Monitoring the performance of your ShowMe website or listing
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a program developed by Google to track visits to websites and to produce statistics which make it possible to analyse traffic, so that decisions can be made as to the effectiveness and popularity of a website.
Analytics for your website
All client websites on ShowMe have their own Google Analytics. As part of the set-up, ShowMe creates an account on Google and will provide a UA number, the Google Reference Number for a specific site. The Google Reference Number is called a Tracking Id. Listings (basic, basic plus and feature listings) do not have their own Tracking Id but we can still provide the most important statistics such as the number of page views and number of visitors for listings.
ShowMe can provide access to a website’s Google Analytics for clients who are experienced with Google Analytics and who have a Google Account (such as a Gmail account).
The Major Statistics
Audience Overview
The Audience Overview report is the first page you will see on accessing analytics:
It is important to understand the different metrics before valid and useful conclusions can be drawn. For example: a high bounce rate is not necessarily bad. A user might visit a website to find certain information, finds the information on the first page and leaves the page without interacting further with the page. This will be registered as a bounce.
Sessions:
This is the total number of sessions within the date range. A session is the period time a user is actively engaged with your website. All usage data (Screen Views, Events, Ecommerce, etc.) is associated with a session.
Layman’s explanation: When a user enters a website, it is the start of a session and when the user leaves the website, it is the end of the session.
Google Analytics previously reported the number of visits to a website instead of the number of sessions.
Users:
This is the number of users who had at least one session within the selected date range. It includes both new and returning users.
Layman’s explanation: A user is the same as a visitor to a website.
Google Analytics previously reported the number of visitors to a website instead of the number of users.
Pageviews:
Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted.
Pages per Session:
Pages/Session (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.
Google Analytics previously reported the number of pages per visit (the number of pages viewed on each visit) instead of the number of pages per session.
Average Session Duration:
This is the average length of a Session (hh:mm:ss).
Layman’s explanation: It is the average time a user stays on the website.
Google Analytics previously reported the Average Visit Duration instead of the Average Session Duration.
Bounce rate:
Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).
Layman’s explanation: If the visitor only looks at one page on the website and then exits without navigating to another page, this is called a “bounce”. If the visitor links out of the website by clicking on an external link before navigating to another page, this is also counted as a bounce. If a user remains inactive on a page for 30 minutes or more, this will also be counted as a bounce.
Percentage New Sessions:
An estimate of the percentage of first time visits.
Google Analytics previously reported the percentage new visits instead of the percentage new sessions. New visits were the percentage of visits by users who have not visited the site ever before. But Google can only recognise “cookies” which are pieces of code placed on a browser which makes it possible for Google to recognize the visitor. If cookies are cleared, Google will record the visitor as new.
New Visitors and Returning visitors:
The Pie Chart tells us what percentage of visitors is returning to a website. It is therefore an indication of whether or not users are pleased with the content provided.
All Traffic
This report tells us where the traffic came from. In the example below we can see that 68 visits came from Google, 43 visits came from ShowMe and 35 visits resulted from users entering the URL directly into the browser.