We deal with many small and medium sized businesses who have embraced the online market either with SEO, AdWords, email or Social Media. When it comes to reporting on the results that we see each month for clients, we use Google Analytics as this is a very powerful free analytics software.Google Analytics is the industry standard reporting software for websites all around the world, however recent surveys have indicated that many business owners are not 100% sure what all the metrics actually convey.So let’s take a look at some important metrics that your Google Analytics reports on and what these figures actually mean.Clicks: Starting out with a really simple metric, the term ‘clicks’ simply means how many times an internet user clicked through to your website. Knowing how many clicks a keyword generates in both SEO and AdWords is really useful, as you can spend more time optimizing around those high performing keywords.Impressions : Impressions is a metric used in CPC advertising models such as AdWords, and it is simply the amount of times your ad was shown in a search results page or on the display network. The more impressions you get then the more potential clicks you can receive.You need to make sure your ads are showing for highly relevant terms though, which is why we spend so much time optimizing campaigns, so that when you ad does get clicked on, it’s a high quality lead.Click Through Rate (CTR) : This is a great metric that shows the rate in which your ad is clicked on. It is worked out by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions. Simple.So if you have 10,000 impressions and 100 clicks, then the CTR would be 0.01%.Conversion : Conversions are the most important aspect of your analytics in many respects. A conversion is defined by something valuable to your business. This is further defined by getting a visitor to your website and completing an action i.e. signing up to a newsletter, submitting an enquiry or buying a product.Cost Per Conversion : This is the cost accrued in getting the conversion, and is calculated by dividing the total cost of the AdWords campaign by the number of goals / conversions generated. So the lower the cost per conversion, the better.Bounce Rate : The bounce rate is when a user clicks on your website and then instantly leaves without engaging at all. We use the bounce rate to gain an insight into how a campaign performs because the more we refine keywords and ad groups, the lower the bounce rate becomes due to the ads are only showing to relevant audiences.Average Visit Duration : This is a great metric to look at which again gives an insight to how users interact on your website. The longer a user engages on your website, the better it is for your website and brand. Again the more we optimise an ad words account, the higher the average visit duration becomes because the visitors to the website will be highly interested in the product and service.Google Analytics has a huge amount of other metrics that offer deeper insights to performance, however from a ‘top level’ point of view; these can give a website owner the best overview of how their website is performing.At Bang Online Marketing we are highly skilled and experienced in the use of Google Analytics for analysis, goal tracking and reporting. We specialise in Google Adwords, Search Engine optimisation, email marketing and social media marketing management. If you are interested to know more about our services and how Google Analytics can help your business, contact us on (08) 9328 7000 or email info@bangdigital.com.au