Welcome back to part 2 of Geeking out in Google Analytics. 

Last week we laid a foundation for Google Analytics by explaining the lingo, telling you how to set it up or make sure it was on your site and what’s possible with Google Analytics. 

Today, we’re going to dive into some of the reports that you want to take a look at to see which ones are going to be most important for your business as you get started with Google Analytics. 

Like I mentioned last week, my goal is not to tell you what reports to run or how to run your Google Analytics account. Instead, I want to teach you how to look critically at the data coming in so you can make smarter decisions about what you’re promoting, or advertising, or launching, or spending money on. 

As we dive into the four main categories of reports, make sure that when you’re looking at reports that you set the default view to be 30 days. Anything less is not going to give you a great snapshot that’s meaningful. 

Audience Reports

The first category of reports when you’re just getting started is Audience Reports. These reports are answering the question: Who is visiting your site? 1. Find out if your traffic is mostly local or all over the country/world Am I reaching the right people? 2. Mobile reports How are they visiting? How much effort should you put into mobile vs desktop design and traffic? 3. Userflow How people are moving through your site, where they drop off 4. Demographics of visitors Age range, gender, interests (what else you’re interested in thanks to third-party cookies)

Acquisition Reports

These reports help you to understand the traffic patterns and answer the question: "Where does my traffic come from?" Channels = communication channel, when I mention channel reports in this section* Important reports to look at in this section are: 1. All Traffic - which will show you by channel, where your people are coming from to hit your site. Ninja move: *Split up traffic into non-branded organic search (people searching for keywords and find you) and branded organic search (type your brand words in and find you) in a filter so you can see how people are searching for you and if its through keyword or brand recognition. Why is this a ninja move to track? Because branded organic search stays longer and is worth more than cold non-branded search, which equals easier conversions and more revenue for your business if you're selling anything. 2. Source/Medium - This report tells you who sent the traffic and how they sent the traffic, and then you can drill down to see what page they sent traffic to For example, google/organic means your traffic came from Google's search engine and they sent the traffic to you because of organic keyword searches. When you see the word referral traffic, it means that someone clicked to your site from another browser or link - (like a blog, directory, social platform, etc). If you advertise on Adwords you can look at Adwords report to see who they are. 3. Social - This report will tell you what percentage of your traffic comes from social platforms, what channels and how many are contributing to your website goals if you’ve set them up with social value. 4. Campaigns - This report will help you track what campaigns are effective and profitable if you use UTMs to track email campaigns or paid traffic to your website.

Behavior Reports

These reports are answering the question: "What did a visitor do on our website?" In this section (and all main categories of reports, the overview page is a dashboard where you can drill down into specific reports for each section -- it's just showing you the data at a glance in a pretty format. 1. Behavior Flow - This report shows how your website visitors go through different pages of your site, whereas User flow looks at the specific user. That means