Using Google Analytics to Report On Landing Pages

Google Analytics is a free, massively popular analytics program for tracking a number of website performance features.  While ‘landing page’ can be used to refer to a specially crafted marketing page, in this context it simply means the page on which a visitor first arrives when coming from another website or search engine. This may be the home page, but it can end up being any other page on the website as well. A search for “sympathy flowers” should lead the customer to your sympathy or funeral arrangement catalogue, not the home page.

Understanding the performance of different pages on your site is key to making sure you are capitalizing on all the traffic that is coming in to your site. After all, there is no point in investing time and resources in pursuing traffic growth through SEO, Social Media and other marketing channels if the website is turning people away!

Viewing and Understanding the Landing Page Report

Landing-Pages---Google-Analytics---Google-ChromeTo find the landing page report within Google Analytics, click the ‘Content’ tab on the left-hand side and select the option for ‘Landing pages.’  This displays the data collected on pages that have served as landing pages.

Here, we can see which pages have served as landing pages, the percentage of new visitors to the site (% New Visits), how long they tend to stay (Avg. Visit Duration), how many pages they visit after arriving (Pages/Visit), and the bounce rate, which is the percentage of visitors that come to the site and leave without visiting any additional pages.

Landing Pages Summary
Landing Pages Summary
This data helps compare the performance of each landing page and can show us where the most traffic is coming from.

Google Analytics Landing Pages Report
Look for outliers, and seek an explanation. The highlighted figures are concerning, until we see that the page in question is the Location and Business Hours page.

Tuning Up Our Landing Pages

To figure out the most successful drivers of traffic to our site, we can set up some additional segments to compare traffic sources.  These allow us to view the sources of site visitors and filter them according to several categories.

We can, for example, show only the visitors that arrive from social media platforms.  With this information, we can see which landing pages perform the best with social media visitors, and tweak our not-so-good pages to make them more like the successful pages.  This can be done by adding or removing keywords, adjusting layout and design, or revamping content.

If we were to set up Google Analytics Goals (an easy process) we could set up one or more Goal Sets.  These allow us to evaluate our landing pages based on the number of conversions they produce.  This lets us see which landing pages visitors are most likely to buy flowers from, and which pages are poor converters.  Again, we can use this information to make our less-successful pages more appealing.

Google Analytics is a powerful analytics tool, but only when used properly.  The time and effort it takes to get to know this program pays off in the enhancements that it brings to our websites.

For more information about understanding and adjusting landing pages with Google Analytics, see the official Google page for landing page improvement and this blog by Wired Impact.

8 thoughts on “Using Google Analytics to Report On Landing Pages”

  1. I used to use Analytics until I really started understanding why you should not use it. Google does not give free services without being able to make some sort of revenue right? I mean look at all their services! Google has applications that track your use online and they target advertising to meet your interests and search results. So, can we trust them with our stats? What if they are using our visitor information to further customer their ads in search when relating to our websites or keywords associated to it? I just find it odd that analytics is free but there is no “visible” catch. I alternatively use Piwik, its free software and you self-host it meaning they are not able to secretly track your stats with you… It also has the same features as analytics. I recommend it or at least giving it a try 🙂

    1. Thanks for the (many) comments, Shawn.

      Google has strict policies governing their use of data gathered through GA, so the fear-mongering isn’t really justified. Besides, they already have a tonne of data available so while this does provide some additional context, if Google was to aggregate it, they know more about the site visitors than we can imagine. The free GA version uses data sampling on larger sites to limit resource use … or you can upgrade to the paid version. Pretty typical these days.

      End of the day it comes down to what tools do the job the best. Piwik is an interesting option, but it’s no match in feature set or performance for Google Analytics.

      Since GA is the most popular option we are writing the series to help readers get the most from their data and reports in order to better run their sites.

  2. This seems like a promising tool to use. The only useful google tool I used was keyword tool. But this seems to have a lot more information regarding visitors to your site. Something I’ve been looking for to help with a website I have.

  3. vida_llevares

    I’m very interested with this:

    We can, for example, show only the visitors that arrive from social media platforms.

    This will help internet marketers identify the success rate or the returns from specific internet marketing platforms.

  4. This is very helpful. Evidently, my landing pages need some improvement. Would you mind doing a post on that topic? I’m not a graphics person, and it’s difficult for me to get into the mindset of what is going through visitors’ minds as they bounce away from my landing page.

  5. Landing pages are brilliant for bounce rate. Lets say you have 10 different pages that are landing pages and all of them have a bounce rate of 30% , then one has a bounce rate of 70% then we know there is problem. This then shows that there is something on this page that people don’t like, or that push people away. Solution is to change the page, start with one item at a time and see what effect it has on the bounce rate.
    I have found that Visitor flow helps alot with these landing pages. If you see that 1 page gets 90% of your landing page traffic the next thing to analyse is where to after that. With the visitor flow you can see which are the popular pages to go to from the landing page. The big question then becomes are these the pages I want them to click through to. So on your home page it gets 90% of your landing page traffic, and on your home page you have a big advert about one of your products. You would assume a large number of visitors would go through to this product advert, if not why is the advert badly designed or badly planned. Hope this helps some people out.

  6. I have been using Google analytics, to track my visitors from the very beginning. I find it very useful, in seeing what is working and what is not. I have not set up any different segments, but will consider this in the near future.

  7. I really need to learn how to use Google Analytics Goals because they seem like they could help me a lot. I’ve been postponing this but I need to start educating myself in GA better. I know the basics but I could get so much more out of this.

    I know that split testing different landing pages will get rid of the bad ones and show me which pages make more money or convert better. By reading this post I am reminded that I need to take the bull by the horns and just use GA at its fullest capacity. I have GA on my sites for years and I still don’t know more than 50% of what it can offer.

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