How to find where your users are coming from using Acquisition Reports in Google Analytics 4

Summary

In this educational video, Krista Seiden guides viewers through Google Analytics' acquisition reports, which reveal the sources of website traffic and user engagement. She introduces key metrics like users, new users, and sessions, and explains dimensions such as campaign, source, medium, and channel. The video demonstrates how to interpret these metrics to understand user acquisition and session initiation, and how to leverage this data to optimize marketing strategies. It also highlights the importance of analyzing both new and returning user data to inform business decisions.

Takeaways

• 🔍 Krista Seiden introduces acquisition reports in Google Analytics, which help understand user traffic sources.
• 🎥 This is the second video in a series focusing on Google Analytics reporting for user interaction insights.
• 📺 Viewers are encouraged to access the analytics demo account for a practical walkthrough using the Google Merchandise store as an example.
• 📈 Acquisition reports provide an overview with cards displaying high-level information about user traffic.
• 👥 Key metrics defined include 'Users', 'New Users', and 'Sessions', which are crucial for measuring website or app interaction.
• 🔗 'Campaign', 'Source', 'Medium', and 'Channel' are key dimensions for analyzing traffic, each with specific meanings for marketing analysis.
• 📊 The acquisition overview card can be interacted with to view data by different dimensions like source, medium, or channel.
• 🛒 The user acquisition report focuses on the initial touchpoints of new users, while the traffic acquisition report looks at session initiations.
• 💰 The script demonstrates how to analyze which traffic sources are most valuable by looking at purchases and revenue.
• 🔄 Adding a secondary dimension like 'first user source medium' helps understand the user journey from initial discovery to return visits.

Q & A

What is the purpose of the acquisition reports in Google Analytics?

The acquisition reports help you understand where your users and traffic are coming from, and how they are finding or returning to your website or app.

What is the difference between 'users' and 'new users' in Google Analytics?

'Users' refers to the total number of visitors to your site or app, while 'new users' is a subset representing those who visited your site or app for the first time within the selected date range.

How does Google Analytics define a 'session'?

A session is a group of user interactions within a given time frame. It begins when a user opens your site or app and ends when they leave or are inactive for at least 30 minutes.

What is the difference between 'user acquisition' and 'traffic acquisition' reports?

'User acquisition' reports focus on the first campaign source and medium that brought the user, while 'traffic acquisition' reports focus on the session source medium and campaign that initiated a session.

How can you use acquisition reports to determine the effectiveness of marketing campaigns?

By analyzing the dimensions such as campaign, source, and medium, you can see which marketing efforts are driving the most new users or sessions and identify which sources bring the most value or revenue.

What are some common traffic sources and mediums you can track in Google Analytics?

Common traffic sources include search engines like Google, social media platforms, direct links, and referrals from other websites. Mediums include organic, CPC (paid ads), email, and referral traffic.

How can you track the effectiveness of Google Ads campaigns in acquisition reports?

By linking Google Ads to Google Analytics, you can see specific metrics related to Google Ads, such as sessions, clicks, cost, and cost per click, and analyze campaign performance through the acquisition reports.

What is the significance of the 'source/medium' dimension?

The 'source/medium' dimension combines the source and medium to provide more detailed insights into where traffic originates, such as distinguishing between Google Organic traffic and Google CPC (paid ads) traffic.

How can the traffic acquisition report help you optimize your marketing budget?

By analyzing which traffic sources and mediums drive the most purchases and revenue, you can identify where to allocate your marketing dollars more effectively to maximize returns.

What is the purpose of adding a secondary dimension in acquisition reports?

Adding a secondary dimension, such as 'first user source/medium,' allows you to analyze how users first found your site and how they returned, providing deeper insights into user behavior and the customer journey.

Outlines

00:00

📊 Introduction to Acquisition Reports in Google Analytics

Krista Seiden introduces viewers to acquisition reports in Google Analytics, emphasizing their utility for understanding user traffic sources. She mentions that this video is part of a series on Google Analytics reporting, designed to answer basic questions about user engagement. Krista encourages viewers to access the analytics demo account for a practical walkthrough using the Google Merchandise store as an example. She navigates through the demo account, explaining the acquisition reports' overview and introducing key metrics such as users, new users, and sessions. She also defines important dimensions like campaign, source, medium, and channel, which are crucial for analyzing traffic data.

05:00

🔍 Deep Dive into User and Traffic Acquisition Reports

This section delves deeper into the specifics of user acquisition and traffic acquisition reports. Krista explains the difference between the two, with the user acquisition report focusing on the initial touchpoints of new users and the traffic acquisition report examining the session initiation points for all users. She demonstrates how to interact with the reports, change dimensions, and explore data like Google Ads campaigns. Krista also shows how to analyze the effectiveness of marketing efforts by looking at the source of new users and sessions. Additionally, she discusses how to assess the value of different traffic sources by examining metrics related to purchases and revenue.

10:01

🔗 Understanding User Journey and Marketing Impact

In the final paragraph, Krista demonstrates how to combine dimensions to understand the user journey, from initial discovery to subsequent visits. She shows how to add a secondary dimension to the reports to view both the first user source medium and the session source medium, providing insights into how users find the website and how they return. Krista wraps up the lesson by summarizing the key learnings and encourages viewers to join the next video in the series, which will cover website performance and demographic reporting. She signs off with a reminder to enjoy the measurement process.

Keywords

💡Acquisition Reports

Acquisition Reports in Google Analytics are tools used to understand the sources of website traffic. They provide insights into how users are finding and returning to a website or app. In the video, Krista Seiden walks through these reports, showing how they can be used to analyze where users and traffic originate from, which is crucial for digital marketers to optimize their strategies.

💡Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. It is central to the video's theme as it is the platform through which the acquisition reports are accessed and analyzed. The video series is focused on teaching viewers how to use Google Analytics for reporting purposes.

💡Users and New Users

In the context of the video, 'Users' refers to the total number of visitors to a site or app, while 'New Users' are those visiting the site or app for the first time within a selected date range. These metrics are fundamental for understanding audience growth and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, as they help differentiate between returning and first-time visitors.

💡Sessions

A 'Session' in Google Analytics is a group of user interactions with a website or app within a given time frame. It starts when a user opens an app or views a page and ends after a period of inactivity or when the user exits. The video emphasizes the importance of sessions for measuring engagement and user activity, as it illustrates how users interact with a site or app over time.

💡Campaign

A 'Campaign' in the video refers to a marketing initiative, either paid or custom, aimed at promoting a product or service. Campaigns are crucial for tracking the success of marketing efforts and are often named to reflect their purpose, such as 'holiday sale 2023'. The video explains how to use campaign data to measure the impact of different marketing strategies.

💡Source

In the video, 'Source' denotes the website or platform from which a user is directed to the site being analyzed. It is a key dimension for understanding traffic referrals and can include search engines, social media sites, or other websites. The video discusses how sources contribute to user acquisition and session initiation.

💡Medium

A 'Medium' in Google Analytics is a category that groups traffic sources, such as 'organic' for search engine traffic or 'email' for email marketing. The video explains that mediums help to categorize and analyze the methods by which users are directed to a site, which is essential for optimizing marketing channels.

💡Channel

A 'Channel' in the context of the video is a rule-based grouping of sources and mediums used to categorize website traffic. Channels help to identify which groupings of traffic sources are most effective in driving visits and value. The video demonstrates how to use channel groupings to analyze high-level traffic patterns and their impact on business goals.

💡User Acquisition Report

The 'User Acquisition Report' is a specific type of report in Google Analytics that focuses on the initial campaign, source, and medium through which users first interact with a site. The video uses this report to show how to track new user acquisition and to answer questions about where new users are coming from.

💡Traffic Acquisition Report

The 'Traffic Acquisition Report' in the video is used to analyze the session source, medium, and campaign for all users. It differs from the User Acquisition Report by focusing on how sessions start rather than the first interaction. The video demonstrates how this report can be used to understand the ongoing sources of traffic to a website.

💡Google Merchandise Store

The 'Google Merchandise Store' is a real online store used as a case study in the video. It serves as an example to illustrate how to apply Google Analytics tools and reports to a real-world scenario. The video uses data from this store to demonstrate the practical application of acquisition reports and other analytics features.

Highlights

Introduction to acquisition reports in Google Analytics for understanding user traffic sources.

The video is part of a series on reporting in Google Analytics.

Access to a demo account for following along with the tutorial.

Overview of the Google Merchandise store as a real online store example.

Explanation of the acquisition reports and their role in analyzing user traffic.

Introduction to key metrics like users, new users, and sessions in Google Analytics.

Definition of 'campaign' in the context of Google Analytics.

Clarification of 'source' and its significance in tracking user traffic.

Description of 'medium' as a category of traffic sources.

Explanation of 'channel' as a rule-based grouping of traffic sources.

How to interact with acquisition overview cards to view different dimensions.

Details on Google Ads campaigns and their integration with Google Analytics.

Difference between user acquisition and traffic acquisition reports.

Analyzing where new users are coming from using the user acquisition report.

Understanding how sessions start on the website using the traffic acquisition report.

Identifying valuable traffic sources for driving purchases and revenue.

Combining dimensions to analyze user journey from first visit to return visits.

Conclusion and预告 of the next video on website performance and demographic reporting.

Transcripts

- Hi, I'm Krista Seiden.

In this video, I'm gonna walk you

through the acquisition reports in Google Analytics.

- You can use these reports to understand

where your users and your traffic are coming from

and how they're finding or returning to your website or app.

Two quick things before we get started.

This video is the second video in a video series all about

reporting and Google Analytics.

Together we're looking at how to find answers

to your basic questions about how people are finding

and interacting with your website or your app.

Find all the related videos on the Google

Analytics YouTube channel.

Second, if you haven't already,

you can access the analytics demo account

to follow along with me today.

I'll be showing you reports from a real Google Analytics

account for the Google Merchandise store,

and you can get access to view that property

through the link in this video's description.

If you use the demo account, you can follow along with me,

or if you'd prefer, you can also look at the same reports in

your own Google Analytics property.

With that, let's dive in to Google Analytics.

Here we are in a demo account

for the Google Merchandise store.

The Google Merchandise store is a real online store

where you can buy Google branded gear.

Today we'll look at the acquisition reports to see

how users are coming to the website.

So when we first open the property,

we're here on the homepage.

I'm gonna go to the navigation menu and open reports,

and then I'll click on acquisition and overview.

This is just that, an overview with cards

that show you high level information about

how users are coming to your website.

You'll see things like users and new users, real time

and many more cards that get into specific details

that you can dive into about how users are arriving.

But before we start looking at these cards and reports,

it helps to know a few terms

that you'll see in the UI.

Here are a few metrics that quantify your traffic.

A user is a person who interacts with your website

or app whose activity you're measuring.

So users represent the total number of visitors

to your site or app.

New users is a subset of your users,

specifically those users who visited your site

or app for the first time within the selected date range.

Session, groups of users interactions together in a given timeframe.

Think of a session as a single time period of interaction

with your site or app.

A session begins when they open your app

or view a page on your website

and ends when they exit your website or app

or when they've been inactive for at least 30 minutes.

During that one session, they might visit multiple pages

or screens, trigger multiple events

or make one or more purchases.

So back in the acquisition overview, there are a bunch

of cards with data that reference these metrics.

In these cards, we see new user

and session counts grouped by some dimensions

that help you understand where those users came from

or from where the session was initiated.

That is did they come from a search, a direct link,

a social media app, or website, an online ad and so on.

So let's define these dimensions as well

and then we'll dive deeper into the reports.

Campaign refers literally to either a paid promotion

or marketing campaign.

This could be a Google Ads campaign

or a custom campaign that you've created.

For example, a paid ad campaign might have the name

of holiday sale 2023

or a custom campaign might have the name of blog post 2023.

To get the most accurate campaign data from Google Ads products,

you'll need to set up product links with Google Ads.

Source, is either the website from which your

user came to your website

or a custom name for the user clicked from.

For example, you might see Google here for users who came

to your site from Google search,

and you might also see various social media sites

that referred users to your website.

You could also see popular blogs that link to your website

or custom name when coming from something like an email.

If a user came to your website

by typing your URL directly into their browser,

or they had bookmarked your site

and came to it that way,

you’ll see direct as the website traffic source.

A medium represents a group

of traffic sources, grouped by category.

So for example, you'll see things like organic

that aggregate traffic from search engines,

email for email provider sources, CPC for paid ads,

meaning cost per click,

and referral for users

who clicked from a link on a different website.

Some of these are automatically defined by analytics

and for others, you also have the option to create your own.

You'll often see these combined

as one dimension, source medium.

This can help you get more information out of the source.

For example, you might see Google Organic

and Google CPC, which helps you distinguish

between organic search on Google and your paid search ads.

Finally, a channel is a rule-based grouping of sources,

mediums, or other rules to separate traffic,

to help you figure out at a high level which groupings drive

the most traffic or value for your business.

There are default channel groupings,

which will show up automatically,

and you can also create your own channel groupings

where you define the rules

to break your data down in other ways.

So in the acquisition reports,

we're gonna see these dimensions, campaign source, medium

and channel to learn how new users come to visit

for the first time, and also

how individual sessions started across all users.

So let's look back at the acquisition overview,

and we can see that the default dimension in this first card

is the default channel group.

We're looking at new users

by first user default channel group.

Now we can interact with these cards

and change this to source, medium,

or source medium if we'd like to see new users

by that dimension.

Same thing in the next card sessions

by session default channel group,

but we can update that to be session medium if we'd prefer.

This next card is Sessions by session Google Ads campaign.

Now if we click into this card, view Google Ads campaigns,

this will actually take us to a whole report specifically

for our Google Ads campaign information.

Now, this is available when we've linked Google Ads

to Google Analytics and then gives us insight into

how our campaigns are performing.

So you can see here we have session Google Ads campaigns

across users sessions, engaged sessions, Google Ads clicks,

Google Ads costs, and Google Ads cost per click.

You can also change this primary dimension here from Google

Ads campaign to any other number of dimensions

that are available from this integration.

After the overview report, we have the user acquisition

and the traffic acquisition report.

Now let's take a moment to understand the differences here.

The user acquisition report is gonna look at the very first

campaign source and medium that we see from that user,

whereas the traffic acquisition report will look at the

session source medium and campaign.

You can use these reports to answer questions such as,

where are my new users coming from?

For that one, we'd specifically look at the

user acquisition report.

This defaults to new users

by first user default channel group over time.

But again, we can change this and interact with it,

and if we'd prefer to see this by first user source medium,

we can do that here.

Now in this case, it looks like a lot of the users

to the Google Merchandise store are coming directly.

So either they bookmark that link or they typed it in,

or we see we have a lot of traffic coming from Google CPC,

which is Google Search and Google Organic traffic.

This can also help answer the question of which

of my marketing efforts are driving the most new users

to my site here in this user acquisition report.

So in terms of marketing efforts, it looks like you know,

Google paid search is definitely driving several new users

to our site, but there are other efforts such

as traffic coming from the support pages for Google,

and if we expand this,

we'll see many more

sources and mediums that are driving traffic such as

partners and affiliates and Google Groups.

Now that we have a good idea of how new users are coming

to our site, let's look at the traffic acquisition report

to understand how sessions are starting on our site.

This report will default

to the session default channel group again.

So I can see mostly most

of my sessions come from direct traffic

and then organic search,

but I can change this just like in the user acquisition report

to Session Source Medium

if I'd like to get more insight.

So now I can see that most of my sessions still are driven

by direct traffic, but in this case,

it looks like Google Organic traffic

is sending more individual sessions than Google CPC,

where we saw those flipped in the previous report.

I also see, scrolling down here to the bottom

that we're getting a decent amount

of traffic coming from our latest newsletter, which is great

to see that level of detail here.

I can use this information to let my email team know

that their marketing efforts have been successful.

Now, one important question

that you might be asking yourself is,

which traffic sources are bringing in the most

value for my business?

What is driving purchases?

What is driving revenue for my business?

So here in this traffic acquisition report,

we're looking at Source medium,

and if I scroll over in this table,

I can change this event count metric to just look

for the purchase event.

And when I do so, I will now see

how many purchases are driven by each source medium.

Looks like direct is definitely driving a lot

of purchases, but I can sort this by this column,

if I just click this little downward arrow

and it puts it in order

of which source mediums are driving those purchases.

So we still have direct, but it looks like

Google Organic is our second,

Google CPC is down at four,

and then we're getting some referrals, driving purchases beyond that.

I can also, if I'd like, sort this

by total revenue, by scrolling over

and clicking on the last column,

this doesn't change the order too much,

but now I can see the total revenue driven by each

of these source medium combinations,

and this will help me to determine my future marketing

efforts and where I might want

to spend my marketing dollars.

Now the last thing that I wanna show you is

how we can actually combine these two dimensions to look at

how people first find your website

and then how they come back.

So I'm gonna scroll back over here and focus on users.

And now I'm gonna go ahead and add what's called

a secondary dimension.

So I'm gonna click this plus icon

and I'm gonna add the first user source medium.

Now what we see here is the second column is

our first user source medium.

So this is how people first found our site,

and the first column is our session source

medium, how people came back.

So they first found it from direct

and they came back to direct,

or they found it from a Google ad on Google search

and came back in the same way or through Google Organic.

This is a great way to understand the user journey,

how people are finding you and how they're coming back.

And then again, you can look at this across the many

dimensions that we've talked about such as purchases

and revenue to understand the

impact of these different channels.

With that, we'll wrap up this lesson.

Now you know a few different ways to see

where your new users and sessions are coming from.

Join us back here tomorrow for the next video in the series,

all about website performance and demographic reporting.

All videos in this series will be linked in the description

below the video, so we'll see you for the next one.

In the meantime, happy measuring.