{"id":1441,"date":"2015-09-29T20:47:15","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T00:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gregcruce.com\/?p=1441"},"modified":"2016-04-30T22:14:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T02:14:23","slug":"what-is-the-channel-report-in-google-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gregcruce.com\/what-is-the-channel-report-in-google-analytics\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is The Channel Report In Google Analytics?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many people love Google Analytics as it provides a powerful reporting system to show the popularity of certain pages<\/a>, which pages have a high bounce rate, and\u00a0many other useful metrics.<\/p>\n

One of the most powerful things you can use Google Analytics for is to create custom segments and see how different traffic performs better<\/a> (or worse). One particular class of segments exists by default in Google Analytics, and that is Channels.<\/p>\n

What Are Channels?<\/h2>\n

\"Google<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Channels are a group of common ways people come to your site<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Google Analytics will automatically take the variety of ways someone comes to your site and bundle them together\u00a0– from social media, referral links, email, pay-per-click, and more. That’s what a channel is, a common way people come to your site.<\/p>\n

Above is an example of the Channel Report as a pie chart. We can quickly see that overall, Organic Search provides most of our traffic in this example.<\/p>\n

Why Do Channels Matter?<\/h2>\n

Since channels give us a way to classify and sort traffic, it makes sense that we should see if certain channels are outperforming other channels, especially when it comes to how our goals are performing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Channel Example – Resource Download<\/h4>\n

For example, let’s say that one of our site goals it so have visitors complete a Registration Form to download a resource. We are currently promoting this resource from social media, and some paid ads. Using that goal, we can see which channels are fulfilling our goal.<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/p>\n

It would appear that our paid ads are having little to no effect on that goal – we should consider pausing that spend if it’s not insignificant or reworking the campaign because it’s not helping with our goal. Also, our social promotion has had some small gains – we should let the social team know that we’ve had some conversions and weigh it against the amount of time put into the promotion. Two great insights that are useful.<\/p>\n

What Are The Default Channels?<\/h2>\n

Google gives us 8 channels by default, and has an explicitly technical matching system for each<\/a>. Below we will take a simplistic look.<\/p>\n