Web Analytics. FAQs MONITOR, ANALYZE, TRACK. Page 1

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1 Web Analytics FAQs MONITOR, ANALYZE, TRACK Page 1

2 Web Analytics FAQs Monitor, Analyze, Track This document contains a list of frequently asked questions on the following areas of the Web Analytics system: DASHBOARD VISITORS REFERRERS CAMPAIGNS Overview Q A Q A Q A What is Web Analytics? Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet Data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. What will web analytics provide me? The web analytics program will provide you the data and report to your top pages, referrers, search words, visitor information, and provide information in a table or chart to clearly convey the information. Where will sponsor link information display? If you have paid a monthly subscription through Emerald for your Sponsor Placement ad, your results will be captured in the Campaign section of the system. (see campaigns FAQs) Page 2

3 Dashboard Q What is the Analytics Dashboard? A Dashboards give you an overview on how your website is performing by displaying summaries of different reports as widgets on a single page. With a dashboard, you can monitor many metrics at once. Q How do I change the view of my Dashboard? A To view and manage your dashboards, use the dashboard and widgets drop down to add or delete different reports? Q Can I reset my dashboard back to what it was? A Yes, within the widget drop down there is a link to reset your dashboard. This will automatically reset your dashboard to the base setup. Q How do I add a new widget? A You can add new widgets to your Dashboard, to ensure it reports on all of your most important metrics. Click on the Add a Widget link: it will expand and you will see a list of categories. Run your mouse over the list and it will display a list of the individual widgets available. There are more than 30 in total. In the example below, the mouse hovers over Visitors and the top item on the list is Visitor countries (world map). Page 3

4 Click on the widget name to add it to the Dashboard. By default any new widget will appear in the top left of the Dashboard. Click and hold on the dark grey title bar to drag and drop the widget into a new position. Page 4

5 You might not be interested in some of the default widgets; it s easy to remove them from your Dashboard. Hover your mouse over that widget (anywhere within the gray outline box) and you will see a cross appear in the top right corner of the box. Click the cross, validate, and the widget will be removed from the Dashboard. You can also select a different Dashboard layout. You could, for example have a wider column on the left and 2 narrow columns on the right: There are several column layouts that you can choose from the Dashboard & Widgets Page 5

6 menu: Q How do I select date ranges? A By default, the analytics system will show data for yesterday. You can click on the calendar and select another date range to view reports. The Analytics supports any day, week, month, year or custom date ranges. (Note: If your data does not appear within a defined period it is possible that your account was not capturing data starting from that date range. This would only occur if your Corporate client program was not collecting Analytics information.) Page 6

7 Example of a custom date range: Q What do the icon images mean on each report? A Below is an example of what a standard report looks like. Below the report is an icon legend listing the different actions that can be utilized on a report. Page 7

8 Icon Legend: Display a simple table of just the main metric that the widget features Display a table with more metrics Display goals information about this metric (if you are using goals) Display a bar chart (usually, hovering your mouse over this icon will give you the option of choosing other types of chart, for example pie charts or tag clouds ) Export the data Save the graph as an image Configures the report s data. Some reports can be flattened, or rows with low visits excluded. It is safe to experiment with clicking on these icons. You can easily go back to the original appearance by clicking the relevant icon. If you hover your mouse over any of these icons a tooltip will appear to remind you of what they do. Page 8

9 Q How do I read the different reports? A In a given report, there are often several metrics that are relevant (visits, page views, bounce rate, conversions, revenue, time on site, etc.). By default, graphs in Web Analytics will show the historical evolution of a given metric. You can also choose to plot on the graph a different metric to the default one: You can also plot several metrics at once, for example here we compare Ecommerce orders and Total Ecommerce revenue: Inline help When a report title is hovered, a Help icon appears current report and the freshness of the report. which will display a short description of the Page 9

10 Visitors Q What are the various reports in the Visitors section? A Below is a list of different reports that are within the Visitors section of the Analytics program. Overview Displays an overview of the number of visits, actions, page views, downloads, and outlinks during a specific time period. Visitor Log: The Visitor Log is a tool that allows you to see all the visits on your site, and browse through these visits to check on individual user sessions. You can click Next at the bottom of the page to access previous visits, or change the date in the calendar to access visits from different days. It is useful to browse individual user sessions on your site and understand what your visitors were looking for, whether they found an answer, or to see which pages they have visited. Page 10

11 Visitor Log Location and Providers Displays the location the visitor resides in and what internet provider they are utilizing. Settings Page 11

12 Display the computer setting of the visitor, what browser they are using, operating system, plug-ins and whether they are viewing on a mobile or desktop devices. Page 12

13 Times Displays the times of activity on your website on a specific date. Engagement Displays how engaged a visitor is on your site and how many returning visits are occurring on your site. Page 13

14 Actions Q What are the different actions that can be captured in the Analytics system? A Below is a list of different reports that are within the Actions section of the Analytics program. Pages This displays the top pages visitors are accessing on your website. Entry Pages These are the pages that the visitors are enter through to visit your site. Page 14

15 Exit Pages Displays the specific pages where a visitor has left your site. Page Titles Displays the list of page titles that are being visited on your site. Page 15

16 Outlinks Displays the list of external URLs that were clicked by your visitors from your website pages Downloads Shows the specific url pages that have unique downloads Page 16

17 Referrers Q What are the different Referrer reports that can be captured in the Analytics system? A Below is a list of different reports that are within the Referrer section of the Analytics program. Overview Displays an overview of the number of visits, actions, page views, downloads, and outlinks during a specific time period. Search Engine & Keywords Displays the list of search engines and keywords that users are coming from. Page 17

18 Websites Provides a list of websites that user are coming from to visit your site. Campaigns Q A What is Campaign Tracking? Campaign tracking in Web Analytics lets you track how efficient various marketing campaigns are in bringing visitors to your website (visits, page views, etc.), how well these visitors convert and how much revenue they generate. Campaigns can track various ways of acquiring traffic, such as: Yahoo! Search Marketing, Google AdWords, Microsoft ad Center: Sponsor Placement, Cost Per Click Display Ads, Banners Page 18

19 Links in Newsletters, ing Tweets Facebook Ad Q A How do I create my own campaign? Campaign tracking is simple: add one (or two) parameter(s) to your website URL. For example, instead of putting a link to your website such as in your newsletter or adword destination URL, you would instead put a link to All visitors who open the and click on the link will arrive on your website. The Web Analytics will track the visit, and detect the parameter pk_campaign in the URL of the first page view, and the visit will be credited to the Referrer > Campaign: -Nov2011. Page 19

20 Screenshot of the Analytics Campaign reports showing various marketing campaigns: Adwords, Facebook, Newsletter, Display ads The Web Analytics system lets you define up to two parameters in your page URLs. This allows for more advanced tracking. For example, if your newsletter contains various calls to action: Learn more and Order now, you could tag the links as follows: 1) <a href=" Nov2011&pk_kwd=LearnMore">Learn more</a> 2) <a href=" Nov2011&pk_kwd=OrderNow">Order now</a> In the report Referrers > Campaigns, you would then be able to click on the row -Nov2011 and see how the two links performed: Page 20

21 On a click on a Campaign name (value of pk_campaign) are displayed the specific links clicked in the newsletter (if you tracked it via in pk_keyword parameter) Tracking campaigns is easy: you don t need to edit your Web AnalyticsTracking code, only the URLs pointing to your website. You can track an unlimited number of campaigns (and keywords). You do not need to configure campaign names in advance. Just use them in the links to your website and visitors following those links will be tracked as campaign referrers. Q A How do generate a campaign URL? It can be a bit tricky to manually generate URLs for use in Adwords, Yahoo! search marketing, in your Affiliate URLs or in your newsletter. To make sure your URLs are correct, you can use the following tool which will create the URL, which you can then copy and paste wherever you are linking your website.» URL Builder tool We highly recommend that you bookmark the link to the URL Builder: and use it as often as possible to tag all your links, which is the first step to getting better insights into your campaigns performance in the Web Analytics. Q A My URLS are tagged properly, but no Campaign is showing up with the Web Analytics? There are a few possible explanations: Are your pages tagged correctly? If you click on your website in a search result, and look at your page source, can you see the Web Analytics tracking code? Make sure the tracking code is installed on all the pages you want to track, and is not within an iframe. We advise to put the Web Analytics code just before the </body> tag. Page 21

22 Are you using a redirect on your website landing page? If you are using a redirect, the visitor browser may lose the referrer information. If you are tracking campaigns, and the landing page has a redirect, the URL loaded after the redirection will have lost the URL parameters. Make sure that your visitors arrive directly on the page with the tracking code installed. Check that the Web Analytics domain name in your Javascript tracking code is correct (this URL is in the second line of the Web Analytics tracking code). There have been cases of missing referrers when the Web Analytics JS code in the pages points to a URL that returns a 302 response instead of the final destination. It seems that some web server compromise the tracking request when such redirects occur. Check in particular if the URL (doesn't) contain " Also, if the server does an automatic redirection from http to https which also affects tracking requests to the Web Analytics system, it might create problems such as missing referrer data Q A What is the advantage of tracking campaigns vs. leaving the URL as is? When a visitor clicks in an newsletter, or in a paid search ad, it will show as a Direct Entry in Web Analytics. Looking at your analytics reports, you will not be able to tell if the newsletter or paid search ad (or Display ad, etc.) have made a positive impact on your website. Tracking campaigns in Web Analytics ensures that you will be able to tell exactly how many visits were generated with each campaign, how many pages the visitors looked at, the bounce rate, and also the conversion rate to your Goals, and the revenue generated by these visits. Tracking campaigns is a very important part of understanding your websites performance. Page 22