Google Analytics The Basics
The Rundown
➤ What is Google Analytics
➤ Why we measure?
➤ What to measure?
➤ Getting use to the Interface
➤ Understanding the Metrics
➤ Interpreting Reports
➤ How to track your campaigns
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about a website's traffic and traffic sources and measures conversions and sales. The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew.
Universal Analytics Universal Analytics introduces a set of features that change the way data is collected and organized in your Google Analytics account, so you can get a better understanding of how users interact with your online content.
• Connect multiple devices, sessions, and engagement data with the User ID.
• Get a new and more flexible tracking code that lets you collect data from any digital device.
• Use simplified and more accessible configuration options.
• Create custom dimensions & custom metrics to collect data that's unique to your business.
• Collect deeper demographic data of your users.
What To Measure
Define Your Business Goals
➤ Why does your business have a website?
➤ What is its purpose or what problem does it solve for the business?
Goals By Business Model
Sell Products Ecommerce
Contact Info for Sales Prospects Lead Genera7on
Show Adver7sing to Visitors Content Publisher
Help Customers Solve Problems Support
Drive Awareness & Engagement Branding
Business Objec7ve Goal
Defining Goals in Terms of Website Actions
View a ‘Thank you’ page
Sign up for an email list
Download a whitepaper
Make a purchase
Listen to 3 audio tracks
All of these ac7ons are “conversions”
For example, do you want your visitors to…
$ ü
Think About Micro Conversions
Goals
There is value here! These ac7ons lead to your future conversions.
Think About Micro Conversions Common Micro Conversions • Share content via social media, • Subscribe to newsletters, • Watch video, • Play games, • Use calculators, • Use payment estimators, • Live chat, • Customize product, • View special content, • Store locator, • Property search.
New visitors
Micro Conversions
Goal Achieved
Keep your customers returning
Getting use to the Interface
Audience
Acquisition
Behaviour
Conversions
Getting use to the Interface
Audience
The visitors overview is the default screen you’ll see when you view the report for any of your sites. This screen gives you the number of visitors, unique visitors, and pageviews (along with the average pages/visit).
It also shows you the average time spent on your site, the bounce rate, and the percentage of new visits (a pie chart comparing new to returning visitors is also shown).
Audience Metrics • Demographics, • Interests, • Geo, • Behaviour, • Technology, • Mobile
Acquisition
The Acquisition tab shows you where your traffic is coming from tells you a lot about the strength of your SEO, your incoming links, and your AdWords and other advertising campaigns.
It also shows you where your weaknesses are. Ideally, you want traffic coming from a variety of sources, so that your traffic isn’t tied to closely to a single source that’s beyond your control.
Acquisition Metrics • Organic, • Direct, • Referral, • Social, • Email
Behavior
On the content overview page, the graph represents page views rather than visits, so you’ll notice the numbers used should be a lot larger than on the visits graph. One thing you’ll notice here is that both pageviews and unique pageviews are both shown.
Behaviour Metrics • Site Content, • Site Speed, • Site Search, • Events, • AdSense,
Conversions
Conversions are broken down into two categories: goals and ecommerce. Goals are fairly easy to set up. You can have up to four sets of goals, each with five individual goals.
This can be valuable for tracking different kinds of actions on your site (like length of time spent, reaching a specific page, or visiting a certain number of pages).
Conversion Metrics • Goals, • Ecommerce, • Multi-Channel Funnels, • Attribution
Understanding Metrics
Pageviews, Visits & Visitors
• A pageview is counted every time a page on your site loads,
• A visit (or session) is a period of inteaction between a browser and a website. Closing the browser or staying inactive for 30 minutes ends the visit.
• A visitor is uniquely identified by a Google Analytics visitor Cookie.
Pageviews, Visits & Visitors – The Basics
Visitors Visits Pageviews
1 1 3
Pageview Pageview Pageview
Visitors Visits Pageviews
1 2 5
VISIT 1 VISIT 2
A B C
Pageview Pageview
A B
Pageviews vs Unique Pageviews
Pageviews
6 Unique Pageviews
3 Page A 3 1
Page C 2 1
Page B 1 1
Pageview Pageview
VISIT
A C
Pageview Pageview
B C
Pageview Pageview
C A
Time Metrics – Time on Page
Time on Page is calculated by the timestamps of the page visit.
3:32:25 3:33:40
Time on Page = 1 minute and 15 seconds
Time on Page = 0 seconds
Equation: Page B Time – Page A Time = Time on Page A
Exit
A B
Time Metrics – Time on Site
Time on Site is calculated by the time on each page.
3:32:25 3:33:40
Time on Page = 1 minute and 15 seconds
Time on Page = 1 minute and 10 seconds
This visit had a time of 2 Minutes and 25 Seconds. Page A (01:15) + Page B (01:10) = Time of Visit (02:25)
3:34:50
Time on Page = 0 seconds
Exit
A B C
Traffic Sources
Direct Traffic Visitor arrives directly
There are a few misconceptions around what is treated as a direct visit. A direct visit can be attributed from a visitor:
- Typing the URL into the address bar,
- Visiting the site via a bookmark,
- Ctrl-clicking a link (manually opening a new window)
- Visiting from a HTTPS webpage,
- Visit from an email without a tracked link,
- Visits from shortened URLs
- Visits from a document
Referral Traffic Visitor arrives via another site.
Search Traffic Visitor arrives via a search engine
How To Track Your Campaigns
Link Tagging Link tagging is the process of adding marke7ng informa7on to the URLs in your marke7ng material.
Tags Meaning
Campaign Name of your campaign
Medium The channel
Source More informa7on about the channel
Keyword Keyword from search
Content Ad variant
How The Tag Is Displayed In Your URL
Example of tagged URL, within an Email
Campaign Tag Query Parameter
Campaign Utm_campaign
Medium Utm_medium
Source Utm_source
Keyword Utm_term
Content Utm_content
http://www.cheproximity.com.au/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=april2014
Event Tracking Events are user interactions with content that can be tracked independently from a web page or a screen load.
_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ’Category’, ’Action’, ’Opt Label’, Opt Value’])‘_trackEvent’
’Category’ – the category that you want to show up, use something broad like external links, social links, images, videos, or form. ‘Action’ – This is the action that occurred; something the user did that you are tracking. For the ‘Action’ property use clicked, submissions, copy or whatever you are tracking from the user. ‘Optional Label’ – This is an optional field you don’t need anything, but when you start tracking a lot of stuff you want to be able to segment it out. For this property think of it like a specific category for example, facebook, box 2, or headline picture. Optional Value – This is a number value for the thing you are tracking. There is no need to put quotes around the numerical value because its a number.
Google Tag Manager Google Tag Manager lets you add or update your website tags and mobile applications, easily and for free, whenever you want, without bugging the IT folks.
End.
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