ComputerAid.org Web Analytics Exchange Project

+

May 2011, London

+ Outline Introduction:

Student Non-profit Mentor Analysis Exchange

Project Objectives

Key Steps: Define Goals & KPIs Identify & Prioritise Implement

Learn to use Filters in GA

Preliminary Findings

Next Steps

Learning & Take-Aways

11ededfdsfsf

Student:

Minyu Bian

@minyubian

Non–Profit Rep:

Anja Ffrench @anjaffrench

Mentor:

Phil Pearce @philpearce

Minyu is a Digital

Planner at Agenda21.

She has graduated

from the University of

Southampton with 1st

class Masters degree

in Marketing Analytics

and has worked with

Professor Paul

Harrigan for Web

Analytics research.

Anja is the Marketing

& Communications

Director at

ComputerAid.

ComputerAid

International is a UK

registered charity that

aims to reduce

poverty by providing

refurbished

computers to

developing countries.

Phil is Web Analytics

Manager at Jellyfish

Online Marketing.

He has more than 9

years IT experience

and has a solid

understanding of

using various

Analytics packages.

Introduction 3

Introduction - Analysis Exchange Free Web Analysis For Non-Profits World Wide

Non-Profit: Computer Aid

• Increase

donations

• Maximise ROI on

paid search ads.

• Increase e-mail

sign-ups & social

followers

• Improve lead

gathering

• Drive site

engagement

Student:

Minyu

Mentor: Phil

Offer Guidance, Support, &

Expertise

Offer Support

Gain Expertise

& Knowledge

Further

development of

Skills

4

+

Picture of Our First Meet Up

+ Project Objectives

1. Guide the Student and ComputerAid through the

identification and tracking of business goals

2. Diagnose installation problems, set-up goals tracking, and

verify the data is accurate

3. Support the organisation obtaining a basic understanding

of using GA

4. Allow for the second phase project of

data analysis, insight and recommendations

6

Computer Aid

Define Goals &

KPIs

Identify &

Prioritise

Implement

Key Steps 7

1. Discuss with Anja about business goals

2. Define KPIs

3. Set up a second GA tracker to enable

Administrator access

4. Identify Data collection and data

integrity issues

Define Goals and KPIs 8

9

Define KPIs

Macro-Conversion

Goal 1: Corporate Donations of PCs

Goal 2: Individual Donations of PCs

Goal 3: Beneficiary Applications for PCs

Goal 4: Volunteers Applications

Goal 5: Fundraisng Event signups

Micro-Conversion

Goal 1: PDF download of Donate.pdf

Goal 2: Outclick: Twitter + Facebook + YouTube

Goal 3: Click Like or Retweet

10

Define KPIs

Identify 11

Identify: Using GA SiteScan & LinkSleuth 12

Identify: Using GA Dashboards

Using the ‘add to GA dashboard’ button:

• 12 account setup errors were identified and saved on the

dashboard screen

• This allowed us to delete the errors reports from the

dashboard once they had been fixed

Form URLs did not change

after being filled in:

www.computeraid.org/enquire.asp

13

Identify: Using GA Dashboards 14

Site Search was also not enabled.

Site Search URL:

www.computeraid.org/search-results.asp


19

Can we fix it

Implement

• Change Form pages’ URLs into “/FormName-Thankyou.asp”

• Enable Adwords Cost Data in GA

• Enable Site Search tracking

• Enable 404 error page tracking

• Enable tracking of Newsletter, Mailto, and pdf downloads

• Add 20 filters to GA

• such as exclude “fb_xd_fragment” URL parameter

• Activate Google Webmaster Tool

• Create an iGoogle Dashboard and GoogleDoc Repository

Implement 20

Set up filters:

1. Pre-defined

2. Custom

Filters can only be applied to new data (forward looking)

Aim at a long-term change

21

Phil Taught Minyu How to Use Filters

Data’s integrity :

a. Exclude Internal Traffic

Visitor IP addresses

Visitor ISP Organisation

Dynamic IP addresses: (1) tag ?utm_source=exclude_me&utm_nooverride=1; (2) use Campaign

Source filter

b. Include Computer Aid’s Traffic Note: These three filters

Hostname were applied to test profiles first

c. Include Computer Aid’s CPC Traffic before being rolled out to the main ones.

Campaign Target URL

d. Force Source/Medium/Keyword/Referral/Request URI To Lowercase

22

Learn to use GA Filters

Customise GA data:

1. Record Email Traffic (From webmail)

2. Apply Filter to separate Social Network (Update specific websites from ‘Social’ to ‘Referral’ when necessary)

3. Put Navigational Search Into same bucket as bookmarked visitors (Campaign Source = Direct_Search & Campaign Medium=None)

4. Separate Broken pages (Place these into the folder /Error_404/ )

5. Display Full Referral URL (Clear User-Defined field before sending data to the field.)

6. Track the use of Google Translate

23

Learn to use GA Filters

Preliminary Findings 24

Service Provider report can be used

to identify corporate donations.


Beneficiary application is highly

influenced by email.


26

Cheap laptops & used laptops have generated 25 and 12 conversions

respectively.


We can see that used laptops has resulted in 188% ROI

over three times more than cheap laptops (58%).

Adwords Cost data

import was enabled.


Site Search was

enabled.

28

Search Terms can be used to improve site navigation

and content.

It helps PPC keywords bidding.

In this case, we know people actively search for T&C,

which was not easily accessible on the site.


404 error pages

are now shown

in Google

Analytics.

1.1% of total traffic is passing through a

404 error page

29


30

Generic page titles can be customised on different

pages to improve natural search rankings.

Next Steps • Establish 1 month data benchmark (now Goal data is being captured)

• Enable Phone Call tracking

• Add thankyou pages for: Individual donations ,Contact Form,

Newsletter signups

• Add Message from Subject line to remaining mail to emails

• Add AnalyticsProEngine (APE) form tracking and/or ClickTale

• Enable GA ecommerce on Wordpay event donations callback page.

• Define and enable Custom Variables/Custom Slots

• Enable Google Website Optimiser onsite testing

• CRM integration (GA cookie imported into CRM)

• Phil’s PPC super-tag (useful for CRM import)

• Setup Advanced segment

• Create GA profiles for SEO + PPC + Social + UK + Non-UK

• Review Adwords campaign

• SEO quick wins.

31

Learning Student: Minyu

It was Phil who initially recommended The Analysis Exchange to me and encouraged me

to participate to learn hands-on experience of Web Analytics. I was intrigued by the idea

of learning Analytics and helping non-profits, so I went to our first meet-up in London,

during which I got to know Anja and her organisation, Computer Aid. I realised how my

support & learning experience would benefit kids who needed computers in Africa.

Instantly, I agreed to start this project.

During the whole project, Phil has been incredibly patient and guided me to implement

GA step by step. He has not only taught me how to identify problems but also offered me

additional resources that he has accumulated through years of learning. From this project,

I have learned how to identify errors, customise tracking codes, set up goals, apply filters

& regex, and glean insights about site user behaviour.

Our organisation rep, Anja, has also been amazingly helpful. Every Tuesday, Phil

organised Conference calls for us to update the project progress. Anja always spared her

time to attend and assisted us for the site change and contact with Web Developers.

I really want to say thank you to them, because this valuable learning experience could

not have happened without their help.

I also highly recommend other students who are passionate about learning Web Analytics

to join the Analysis Exchange for future learning. ---------------- HIDDEN TEXT ---------

During this project, Phil has guided me on implementing GA. He has taught me how to identify

problems, and how to solving these.

I have learned how to identify errors, customise tracking code, set-up goals, apply filters & use regex

and have gleaned insights from visitor behaviour.

Our organisation rep, Anja, has been amazingly helpful. I really want to say thank you to them both,

because this valuable learning experience would not have been possible without their help.

I would highly recommend to other students, who are interested in learning Web Analytics, join the

Analysis Exchange; it is a great way to learn & make friends in the process.

32

Learning Non-Profit: Anja

• I think WA Exchange is a fantastic idea. For a small charity like Computer Aid

International, getting expert advice on how our website analytics could be improved

would not have been possible without this programme.

• Now the changes have been made to our website, I’m excited about the opportunities

for improving Computer Aid’s website performance and hopefully improving the rate

of PC donations coming into the organisation!

• Phil and Minyu are both obviously experts in the area. I would like to thank them both

for all of their help and also for their patience with my ignorance regarding all the

technical details which they had to talk me through!

Mentor: Phil

• I first became aware of Computer Aid after watching a documentary on BBC Click. I

was impressed by the simple goal of allowing children and students to learn, by

providing the tools to educate within impoverished, under-developed societies, and I

wanted to do something to help!

• At the same time I had register, but I was dormant within the WA exchange, having not

completed any projects.

• This was a great opportunity for me to impart my knowledge, give a Student a

jumpstart into a successful WA career, and be involved in something I could be

morally and educationally, proud of - hence here we are today :)

33

+

34

Appendices: Example Discussion between Student & Mentor

Minyu: “1. New vs Returning: 81.06% of visitors are new and their bounce rate is 48.01%. In this case, both site relevancy and

stickness have to be improved. ” Phil: “I agree. The website needs to be more engaging for new visitors. Possibly adding an

embedded YouTube video to the homepage would help. Once AdWords data is shown, we can check that deep-link landing pages

are used (i.e not all ppc traffic is sent to the homepage). SiteOverlay and Navigational summary on the homepage might provide some

suggestion for why traffic is bouncing. ClickTale which records mouse movements on a page would also help explain the cause for

this.

Minyu: “2. User Defined: the majority of visits are not set. Does that mean most traffic comes from laptop/PC? (You need to explain

this to me.) Is it possible for us to track and get value for the most visits?” Phil: “User-defined is an empty field in GA. It is turned off

by default and is populated either via a custom filter, or in this instance by adding code to landing pages e.g... setVar("Guests”). We

need to decide on what 6 values should be stored within setVar and CustomSetVar().”

Minyu: “3. Map Overlay: Nigeria, Kenya, United Stats, & South Africa are popular traffic locations but all of their bounce rates are very

high. Perhaps including national flags on the page is a good idea.” Phil: “The Country flag might be a good a/b test - it might improve

the application rate for recipients of the PCs in Africa. Also it will be interesting to see if there is Google translate traffic from these

countries, and what the language is changed to.”

Minyu: “4. Languages: English, French, and Spanish are mentioned on the site at the moment but other languages (e.g. German) are

also used and their bounce rates are high. Perhaps we can introduce Google Translate to the site? Phil: “To see visitors who

translated the website into German, these would be shown as: /google_translate/de/en/. Yes, it will be interesting to see the volume

of traffic that lands on non-English pages which contain ^/.*-(fr|esp)\.asp in the urls.”

Minyu: “5. All Traffic Source: Source/Medium is not set.” Phil: “I am not sure which field, you have appended on the pdf. Do you

mean ‘Source/Medium+UserDefined’ ?”

Minyu: “6 & 7. Campaign & KeyWord: Adwords is not linked to the GA account.” Phil: “Yes. This is a serious set-up issue for them, as

Bidword and SearchQuery data has been lost/missing.”

Minyu: “8 - 12. Top Content: error pages, goal setups, regular expression in use & on site search tracking.” Phil: “Yes.”

+

37

Appendices

ComputerAid.org Web Analytics Exchange Project

Data & Analytics

Transcript of ComputerAid.org Web Analytics Exchange Project