Who is visiting my site? 3 Useful Reports in Google Analytics

Back for more? Here is a final post to give you that final push in the tool.

In this last post, I’m talking about Users. Why Users and not users? Because this metric is super helpful and not many pay attention to. I figure putting a capital letter at the top will get you all to take Users a bit more seriously. What do Users mean in Google Analytics?

Users - A count of the unique users visiting my site.

This definition seems obvious but let’s quickly compare this to the other metrics people tend to obsess with like page views and sessions. Page Views are how many times a page is loaded, while Sessions is a combination of Page Views that is considered a Visit. But Users only represent one unique visitor to my site, doesn’t matter how many sessions or page views they took to get there.

Why do I think this metric is gold? Because it gives us a much more defined picture of traffic to our site, while Page Views and Sessions require more analysis.

So, here are 3 amazing reports to see this metric in action:

Report 1: Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels

Here the New Users metric gives us a clear picture of which channels are attracting a new audience to our site. This may lead us to shift our focus to a previously unknown channel or continue our attention to a successful channel.

(Psst..if you click on the metric name in the report, it will filter and reorganize the report based on that metric. Try it here!)

Report 2: Audience > Behavior > New vs. Return:

This report gives us a breakdown of how many users coming to our site are new vs returning users.

This view is more interesting and you can actually play around with the drop down menu to switch up the different metrics and analyze how return users are behaving in comparison to new users. This can make us better thing about how our content strategy can change when we are targeting new visitors vs. returning visitors.

Report 3: Audience > User Flow

This report is captivating because it let’s us see the navigation flow of our users, based on where they are coming from.

If the “Country” filter doesn’t do it for you, you have the option to also filter by “City” (among other options). This type of report not only tells us where our prime market are, but how they are navigating and how this might differentiate them from other user.

I hope this has been helpful! If you have any questions, please leave your comments below.