How to read a Google Analytics report, explained simply - Zephyra Studio

A Google Analytics report should not be read top to bottom but in an order that answers four questions: how many people came, where from, what they did, and what of that brought business. The first question needs only the overview with users and sessions, the second the traffic acquisition report, the third the report on pages and events, and the fourth the report on key events. Read in that order, the report stops being a list of numbers and becomes an answer to why this month was better or worse. Two things get in the way most often: mixing users with sessions, and comparing a total with last month without accounting for what changed in between.

Four questions and four reports

The first question is volume. In the overview, look at users and sessions rather than page views, because page views also grow when the same person clicks in circles. Check average engagement time alongside them, because it shows whether people stayed on the site or bounced straight away.

The second question is source. The traffic acquisition report separates organic search, direct visits, paid ads, referrals from other sites, social media and e-mail. On small sites most of it falls into two entries, organic search and direct, and everything else is usually the result of a campaign or a single post.

The third question is behaviour. The pages report shows which pages people open, and the events report shows which actions they take. Without events you can see that someone arrived, but not whether they looked at the phone number or sent an enquiry.

The fourth question is the result. Key events, previously called conversions, show how many enquiries or purchases there were and which channel they came from. That is the only report that answers whether the month was good or merely full of visits.

Users, sessions and page views are not the same thing

A user is a person, a session is one visit with one entry point, and a page view is one opened page. One person can produce three sessions and twenty page views in a day, so the same activity appears as three different numbers across three columns.

A session counts as engaged if it lasted ten seconds or longer, if it covered two pages or more, or if it triggered an event marked as a key event. That is why the number of engaged sessions describes the quality of a visit better than the number of sessions.

On single-page sites every session looks like a bounce, so the figure is not used as an indicator there. On sites where people come to call, a short session is a success rather than a problem.

Some sessions will always lack a source and appear as direct or unknown. That happens when someone arrives through an untagged link, from an app, or when scripts are blocked because cookies were declined. So a drop in sessions is sometimes explained by that rather than by an actual fall in visits.

How to compare without drawing the wrong conclusion

Compare periods of the same length and the same composition. If this month is compared with last month, and last month contained a campaign or a holiday, the difference gets attributed to content when it comes from the calendar.

Before concluding anything, check what changed: a new page, a new campaign, an edit to the form or a new tracking setting. Without that list of changes the numbers get misread, because the biggest shift in the data often comes from a technical change rather than from the market.

It helps to separate visits from people who already know you from visits by new people, because one is maintenance and the other is growth. If only the number of people searching for your name grows, the business is stable but nothing new has opened up.

On smaller sites no conclusion is drawn from a single day, because the sample is too small. Weekly and monthly totals say something, while daily spikes usually do not.

The reports used most in practice

Most questions are answered by a handful of reports, while the rest serve a deeper analysis once something looks off.

• The traffic acquisition report, to see where visits come from and which channel is rising or falling
• The landing pages report, because it shows what people see first, and the home page is often something else entirely
• The pages and events reports, to see what on the site is actually used
• The countries and cities report, especially for businesses working locally
• The device report, because it shows how much traffic comes from phones and whether something breaks there
• A custom report when two groups of pages or two campaigns need comparing

What is worth looking at once a month

The monthly review takes about twenty minutes and consists of the same five items, so changes become visible over time rather than all at once.

Start with the count of key events and its trend, then the number and quality of enquiries. Next look at the three biggest landing pages and check whether their traffic is rising or falling with the same content. After that, check the mobile share and speed, because most problems on small sites show up there.

Finish in Search Console, because it shows queries and positions that analytics cannot see. That is where the reason for a rise or fall in organic traffic usually appears, which either confirms or corrects the conclusion drawn from analytics. Basic concepts such as organic traffic and conversion rate are worth reading up on before the first review, because without them every number looks the same.

Source

Key takeaways

• Read the report in order: volume, source, behaviour, result, rather than in the order it is displayed.
• Users, sessions and page views are three different things, and mixing them causes most wrong conclusions.
• A short session is not a problem when the goal is a call or an enquiry, and engaged sessions describe that better than a total.
• Compare periods of equal length and keep a list of site changes, because the biggest jumps often come from technical edits.
• The monthly review has five items and ends in Search Console, where the cause of organic changes is found.

Conclusion

A report is useful when you ask it one question rather than reading the whole thing. If you do not know where to start, start with key events, because without them the other numbers say nothing about the business. Setting up events and measuring enquiries is covered by our analytics and CRO service, and the concepts that appear in every report, from organic traffic to conversion rate, are explained together in our analytics content.