CONFERENCE 2012March 7 - 10, 2012

GOOGLE ANALYTICS 101: A PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN

GETTING TO KNOW THE BASICS

Kimberly Hodel

What is Google Analytics?

What is Web Analytics?

• Data vs. Information• Turning meaningless data into actionable

information

• Google collects the data… • …But it's up to you to make it useful.

Understanding the data

What does Web Analytics do?

What does it measure?

• Each page on the site and how visitors navigate through them

• How the visitor arrived (keyword, search engine)• When they last came/how often they come back• Where they came from (geographically)• If they achieved the goals you set for them

Web Analytics is a process

Take Action

Learn

Measure

Taking Action

Action = $$$• Why don't more organizations take action?

• Don't know what to do(lack of web analysis understanding)

• Don’t have someone to do it(lack of resources to execute changes)

•Understand what's important(…and what’s not.)•Put data in context•Segment and analyze data•Find actionable insights

What do Web Analysts do?

What is the goal of your site? Lead generation, mailing list, information (blog), or in our case –

Ecommerce

•“Dollar Impact” that's not an immediate conversion•How do I categorize & determine the value on traffic?

There is actionable economic value for

every action

Google Analytics Menus

GA 4

GA 5

What can we measure?

Audience: Who came to our site

Where do they live?

Have they been here before?

How often do they come back?

Did they share with any friends?

Getting Started with Google Analytics

Tracking Code

So, how does it work?

• Cookie based, but may move towards server based (time stamps) in the future

• If the visitor leaves the site, and searches again… GA Will count it as a new visit if they come back through a different source, and more than 30minutes has elapsed since their previous visit

User Access Types

View reports only• Cannot make

configuration changes, such as creating goals or adding other users

Account administrator• Has complete

control over the account and all of the profiles within

• There is no “audit trail” with these accounts, so be careful. (no way to track who did what when)

You can specify access on a profile-by-profile basis

Account Overview - USER

Login does NOT have to be a

Gmail account

Note: User login MAY have access to multiple GA accounts

Account Overview - PROFILE

Separate “buckets” of data

within an account

Can create different

profiles for different websites

Can collect different set of data, filtered a different way, for the same

website

Dashboard

Good snapshot, but the data is very dependent on context

Site Usage Metrics Definitions

Visits: Number of distinct sessions in which someone interacted with the site

• Within a 30 minute period of time• “Number of times people enter the front door of a store”

Pageviews: Number of times pages on your site were loaded

• If this number is 1, it's a bounce

Pages/Visit: Average number of pageviews in a single visit

• “I come to your site, I puke, and I leave”• Lower is better (less visits bounced)• Can be misleading when taken out of context

(For instance: high bounce rate on a contact information page that contains a phone number)

Bounce Rate: Percentage of single-page visits

Site Usage Metrics Definitions

Time on site: length of time a visit lasted, from first pageview to last pageview

• Aggregate/not useful alone • Great when in conjunction with engagement reports

% New visits: percentage of visits my visitors who had never been to the site

• Segmentation: new folks vs. returning• Users have a different experience when it's their first time/when they've been to the site before• Getting people to log in helps show truly returning visitors, because it shows the different devices the same visitor might use

Conversion Rate: #of conversion/# of visits

• “Did they do what we wanted them to do?”(Fill out a form, buy something, etc)

• “Convert” them from a mere visitor to a “Customer”

Site Usage Metrics: Good and Bad

Mostly interested in comparing different groups of visitors or trends over time Don’t focus on absolute numbers

Info is ALWAYS dependent on context:What type of site you have?

What really matters is moving in the right direction“Is it better than (last month)?”

Choosing the Metrics that Matter:

What metrics might help measure your success?

• Ecommerce: Conversion Rate (purchases, form sign-ups)• Content sites: Time on site, Pages/Visit

Don’t forget the intermediate steps to success:

• Did they go past the landing page? (bounce rate)• Did they view a key page of information? (conversion rate)

Putting it All Together Into a Story

Traffic SourcesHow Did They Get Here?

Why do we care how they got there?

Marketing people: are their marketing/advertising efforts

successful in generating traffic?

SEO people: is the site getting enough attention through search engines?

Partners/affiliates: how much traffic are they

channeling to your site?

Basically, a good idea of the “health” of the site

Overview – The 3 Big Buckets

Direct: URL typed directly in to an address bar, or a bookmark• As far as GA can discern, you didn't come from somewhere else• Bookmark might not be direct! It depends on where/when you got your cookies

Referring: Followed a link from another site• Social media, email, advertisement, etc

Search Engines: searched by typing a keyword and clicking on a result• Can be organic or CPC (paid)

All Traffic Sources Report

All Traffic Sources Report - DEFINITIONS

Medium - “How”

• The channel through which the visitor came (referral, direct, etc)• Good to keep broad/general

Source - “Who”

• Where the came from – what other site, what search engine (specifics)

All Traffic Sources Report

Dimension: a ROW in reports = label

• Represents a variety of labels applied to the data, such as where they came from or what page they viewed

Metric: a COLUMN in reports = measurement

• Represents a measurement made on a visit, such as time on site or bounce rate

All Traffic by Medium

Tabs: same data, different measurements

Ecommerce

Goal Set

Site Usage

Use the different chart views available

Performance view – “Performance in a visual manner”

Digging in to Traffic Sources:

Using the chart over time: Measuring trends

•Use the calendar to set date ranges •Make sure to compare not just the same number of days, but instead line up weekday to weekday to get the most accurate info•Don't use it “Daily” - go by week/month

Digging in to Traffic Sources

•“As far as GA can tell, you came right to the site.”

Direct

•Shows what sites, and then goes in to expanded detail•View “Individual referring pages” to see what pages visitors are coming from

Referral

Percentage View

“Quantity in a pretty chart”

Paid vs Organic

Paid:

sponsored

ppc (pay-per-click)

cpc (cost-per-click)

Filter by Keyword

Campaign Traffic Tracking your marketing and advertising

Important Questions to Ask

How did the visitor get to my

site?

Which

source

brought the

most?

Which

source

was the

most profitable

?

Which

source

had the

highest

bounce

rate?

What was the ROI on

that ad

campaign?

Getting in to the right bucket

Be consistent!Use the same words you chose to follow certain campaigns

GA will count “Seminars” and “seminars” as different things

Helpful Reminders

Don't make things more complicated/granular than you have to

Use ONLY for external marketing links! - Using this within your own site will make a mess of your data!

Outlook links will show as direct, Gmail/Ymail/web based mail will show as referral – tagging this information gives you usable segments

Campaigns in AdWords will automatically populate here as long as your accounts are properly linked

Remember, these are just the basics...

Campaign, Source, Medium, and Content

Campaign:•Aggregate overall of marketing initiative•Biggest “bucket” - “spring2012” or “seminars”

Source:•Who brought them to my site?•Newsletter, New York Times, Yahoo

(Yes, Yahoo – manually set “where” the traffic source is coming from to make sure your info goes in to the right bucket.)

Medium•How did they learn about my site?•Radio, TV, print, email

Content•What did they click on?•You can track the how many people click on an ad banner vs. a button•Determine which visual items are getting more attention

So... How do we do this?

• Control the link you use so that it doesn't pollute other info!• Example: Campaign: spring2012, Source: newsletter, medium:

email

• Link address the user sees: www.domain.com/SpringDeals

• The real link address: www.domain.com/SpringDeals?utm_campaign=spring2012&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

..Gosh, that's an ugly link...

Google's URL Builder Tool

Content: What did they look at on the site?

Content creators care about what content is popular• Helps judge the success of existing content

and on how to decide on new content to add to site

Merchandisers care about what products visitors are exposed to

Marketers care about landing pages for campaigns and whether they draw visitors

further in to the site

Content Overview - “Aggregate Health Check”

Content Reports: Identifying Pages

URL •This is base URL, i.e. www.domain.com/category/product.html

Title •Designated by your meta title

URL by subdirectory •Content Drilldown

Top Content

All the top pages viewed, regardless of where they're located in the site

Content by TITLE

Unique page titles are important!

• If multiple pages have the same title, GA will lump them together in this report

Content Metrics

•This does not include page reloads, or the same customer viewing the same page multiple times in one visit

Unique Pageviews: The number of visits during which the

page was viewed

•A high exit rate on your final checkout URL would be good!•...A high exit rate on your landing page would be bad.•Actionable insight:•% Exit isn't always useful – every one leaves the site from somewhere•…But it can be useful in regards to navigational pages designed to lead visitors down a certain path

% Exit: The portion of visits for

which this page was the last page

viewed

Top Landing Pages

Entrance Keywords

Terms like “(not set)” more common now due to Google’s new “secure search”

Site Search – I spy what you spy

Best Practice:Track Internal SearchesVisitors tend to

have a more specific mindset

when searching on a site vs. in Google

Learn exactly what your visitors are

looking for

Site Search Metrics Definitions:

Total Unique Searches: The number of searches performed

• Does not count identical searches within one visit

Results Pageviews/Search: Number of result pages viewed in the search

• “Are the visitors looking for things I don't offer?”• “Am I reaching the right audience?”

Search Exits: Percentage of visits that exited the site after the search

• “Am I losing the people who actually came searching for what I offer?”• “Why did I lose the sale?”

Site Search Metrics Definitions:

% Search refinements: Percentage of searches that resulted in another search

• People trust search engines so much that they're more likely to modify their search terms than the are to go to page 2 of a search• “What are they REALLY looking for?”

Time after Search: Time spent on the site after a search was completed

• How long does it take them to find the content they're searching for?

Search Depth: Number of pages viewed after a search

Audience: Who’s out there?

Demographics: It's a small, small, world...

Geographic and Language data “Language” is what language

the physical computer is set to

Behavior

New vs. Returning Have they ever been here before?

Frequency & Recency How often do they come back?

EngagementHow long did they stay

How many pages did they look at?

Technology and Mobile Reports

What devices, browsers, operating systems are your visitors using?

Social Reports

Conversions: Goals & Ecommerce

•What are the measures of success for visitors on your site?•Negative goals can be used to check for and associate problems

Goals: Did they do what

we’d hoped?

Two Types of Goals

URL Goals:

Visitor reaches a particular page

Configure funnels if there are a certain number of

steps that leads the visitor to this conclusion

Engagement Goals:

Metric reaches a numeric threshold

“Non-impulse oriented”

Pages/Visit, Time on site

Ecommerce

• How is conversion rate determined?• Number of conversions divided by the number of visits

• What does Ecommerce tracking do?• Tracks transactions (products, quantities, dollar value,

shipping costs, etc)• Tracks the success of your website by sales/revenue

Goal FunnelsVisualize your goal completions and identify possible abandonment issues

Sharing is caring

• Communicate your data• Remember – you can configure users who can either

view OR modify reports

• “Potential Value”• the data needs to get in to the hands of the people who

can take action on your insights.

Apply the knowledge!