{"id":504,"date":"2013-08-10T02:44:54","date_gmt":"2013-08-10T02:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.flow20.com\/?p=504"},"modified":"2025-03-03T10:18:51","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T10:18:51","slug":"google-analytics-important-metrics-for-beginners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flow20.com\/blog\/google-analytics-important-metrics-for-beginners\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Analytics – Important metrics for beginners"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If you are a small business owner with a website, you should be looking at your website analytics data regularly.<\/p>\n

Here are some metrics that I recommend most Google Analytics newbies get the hang of to begin getting the basic understanding of their website performance and visitor behavior.<\/p>\n

Bounce Rate<\/b><\/p>\n

This is perhaps, one of the most important metrics for your website. Simply put, Bounce Rate (BR) refers to the number of single page visits. In other words, if the user didn\u2019t click any further into your website upon arrival then that counts as a Bounced visit and Bounce Rates are expressed as percentages.<\/p>\n

A high Bounce Rate is usually indicative of design (as opposed to usability) issues of a website. With just under 3 seconds to convince a new visitor to remain on your site, being able to tell your new visitors what your site is all about and what they can expect there needs to be an intuitive process.<\/p>\n

For most small business websites, a low Bounce Rate can be anywhere between 20 \u2013 40%. \u00a0\u00a0However, for the purposes of evaluating your website\u2019s performance, it\u2019s important to take other metrics (talked about below) into account as well, because Bounce Rate % on it\u2019s own can be sometimes misleading. For example, news websites and blogs usually have a BR as high as 80% as most users visit the site to get an update on news headlines with only a minority staying to read further.\u00a0 A high BR in this case isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing.<\/p>\n

Similarly, your own website\u2019s contact page may have a high BR but this could simply mean that visitors leave that page once they have the necessary contact information.<\/p>\n

For more on Bounce Rates, check out – What is your website\u2019s Bounce Rate<\/a>?.<\/p>\n

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Referral data<\/b><\/p>\n

Another important metric to watch out for is the referral traffic – where your visitors come from and who sends them (If you are involved in any form of Search Engine Optimisation<\/a>, this is perhaps the most important metric in that case).<\/p>\n

To get here, click on Traffic Sources > Overview<\/strong>\u00a0 from menu on left. You’ll see a list of keywords towards the bottom right of the page. Click on ‘view full report’ \"\"<\/p>\n

If you are using Google Analytics, you\u2019ll generally find 3 types of referral data<\/p>\n