Dashboard

This gives you a brief overview of what information is on Google Analytics.  All short reports on this page has links to go to a further in-depth report

 ·      Visits

When a user visits your site

 ·      Pageviews

When users look various pages within your site

 ·      Pages/visits

The amount of pageviews divided by the amount of visits results in the average amount of pages that were looked at per visit

 ·      Bounce rate

What percentage of users just looked at the homepage and then went on to a totally different site

 ·      Average time on site

The average amount of times users stayed on your site

 ·      New visits

Percentage of users who are visiting your site for the first time

Visitors

The information held here covers how many people are visiting your site, how long they are there, if they’ve visited before, etc.

·      New vs. returning

The comparison of returning visitors to new visitors (Google Analytics registers computer IP addresses and recognises new ones).

·      Browser capabilities

This gives data on what browser your users are using.  For example Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox.

·      Network location

This shows you what internet service provider people are using to access the interent with.  For example, Optus, Telstra, etc.

Traffic sources

This section reports information how people get to your site, where they came from and what led them there.

·      Direct traffic

When a user goes directly to your site, from either typing the web address into the browser or if they have already set the school’s website to be their homepage.

·      Referring sites

This refers to users who arrived at your site from a link on another site.  For example they may have seen your school listed on the Department of Education’s site and clicked the link.

·      Keywords

This is a list of what words people used in search engines such as Google or Yahoo.  Your site came up in the results page because they correlated to those keywords.

Content

The area of Google Analytics explains what areas of your site are being visited the most, what pages people landed on, what pages they left on, etc.

·      Top content

This lists what are the most visited pages in your site.  This gives great insight into what users in your school community are reading most. 

·      Content by title

This section has relatively the same information as the Top content page, however it lists the page title names as you have them in your site so it makes it easier to understand! 

·      Site overlay

This page gives a really comprehensive and impressive visual of your website’s homepage with what percentage of buttons were clicked to go through to the various pages in your website.