The Language report shows visitor data based on the language configured in the visitors’ operating system. That is important to keep in mind when using this report. Just because I have my operating system configured in American English does not necessarily mean I am visiting your site from the United States or that my native language is English. This is not a geographical report. Where it can be useful however, is in developing your site to meet your users’ needs and deciding where to put your marketing dollars. Do I have a large percentage of Spanish speaking visitors? Maybe French speakers come to my site in high numbers but bounce after viewing my landing page. Should I have a French version of my site?

Navigate to the language report from the menu on the left under the visitors heading. Your default view is going to be visits. But use the drop down box (1) to select a view that works for you and to compare metrics.

If you have goals set up be sure to gather insights from the goal conversion (2) tab. Do Japanese speakers (or those with their operating systems configured for Japanese) sign up for more newsletters or place items in their shopping cart more than English speakers? Maybe a newsletter geared towards that user’s language or products tailored for a Japanese market makes sense. Find the insights and use them to improve your users’ experiences on your site.

To help you use and understand this report better, here are few of the more common language codes:

de-at - German Austria
de - German Standard
el - Greek
en - English
en-ca - English Canada
en-gb - English United Kingdom
es - Spanish
fr-ca - French Canada
fr - French Standard
he - Hebrew
it - Italian Standard
ja - Japanese
ko – Korean
nl - Dutch Standard
pl - Polish
pt-br - Portuguese Brazil
pt - Portuguese Portugal
ru – Russian
zh-cn - Chinese PRC
zh-tw - Chinese Taiwan

Up Next: Visitor Reports – Visitor Trending - Visits

The New vs. Returning Visitor report does pretty much exactly what it says; shows you data for new visitors compared to returning visitors. The behavior of a new visitor can be quite different from that of a returning visitor. The insights gained from reviewing that data can be valuable for understanding your customers and tailoring your site to their needs.

The default view shows you Visits in a pie chart. But you can select other options from the drop down box (1) above the pie chart. Alternate views (2) such as a bar graph (2a) and comparison to site average (2b) are also available.

If you have goals and/or e-commerce (3) set up you have even more options to analyze your visitors.

In order to use this report effectively it will help to understand the distinction between these two types of visitors and some of the challenges associated with gathering 100% accurate data.

A visitor is recorded as a New Visitor when there has not been a cookie set for them previously.

They are recorded as a Returning Visitor when the cookie has already been set for them.

Simple enough, but there are a few things that could throw this off.

When you first install Google Analytics, ALL of your visitors will be new visitors. The cookies can’t be set until the GA code is installed and capturing data.  Keep that in mind before you worry that no one comes to your site more than once.

In addition, sometimes a returning visitor will get counted as a new visitor.

This is can happen when someone deletes their cookies or turns off cookies altogether.

Or, many people use multiple machines; a laptop in the living room, a desktop in the den and another computer at the office. They will often visit the same sites from each different machine.  But since cookies are machine and browser specific, that one person will be counted as new the first time they visit from each computer or if they use different browsers on the same machine.

Up Next: Visitor Reports – Languages

The Visitor Map Overlay report shows you where your visitors are coming from, allowing you to analyze metrics by geography. This report uses the visitor’s IP address to pin-point their location. The data is typically quite accurate, but keep in mind that is may not always be available and a certain number of visitor locations will show as “not set,” meaning GA was not able to determine where they were coming from.

Navigate to this report from the menu on the left. The default view will be visits by country. Each country is color coded by density with the darker the color the higher the reported metric from that location. A density key is in the lower left corner of the map.

Roll your mouse over each country to view the exact metric for that location.

Change the metric displayed on the map by opening the menu in the upper left corner of the map and selecting a new metric.

In this example I selected the new metric of bounce rate and the map below reflects these rates.

To drill down into more detail for a specific country click on it and your map will change to that country by itself. Keep drilling down to a smaller region (such as a state) and finally down to city by clicking on the territory or region.

Keep in mind when viewing the Map Overlay reports that aggregate metrics can be a bit misleading. Notice how closely this visits map matches a basic population distribution map of the United States. It stands to reason that you will get more visits from highly populated states such as California and while North Dakota, with its smaller population, results in fewer visits.

Percentage or per-visit metrics can be much more useful. When looking at the Percent of New Visits on the map below, North Dakota has a very different story than on the map above.

Up Next: Visitor Reports – New vs. Returning

The Visitor Benchmark report allows you to see how your site is doing compared to other sites in the same category as you. In order for this feature of Google Analytics to work at its best site owners need to opt in to share their data. But don’t worry; the data is a collective of all sites that opt in. Your personal site data will not be viewable by anyone else.

Navigate to this report from the menu on the left.

The default view shows you several metrics compared to all sites of a similar size.

To make more specific comparisons open the category list and compare your metrics against sites in your same category by selecting the category that matches your business and clicking the “select category” button.

Comparing your data against others in your category and similar sites can help you understand it better and even gain some insights. But remember the benchmarking data is only as good as the number of people sharing their data. The more that share the better the data becomes.

Up Next: Visitor Reports – Map Overlay

The Visitor Overview Report presents a snapshot of who is visiting you site and how long they are staying. It is essentially a beefed up hit counter that gives you a high level view of your site stats. But remember to drill down and compare date ranges to search out those useful insights.

Navigate to this report from the menu on the left.

From the visitor overview screen select the date range you want to view. The data displayed includes such things as visits, pageviews, time on site, and bounce rate.

For better insight use the date comparison feature and see how one time period is performing compared to a previous period.

Be sure to note that there is a difference between visit and visitor. Google Analytics measures both.  A visit is the individual session initiated by the visitor, or person.  If that visitor is inactive for 30 minutes or more or if they leave your site and return after 30 minutes their next session will be counted as a new visit but the same visitor.  In the examples above 251,213 visitors made 327,057 visits to this site.  Meaning some people came more than once.

Here are a few more definitions that will be helpful when viewing your reports:

Unique Visitors - Determined by cookies, this is the number of visitors that have not been to your site before.  Keep in mind that things such as deleting cookies, using different computers or browsers and multiple people using the same computers can skew these numbers somewhat.

Pageviews - Each instance of the browser loading a page.  For Google Analytics this is each time the tracking code is loaded by your browser.

Bounce Rate - A one-page visit.  In other words, a visitor comes to your site, views one page, then leaves from the same page they landed on without going to any others.

Up Next: Visitor Reports – Benchmarking

The final option available for sharing reports through Google Analytics is to email them. This can be done from within any of the reports with a simple click of a button and a few steps to set things up. As with most everything in GA, you have several options for emailing your reports; send it now, schedule it for future or repeated emailing or add it to an email you already have set up.

To access any of these options start by clicking the email button at the top of the report you wish to send.

Send Now:

Click the Email button then complete the information on the “Send Now” tab.
Send to others: Who do you want this report to go to? Fill in the recipients separated by commas. If you want to receive a copy be sure to select the “send to me” box.
Subject: Give the email a name so people are sure to open it and read the reports.
Description: Not required, but it gives your recipients an idea of what they are getting.
Format: Select from PDF, XML, CSV or TSV. The report will be in an attachment in the format you select.
Word verification: Need to make sure you are human.
Send: Click on the send button and you are done.

Schedule:

Click the Email button then complete the information on the “Schedule” tab.
The steps are the same as the Send Now option above up through the format step.
After that you have the option to select your date range and emailing schedule. If you want to include a date comparison check the box. Then click the schedule button.

Add to Existing:

Once you have set up one or more scheduled reports you can then add more reports through the Add to Existing tab. Check the email you would like to add the new report to and click the Add Report button.

Deleting or Changing Scheduled Reports:

If you no longer need a scheduled report to be sent out or need to change a report removing or changing it is simple. From the Settings menu on the left select the email option.

From this screen you can manage scheduled emails. Click on the email name to change it or on the trash can icon to the right to delete it.

Up Next: Visitor Reports - Overview

If you do not want to grant access to your Google Analytics account to everyone but still have a need to distribute reports among various people or departments you have the option of exporting data. You can select which reports are needed and make them available in several formats as necessary.  Rather than being done on a user basis like granting direct access, you can export at the report level with a few easy steps.

Step 1:
Log into Google Analytics.

Step 2:
Navigate to the report you wish to share.

Step 3:
Configure the report as you want it to be exported. Be sure to select your date ranges, dimensions, number of rows, etc.

Step 4:
Click on the export button and select the format you would like. Choose from PDF, XML, CSV or TSV.

Up Next: Sharing – Emailing Reports