Google Analytics & Social Media Monitoring Jeremy Coates / @phpcodemonkey
Who am I? Jeremy Coates, MD at Magma Digital Ltd Social Media Guru of the Year 2012 @phpcodemonkey linkedin.com/in/jeremycoates http://bit.ly/magma-ga-links
What is Google Analytics? One of the most powerful tools for measuring your sites performance. In the words of Google: It gives you powerful insights and statistics about your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.
What Does Google Analytics Do? You can monitor: Visitor numbers Where they come from How they found you What they looked at How long they stayed If they stuck around 5 of 46
What Does Google Analytics Do?(cont.) Website traffic Conversions (how many achieve your set goals) Adwords Performance E-Commerce
What Do You Need to Know? Key metrics SME benchmarks Comparing & changing time frame Other metrics Customising Google Analytics Real-time analytics Social media monitoring
Key Metrics No. of unique visitors Traffic sources Bounce rate Pages per visit Average visit duration Mobile vs desktop New vs returning visitors
Unique Visitors First time visitors within a set time frame or specific campaign Unduplicated _utma cookie is the unique identifier
Traffic Sources Source - The referral origin Medium - Type of referral Keyword - The words searched by visitors Campaign - Name referring to AdWords campaign 10 of 46
Traffic Sources: Source Sources: Google (name of search engine) Facebook (name of social media or other website) Direct (typed your URL or had your site bookmarked) Spring_newsletter (your newsletter)
Traffic Sources: Medium Mediums: Organic (unpaid google search) CPC (cost per click i.e. paid search) Referral Email (custom medium example) None (direct URL)
Traffic Sources: Keyword Keyword that visitors have searched on a search engine to reach your site This is true for both paid and non paid (not provided) is the default value for any visitor signedin to a Google account
Traffic Sources: Campaign The name of your AdWords campaign A custom campaign you are running
Bounce Rate % of visits that entered your site and left straight away Calculated as a single-page view in a session or visit 15 of 46
High Bounce Rate Visitors might leave your site due to a bad site design or usability issues Or they might leave because they have all the answers they need
Bounce Situations A user clicks on a link onto your site sent by a friend, reads the information on the page and closes the browser A user comes directly to a reference page on your site from a web search, leaves the page open in their browser, completes other tasks and the session times out
High Bounce Rate: Single Page Sites If your site is a single page site Google Analytics won t register multiple page views. This will give you a high bounce rate
High Bounce Rate: Tracking Code If you re seeing a high bounce rate from a multiple-page site, check to see if you have added your tracking code to every page If all pages contain the tracking code and you still have a high bounce rate, try redesigning your entrance page or optimising those pages to match your top keywords
Pages Per Visit The average number of pages viewed per visit to your site Repeated views of a single page is counted 20 of 46
Visit Duration The length of time an average visitor stays on your site The longer they stay the more valuable your information is to them But, you may not want them to stay too long as they may be struggling to find what they are looking for
New vs. Returning Visitors This shows the difference between new visitors and returning ones You are a new visitor if you have never been on a site with your tablet or phone (until now) even if you have visited on your PC before (unless you're logged in to Google)
Mobile vs. Desktop Improving your user experience Is your site attracting large amounts of tablet or mobile users but giving you a high bounce rate because it is not optimised for mobile / tablet?
SME Benchmarks SME Average Take Action Pages / visit 4.5 1.5 Bounce rate 42.500% 65.00% Visit duration Goal Conversion (for e-commerce) 5:23 1:11 1.1500% 0.5600%
Comparing & Changing Time Frames Google Analytics maintains at least 25 months of historical date (from date set up) View reports for any date range Compare a date range to another 25 of 46
Date Range Today: Data available for the current calendar date up until time of selection Yesterday: Data from the previous calendar date Last Week: Data for Sunday through Saturday of the previous calendar week Last Month: Data for the first to last day of the previous calendar month
Custom Date Range Single Date: Click a date on the calendar Specific Week: Click the first and last day of the week Custom Range: Click the desired start dates followed by the end date Comparing: Select the compare to past checkbox then use the controls as above to set the past date range
Other Metrics Browser Country / Territory Frequency vs. Recency Keywords Site speed In-page analytics Real-time analytics
Browser You need to have a general idea which browsers your audience prefers Ensure you choose a data range of around 12 months
Country / Territory If you are targeting visitors from other countries, how well does your content translate? Is there a possibility you are offending potential customers? 30 of 46
Frequency vs. Recency Found in the behaviour section The level of user interest in your site How frequently visitors return to your site within a time frame (once, twice, ten times etc) How many days go by before they return to your site (once a week or once a month etc) Zero days in their recency shows they are back everyday
Keywords One of the most important reports Gives insight into words and phrases that search engines have associated with your content and have been used to find your site Helps you ensure your top keywords are the ones you want to be associated with
Site Speed This measures page load time (latency): how quickly your pages load in different browsers, geographic areas etc The higher the page load time the more likely you are to have a high bounce rate as people are getting more and more impatient
In-page Analytics Enables you to give a visual assessment of how users interact with your website pages Available under content > standard reporting
Real-time Analytics Real-time allows you to monitor visitor activity as it happens on your site. 35 of 46
Customising Google Analytics You can create custom reports which help you find the most relevant information for your site on one simple dashboard
Google Spiders These crawl your website to allow you to appear on search engines These spiders or bots index your website in order to bring up the most relevant results for any given key word or phrase
Link Back Pingback: is an acknowledgement. This acknowledgment is sent via a network signal (a ping) from the originating site to the receiving site Trackback: is similar to a pingback but does not require a link from the originating site Refback: is a normal referring link, how the web works!
Sitemaps Creating a sitemap helps search engines crawl your site and categorise better Google webmaster tools can easily create and verify a sitemap for you and some CMS sites can also easily create one for you through built-in tools
Website Statistics If your website is built on a Content Management System (CMS) you have the ability to check their statistics against Google Analytics Many keywords that are set to (not provided) on google analytics may be found from the CMS statistics 40 of 46
Social Media Monitoring Data hub Is it for you? What does it mean?
Bit.ly bit.ly is a URL shortener that can be used in many different places to help monitor your traffic. This includes social media platforms, your website, newsletters etc
Social Media Monitoring bit.ly social media monitoring tools include: Bundles Viewing stats on any link sharers social media clients
Facebook Insights Insights provide measurements on your pages performance. Find anonymous demographic data about your audience and see how people are discovering and responding to your posts
Linkedin Profile vs. Page Product / Services Insights 45 of 46
Now Get Measuring... Jeremy Coates, MD at Magma Digital Ltd Social Media Guru of the Year 2012 @phpcodemonkey linkedin.com/in/jeremycoates http://bit.ly/magma-ga-links Download Slides Here! http://bit.ly/magma-google-slides