Just so we’re up to speed – “Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand” (wikipedia). Google Analytics is a digital marketing tool offered by Google, that integrates well with other Google tools, almost every type of website, and data tools like Cruxdata.
Well, how does Google Analytics work?
“Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising ROI as well as track your Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications” (Google). Essentially, Google Analytics let’s you understand what sources your website traffic is coming from, what links/buttons/pages/forms visitors are engaging with, which visitors are buying, their average visit time, and more. Google Analytics offers a deep look into your website's visitors, with as little or as much complexity as you're comfortable with. Google Analytics collects data from your website after you install a snippet of code in your website’s codebase.
To get the most out of Google Analytics, you need to understand some basic terminology. The following definitions will help you navigate Google Analytics reports and identify trends and patterns that can help your website succeed.
Visitor
A visitor is someone who arrives at your website. They could be a person or a program that requests web pages from your site.
Sessions
A session begins when someone requests a page on your website and ends when they either leave the site or start another session. A session can include multiple page views, events and ecommerce transactions.
Pages/Visit
This metric is the number of pages viewed per visit to your site. If a visitor spends 3 minutes on your website and views 3 pages in their visit, their pages/visit would be 1 (3 / 3 minutes).
