Madrid

Barcelona
Valencia

Convertion Rate
www.esic.edu

Sevilla
Zaragoza
Málaga
Galicia
Pamplona

Optimization
Bilbao
Granada
 Measurement Plan

Goal

Strategy

Kpi

Segment
Google Analytics dimensions and metrics

Metrics and dimensions are the building blocks of Google

Analytics that help you segment, organize, and analyze your
traffic data

What’s the difference between metrics and dimensions?

Google Analytics reports are made of dimensions and metrics.

Throughout most reports, metrics are the quantitative
measurements of data and dimensions are the labels used to
describe them—or, in even easier terms: metrics are always
expressed by numbers (number values, %, $, time), while
dimensions are expressed by non-numerical values.
What is a dimension in Google Analytics?

Dimensions are the attributes that can be used to describe and segment, organize, and sort data. Examples of
dimensions include:

● Medium
● Browser
● Country
● Language
● Campaign
● Device Category

Each dimension accepts different values: for example, the dimension ‘Device Category’ indicates the type of device used
to visit a website, accepts ‘desktop, mobile, and tablet’ as values, and can help sort traffic between the three devices.
What is a metric in Google Analytics?

Metrics are expressed through numbers (number values, %, $, time) in a Google Analytics report: they are quantitative measurements of

data and show how a website is performing in relation to a specific dimension.

For example, the number of ‘Users’ who came from desktop, mobile, and tablet devices and their ‘Average Session Duration’ are metrics
for the Device Category dimension:
Common GA metrics

1) Acquisition-related metrics answer questions such as: how did people get here, and who are they?

● Users → the visitors who initiated at least one session in the date range of interest
● New Users → the number of first-time users (as opposed to returning ones) in the date range
● Sessions → Google Analytics starts recording a session whenever someone visits a website and
terminates it after 30 minutes of inactivity. GA keeps track of all user interactions that take place
within that specified time frame.
2) Behavior-related metrics answer questions such as: how did people behave once they got here?

● Bounce Rate → the percentage of all single-page sessions where the Analytics server did not record any interactions (e.g.
where the visitor landed and left without clicking on any links and navigating to a second page)
● Exit Rate (shown as '% Exit') → the number of exits / number of pageviews for the specified page
● Pages/Session → the average number of pages viewed within a single session
● Session Duration → the average length of a session
3) Conversion-related metrics answer questions such as: how many people did convert, and how much revenue did we

get?

● Ecommerce Conversion Rate → the percentage of sessions that included an ecommerce transaction
● Transactions → the number of transactions (i.e. completed purchases) that took place
● Revenue → the amount of money generated from the transactions
Most Common Default Channel Groupings in Google Analytics Explained

1. Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from search engines. When people search for something on Google (or
Bing, or any other search engine), a list of websites shows up. This page is called a search engine results page (or SERPs).
When people click on one of these results, that visit is counted in the organic traffic of that website.

It is the best, most sought-after traffic by marketers. It’s the main reason why content marketing is on the rise today. The
results of organic traffic are exponential.
2. Direct Traffic

Direct traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from people directly typing or entering your website’s URL on their
browsers. If someone bookmarks your page, then later goes back and open it, that’s counted as direct traffic.

It’s usually an indication of brand awareness

From the user’s perspective, direct traffic usually comes from bookmarks or autocomplete in the URL — which is similar
to typing it directly. The only difference is that you had a little help from your browser.

Example: Jon realizes that Christmas is around the corner. He opens up Safari and starts typing “amaz” then the browser
autocompletes the URL to amazon.com. He hits enter and Amazon’s website shows up.
3. Social Traffic

Social traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from social networks. This happens when people share a link on Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, etc. and you click on it.

Quora, Reddit, and other similar sites also fall under here. But it depends on how Google categorizes the site. In short, it
depends on the document referrer field and matches the value there to a list of known social networks. If it doesn’t have
a match, it will fall under referral Traffic.

Example: Jon is scrolling on Facebook and sees a Tasty video about pasta cooked 4 ways. He sees how it’s made and
thinks to himself, “I can do that.” He clicks on the link in the post to see the full recipe. Tasty’s website loads with the
specific recipe for that video.
4. Referral Traffic

Referral traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from other websites.

If done right, this is the result of effective content marketing. What happens is other people/organizations write about
you/your products/services on their own websites.

Since they have their own audience, when they click on that link, they land on your own website.

Google Analytics counts that as referral traffic. The website that links to your site is called the referring website/domain.
5. Email Traffic

Email traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from your email campaigns.

Take note that not all links in your emails go to this traffic. To make sure it appears properly under this channel grouping,
you have to integrate your email marketing software with Google Analytics or manually tag (UTM parameters) your links —
and make sure the medium parameter is exactly “email.”
6. Paid Traffic

Paid traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from paid advertisements. These are ads from Google Ads or Bing Ads. To be
more specific, links with the medium “ppc” or “cpc” (or the ones indicated in the table above) are the ones tracked.

You can customize this, along with other settings, in the admin settings of your Google Analytics account. You can find out
more information about how to do this in my previous post about paid traffic.
7. Display Traffic

Display traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from paid advertisements as well. Unlike Paid Traffic, this kind of traffic requires the
medium parameter to be equal to “display.”

I’m sure you’ve visited sites that are showing you ads. If you click on one of those banner ads, most of the time, your visit which leads to
another website will be counted as display traffic.

You’d often find ads on news or media outlets, bloggers or affiliate sites. If it involves a form of pretty graphics, those are display ads.

Refer to the table above to see which parameters direct traffic is counted in your GA account.
Thank you
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