OSU Drupal 7

1. Test Connection

The best way to test for a connection between your website and Google Analytics is to do a side-by-side comparison between a page in your site and the home page of your Google Analytics dashboard.

When you click on something within your site, the activity should register on the dashboard fairly quickly.

2. Real Time Screen

The Real Time screen displays what's happening on your site right at the moment.

You can actually watch as traffic enters and exits your site.

3. Audience Section

The Audience section contains a wealth of useful information about your audience.

This information includes details such as:

• The geographic locations of your audience
• What browsers are being used
• What operating systems are being used
• What service providers are being used
• What screen resolution is being used (for mobile)

4. Acquisition Section

The Acquisition section tells you where your visitors come from.

For example, it will tell you if your traffic comes from different places such as other websites, search engines, or social networks. If you're focused on online marketing, this is a really good section to get familiarized with.

5. Behavior Section

The Behavior section will provide information about what your traffic is doing on your site. For example:

• What is the traffic flowing like through your site?
• What items are people clicking on/interacting with?
• What are people searching for?

6. Conversions

The Conversions section contains reports that track how well your site is doing in terms of completing different goals that you've set for your site.

Quite often, when people talk about Conversion Goals, they're speaking in terms of revenue generation. There are quite a few different types of events that can have goals set for them and, in turn, be tracked, such as:

• Document downloads
• Contact form completions
• Audience engagement such as number of pages per visit
• Events, such as watching videos
• Clicks to social media accounts (like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn)