This is the second part in my miniseries on Google Analytics, sparked by an email containing a flurry of questions from my friend, Susan. If you missed Part 1, you can read it here.

Who’s visiting your website?

Click on “Standard Reporting” at the top left, and ensure you’re on the “Audience: Overview” tab (if you’ve never been here before, it will probably default to this page anyway). Both of these are indicated in the image to the right.

You’ll see something like this:

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Susan is a very talented friend of mine who designs and makes bags under the label Stitchedup4u. She sent me this email today:

I use Google Analytics to track traffic on my Folksy website, however, I don’t really understand all the functions it has and therefore can’t get the info I would like from it.

There is so much it can do that I don’t know about. That is what gets to me. I want to know how to search for specific things like where are people finding the links to my items – ie Facebook, Folksy, emails? How do I search for their locations? Who are first timers to my site and who are returners? How do I discount my own views? How will it impact on my sales – how do I find where they have found the links to Folksy/Facebook? What search words are they using and how is it directed to my page? I had 78 views on my Folksy page yesterday but what do I do to see what/who it is? BUT also what else do I not know that would be useful to me?

These are just some of the questions but there are loads more!

Happily, all of these questions are very easily answered! I will answer the questions in stages though – there is simply too much information, especially if you’re new to Analytics. We’ll start today with a general explanation of the basic stats you’re presented with when you log in.

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