Google Analytics is an invaluable tool for gathering data and understanding the performance of your website and digital marketing efforts. If you’re looking to take your analytics game to the next level, it’s important to understand the basics of the language and concepts used in Google Analytics. By learning about the various dimensions, metrics, hits, and sessions, you’ll gain a better overall view of the performance of your site and be able to leverage it to drive business success.
Dimensions are simply the characteristics of your visitors. Examples of dimensions include gender, age, location, browser, language, and source/medium, among many others. When combined with metrics, which are the actual numbers, you have the data you need to measure website performance. For example, if you want to measure the performance of your mobile website, you would look at the Mobile Browsers dimension to see how many of your visitors are using a mobile device and gather their demographics such as age, gender, and location.
Metrics are the numeric data points of your website performance and can range from total visits to the conversion rates to goal completions and more. By comparing and analyzing the metrics data, it is possible to gain a more robust and meaningful picture of user activity on your site.
Hits are the requests sent by the browser to the server, including page views, downloads, and event tracking. These hits are reported in Google Analytics, giving you a better understanding of what a single visit entails.
Finally, there are Sessions, which represent complete visits to your website. A single session can include multiple hits and events, and is tracked by Google Analytics over a certain period of time. By understanding the various components that make up each session, you can gain a better understanding of user behavior on your website.
By understanding the different dimensions, metrics, hits, and sessions reported in Google Analytics, you with be able to better measure and understand website performance. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to make informed decisions about content creation, marketing strategies, user behavior and more.