How to Get the Most Out of Google Analytics

Almost everyone has Google Analytics installed, but most only use it to check one thing: overall traffic. This is like owning a sports car and only driving it to the mailbox. If you’re ready to move beyond basic pageview counts, this guide will walk you through exactly how to unlock the actionable insights hiding inside your Google Analytics account.

Define What a ‘Win’ Looks Like: Setting Up Goals

Before you analyze anything, you need to tell Google Analytics what success means for your website. Without this step, you’re just looking at numbers without context. Goals are specific user actions that contribute to the success of your business, like making a purchase, submitting a form, or signing up for a newsletter.

There are several types of goals, but the most common and easiest to set up is a Destination goal. This type of goal tracks when a user visits a specific page.

How to Set Up a Destination Goal

Think about what happens after a user completes a desired action. Do they land on a "thank you" or "confirmation" page? This is the perfect destination for a goal.

For example, let's track a contact form submission:

1. Navigate to Admin > Goals (in the View column on the right).
2. Click the + NEW GOAL button.
3. Under "Goal setup," choose a template like "Contact us" or select "Custom." Click Continue.
4. Give your goal a clear name, like "Contact Form Submission."
5. Select "Destination" as the type. Click Continue.
6. In the "Destination" field, select "Begins with" and enter the URL of your confirmation page (e.g., /thank-you). Don’t use the full domain, just the part that comes after the .com.
7. Click Save.

That’s it! Now, whenever someone visits your ‘thank you’ page, Google Analytics will record a conversion. You can see which channels, campaigns, and pages are driving the actions that actually matter.

Understand Who You’re Talking To: The Audience Reports

The Audience section answers the crucial question: “Who is visiting my website?” Instead of guessing, you can get concrete data about your users' demographics, locations, interests, and the technology they use.

Navigate to Audience > Demographics > Overview to see the age and gender of your visitors. Go to Audience > Geo > Location to see which countries and cities drive the most traffic.

Here’s how to make this information actionable:

• Demographics: If you discover your primary audience is younger than you thought, you might adjust your brand voice or the social media platforms you focus on.
• Location: Seeing a surge of visitors from a specific country? Consider if you can create content for that region or offer pricing in their local currency.
• Technology (Audience > Technology > Browser & OS): If you see that 80% of your visitors are on mobile devices, viewing your site on a phone shouldn’t just be an option - it should be a perfect experience. This report gives you direct evidence to prioritize mobile optimization.

Find Out How People Find You: The Acquisition Reports

The Acquisition reports show you where your traffic is coming from. This section helps you understand which marketing channels are working and which ones need attention. Go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels to see the breakdown.

You’ll typically see the following sources:

• Organic Search: Visitors who find you through search engines like Google (SEO efforts).
• Direct: Visitors who type your URL directly into their browser or use a bookmark.
• Referral: Visitors who clicked a link from another website to get to yours.
• Social: Visitors from social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, or X.
• Paid Search: Visitors who clicked on one of your paid search ads (e.g., Google Ads).
• Email: Visitors who clicked a link from one of your email campaigns.

Pro Tip: Use UTM Parameters for Crystal-Clear Tracking

Sometimes, your efforts get miscategorized. For example, a link in an email newsletter might show up as "Direct" traffic if Google can't identify the source. To solve this, you need to use UTM parameters - small snippets of text added to the end of a URL.

Let's say you're linking to your summer sale in an email newsletter. A properly tagged URL would look like this:

yourwebsite.com/summer-sale?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=summer_sale_2024

This tells Google Analytics exactly where the click came from. Now, in your reports, you’ll see that the traffic, engagement, and conversions from that email are attributed to your "summer_sale_2024" campaign. No more guesswork, just clear results showing you what channels are truly driving your pre-defined goals.

Learn What People Do on Your Site: The Behavior Reports

Once users arrive on your site, what do they do? The Behavior reports answer this question by showing you which pages they visit, what they search for, and a lot more.

Three Essential Behavior Reports to Watch

1. Site Content > All Pages: Found under Behavior > Site Content > All Pages, this report lists your most popular pages. It’s a goldmine for insights. The pages at the top are your most valuable content. Are you linking from these pages to your important product pages or sign-up forms? If not, you’re missing a big opportunity. This report also helps you identify popular content you should refresh or expand on.
2. Site Speed > Page Timings: Slow speed is an unforgiving issue for user experience and SEO. This report shows how quickly your pages load on average. You can identify your slowest pages and prioritize them for optimization to reduce bounce rates and improve rankings.
3. Site Search > Search Terms: To use this report, you must have site search tracking enabled in your View settings (under Admin). Once set up, this report shows you exactly what your visitors are typing into the search bar on your site. It tells you what people are looking for and potentially not finding easily. If many people are searching for "return policy," maybe your return policy page isn’t readily accessible.

Slice Your Data Your Way: Segments and Custom Reports

So far, we've been looking at data for all your users. But what if you only want to analyze a specific group? That’s where segments come in.

Segments are filters that let you isolate and compare subsets of your data. For example, you can compare the behavior of mobile users versus desktop users, or users who completed a goal versus those who didn’t.

Here’s how to apply a segment:

• At the top of almost any report, you'll see a box that says "+ Add Segment." Click it.
• You can choose from built-in segments (like "Mobile Traffic" or "Organic Traffic") or create a new custom segment.
• For example, select "Mobile Traffic," and GA will instantly filter the report to show you data only from mobile users. Click "+ Add Segment" again and select "Tablet and Desktop Traffic" to compare them side-by-side.

This simple comparison can reveal that mobile users browse fewer pages or have a much lower conversion rate, highlighting a clear user experience issue to fix.

For even more control, you can create custom reports (found under the Customization tab). These let you build a report from scratch, choosing the exact dimensions (like Page, Source, City) and metrics (like Sessions, Conversion Rate, Bounce Rate) that are most important for your specific questions.

Add Context to Your Data With Annotations

Ever look at a traffic graph, see a huge spike or dip, and have no idea what caused it? Annotations are the simple answer. They are small, private notes you can add to specific dates on your timeline graphs within Google Analytics.

Did you launch a major marketing campaign, publish a viral blog post, or experience website downtime? Add an annotation. A few months later, when you’re reviewing performance, those handy notes will provide instant context for the changes you see in your data. To add one, simply click the small gray tab just below the timeline graph in any Overview report.

Final Thoughts

To really get the most out of Google Analytics, you need to go beyond the default dashboards. By setting up actionable goals, segmenting your audience to find deeper insights, and paying attention to behavior reports, you can transform it from a simple traffic counter into a strategic tool that guides your business decisions.

We know that digging through different reports and connecting the dots between Google Analytics, your ad platforms, and your CRM can be a massive time sink. With so much data scattered across different platforms, you can end up spending more time pulling reports than acting on them. That's why we built Graphed. We connect to your data sources like Google Analytics in just a few clicks, letting you ask questions in simple, natural language and instantly see the answers in live dashboards. Instead of chasing stats across multiple tabs, you get a unified view of your business, which helps you make smarter decisions, faster.