Web Analyticsfor Communicators

Why do we communicate?

• Why do you have a website?

• What’s your message?

• What will you measure?

• Is it SMART? Specific, Measurable, Achievable (or actionable), Relevant, Time-bound (timely)

• Will you be able to act upon your findings?

Before you measure:Is content student/client-focused?

Self-focused

• Inform, persuade

• Increase registrations, purchases, subscriptions

• Increase brand awareness

• Increase status, build a following, start a movement

• Customer retention

• Change behavior

• Generate qualified leads

Client-focused

• Answer my question quickly and definitively

• Get me past a pain point

• Simplify my decision-making, my life

• Increase my status

• Affirm my beliefs, ideas, decisions

• Be entertained

• Collaborate, share, socialize

Data sources in addition to Google Analytics

• Email analytics

• Customer relationship management (CRM) data

• Customer surveys

• Informal conversations

• Call Center data (front desk, receptionist, or adviser)

• Industry data (Lipman Hearne, Stamats, Councils of Graduate Schools)

• Data from across business/university silos

• Tracking codes

Identify Topics Create Content Optimize

Publish(everywhere) Promote

MEASURE Refine MEASURE

Set up for useable signals

Don’t measure your own use

Admin > View > Filters

Exclude many bots

Admin > View > Reporting View Settings

Add goals

Admin > View > Goals

Import from Gallery

Create new goal

Connect to Google Webmaster

General health measures (trend lines)

• Number of unique visitors (Is the site still performing?)

• Time on site (Are people hanging around?)

• Avg. number of pages views (Do they look around?)

• Frequency and recency (Do they maintain interest?)

• Bounce rate (Do they run away?)

• Page load times (Do they have to wait?)

Intelligence Events and Alerts

How to read this stuff

Check the little question mark

Click on the graduation cap (top right)

What do communicators care about?

• Are people reading my stuff?

• How do they find it?

• Do they take the time to read it?

• Do they engage with my site?

• What pages are getting shared?

• Did my new headline make a difference?

• Did my new meta description make a difference?

• What else should I write about?

What can we learn from analytics?

New or legacy web page(s)

• Is it seen? Views, page ranking in search

• Is it accepted? Time on site/page

• Is it relevant? Times shared, inbound links, trackbacks

• What’s the best way to amplify this type of message? Review of where it’s shared, or clicked on. Which sources return best conversion?

• You’re not just reporting. You’re also LISTENING. You’re looking for signals about what interests your intended audience.

Benchmarks

• SHARE what you learn

• Use your own community

• Other metrics: Is level of interest in a site reflected in applications, subscriptions, attendance, inquiries? Does interest in your site rise and fall with other measures?

Are people reading my gems? Behaviors

Behaviors > Site Content > All pages

What does “/” mean?

• / is usually your home page.

• If it doubt, you can usually change your view to show page title.

A few terms

• Pageviews – Includes repeated views of a single page during a session.

• Unique pageviews – Number of visits during which the page was viewed at least once.

• Entrances - # of times visitors entered your site through this page

• Bounce rate – Percentage of single-page visits.

• Avg. time on page – Time spent on this page by visitors who decided to visit another page on your

• NOTE: Someone could come, read one page thoroughly and count as both a bounce and a zero second visit. (The last page a visitor views on your site doesn’t produce a time because there’s no end count event.)

Comparing trend lines over time

What happened?

Spikes and dips

• Interest is related to seasons, events, holidays

• New inbound link | lost inbound link

• Your changes paid off | you broke the page

• News story

• Social media campaign worked

• Google search algorithm change

• You got called out in social media

Use annotations

Polar vortex, Panda, home page changes, new inbound links, new navigation or design

Landing pages: where the visit (and judgement) begins

Landing pages

• Not always the home page

• Pages that are shared and linked to

• Usually pages with the useful, fun, or transactional stuff

What we want to proofread again, review regularly, write more of

Behaviors > Site Content > Landing Pages

Home page is 2nd.

Acquisition > Social > Landing Pages

Tips

View by page title

Search

Unique pageviews, time on page, bounce rate, exits

Short stays are not always bad

• Navigation pages – Great. They found their next link quickly.

• Shopping carts/registration confirmations – Yay! They’re eager to complete.

• Pages with a major call to action (as long as they take the action).

Compare pages

Compare pages

Dimensions are fun to explore.

What are we looking for?

• Trends over time

• Unexpected spikes and dips in trend lines

• Comparisons to other pages

• KPIs • 5% increase in traffic from Google over the prior quarter

• 8% increase in time on page over prior version of page

• 10% decrease in exits on a page compared to last year

• 6% increase in visits from social media over last quarter

• 3% increase in goal conversions (you set these)

Referrals

•These are the sites and people willing to give you an endorsement

•Or they might be using you as a negative example

Acquisition > Referrals

What did they say about me?

• Do they like me?

• Do they understand me?

• Can I add something? Suggest another link?

• Do I need to tell them Ichanged the link URL?

Referral spam

No traffic sent.They just want you to click.

Don’t.

Yoursite.com

Yoursite.com

Yoursite.com

Yoursite.com

Yoursite.com

Yoursite.com

Yoursite.com

Yoursite.com

Yoursite.com

Admin > Property > Tracking Info > Referral Exclusion List

Might just mask the problem and move traffic into Direct reports

Set a filter or exclude through .htaccess file or block IP addresses

http://www.optimizesmart.com/geek-guide-removing-referrer-spam-google-analytics/

Promoting content

• Which social site works the best for us?

• Who is promoting for us?

• Is email working?

• How about our SEO?

• PR?

Social

Campaigns = email, AdWords, etc.

Also, now with spam.

Consider how you name your email campaigns

Segments

Customize it

Built-in options

Import from gallery

Minnesota visitors only

Minneapolis – sort of

This is approximately the Minneapolis metro.

Compare audiences

All keywords from Google are shown as (not provided)

This report shows only if connected with Google Webmaster

One query can have multiple pages and multiple positions.

Other reports

Don’t freak out about these. Just ask your developer(s) to take a look.

You can ask for your search logs

• Scan the search queries

• Look for the

• Unexpected (need new content, different words?)

• Repeated (problem with navigation?)

• Outdated (need a page just for these queries?)

• Consider KeyMatches

Ask for a screen shot instead of this

Lots of searches for“director school ofmusic”

Search for Women’s Studies

Search for “meat lab hours”

Dashboards

Use ones created by others.• www.dashboardjunkie.com

• www.google.com/analytics/gallery/#landing/start/

• econsultancy.com/blog/62828-10-useful-google-analytics-custom-dashboards/

Dashboard:

Long tail Keywords, real words used by visitors

Identify Topics

Blog titles, headings, search keymatches, social teasers

New content ideas

What analytics doesn’t measure well

• Upcoming trends, interests, needs

• True satisfaction (Are people just taking the best they can find?)

• Why a page fails (jargon, not of interest, too wordy, poor choice of image, etc.)

• Visitor intent

• Visitor intent to return

Social analytics

• Follower count

• Likes, +1s

• Shares

• Unsolicited shares (created their own posts linking to you)

• Engagement (comments)

• Clicks on landing pages or target pages from social

• Which social channel performs best

Email

• Open rate

• Clicks (on which content?)

• Forwards

• Subscription rate

• Unsubscribe rate

• Leads generated / goals achieved

Production

• Time to publish

• Content throughput (volume)

• Content backlog

• Production cost

• Distribution cost

• Who writes your best performing content?

Learn much more

• https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/

• Identifying and Filtering Internal Traffic from Google Analytics

• 7 Essential Intelligence Events for Your Google Analytics Account

• 18 useful Google Analytics custom reports, segments and dashboards for SEO

• YouTube Tracking In Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager

• Understanding Bot and Spider Filtering from Google Analytics

• Where Should The Google Analytics Tracking Code Be Placed?

Hey, thanks!

Kristeen@KristeenBullwinkle.com