Google Analytics is a fixture in every dealer’s arsenal of reporting. It allows you to monitor your web traffic in real time, keep track of your advertising portfolio’s performance, and optimize your website for conversions. With a seemingly infinite number of possible reports capable of being generated it can get overwhelming to track everything.   Here are the three most important Google Analytics reports you should keep up with to stay on top of your advertising.

All Traffic Report

All Traffic is the gold standard for most Google Analytics reporting, and is the perfect place to start your daily Google Analytics dive. It shows all the traffic to your website based on the time period you select to view and can be found by clicking All Traffic > Source/Medium. The traffic is segmented by source, and your paid traffic sources should be easily identifiable if your automotive marketing agency or vendor is using proper UTM code practices.

From the all traffic report you can monitor overall traffic for sudden changes in quality, bounce rate and volume. All of those metrics are easily visualized over time in the chart at the top of the report and in the table you will see below that. You can easily change which metrics are being shown in the chart via drop downs, apply custom segments to isolate traffic sources or any other measurable variable, and even drill down further with secondary dimensions if you desire. The possibilities are nearly endless, and the report can be easily adapted to your individual needs. The All Traffic report is a 10,000-foot view of your analytics picture, and a vital first step in staying on top of your data. If you’re questioning your Bounce Rates when looking at this report, it might be a good idea to head over to our blog regarding Bounce Rate myths or, just watch the video!

Geography Report

The next report you should be viewing daily is your Geography report. This report is under Audience > Geo > Location. Clicking that sequence will bring up a clickable world map in which you can drill down to a city level.

This geographic data is also segment-able the same way as the All Traffic report is so you can monitor the geographic locations of sessions from your advertising portfolio. This is helpful especially when targeting competitive dealerships.

The Geography report can also help you identify potential bot traffic and get a clearer picture of your overall web traffic. Bot traffic tends to cluster together from specific towns across the country. Are you a dealer in New Jersey and getting thousands of sessions from Ann Arbor, Michigan or Coffeyville, Kansas? Those are more than likely bots and crawlers generating sessions. Filtering those sessions out of your reports will clean up your data and paint a more accurate picture of your true traffic volume and quality. This is also a great place to determine the quality of your advertising traffic. Some vendors will deliver a high volume of traffic, but unfortunately, it will be from way out of the area signaling an issue with the quality of traffic generated.

Top Events Report

Most dealer websites have Google Analytics Event Codes embedded in key places on the site. These event codes send data to Google Analytics when a specific action is taken and record it in real time. These actions include but aren’t limited to click to call, form fills, VDP views, landing page visits and more. Your events are viewable in the Top Events report, found in Behavior > Events > Top Events.

Just like the Geography and All Traffic Reports, these events can be segmented by any dimension you choose. You can segment them by traffic source to find out which sources are providing the best conversions, geography to find out where your conversions are coming from, hour of the day to find out when your conversions are coming in and so on and so forth. Monitoring your events is an excellent way to measure effectiveness of optimizations made to campaigns and allows you to see the result of those tweaks in real time.

The All Traffic, Geography and Top Events reports are a great way to gain valuable insight into your daily Analytics reviews. Each report breaks down vital aspects of your data into easily digestible and actionable information. Staying on top of these three reports will give you invaluable insight into the inner workings of your campaigns, allow you to keep your data as clean as possible, and stay ahead of the curve in the pursuit of your advertising goals.

As an Automotive Digital Marketing company, we specialize in transparent Google Analytics reporting for car dealerships. If you’d like some help reviewing these reports, reach out and schedule a call. We’ll gladly go over them with you and show you some more insider tips and tricks to gain a deeper understanding of your analytics data. Contact us today!