How to Use Google Analytics to Measure Mobile Traffic on Your Website

Quick guide: How to use Google Analytics to differentiate mobile traffic from desktop traffic on your website

Google Analytics is the number one choice in web analytics tools with more than 28,000,000 installs* world wide.  This quick guide will show you one of the core use cases of the tool which is the ability to compare mobile traffic to desktop and tablet traffic.

Despite its popularity, Google has announced the end of life for Universal Analytics and essentially mandated the use of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in the next 13 months.  So right up until July 1, 2023, you’ll be able to use these steps in Google Analytics to measure mobile traffic to your website and generate powerful mobile vs desktop web traffic insights!

Step 1: Log in to your Google Analytics account

You can get to your Google Analytics account here if you don’t have it book marked.

How to Use Google Analytics to Measure Mobile Traffic on Your Website

Step 2: Select Audience > Mobile from the left side menu

Selecting Audience will expand the menu.  Scroll down to Mobile, click it, then select Overview.  The Overview will give you device category (Mobile, Desktop, etc.) plus it allows you to add a Secondary Dimension to give you Device by Medium or Source.

Selecting Devices from the menu tells you what kind of device was used to access your site, like iPhone.

This type of information is useful but I’d classify this as top level data.  It’s a point of interest, not something you can do a ton of analysis with which takes us to…

How to Use Google Analytics to Measure Mobile Traffic on Your Website

Deeper Mobile Traffic Analysis

When you really need to know something about how mobile traffic uses your site, you’ll want to leverage the Segment functionality (shown below) to split out or compare Mobile Traffic against other subsets of traffic.  

How to Use Google Analytics to Measure Mobile Traffic on Your Website - Analytics 2

Google Analytics Reminders

  • Segments will stay in effect until you make a change.  If you’re navigating through a series of reports double check that you are seeing the segments you need to.
  • Mind the date range.  Even Google Analytics pros can overlook the ever present date range selector in the top right of the window.

That’s all there is to it!  Now you know how to use Google Analytics to measure mobile traffic on your website so that you can optimize your mobile experience and generate additional revenue!

* Stat via builtwith

Written by Erik Sunset

Written by Erik Sunset

Erik is the owner and operator of Sunset Marketing Works. Click to learn more about the author.

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