Google Analytics provides a wealth of data, which can be both a blessing and a curse. With so much information available, deciding what to focus on can be overwhelming. While the specific metrics you should track largely depend on the goals of your website or campaign, here are five fundamental performance metrics that most website owners should regularly check:

Traffic Volume and Sources

• Sessions: The total number of visits to your website.
• Users: The number of unique visitors.
• Source/Medium: This shows where your traffic is coming from (e.g., organic search, paid search, direct traffic, social media). This helps you understand which channels drive the most traffic and which might need more attention.

Bounce Rate

This metric represents the percentage of visitors who land on your site and leave without clicking or navigating to another page. A high bounce rate can indicate that visitors are not finding what they are looking for or the user experience needs to be more engaging.

Conversion Rate & Goals

Set up specific conversion goals in Google Analytics depending on your business goals. These could be things like purchasing, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete these desired actions.

Average Session Duration & Pages per Session

These metrics give insights into how long visitors stay on your site and how many pages they visit during a session. If users stay longer and see more pages, it’s a good indicator that your content is engaging.

Pageviews and Top Pages

• Pageviews: The total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are also counted.
• Top Pages: This shows which pages on your site are the most popular. Knowing this can help you identify the most engaging content and where you might want to focus your optimization efforts.

Bonus:

Mobile Performance: As mobile traffic grows, you must check how your site performs on mobile devices. Look for metrics like mobile bounce rate, conversion rate, and page load time on mobile.

Remember, these are just foundational metrics. Depending on the nature of your site or business (e.g., e-commerce, blog, informational), additional specific metrics will be critical to monitor. Always align your metrics with your business objectives to ensure you are getting insights that drive meaningful action.