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Learn the Secret for Viewing Google Analytic's Engagement Overview
Marketing is all about how you engage with your prospective customers, and keep them engaged through purchasing and beyond. Here’s how GA4’s Engagement report measures that:
Last time, we looked at the Acquisition reports because analyzing how you attract users is important to know, but it’s also vital that you engage users once you’ve caught their attention. The Engagement Overview is another report in the dropdown under Life Cycle in GA4 with a series of pre-made Summary Cards. The data collected in these cards shows you what Users are doing once they arrive at your website.
Average engagement time and Engaged sessions per user
The first line graph summarizes how many Users have been on your website over the last period, the average amount of time a User was engaged, and how many engaged sessions each User had, depending on which view you click. As a reminder, a session lasts from when a User arrives at your site until they leave or 30 minutes after they stop engaging. Engagement includes multiple screen views, video plays, scrolling, and similar “key events.”
Users in the last 30 minutes
In addition to the multiple-day view, monitoring Users in the last 30 minutes may be of interest when you launch a new marketing campaign or need to gauge future activity. Of course, not everyone has time to watch their analytics during the working day, but the option is there.
Views and Event count
The Views and Event count is another multiple-day line graph. Views is a display of how many pageviews were recorded and Event Count displays how many of those “key events” were recorded during those pageviews. The totals are always visible, but you can click on “Views” or “Event Count” to toggle between the two graphs. You’re shooting for many more events per view because that means your Users are staying engaged.
Event count by Event name
To see how Users are engaging, check the Event count by Event name report. You’ll see Events such as “session_start,” which means they showed up at your website, or “first_visit” which means the number of new Users. While those are both important events, increasing other events such as “user_engagement” is even more important to helping Users along the buyer’s journey.
Views by Page title and screen
The report Views by Page title and screen gets into the specifics of what has interested your Users. The titles of web pages visited by Users are listed by frequency so you can see which ones are the most popular.
User activity over time
The User activity over time report covers three different time periods: 30 days, 7 days, and 1 day. It gives you a heads-up so you can make corrections quicker. If the 1-day number is down, then the 7-day number will be down, too. Doing something about it now is better than being surprised at the 30-day number.
User stickiness
User stickiness is the last pre-made Summary Card. Stickiness refers to how well you retain Users over time. Getting a bunch of Users to come to your website is great, but statistics tell us that not many folks are ready to buy right away. It usually takes a few more “touches,” which is why engaging with Users is so important.
The User stickiness graph reports three ratios:
Daily Active Users (DAU) / Monthly Active Users (MAU)
Daily Active Users (DAU) / Weekly Active Users (WAU)
Weekly Active Users (WAU) / Monthly Active Users (MAU)
The higher the ratio, the better your stickiness is, which is what you are trying to achieve. Getting people to go to your website every single day would be quite a challenge, but there are ways to entice them to engage more often to increase those ratios.
That explains all of the pre-made Summary Cards in the Engagement Overview report. Remember, some of these reports can be opened to see a more detailed view, and you can change the dates of the Overview by clicking on the drop-down menu in the top right corner. We have now looked at all of the basic reports, but there is one optional report that you might want to add. We’ll explain next time, but if you just can’t wait, send us an email or call to learn more about how we can be your SEO partners.
Photo by Eren Li
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Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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