If you have a website up and running on the good ‘ol world wide web, then you need to have Google Analytics installed! They kinda go hand in hand with one another, like two peas in a pod, Bert and Ernie, B1 and B2.
Having a fully responsive aesthetically pleasing website is definitely fundamental to your company, having said that it is just as important to to have a good understanding or have a professional handle the analytics of your website. This tool simply put, allows you to understand how engaged your website audience is.
By looking at the data you can learn and identify problems and issues that arise which prevents you from successful engaging your audience.You can also identify what helps you to improve user engagement. To be able to do that you should know what the most important Google Analytics engagement metrics are and how to track them.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate is known as the percentage of users that bounce back (leave) from the first page they visit on your website with out exploring any further.
There are many different reasons as to why a bounce rate would be high, this includes users arriving on a wrong or unwanted page, the overall look and feel may be an issue, there may be usability issues or just too many distractions.
I almost all cases where there is a high bounce rate, there is something wrong with your site. Having said that one thing to consider is that sometimes a visitor may bounce because the page gave them exactly what they wanted. Bounce rate along with ‘time on site’ are part of dwell time, a metric that affects your search engine rankings. So a high bounce rate and low time on your site decreases your SERP.
Average bounce rate per industry: KISSmetrics made a great infographic sharing the average bounce rate for different industries tracked with Google Analytics:
- Retail – 20 – 40%
- Landing pages – 70 – 90%
- Portals – 10 – 30%
- Service sites (self-service or FAQ site) – 10 – 30%
- Content sites – 40 – 60%
- Lead generation (service for sale) – 30 – 50%
How to track Bounce rate with Google Analytics – to track this engagement metric, go to Google Analytics – Audience – Overview.
Time on site
According to HubSpot, 55% of visitors spend 15 seconds or less on your site. This poses quite a problem, if users don’t engage with your website, then how do you sell them your good or services? That’s why tracking your website with Google Analytics is absolutely crucial! And when you find that people are spending too little time on your site you should use some strategies to increase it. Also, you should track time on site for each page of your site. That way you will know what page has your most engaging content and which posts lack engagement.
Average pages per visit
The average pages per visit will be a super important engagement metric to track for media websites. The more pages people visit, the more ad impressions are generated which leads to higher revenue. This Google Analytics engagement metric is important for other types of businesses as well – like eCommerce, SaaS and service-based businesses. When people browse more pages from your site, they’re more likely to buy something. If they only visit 1-2 pages per visit, this is a signal that you failed to engage them further.
Percentage of returning visitors
Returning visitors are the best visitors. They are the ones that have visited your website once, liked your content and come back again for more. In this sense, they are more engaged around your brand. That’s why this is a really important user engagement metric you’d want to track with Google Analytics.
Frequency of visits
Frequency of visits represents your user engagement similarly to new vs. returning visitors. However, here you have much more details. You can see how many sessions were generated for a certain percentage of your audience.
Do you currently track the following user engagement metrics using Google Analytics? If not get in contact with us, with over five years of experience using Goggle Analytics, our Angels would love to hear from you and help you out or answer any questions relating to Google Analytics!
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