a contact form while they’re on the website, or a user spending time with your content.
It’s usually gauged in 30-minute intervals, so the moment a user gets on your website, Google Analytics starts tracking what they’re doing.
Let’s say a user happens to stumble on your site, and they browse through it for a couple of minutes and get distracted, but leave their tab open. If they return to it in less than 30 minutes, say 29, their activity will still be counted as a particular session.
But, sessions are not limited to 30-minute intervals. There are also time-based sessions where the beginning of a new day can trigger a new session on behalf of the user. If a session lasts past midnight, it’s counted as two sessions since it will trigger a new count for the next day. This is dependent on your time zone.
There are also sessions based on separate campaigns that you are running.
You should always place reasonable KPIs to track an increasing number of sessions as you move forward with your various digital marketing campaigns.
Don’t add drastic KPIs, a slight increase of 5-20 percent should suffice.
Bounce Rate
“Bounce” is a common term in digital marketing. In email marketing, it refers to an email that doesn’t go through its recipient, but with Google Analytics, it’s defined as a single-page session on your site.
If a person is led to your website but doesn’t perform any interaction with your site, such as clicking on another link in the page they landed on, and if they only trigger one request from the GA server, it’s counted as a bounce.
Now the bounce rate is calculated by the total of single-page sessions divided by the number of regular sessions.
Are High Bounce Rates Bad?
There is the notion that having a high bounce rate is terrible, but there’s another way of looking at it.
A high bounce rate, in general, can be considered harmful because it indicates that a user landing on your website might not be interested in going through it or examining other types of content that you have. It can only suggest that you have poor UI or UX in place, preventing users from enjoying your site.
This is especially true if the success of your website is highly dependent on visitors having multiple page experiences on your website. For example, a lead generation campaign that depends highly on them exploring your website.
However, if your only goal is to get new visitors to your site and you’re confident that they don’t have to interact with the entire site to be successful with your marketing campaign, having a slightly high bounce rate isn’t exactly a big deal.
There are still a lot of ways to lower your bounce rate.
- Optimizing your content
- Creating incentives for your users to keep staying on your website
- Improving the UX through better UI
Fixing your bounce rate is a long-term affair, and it involves a lot of testing to get it done right.
Pages Per Session
This tells you how many pages people check on average when they land on your site. Try to get it as high as possible with multiple links or avenues for your visitors to explore.
You can also improve this with better UI design.
Pageviews
A page view is any instance where a page is loaded or reloaded.
In the hierarchy of Google Analytics metrics, sessions take precedence over pageviews. However, both still matter in interpreting if people are landing on your website’s pages and if they are being converted.
New Visitor vs. Returning Vistors
This particular metric is interesting because it shows you how much of your traffic comes from new sources.
As a quick rule, you want a stable number of people coming in compared to your frequent visitors.
At BAMF, at least 10 percent of our traffic comes from new visitors, which suggests that our efforts for lead generation and brand awareness are bringing us additional traffic.
Average Time on Page
The average time on a page is one of the most straightforward metrics to look at because its name and purpose are self-explanatory. It measures how much time a visitor has spent on a given page, and the longer it is, the better that page performs compared to other pages on your site.
It might seem simple, but it does come with a lot of caveats.
The Time on Page is Dependent on the Content
Don’t feel bad if your average time on a page is low; this metric is still highly dependent on how much consumable content you have on that page. A page might still serve its purpose even though it only has 100 words if it functions, for example, as a landing page or lead magnet.
Your Other Pages are the Comparison
Unless you are doing something identical to your competitors, your primary benchmark if you’re doing well is the other pages on your site. How does one page stack up to the next? Are you creating better content? These are all questions that you should look into when analyzing this metric.
You Can Improve the Time on Page Over Time!
Growth hackers should also note that you can improve time on page for any page with new design features, changes to the overall UI, and the like.
Takeaways with Google Analytics Metrics
There are a lot of Google Analytics metrics that you could be tracking. Still, these form the most critical when generally determining if your website is making a difference in your digital marketing campaigns.
But, here’s the thing.
You can’t take any of these metrics by themselves.
They always have to be combined with other metrics to paint an accurate picture of how you’re doing.
For example, there’s always been a long discussion that a high bounce rate can be perceived as bad, but some organizations have had high bounce rates but still maintained a good balance of visitors.
Examine everything when you track.
That’s the proper way to do things.
