Google Analytics can be overwhelming. There are so many different reports, and it isn’t always clear what they mean.

Fortunately, there are only a handful of reports that truly matter to the typical business owner.

Usually, the first place to go is:

Audience -> Overview

When you open Google Analytics, the first thing that you want to do is select a date range in the upper right corner. The selected dates will follow you throughout the analytic session.

Users – the number of unique individuals (computer IP numbers) who visited your site in a given time period.

Sessions – the total number of times the website was viewed. It is possible for a User to visit more than once. Hence, Sessions are always more than users.

Acquisition -> Overview

This chart shows how your visitors are visiting your site. Some are through Organic Search (e.g. Google), some through Social Media, some are Referrals (i.e. links from other sites).

Behavior -> Overview

See which pages on your site are the most popular.

There are many more details available, but these three basic charts will get you started.

The answer to this question depends on two things:

– Where is your website hosted?
– Have you setup Google Analytics?

The website host typically provides a basic analytics package. In many cases, this is enough to give you a basic sense of how many people visit your website, and notice trends. We can help you identify how to access the analytics, depending on your host.

Google Analytics provides the best analytics, but it needs to be installed at your request. We do not typically install Google Analytics by default. This is because you – the site owner – need to establish the Google account so that you have access to the data. We can help if you ask.

Google Analytics can be needlessly complex. For most websites, there are only a handful of stats that are meaningful. Take a look at our Advanced Google Analytics package for more.