This is a reverse-lookup dictionary for [Google Analytics], a handy, free access analysis tool that lets website and smartphone site owners view the data they want to know from a variety of angles.
If you've just started using Google Analytics, we recommend starting here: 〜Basic Information Edition〜 is available here.

This time it's the "PC, Smartphone and Tablet Breakdown" edition.
We'll show you how to use Google Analytics to check what devices your visitors used to reach your website.

Lately you hear everywhere that "there are lots of smartphone users" and "you need a smartphone site," but do you actually know what percentage of visitors to your site are smartphone users?
It's certainly true that, as an overall trend among internet users, more and more people browse websites on smartphones. Looking at yourself and those around you, far more people than a few years ago now quickly look things up on their phones.

This time we'll show you how to check the share of those smartphone users as actual numbers, not just a gut feeling.

If you want to know the percentage of smartphone users visiting your own website, please read on.

1. Go to the Google Analytics login screen and log in.

Search for "Google Analytics," or go to https://www.google.com/intl/ja_jp/analytics/index.html, click the "Log in" button, and enter your Google account ID and password.

2. After logging in, click the blue text that says "All Website Data."

After logging in, you should see your website name or URL displayed.
Click the blue text below it that says "All Website Data."

3. From the menu on the left, click "Audience" → "Mobile" → "Overview."

Google Analytics has a menu on the left side of the screen (on a PC). You click through the menu items you want to view each time; this time we want to see the device breakdown, so go to "Audience" → "Mobile" → "Overview."

4. A graph and something like a ranking table will appear in the main screen.
This ranking table is the data showing what devices your visitors used to reach your website, listed from most to least common.

Take a look at the item called Device Category. It lists the names of each device type, such as desktop, mobile and tablet.

desktop = PC
mobile = smartphone
tablet = tablet

That's what they mean.
Since you can see basic information for each device type, such as sessions (number of visits) and the percentage of new sessions, take a combined look at what you want to know: which devices bring the most visits, which devices new visitors use, whether any device has a high bounce rate, and so on.

For example, if the bounce rate for mobile is high, you might conclude "it must be hard to read on a smartphone," or if you don't have a smartphone site yet but mobile sessions are high, "we'd better build a smartphone site soon." Numbers make judgments like these much easier.

Another common situation: the owner or the production company edits the website and smartphone site on a PC, checks the result on a PC, says "looks good" and calls it done—while the users actually viewing the website and smartphone site hardly ever use a PC and are almost entirely looking at the smartphone site!

We all tend to check only on the device that's easiest for us to view, but to avoid discovering that the smartphone site's layout was broken all along (and that prospects were leaving because of it!), make sure you never neglect to check how things look on each device, and to check device usage in Google Analytics.

I'll be careful about that too.