Post on 10-Jul-2015
description
Using Analytics to
Inform Business
Decisions
Adeel Ahmed
Extension Educator
ahme0004@umn.edu
Agenda
1. How does analytics work? – cookies,
caches, privacy
2. Examples of interpreting analytics to make
decisions
a. Type of content you should focus on
3. Setting up analytics on your site
page visits
everything else – tracking EVENTs
Basic questions
• Why people come to your website?
– Purpose
• How do they get to your website?
– Advertising
• What do they do on your website?
– Content
• What are types of visitors you have?
– Customer segmentation
• What are your goals? How do you define
success?
What is a “Visit”?
• A visit is a group of interactions that take place on your
website within a given time frame. For example a single
visit can contain multiple pageviews, events, social
interactions, custom variables, and ecommerce
transactions.
What can be measured
• Every click is recorded
• “time on site” is the sum value of the time
between clicks within the website
– Time between last click and exiting the website
is not measured.
• New visits / Unique visits.
Analytics doesn’t
know how long
visitor spent on
Page 3
How analytics work
What is Web Analytics?
1. The analysis of qualitative and quantitative data
from your website and the competition
2. To drive a continual improvement of the online
experience of your customers and prospects
3. Your desired outcomes (online and offline) • Avinash Kaushik - Web Analytics 2.0
• Online activities on your website you might
consider measuring
Q1 – complete reservation
1. Determine % of people that complete the registration
process vs exit the site.
A. Goal – try to improve the percentage of successful
completions from year to year
(i.e. Spr ‘13 to Spr ‘14
Web reservation
page
Reservation
complete $$
Exit
How to measure
1. How many people visit the
reservation page during a given
period of time?
2. Set up an EVENT to measure
clicks on “Online reservations”
link. Compare that number to
your reservations during a
given time period
However Online reservations
are located on another site.
www.reseze.net
Setting up EVENTS
• EVENTS are clicks that : – Take users to another site
– Play a video
– Referral programs
– Advertising
– Downloads – i.e. PDF
Rates to Reservation
• Or you can measure percentage of people
that go from RATES pages to
RESERVATIONS page.
Q2 – page before resv. page
1. Which page do visitors most often visit before your
reservations page?
B. Goal – improve that page, remove road blocks,
Measure change from year to year.
Reservation page?
You can even
compare to -
Phone Call?
Email?
Behavior flow
Q3 – most visited page
1. What is your most often visited page?
Goal – What page do you want to be the most visited? This is
probably the page most people are making their decision about
your resort.
Q4 – sources of traffic
Where is traffic to your site coming from? Organic
search, direct?
Goal – steps to improve ORGANIC SEARCH
Business goal 5
• On your own – write down another metric to
measure and goal to achieve.
Year to year visits
• How do visits to my site compare from last
year? – Behavior > Overview > click on the date range > clcik check box for
"Compare to" > select "previous year"
Geographic location of customers
• From where are people accessing my site.
As in what is their location? – Audience > Geo > Location
– Then click around in the map to find countries, states, and cities
• Should I be marketing differently to people
from the metro? Is their behavior any
different than visitors from other parts of
MN? • Behavior > Overview > Add Segment > + New Segment >
Demographics > Location > select appropriate location
• One thing to check here is %Pageviews of the top pages. See where
they are markedly different
1. Setup Analytics
• Google Analytics A. Set up / sign in to your Google Analytics account,
1. http://www.google.com/analytics/
2. Click Admin in the top menu bar.
3. From the Account and Property columns, select the property
you’re working with. Click Tracking Info / Tracking Code.
Your Tracking Code
3. Find your tracking code. Copy and paste it into every web
page you want to track.
Paste it immediately before the closing </head> tag.
If you use templates to dynamically generate pages for your site (like if
you use PHP, ASP, or a similar technology), you can paste the tracking
code snippet into its own file, then include it in your page header.
Head tag
Paste script anywhere
before this
Verify your setup
• Check your set up.
Make sure that the tracking snippet
installed on your website matches the code
shown in the view, and see more ways you
can verify your set up.
For more info see: – http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/setupchecklist.html
To learn more
• What are some other web analytic tools and what is the difference
between them?
– http://www.inc.com/guides/12/2010/11-best-web-analytics-tools.html
• An excellent blog for information on analytics is
– http://www.kaushik.net/
• University of Minnesota – eMarketing: Practical and Useful Research
– http://blog.lib.umn.edu/vitality/emarketing-guides/2013/07/how-can-i-learn-more-
anout-visitors-to-my-website/
• Official Blog for Google Analytics
– http://analytics.blogspot.com/
• Case study academic paper on using web analytics for strategic
communication
– http://www.academia.edu/download/30271266/Kent_Carr_Pop_Analytics.pdf
• Source for various customized dashboards
– http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/google-analytics-tutorial-8-valuable-tips-to-hustle-
with-data/#customdashboards
• Video on how to setup Event tracking and Goals
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEhZfefxn0E
• How to track Twitter and Facebook clicks using Google Analytics
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI9d-9dPNzo
– Tracking Ad campaigns with Google URL Builder and Bit.ly