Explore how Google Analytics reports uncover patterns in user behavior, technology usage, and overall traffic quality. This overview walks through how to read, customize, and share standard reports so you can make data-driven marketing decisions using segmented insights and source-level analysis.
Key Insights
- The technology overview in Google Analytics provides data on user device types, operating systems, and browser platforms, showing Chrome as the top browser and an even split between Windows and Mac users.
- Users can share reports through various methods including direct links, scheduled email exports (PDF, CSV, or spreadsheet formats), and integrations with third-party platforms like Salesforce or HubSpot.
- While the standard reports offer extensive insights, users can further customize them by adding dimensions and metrics such as device models or engagement rates; Noble Desktop demonstrates how to interpret this data using Google’s demo account.
This lesson is a preview from our Digital Marketing Certificate Online (includes software). Enroll in a course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.
OK, so finally, that's the demographic overview, as well as audiences. And then the final section is tech. And as you have seen before, when we talk about, well, the only platform we're tracking here is web, you would have there.
They do have an app that is tracked separately. It gives you a snapshot of just the web. But here, you see by operating system, how many Windows versus Macs.
And interestingly, it comes out equal. Android versus iOS, I would think more Android, because they're selling Android products here, right? By website, web desktop, web mobile, web tablet, web smart TV, it shows where their users are. So everything's around some tech aspect, the device, the platform, the browser platform.
Chrome is the number one. It is a Google store, after all. Safari, Edge, Fire, and all the way down.
And the in-app, et cetera, the various categories they have. And then percentage, website, desktop, tablet. Stream revolution, I can't imagine how that's what relevance they gleaned from that.
But it's one of the reports that are offered, all right? And that's the overview. And then there's the details section. So they're telling you, like, within this category that Chrome spiked 8.7, you know, a sharp increase.
We saw that earlier. And it shows you by the browser, you know, with most of the activities taking place, which browser, so forth. So essentially, those are the reports that are available in Google Analytics.
You can, you know, customize reports as well. But those are essentially the standard reports that are available. Now, you know, we talked earlier about the stakeholders in this process, the people who are contributing to the performance plan, right? And it could be, you know, the marketing people, the agency, the web developers, a number of different stakeholders, business leaders.
So you might want to share reports with the different stakeholders, SEO specialists, et cetera. So how would you do that? There's either an email report. You can share a link, or you can export it.
And it's really straightforward. Or the demo account, just so you understand that. You can't identify key events.
You can't create, or you can't do any of that. You just could observe, right, which makes sense. We go to reports.
Click on any report you want. So let's say you want to share this particular report. You click on Share this report.
And you can share the link, or copying the link would be one way. And I see this is still the same one I was looking at before. Hold on.
All right, so this is my client one, not the demo one. And there are actually more options. So the share link is still available, right? You can just copy the link and share it in an email, wherever you want to.
But you can also send an email, right? Enter the email addresses, whether it's a PDF, SCV, or spreadsheet. And if you have up to 50 people who receive that, right? Scheduling an email means you can do it on a continual basis every, you know, date, monthly or weekly, daily, they get this report, right, and just send it out. Or you can download the file and, you know, export it that way.
So many different options to share your report, right? There's also the Google Data Studio, which allows for, I think this is, might be with their more high level account, you know, for the larger brands, but they create, you know, more interactive and visually appealing reports that can be shared, you know, the same way, but it's just a way to spruce it up. And third-party integration, you know, different platforms like CRM systems, like HubSpot and Salesforce, might have integrations where they'll extract the data, and you could create a report on that platform. So a little bit different.
You can customize reports. I think I referenced that before. I wouldn't suggest this be the first thing you do because, as you see, there's so much information that is readily available, but if you do want to customize the report, click on that, all right, and you simply add dimensions that are not currently being looked at.
I remember dimensions, descriptions, labels, right? There are device models, you know, all those types of things or metrics, right, engagement rates. So there are different, you know, additional metrics and dimensions you can add. You can also, you know, make it a bar chart, scatter chart, you have different options there.
And summary cards, summary cards are those, or when you see like the snapshot, those are the, like, these are summary cards, right? They summarize information. So you can also customize your summary cards, additional ones that you can add to your screens, right? So there is another level of customization available, but as you see, they do cover most of the things that, you know, the most critical things that they feel your brand would want to track. All right, here's another activity that, you know, you can do from the Google demo site.
And we'll look at it together, but the top three traffic sources, like where would you go for that? Total revenue for each traffic source, the bounce rate, and session duration metrics, and then determine which traffic sources are performing best. How can underperforming sources be optimized? You know, so that's the type of decisions that a marketer looking at this data would try to, you know, make based upon the insight that they're seeing, you know. If we just look at this briefly.
All right, so this is the Google demo account again. So how will we find the top three traffic sources, right? We click on reports, and that's acquisition, right? Where the traffic is coming from, and then that information will be here, right? No, here, right? And you can, you know, select sessions by, that's traffic, and session source. That shows you, you know, other things that they're doing.
You look at it here, how many, you know, where each of the sessions is coming from, from the initial source, right? So the point of this exercise is to see if you can answer these questions for yourself, you know, from the Google demo site, the bounce rate and session duration metrics, you know, how do you figure out the bounce rate? The bounce rate is the inverse of the engagement rate. If you have a 60% engagement rate, the bounce rate is 40%. So find that, look for that, which traffic sources are performing best, meaning are driving the most traffic to the website, creating the most engagement.
You know, you can look at it in various ways as to what means performing best, and how you can, you know, optimize underperforming sources, sort of sources. Let's say your Google Ads campaigns are not as effective as you want them to be. Well, maybe there are audiences that you could be creating and using in your Google Ads, you know, targeting people who have scrolled 70% or targeting people who are likely to make purchases with our suggested audience.
So, just going through that process, because essentially, all this information is great, but how do you use the information? What information or what decisions might be informed by this information?