Google Analytics is a valuable program that can provide very insightful information. It is also a program that provide a large volume of information. As with any business, time is money. And, as executives, you need quick access to the important information, to make business decisions.

Below is a quick summary of how to best embrace some of the basic tools within Google Analytics. The need is to focus on top level stuff, not geting stuck in the weeds

Website Traffic - Determines if your site is growing, stagnating or declining

Total Number of Visitors

Looking at New & Repeat Visitors

Traffics spikes based on events/promotions/content

Traffic Sources - How your users are getting to the site

Organic Search - traffic via search engines

Referral - traffic from another website

Direct - Users typing your domain into the browser

Social - traffic from social media

Bounce Rate - Percentage of users that leave your website immediately after arriving

Gives you the percentage, but doesn't tell you why

Common reasons

Slow load times

Bad first impression

Poorly targeted keywords

Top Pages - Best performing pages in terms of traffic

Gives you page examples of what your website users respond to

Exit Pages - Last page the users views before leaving the site

Just identifying that makes sense. Is it a form that was filled out, etc.

Looking at these metrics on a regular basis will help guide on marketing decisions and your website performance.