PPC or Google Ads is one of the best tools to enhance the flow of visitors to your site. With Google Ads, it’s pretty easy to calculate that how much money your ads are costing and how many conversions are being delivered by the ads. But, unless you use Google Analytics, what happens between the click and the conversion remains a mystery.
When you use the PPC campaigns to attract the potential customers to your website or landing page. Google Analytics provides the invaluable insights which exhibit that after clicking on the ad, how people are engaging with your website. It also shows how many people get converted, and when the people leave the site. And which step they get discouraged from moving ahead towards purchase/conversion and much more.
By analyzing the data facilitated by Google Analytics, the places for improvement, ways to increase conversions and ways for editing the campaign to reduce the costs can be identified.
To get detailed and better insights, with the different types of reports facilitated by Google Analytics (GA), one can use Reportgarden for Google Analytics PPC Campaign Reports. Here we have listed the top 10 GA reports which should be used by the PPC professionals to make their campaigns more results-oriented and fetch better ROI from the Google Ads campaigns.
10 Key Google Analytics Report Every PPC Professional Should Use
- Time Lag Report
The Time Lag Google Analytics report provides the information about the number of days from the first interaction of the user with the site – which can either be a click, an impression or a direct session to conversion. That is, the difference between the first interaction date and the final conversion date.
Comprehending how long it usually takes your potential customers to actually convert after their first landing on the site can help in determining that whether your conversion window is set up appropriately or not. For example, if it generally takes 45 – 60 days for visitors to convert, and your conversion window is set for 30 days; you might not be able to visualize the actual effectiveness of the ad.
By tweaking into your GA’s setting, the conversion window’s time can be changed to get the accurate view of the ad’s efficacy.
- Organic Keyword Report
The landing pages designed for the PPC Ads are a good way to analyze the organic search traffic. Because every landing page has been designed around a specific product, theme or focus keyword.
So, with the help of this report, one can check that which landing pages are receiving traffic from the Google organic search and how well this traffic is performing. This report can easily be customized as per your specific needs and according to the particular fields whose data you want to see.
- Landing Pages Report
It is one of the most useful Google Analytics reports for improving the performance of the landing pages designed for the ads. The “Landing Pages Report” can easily be accessed under “Behavior”, then “Site Content” and then “Landing Pages”.
This report shows the landing pages in a chronological order based on popularity. The most popular ones are placed on top with all the details like – the number of visits on the page, the average duration of visit, bounce rate and much more.
From this report, one can fetch information about that which pages are making visitors bounce and which pages persuade the visitors to explore further. It also shows that which pages are serving as an intro to your website, and how these pages can be improved further to attract more traffic. There are many ways in which this report can be customized and set to fetch desired data.
- Traffic Acquisition Report
The “Traffic Acquisition Report” tells us that from where your visitors are coming, like whether they are landing on your page from the search engines, website referrals or social referrals. This is one of the key reports which help in determining that which of the online marketing tactics are becoming successful, and which are pulling most visitors towards the website.
This report helps in understanding that efforts on which digital channel are yielding best results, and which channels are non-useful for you.
- Mobile Performance Report
It is one of the best reports for determining that how well the site is optimized for mobile access and which areas of the mobile site need improvement.
For instance, if the report is showing high bounce rate for Android and higher average session duration for iOS when compared to Android. Then it becomes clear that you need to do something to decrease the bounce rate for Android devices. It also indicates that you might need to optimize your website in a better way for the Android users.
- Display Targeting Report
This particular Google Analytics report allows you to monitor and analyze the performance of your Google Ads campaign which targets the Google Display Network (GDN). This report fetches the data from the “Search Network With Display Select” and “Display Network Only” campaigns which use one or more of the following targeting options:
- Age
- Gender
- Interests and Remarketing
- Topics
- Placement
- Display Keywords
Each of these targeting options is used as the Primary Dimension by the “Display Targeting Report”. For each of these “Primary Dimensions”, one can examine the Conversion, Behavior and Acquisition metrics for the traffic which is targeted through the specific targeting option. This report also lets the users understand that to which extent the users – who clicked on the display ad are engaging with your site after clicking the ad, and how they convert.
- Destination URLs
The “Destination URLs” report delivers the information pertaining to all the metrics tied with each unique URL in the particular containing entity. The structure of the Google Ads account is segregated into three levels – Account, Campaign and Ad Group. And depending on the scope, whether it is the account, ad group or campaign, all the metrics are totaled on the basis of each URL.
It helps in assessing the performance of the pages against each other without requiring to combine metrics across the different ads with the same destination URL with the help of filters or the other programs like MS Excel.
This report can be accessed from the “Dimensions Tab”. It is one of the best reports that enable quick scanning of the landing pages and find out that which URLs are getting higher influxes of traffic and which aren’t. Also, it makes the comparison of the landing pages across the account much easier.
- Assisted Conversions Report
The “Assisted Conversions Report” showcases the number of conversions and sales, which are assisted by a channel. The appearance of a channel anywhere during the process of conversion, except as the final interaction on the conversion path, is considered as an assisted conversion. The higher these numbers are, the more vital the assist role of that channel is.
In online retail, most of the users don’t purchase anything when they first visit the website. They gather the information, look for different products and then purchase after a few days. And this comparison shopping results in the multiple visits to the site. This is a significant concern, because there may be some channels that may be contributing greatly to the success of the site. But, often, they are not accounted for the same.
The Assisted Conversions Report helps in developing the complete picture of how the visitors fond about the site. And the products which they finally purchased, so that, the channels which are actually supporting the sale can be uncovered.
For instance, in the picture, we can see that the “Paid Search” has a relatively small number of direct conversions. But, if the assisted conversions are checked, but plays a role in assisting 20% of the site’s total conversions. When we check the assisted conversions report, we may know about some channels which might not be directly contributing the sales. But, supporting them or assisting them, and thus, marketing experts should know about them so that they don’t cut those channels because of the lower number of direct sales from them.
- Matched Search Queries Report
The “Matched Search Queries” Google Analytics report helps in checking the exact search phrases types of the users in Google to trigger your keyword of Google Ads. These days, the queries types by users on Google are becoming more and more complex. Thus, long tail keywords are able to help better in attracting the traffic than short keyword phrases.
This report can be quite helpful in improving your campaign and keyword selection.
- Site Search Report
Located under the “Behavior” section, the “Site Search” report helps in uncovering that how people interact with your site’s search functionality. It’s easy to set up and can deliver several valuable insights about the user behavior when they are on your site. Using these insights, the site’s structure and other elements can be improved for delivering better “User Experience”.
