There are five report suites inside Google Analytics that will each offer you different types of information.
These five different report times include:
- Real Time
- Audience
- Acquisition
- Behavior
- Conversions
Some sites may not use all of these reports. For example, if you’re not selling anything, you may not need to use the conversion suite. (However, it’s still useful for tracking conversions to your email list and such.)
Real-Time
Real-time reports let you know what is happening with your site right now. You can find out what is happening on your website at the moment you’re viewing the report. This will give you live information about how much traffic you’re getting and what pages people are currently viewing.
Audience
The audience reports give you information about the people visiting your site. They let you know their demographics such as age and gender, their interests, where they are located, what type of devices and browser they use, etc.
Acquisition
Acquisition reports tell you where your traffic is coming from. It gives you information such as keywords used to find you and links they came from. This will help you determine which are your most effective keywords and marketing channels.
Behavior
The behavior reports let you know information such as which pages people are viewing, where they go, how fast your pages load, etc. This will tell you which articles are most popular, and what you could do to make people enjoy your content more.
Conversions
The conversion reports will let you know how effective your site is at making sales or getting email signups or getting users to take whatever other action you’d like them to take.
Those are the five different types of reports and what type of information you can get from each one. Ideally, you’ll be using each of these different types of reports in order to take full advantage of the power offered by Google Analytics.
You can learn a lot about how to increase your traffic and conversions by using these reports.