ADVANCED GOOGLE ANALYTICS FOR SOCIAL SITES
Bruce ChapmaniFinity Software
Aim : everyone here to go back and utilise analytics better on their sites
Background on Web Analytics and Social Sites
What to measure in Social Sites
How to measure in Social Sites
3 Techniques for implementing tracking
Understanding and using your data
Agenda
Social Sites
Social Sites : social features enabled on your own website
Social Features:– Membership (friends, follow, groups)– Activity (Q&A, Forums, Blog comments)– Any other site-specific user interactions
Implementation of Social Sites with DotNetNuke DotNetNuke social (6.2 or later)
ActiveSocial
Other custom methods and components
Integration with other social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)
History of Web Analytics(how did we get here)
Early days (early 1990s): hit counting – ‘hit’ being a request for a file on a server, including images + pages
Hit Counters (mid 1990s) :
Log File Analysis (early-mid 90s): after the fact collation of data.
Script + cookie based tracking (late 90s) Pageview emphasis, rather than hits
Launch of Google Analytics (2005)
Analytics Now
Real time statistics
Heatmaps, ClickTale reporting
Mobile + desktop application analytics
Integration with e-commerce + advertising platforms
Extremely widespread since Google Analytics was made free
Concept of Pageview losing relevance
Recent new Features of Google Analytics Switch to Asynchronous tracking
Real-time data : see traffic as it arrives
Webmaster tools integration
Social Engagement reports
Visitor Flow
Event Tracking
New interface (dashboards, etc)
How Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking works Asynchronous prevents page load from waiting
on Analytics code
When page loads, commands are placed into a ‘_gaq’ array.
When analytics script (ga.js) loads and runs, loops through loaded _gaq array and executes commands.
Any further additions to _gaq are executed immediately
Analytics and Social Sites
Modern DotNetNuke sites have lots of client-side operations
Client side operations don’t trigger pageviews
Pageviews don’t give contextual information
External interactions (g+ links, Twitter Buttons) don’t show up in site Analytics
Analytics and Social Sites cont.
Effectiveness of a Social Site is about return visitors and engagement with the site
Improving the site effectiveness means measuring success of particular actions
Measuring Success requires measurement of actions.
Pageviews alone will not provide enough information
Tracking on-page interactions with Events Events are a relatively new Analytics feature
Events
VisitPageview
Google Analytics Events
Events can have three variables supplied:– Category – Label– Value.. in addition to the event name or ‘Action’
Each user session is limited to 500 requests (events + page views)
Events are integrated into Analytics Reporting
Viewing Events in Analytics
Viewing Events in Analytics (2)
Using Events to Measure Effectiveness
Measuring effectiveness is measuring goals against targets
Traditional Pageview based (Url) goals are clunky
Event goals can measure how much a visitor is engaged
Using Goals and Conversions
Ideas for Goals:– Friends made / Follows clicked– Comments – blogs / walls / forum posts– Groups Joined– Downloads– External Links followed
How to Track Events in DotNetNuke sites 3 Methods
1. Add specific event tracking code to pages2. Associate clicks to event tracking function3. Use event-enabled Analytics Plugin
Skill level : copy/paste – if you can add Analytics code, you can add event tracking
1. Add specific event tracking code
Assuming Analytics already configured for Asynchronous tracking
Use code snippet directly in Html using javascript
Tracks an event called ‘Something’ for the ‘Social’ category, using ‘A1’ as a label
2. Associate Clicks with event tracking
If you can’t directly control html, then use jQuery to assign click handler to elements on the page
Recommend using the ‘on’ handler as content might be AJAX loaded, and click needs to be bound
3. Using event-enabled Analytics Plugin iFinity Google Analytics 3.0 – free Analytics
plugin
Now updated with event tracking
Use ‘identifying’ mode, click on things to track
Associate Category, Event name and optional Label or jQuery selector
Test event tracking by using click testing
Code works by associating handler with clickable elements, and recording matching events
Analytics Module Demo
Analytics Module Advantages
Integrated external links reporting
Setup tracking across entire portal, or for specific page
Consistency of Category/Event naming
No need to write Javascript code, but option of including site / page level custom Javascript for extra tracking (events, custom vars, etc)
Tracking External Social Interactions
Tracking clicks + interactions with External social sites (LinkedIn, g+, Facebook, etc)
Slightly modified version of Event tracking
_gaq.push(['_trackSocial', network, socialAction, opt_target, opt_pagePath]);
See Google Analytics Help for more examples
Understanding and using your Data
Move beyond ‘visits’ to ‘interactions’ in measuring data
Determine what is a conversion
Use analysis of existing conversions to determine
Think in terms of goal funnels – ‘gates’ that visitors must go through before conversion
Don’t forget to track from point of view of anonymous visitor to regular contributor
Visits triggering events can be used as a segment
Create Custom Segments from Event Data
Custom Segments created from Event data
Use to track/compare actions whereevent was completed
Viewing Data by Custom Segment
Showing activity of visits to /Licensing page Licence Requests vs All Visits
Key things to Analyse
Acquisition (paid/organic/other)
Activity (pageviews/events -> see vs do)
Outcome (bounce/conversion/browsing session)
Reduce down to a value/visit metric increase visitors, increase value (revenue / leads / other)
Example Goals for Social Sites
Signup (register) completion
Forum Post
Group Join
Profile Update
Friends Made
Conclusions
Social Site success depends on visitor interaction + repeat visits
Interaction + repeat visits depend on social activity
Therefore, measuring social activity, and using that data to improve is vital to site success
DotNetNuke has great social features but these can’t be measured by pageview, due to ‘single page’ interactive design
Integrate Event Tracking with your Social Features to understand your social activity
Use Events to segment visitor data
Questions?
Google Analytics 3.0 module install available at https://dnngoogleanalytics.codeplex.com/
Slides available at http://www.slideshare.net/brchapman
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