Acquisition Reports

Acquisition Reports. In CXL INSTITUTE We were showed how to use Google Analytics to answer the question, "where are my users coming from?"Let's take a look. Welcome to Getting to Know GA: Acquisition Reports.Today's objectives: Number one, the purpose of acquisition reports. We're going to talk about specific answers you can get from those reports, and of course, limitations in those reports. First up, the journey. So far, we've already covered audience reports. Now we're moving into acquisition reports. Then we're going to move into behavior and conversions reportsand that's going to kind of finish us out on this getting to know Google Analytics section. So at that point, you'll have a great overview of all the different things that are available to you in Google Analyticsand the types of questions you can answer. Then, we will move into part three where we will start to actually set up our Google Analytics account, starting with the account settings, then moving into the property and ultimately the view settings. For now, though, we're going to be getting to know Google Analytics Acquisition Reports.OK, first, what do they answer?

Understanding Source/Medium & Campaigns

Remember, real time reports answered "what?"They answered testing questions, right?"Is this thing working? Is this thing on?"Audience reports answered "who?""Who are my users?"Acquisition reports answer "where?""Where are my users coming from? How did they find me? They were just on somewhere else, now they are here. Where was that somewhere else?"That's what acquisition reports are designed to answer. So where do we find those? In Google Analytics, you will find them right underneath AUDIENCE.So you got to remember: testing, who?, Where? Right, "Where are my users coming from?"That's your acquisition reports. Now there are some specific answers that you can get. We're going to talk first about traffic sources. So this is the one you are probably going to use the most. So we're going to come into ALL traffic and then we go into SOURCE/MEDIUM. And I'm going to start here because I think this is a really good overview of everything that's coming into your site. That's what this is for. So this is ALL TRAFFIC and then SOURCE/MEDIUM. You're going in to see all the different traffic sources that are coming in. This is essentially the "brand" of the traffic and then the "type" of the traffic. That's what the source and the medium is. Kind of an easy way to think about it, so the "brand" that it's coming from and the "type" of traffic that it was. So the "brand" in this case is Google, the "type" was organic. And we'll cover these, and what these mean, in intricate detail in the future lessons, so I won't dive into that now but sufficed to say in this report, I can get answers to 80% of what I really care about. One, "where are they coming from?"So I see my identity of the traffic sources here. Then I see "how much?"That's the quantity of the traffic that's coming through. Then I see what the actions, what the engagement is. It kind of helps me give like a quality score, so to speak, to the different traffic that's coming through. And then I can actually see the results of the traffic that's coming through. All in one report! That's why I said you're going to be using this one a lot. So the Source/Medium report is amazing if you want to understand the traffic sources that are sending the traffic, how much they're sending, how much it's engaging, and actually the quality of that, and then ultimately what the results of those traffic sources are. So that's super important when it comes to Google Analytics. Second, campaigns. So in Google Analytics, you can come down and you can take a look at campaigns. Now I'm going to start with ALL CAMPAIGNS here but you can break these down, so you have campaigns that are coming in from Ad words or something else. This is everything that they've got. You see a lot of Ad words campaigns they've created and they've got those little Data Share Promo campaign that was created. So what happens is when they click through here, you can actually drill down and in a perfect world, you would actually see all the different traffic sources that are pushing toward that campaign. And to be completely honest, I don't think Google's done a fantastic job in combining that, but it could also be because they're not tagging a lot of the traffic, which we're going to talk about, in fact, I'll show you some examples of that in a future lesson, so you can see how that makes this even more useful. But, the campaigns themselves, super important report because what it's basically helping you to answer is"OK, all the traffic is pushing toward this one purpose, this one direction, like in this case to get apparel, so what are the different traffic sourcesthat are doing thatand then how are they working together to achieve a result?"Like you can see that if you tag everything properly. So that's where it would end up in campaigns. And what I would do if I were you would go into your campaign reports, and see if you have a lot of them. Some clients I've been to, and if you're like this that's totally fineit's kind of normal that a lot of people do this, they're very fractured. And we'll talk more about this in that lesson where we talk about traffic and understanding traffic, but you might see that you have hundreds of campaigns back here, and that might be a little too much. Campaigns, again, really just all about the point of the traffic, the idea isto drive a certain result in most cases.

Understanding Channel Reports

Next, wanted to show you the channel report. Now channels report you will also see an awful lotin acquisitions. So when you go into ALL TRAFFIC, you will see this top report called CHANNELS. Now this is one of those reports that in the beginning, you think you will use a lot, and you might, but what you will really start to do is customize it as you get good. So this is the beginning, this is kind of what they give you by default, and this is the built-in channels so you've got Organic Search, which is exactly what it sounds like, it's all the search traffic coming to inform search engines. Then I've got Direct, which is essentially untagged traffic referralsfrom other sites. Social Media, so there's your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, all that sort of stuff should show up under here. They have an Affiliates channel. So you've got all of this different channel information that's flowing through here,and just like the SOURCE/MEDIUM,I can see the identity of the channel,I've got all of the different quantities,how much I'm getting from each channel,what the actual quality is of that,how they're engaging,and then ultimately what the results are of that channel as it's coming through. And channel, the way to think about it is, it's bigger than the brand and the type. Right?So Facebook would be a "brand", and the "type" of Facebook might be pay traffic that's coming through. So that's like your source/medium. Social is the channel, which would also include things like, if I click down on social we shall see, hopefully, let's find out, yes!YouTube, Facebook, Google Groups, Quora, right?All those different social networks that are coming throughto help fill that channel of social. That's sort of the top level of classifying it. Then within the channel, you have different types of sources that are coming through, and then within those sources, you can have different types of traffic. You might have Facebook that's pay trafficand Facebook that's, you know, not paid or share traffic. And again, I'll show you all of thatas we move into our understanding traffic sectionof this course. But I wanted you to be familiar with this report, so the channels report, the source medium report for figuring out where these different traffic sources are that are coming through, and, of course, the campaigns report so you can kind of understand the point of the traffic, because really, what this is helping you understand"What's the point of the traffic? What was it designed to do?"and that can help you to, sort of, keep track of that. Now, two other things I want to point out