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

You can gather endless amounts of data from Google Analytics.  But if it never gets into the hands of the people who can analyze it and take action, it is essentially useless.  The value of that data increases once it is shared with your organization.  Google Analytics gives you three ways to share reports; direct access to GA, exporting reports and emailing reports.

Today we will touch on direct access.

Different people in your organization will need different information depending on their role.  Marketing, finance, sales, executives, and IT are all likely to want to see different data.  If you want everyone to navigate GA on their own and review the data as needed use the User Manager to set them each up with direct access.  It can be accessed from the setting screen of your account.

There are two access levels; account administrator and view reports only (user) and they only require a few clicks to set up.  Administrator accounts have access to all configurations and profiles.  Use this one sparingly.  Give someone view reports only access to control which profiles they have access to and limit their ability to make changes.

Up Next: Sharing – Exporting Reports

What is “segmentation?”  Essentially, it is the process of dividing something up into smaller pieces or groups based on like characteristics.  In Google Analytics it is the key to analyzing data.  We are segmenting by dividing our visitors up into groups to analyze their behavior on our sites and find insights.  There are many segmentation options available in GA.  Expand them further by segmenting the segments and analyzing combinations of segments.

In this traffic by search engine report you can click on any of the search engines listed to drill down on the data.

Now you can segment further by selecting any of the dimensions from the drop down box.  Here we are only viewing traffic from Google and have narrowed it down to the Country/territory dimension.  In this case, 79.36% of our total traffic comes from Google and 47.45% of that comes from the United States.  US Google users are a big source of this site’s traffic.  What does that say about who advertising might be best targeted to?  Always be on the lookout for the insights.

Remember from our earlier post that Google has recently changed the “Segment” option to “Dimension.”  This was a change in name only; all the segments remain the same.  We can segment by a multitude of metrics including traffic source, visitor location, user experience and even custom ones.

Up Next: Sharing Google Analytics – Direct Access

Your reports will default to showing the first 10 rows of data.  At the bottom right of the report you have several options for manipulating how much data is displayed and for navigating through the data.

1)    If you know the specific row number you want to view enter it here and that row will be brought to the first position on the page.
2)    Use this drop down box to select the number of rows to display at a time; up to 500.  Keep in mind that the more you show at once the longer the report may take to load.
3)    This area shows you the total number of rows the report contains.
4)    Finally, use the left and right arrows to advance or go back by the number of rows set in the drop down box (#2).

Up Next: Segmentation

Before we start in on filters we need to clarify that there are two kinds of “filters” used in Google Analytics; profile filters and inline report filters.  The filters we will discuss here are inline report filters.  When viewing a report you can use these filters to find specific data within that particular report as needed.  Profile filters, on the other hand, are used to do things to the data that’s coming into Google Analytics to alter it permanently – we’ll be looking at these a bit later.

Some reports contain so much data that finding what you need is a like the proverbial needle in a haystack.  This is where inline filters come into play.  When the list of data returned is longer than you have patience for scrolling through, or you only want to view a subset of data you can narrow your data down by using the “Find” filter box.

There are two ways you can enter filter criteria into this field.  In each case you need to first decide whether you want to filter your report by including certain data or excluding it by selecting “containing” or “excluding” from the drop down box.  Then just pop in your filter term(s) in plain English and click “Go.”

The image below shows the before and after results of a filter.  Notice that your list of items in the report has been filtered down and the data along the top (visits, Pages/Visit, etc.) is representative only of the data set being shown after your filter is applied.

Another option is to use regular expressions in your filter.  To do this, just select “containing” or “excluding” and then enter your regular expression and click “Go.”  Your data will be filtered down to just what you need making it easier to analyze and manage.  In the example below, we might use a regular expression to find referring sites like “images.google.com.”

Up Next: Specific Reports – Rows of Data

In our last post we dove into the various views available in your Google Analytics reports.  Let’s look around a bit more and talk tabs.

On the left, just above the data table you will see some tabs.  If you are not tracking goal conversions (although everyone should be tracking goals), you’ll be seeing lots of zeros on this tab, and if you’re not using ecommerce keep in mind that you will only see the default goal and site usage tabs.

Your Site Usage tab (above) is going to give you a breakdown of visits, average time on site and the like for each report you are viewing (browser, search engine, etc.).  But don’t stop there, drill down, view alternate dimensions, gain new insights.

Your Goal Conversion tab (below) will give you the details of how your goals performed based on the report and dimensions you are viewing.

The last tab is the Ecommerce tab.  If you have ecommerce on your site and you are tracking it through Google Analytics this tab will give you plenty of information such as revenue, transactions and ecommerce conversion rates.  Once again, remember to drill down for additional insights.

Up Next: Specific Reports – Filters

Now that you have gotten your feet wet with the basics of the overview graphs and reports you are ready to dive in a little deeper and start reviewing the more in depth data of specific reports.

As we saw last time there are five main report categories in Google Analytics; each with an overview report.  But that is just the beginning.  Explore further and you will find multiple in depth reports in each category.  Some of those drill down even further with their own subcategories.  Open any one of these reports and you will see a familiar layout; a graph at the top and a data table at the bottom.  But as usual, the default view, the data table (below), is only one of several ways GA gives you to view your data.  Notice the 4 “Views” icons at the upper right of the data table.  Click these to change your view.

For the right brains the pie chart view might be just what you need to visualize the data.

The bar chart option can be useful for a quick visual understanding of how data points are relating to each other.

The comparison chart allows you to compare the data to the site average.  This is useful when you need to know which areas are not performing up to standards.

No matter which option you chose to view your data you should always be drilling down for more insight.  Click on any of the categories being reported for more details.  The example we used here was visitors by browser.  Click on number 1 in this example, Internet Explorer, and you will see which version your visitors were using.  Keep going and see the average time on site, bounce rate and more just for that browser version.  Why drill down to such a finite level?  It is all about maximizing the user experience.  If you are spending all your time and resources designing the perfect site for Safari 525.18 yet the majority of your visitors are using Internet Explorer 7.0 you might want to rethink your strategies.

Up Next: Specific Reports – Tabs

There are five main report types with quick links in the upper left menu on your dashboard.  (Note: there will only be four if you are not using e-commerce.)  Each of these contains reports that present you with an “overview” of your site’s data.  Simply click on the menu title to expand it and view the additional reports available to you.  The top report under each category will be the Overview report.

In our last post we reviewed the overview graphs that show at the top of each of these reports.  Now we will get into the other details the overview reports provide.

High Level Data

The high level data report can be found just under the top graph.  The example below is from the visitors report and gives you a 30,000 foot overview of visitor data.  For a quick glance at some of the basics you might to keep an eye on such as number of visits, average page views and bounce rates this report will be an efficient use of your time.  When you need more details and really want to delve into the data click on each item to get the full story.

Segmentation Options

Also under the top graph you will find segmentation options.  Need to know how many French speaking visitors using Firefox and Windows Vista are coming to your site?  Segment your reports to view data such as this here.  But be warned, there is a lot of information here and digging it through it might get addicting.  Having a plan in mind when you jump in can be helpful and be sure to use the information you get to improve your visitor experience.

Select Data from Specific Reports

The bottom of the page will show select data that will depend on the overview report you are viewing.  In the case of the example here, from the Visitors Overview, we are looking at browser and connection speed statistics.  As with all the reports, the option to dig further is available.

What Else Can I do from the Overview Report Page?

The comparison option from the date range selection box is very useful to look at two sets of data and compare it.  You can compare month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year or even day to day.  Set your range and each of the reports on the page will feature data from that range.

Up Next: Specific Reports – Views