Google Analytics provides us with a multitude of important data for improving our web performance. Unfortunately, we don’t always possess the extra time to study this data and turn it into something useful. Most of us need an easier and faster way to examine relevant data for developing better websites. That’s precisely where Google Analytics Behavior reports come in. With the help of these Behavior reports, it becomes simpler to quickly determine how your content is performing and what actions online visitors are taking after leaving the landing page.
What are Google Analytics Behavior Reports?
The Behavior reports section is easily accessible using the left sidebar menu of Google Analytics. This function allows you to analyze the common behaviors of your website’s visitors. You can isolate keywords, pages, and sources to perform your analysis. You can use crucial information in Behavior reports to develop practical methods of solving issues and improving your site performance. Let’s take a closer look at what you can find under Behavior reports:
As its name suggests, the Overview section gives you a big-picture idea of the traffic navigating on your website. Here you’ll find information on the total page views, unique page views, average view time, etc.
This section also gives you data regarding the average amount of time visitors spend on a certain page or screen. You can also view your bounce rate and exit percentage, which can help you better understand your website’s user behavior.
Giveaway: Get key insights into the behavior of your users from parameters like PageViews, Bounce Rate, Exit Rate, Average Session Duration, and Adsense Revenue. In comparison to last month, you can evaluate your efforts over a fixed course of the period. Look to see if the user behavior has improved by adding new content, selling new products, or any other site changes.
Behavior Flow Report
The Behavior Flow report gives you an insider’s look into what pathways your visitors take to land on your website. This section provides details about the first page they viewed and the last one they visited. From here, you can locate the sections or content that receive the most engagement and the least.
Site Content
This section of the Behavior reports provides detailed data about how visitors are interacting with each page on your website.
- All Pages – The All Pages reports let you see the top-performing content and the average revenue you get for each page. You’ll get a display of the top pages on your website based on traffic, page views, average view time, bounce rate, unique page views, entrances, page value, and exit percentage.
- Landing Pages – The Landing Pages reports show information on how visitors are entering your website. You can pinpoint exactly which are the top pages where visitors land first. The data helps you determine the pages through which you can generate the most conversions and leads.
Giveaway: As you see in the image, total session is increased by 67% and new users increased by 81.4%. This is pretty good, although the traffic disturbed the average session duration. So with this report, we need to focus on users’ navigation. Maybe they’re not able to navigate easily because you site offers poor user experience. With these behavior reports, you can tell that the owner needs to focus on user engagement. This will reduce the bounce rate and increase the average session duration time.
- Content Drilldown – If you have any subfolders on your website, you can make use of the Content Drilldown report to find out the top folders. You can also discover the top-performing content within each folder. This lets you see the best content sections on your site’s pages.
- Exit Pages – Under the Exit Pages report, you can determine which pages users visit last before leaving your site. This is useful for brainstorming strategies to improve these common exit pages. It’s highly recommended that you add links to other pages on your website so that visitors stay longer.
Site Speed
This section of Behavior reports is crucial in that it helps you identify areas where you may need to optimize your website. You can get a clear idea about the page speed and how it impacts user behavior. Also, the report shows know average load time differs in various countries and different Internet browsers.
- Site Speed Overview – In the Site Speed Overview report, you’ll see a summary of how fast each page loads on average. It displays diverse metrics, including the average page load times, domain lookup times, redirection times, page download times, server connection times, and server response times. These numbers will help you understand how you can optimize your content for an enhanced page download time and page load time. For example, reducing image sizes and the number of plug-ins can help improve page load time.
- Page Timings – Using the Page Timings report, you can find out the average loading time for your most-visited pages and how it compares to other pages. Review the pages that have high loading times, so you can work towards optimizing the others similarly.
- Speed Suggestions – In this section, the Behavior reports provide useful advice from Google regarding the optimization options you have for certain site pages. Start fixing any issues on pages that receive the most traffic before moving on to other pages. You can also visit Google Page speed tool to identify recommendations for speeding up certain pages.
Giveaway: Page speed is a major search engine ranking factor. Every one second of delay leads to 7% lower conversions. Fixing load time issues can augment your conversions and reduce the abandoned rate.
- User Timings – With the User Timings report, you’re given the valuable chance to measure the loading speed of specific elements on a page. You can also determine whether or not this affects user experience.
Site Search
This is an amazing part of Google Analytics Behavior reports where you can get insight on your search box. You may determine how well your search box is used and what queries are being typed in by users. But, before using the report, you need to enable the “Site Search Tracking” button in the Site Search Settings. That can be found under the Admin section on the top navigation. You only need to add the search query parameter in the field as shown in below image to run the tracking.
- Site Search Overview – With the help of Site Search Overview, you can learn the search terms visitors have used. These Behavior reports display various metrics, such as search exits, time after search, and average search depth. It basically analyzes everything users have searched in your site’s search box.
- Usage – The Usage section helps you understand how the search box affects user experience. You will be able to find out how having a search box impacts your bounce rate, conversions, and average session duration.
Giveaway: If you see that usage of the search box is very high, then it’s always recommended that you place the search box at the most prominent area of visibility to boost engagement.
- Search Terms – The Search Terms report shows you which keywords visitors enter into your site’s search box. It also displays the total number of searches and amount of search exits.
- Pages – Here you’ll receive the same metrics as in the Search Terms report, but there’s a focus on studying the specific pages from which the keyword searches come from.
Events
Under the Events section of Behavior reports, you can track specific web interactions, including file downloads, video plays, and external link clicks. Event tracking is quite a long, difficult process to understand, but Google Developer guides have made it easier to set up and learn from.
- Events Overview – The Events Overview report is basically an outline of visitor interactions. It will show the number of events and their value. You can discover which events you should focus on in the future to improve performance.
- Top Events – Here you get to observe which events have the most user interaction. Knowing the Top Events helps you identify which your visitors are most interested in and which other ones don’t get much attention.
- Pages – The Pages report gives you an insight into the top pages with the highest number of visitor interactions.
- Events Flow – In the Events Flow section, you can simply track the path visitors take to interact with an event.
Publisher
Previously, the Publisher section was named Adsense. You can view this data after linking your Google Analytics and AdSense account. Doing so will allow you to view important Behavior reports related to the same.
- Publisher Overview – The Publisher Overview part helps determine your total revenue generated from Google Adsense. You can also find out your click-through rates and overall impressions in one convenient stop. This way you don’t need to manage Adsense pages and Google Analytics to view your earnings.
- Publisher Pages – Under the Publisher Pages report, you can spot the pages that generate the most revenue dollars. Try to understand why these pages are performing better than others, so you can implement the same tactics for improving other pages that are lacking.
- Publisher Referrers – Here you can find out the referring URLs that drive visitors to click on your AdSense ads. Reviewing the Publisher Referrers report allows you to focus on the right traffic sources for optimal growth.
Experiments
The Experiments section of Behavior reports enables you to conduct simple A/B testing. Therefore, you’ll be able to see the landing page variations that perform the best. These trials help you in optimizing your site to meet specific conversion goals.
In-Page Analytics
The In-Page Analytics tab allows you to view the pages on your site right along with Google Analytics data. You can find out which areas get the most attention and add links to aid in better conversions. Beforehand, you must install the Google Chrome Page Analytics extension, which lets you see the real-time data with clicks on each page link.
Final Words
Now, you see how Google gives you free, detailed data on your site performance that you likely once overlooked. The Google Analytics Behavior reports revealing in-depth information related to how visitors interact and engage with content on your site. You get a sneak peek into which pages and events perform the best and which ones need improvement. The only smart move would be to take advantage of these Behavior reports to optimize your website and improve your conversions.