What Google Analytics Should I Report to a Client?

Knowing what to report to a client from an ocean of Google Analytics data can feel like being asked to summarize a thick novel in a single sentence. With hundreds of metrics and dozens of reports, it's easy to either drown a client in data they don't understand or miss the key numbers that actually prove your value. This guide will walk you through a simple framework to create clear, valuable, and action-oriented reports every time.

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First, Talk to Your Client (Not Google Analytics)

The single biggest mistake in client reporting is starting inside Google Analytics. The most effective reports begin with a simple conversation about business goals. A report is useless if it doesn't connect your marketing activities to what your client actually cares about - growing their business. Before you look at a single metric, you need to know the 'why'.

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Key Questions to Ask Your Client:

• What is the primary purpose of your website? Is it to generate leads, sell products, build an email list, or attract readers to your content?
• How do you define success? Is it a form submission, a product purchase, a newsletter signup, or something else entirely?
• Who is your target audience? What do you know about their demographics and what they are looking for?
• What are your business goals for this quarter? Are you focused on brand awareness, increasing sales by 20%, or reducing customer acquisition cost?

The answers to these questions are your reporting blueprint. They tell you exactly which conversion goals to track and which metrics matter most. For an e-commerce client focused on sales, reporting on "Time on Page" for a blog post is secondary to "E-commerce Conversion Rate." For a lead-gen client, "Form Submissions" is the whole game.

The Four Core Sections of Every Client Report

Once you understand the business goals, you can structure your report to tell a clear and logical story. Don't just export random charts. Instead, organize your findings around these four key themes, presenting them in this order to build a narrative your client can follow effortlessly.

1. Audience: Who is visiting the website?
2. Acquisition: How are they getting there?
3. Behavior: What are they doing on the website?
4. Conversations: Are they doing what we want them to do?

This "AABC" structure walks the client through the complete customer journey, from who the visitor is to the actions they take. Now, let’s break down which specific metrics to include in each section.

Essential Metrics for Each Reporting Section

Here are the go-to metrics you should include in your reports, along with how to frame them so your client understands their significance.

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1. Audience: Who is visiting the site?

This section sets the stage by painting a picture of the website's visitors. It helps confirm if your marketing is reaching the right people.

• Users: This is the number of unique individuals who have visited your site. Frame it as "the size of your website's audience." Is it growing? This is a great top-level health indicator.
• Sessions: A session is a single visit to your site. A single user can have multiple sessions. This metric helps you understand the overall volume of traffic.
• New vs. Returning Visitors: A healthy website has a good mix of both. New visitors show your brand reach is expanding, while returning visitors indicate strong engagement and brand loyalty.
• Demographics (Age & Gender): Does this data match your client's target customer profile? If they sell high-end skincare to women over 40, but their traffic is mostly 18-24-year-old males, you have an important conversation to start.
• Location (Country, City): Crucial for local businesses and for identifying new markets. Are you getting a lot of traffic from a specific city? That might signal an opportunity for targeted ads.
• Devices (Desktop, Mobile, Tablet): Show your client how people are experiencing their brand. If 80% of traffic is mobile, is the website fully mobile-optimized? This insight directly informs web development priorities.

2. Acquisition: How do they get to the site?

This is where you directly connect your marketing efforts to website traffic. This section proves the ROI of your activities, whether that’s SEO, social media, or paid advertising.

• Traffic Channels (Channel Grouping): This is the star of the section. It shows a breakdown of how users found the site.
• Source/Medium: This gives more granular detail than the general channels. For example, instead of just "Social," it will show "facebook.com / cpc" versus "facebook.com / referral," allowing you to distinguish between paid Facebook ads and organic posts.
• Top Landing Pages From Channels: For your top traffic sources (like Organic Search), show the client which specific pages are acting as the entry points. Is their newest blog post a surprise hit for SEO traffic? This helps inform future content strategy.

3. Behavior: What do they do on the site?

Once visitors arrive, what happens next? This section reveals how engaging and user-friendly your website is. It helps diagnose problems and identify what's working.

• Pages per Session: The average number of pages a person views during a visit. Higher numbers usually suggest good engagement - visitors are interested enough to click around.
• Average Session Duration: How long visitors stick around on average. Longer durations can signal highly-engaged traffic and valuable content. Be mindful of context - a visitor might spend 10 minutes reading a detailed blog post (good!) or 10 minutes trying to find a contact number (bad!).
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate could mean the page wasn't what they expected, the user experience is poor, or they found what they needed instantly. It’s vital to look at bounce rate on a page-by-page basis. A high bounce rate on an FAQ page might be fine, on your e-commerce homepage, it's an alarm bell.
• Top Pages (by Pageviews): What is the most popular content on the site? This answers that question directly. It tells you and the client what kind of content resonates most with your audience.

4. Conversions: Did they do what we wanted them to do?

This is the most important section. It ties everything a client just saw directly to business outcomes. It’s your proof that the entire strategy - from marketing campaigns to website content - is generating tangible results.

• Goals / Conversions: This shows the raw count of how many times a key action was completed. Whether it's "Form Submissions," "Newsletter Signups," or "Purchases," this is your bottom-line number.
• Goal Conversion Rate: This is arguably the most important metric on the entire report. It’s the percentage of visitors who completed a goal. It tells you not just how many conversions you got, but how effective the site is at turning visitors into leads or customers. Improving this rate is how you make a site more profitable.
• Conversions by Channel: Which of your marketing channels are driving the most results? If you see Organic Traffic has a 5% conversion rate but Paid Social has a 0.5% conversion rate, you have solid data supporting a budget shift. This is how you provide strategic value, not just numbers.

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Don't Just Report Numbers - Tell a Story

A list of metrics is not a report, it's a data dump. Your real value to the client is in the interpretation and recommendations. A good report transforms numbers into a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end.

1. Lead with a high-level summary. Start your report with a short paragraph titled "Key Takeaways" or "Executive Summary." Tell the client the most important headlines in plain English. For example, “This month, our increased SEO focus drove a 15% increase in organic traffic, resulting in 22 new qualified leads, our highest number this year.”
2. Context is Everything. A number by itself is meaningless. Always provide a "Period-over-period" comparison for key metrics such as "Last Month vs. This Month" and "This Year vs. Last Year" to show progress. "Website traffic was 10,000 sessions" is just a fact. "Website traffic was 10,000 sessions, a 20% increase from last month," is an insight.
3. Turn Insights into Actionable Recommendations. This is where you turn data into intelligence. Don’t just say "Our landing page B has a high bounce rate." Instead, provide context by suggesting improvements. "Our landing page B has a high bounce rate, consider revising the call-to-action to be more engaging." Provide strategic advice that leads to better outcomes.

Don’t overload your report with dozens of charts. Focus on these core metrics and tie them together with thoughtful analysis, and you'll deliver reports that provide not just clarity but valuable insights to your client.

Final Thoughts

Creating effective client reports from Google Analytics comes down to translating data into a business narrative. By focusing on goals and structuring your metrics around the core user journey - Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions - you provide not just clarity, but valuable context.

We know that manually pulling these reports can take hours of your valuable time every week. That's why we built Graphed. With our solution, you can get the insights you need in seconds, saving hours of work each week. Just connect with us, and you'll have the tools to streamline your reporting and focus on delivering real value to your clients.