Using Google Analytics Overview Google Analytics is a free tracking application used to monitor visitors to your website in order to provide site designers with a fuller knowledge of their audience. At its simplest, Google Analytics can tell you how many visitors or views your site is getting, but the advanced metrics and multifaceted analytics are so much more valuable than a simple hit count. With Google Analytics, you can discover elements of your audience s behavior that can suggest problems or opportunities in your site s design that might not otherwise have made themselves known. Everything from overcomplicated navigation to knowing where to look to get your audience s attention is revealed with any of a number of easy-to-use reporting tools. As a web content manager, Google Analytics is an invaluable tool to let you know how effective the content and layout you re using will be to ensure the best possible user experience on your website. Learning Objectives By the end of this workshop, you will be able to Create a Google Analytics profile and add tracking to any or all of your webpages to begin tracking your audience Use tracking metrics to enhance visibility of programs and events by knowing how your audience navigates your site s content Gauge the effectiveness of your site design and layout based on how long it takes your audience to reach critical pages, and how long they stay once they re there Enhance visibility and marketing efforts by knowing how your audience is finding your site in the first place, and where they go when they leave Page 1 of 10
Getting Started Sign up for a Google.com Account Because Google Analytics is not currently offered as part of the campus edition of Google Apps, you will not be able to access Analytics on your NCSU Google account. If you don t already have a Google.com account to work with, follow the steps below to set one up. Visit the Google Analytics website at: http://google.com/analytics/ to sign up for a new account. Click the Create an account button and follow the on-screen instructions. If you already have a Google.com account, instead click the Sign in link instead. Set up properties and profiles A Property in Google Analytics refers to a site, page or app that you wish to track. You can track as many separate Properties as you like under a single account, but every Property must be set up individually. When you add a Property to your Google Analytics account, Google will verify that you have access to the site, and then produce for you the tracking code that will help you collect data for that site. A Profile in Google Analytics refers to a more limited view of an existing Property based on criteria you choose. For instance, if you were managing the PRTM website and wanted to create a separate profile just to focus on data regarding the Alumni page, you would create a Profile. User access is also controlled at the Profile level, making it easy to determine who has access to what under a given Property. Add the tracking code to your site Once you have your Properties set up, you will need to add the Tracking Code to your website or mobile app to collect and send usage data to your Analytics account. We will cover the tracking code in depth on page 8 of this hand-out. Page 2 of 10
Adding Users to Your Profile If you are working collaboratively on your site and wish to grant other users access to view the same Profile in Google Analytics, you can add them by their Google.com email address. To grant access when adding a new user: 1. Click User Manager 2. Click Add User 3. Enter the user's email address, last name, and first name. The email address must be a Google.com account. 4. Select the Access type for this user: View reports only, or Account Administrator, which allows the user to edit account settings 5. Select the Profiles to which this user should have access. Reports for Profiles that are not selected will not be available to this user 6. Click Add to move these Profiles into the Selected Website Profiles list 7. Click Finish to create the new user. They can now log in using their Google.com account information. To modify access for a user you ve already added: 1. Click User Manager 2. Find the user in the Existing Access list and click Edit 3. From the Available Website Profiles, select the profiles to which this user should have access. Reports for profiles that are not selected will not be available to this user 4. Click Add to move these profiles into the Selected Website Profiles list 5. Click Save Changes to update this user's access Page 3 of 10
Using Google Analytics 2012 Exploring the Dashboar rd 1. Profile Selector 2. Administrative Settings 3. Report Finder 4. Directory of Reports 5. Report Title 6. Date Range Selector 7. Advanced Segments 8. Metric Groups 9. Primary Dimension 10. Secondary Dimension 11. Table Filter 12. Table Controls 13. Current Metric 14. Graph Increment 15. Plot Rows 16. Dataa View 17. Home (Dashboard) 18. Custom Reporting 19. Email/ /Export Options 20. Add to Dashboard 21. Annotations 22. Contextual Help 23. Search Help Center Making Sense of the Metrics One of the more daunting qualities of Google Analytics is the sheer volume of metrics and analysis available. It can be difficult to find exactly whatt you re looking for without a far deeper understanding of statistics than most of us bring to the table. For that reason, we ve included the table below as a reference chart for the available metrics, reports and tools within Analytics to give you an idea in plain English what each feature does, and how it can help you. Page 4 of 10
Menu Item What it is Why you d use it Audience Who your visitors are, where they come from and how they connect to your website To tailor your site based on your audience s technical and regional needs Demographics Behavior Technology Mobile Visitors Flow Advertising The location and languages used by your audience How frequently returning visitors view which pages, how many of your visitors are brand new, and how long they stay on your site A listing of browser, operating system and network providers used by your site visitors A technical listing of visitors using mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, broken down by device type A visual map of where users are coming from and which pages they re going to and through as they navigate your site If you make use of Google s AdWords feature, you can gauge the effectiveness of your existing campaigns To customize content for distance versus local visitors and account for multilingual support To gauge the effectiveness of new marketing techniques to draw in new visitors and evaluate the overall interest and engagement of visitors To account for browser-specific issues and network speeds to minimize errors, delays and layout issues for your visitors To judge the need for custom mobile templates and layouts for your site To determine the most common points of entry to your site and common paths of navigation to know how to reach your visitors To judge the worth of your investment into AdWords and help guide and update the search terms you d like to associate with Traffic Sources Sources Search Engine Optimization How users are reaching your site, whether referred from other sites, through search engines or by typing in the URL directly A breakdown of the different traffic sources, including a listing of the sources of referrals and the particular search terms used An advanced feature for optimizing search results to guide users to your site. Requires the setup of Google s Webmaster Tools To spot trends in visitor flow even before they reach your site so that you know how to reach new visitors To know where best to focus your marketing efforts, whether into AdWords for Search sources or on partner sites for Referrals To help improve the chance that a common set of search terms will find your sites earlier in the list when your visitors look for you Page 5 of 10
Menu Item What it is Why you d use it Social Content Site Content Referrals from social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook A page-by-page evaluation of your website s content An overall look at which pages are generating the most hits, which folders are generating the most traffic (via Content Drilldown), and where visitors start and end their journey through your site To gauge the effectiveness of active social media marketing or learn about the buzz already circulating for your website To determine which pages are the most and least popular to help guide marketing efforts and navigation and layout decisions To see what page visitors most often encounter first when visiting your site to improve awareness of events and other marketing efforts and to evaluate overall the effectiveness and awareness of each individual page Site Speed Site Search Events & Experiments In-Page Analytics Conversions A listing of page and visitor timings to determine how quickly your content is getting to your visitors If you use Google s Site Search, you can see how often it s being used and what search terms visitors are entering most often Advanced features for web developers to run test visitors through the existing site A visual walkthrough of your site with pop-up information that shows the percentage of users who viewed or clicked on different segments of a given page A set of configurable goals you create to compare against the above metrics to determine how effective your site is overall To determine which pages are taking longest to load to evaluate whether or not their content needs to be split into several smaller pages To find the content your visitors are looking for most and look for ways to make it more readily available within the navigation To test the completeness of advanced web applications, like Flash objects To help visualize the path your users are taking and see organically where their attention is focused as they browse your content To set out specific, measurable milestones for your site as you work to improve its effectiveness according to your unique needs Page 6 of 10
Five Useful Metrics for Any Site 1) Pageviews The simplest and most basic metric for any site, Pageviews determine how many hits your site has received. A Pageview is generated each time any page on your site is loaded by someone, whether it s the same visitor refreshing the page or a new one finding your site for the first time. Pageviews offer a rough estimate of how popular your site has become, but they can be deceptive as a true measure of visitor engagement and retention. The Content section offers the most complete analysis of which areas of your site generate the most Pageviews, while the Audience section can help you determine just how valuable those Pageviews are. 2) Bounce Rate The Bounce Rate is the percentage visitors who bounce off your site with only a single Pageview in a session or visit: someone who does visit your site, but then immediately leaves without browsing any other pages. The Bounce Rate can help you quickly determine the value of your Pageviews and the overall draw of your site: how effective it is at keeping visitors once they reach you. On average, a site will have a Bounce Rate between 40-60%. If you find you have a high Bounce Rate, you may want to investigate your Traffic Sources to determine where the most bounces are coming from. There may be a confusion over search terms or a bad referral from another site that is misleading users as to what to expect when they get to your site. It is also a good idea to check the Bounce Rate on your Landing Pages, under Content > Site Content, to determine which pages have the highest bounce rate and are scaring the most visitors off. 3) Search & Site Search Under Traffic Sources > Search, you will find a sub-heading for Organic search terms visitors have used to reach your site. This can give you fantastic insight into what terms people associate with your content, and which words are putting your content highest in the results of popular search engines. Knowing how to market your pages and how to funnel new visitors to your site often depends on knowing how they search. You may find, as many other web providers have, that more users reach your site by searching than by browsing directly, even when the links are available. Similarly, under Content > Site Search you can see what visitors are searching for once they reach your site. If you see the same terms often, it may be that you need to shift your Page 7 of 10
navigation to make links to popular content and pages more obvious and more immediately accessible to your visitors. 4) Visitors Flow Besides helping to visualize the overall movement through your site in a way line graphs never will, the Visitors Flow feature can show you the interaction between your pages, rather than just activity on a given page. When making changes to your site navigation or trying to highlight new or valuable content, knowing what paths your visitors take through your site is absolutely essential. To get their attention, you often have to first know where they are, which is precisely what the Visitors Flow helps illustrate. 5) Mobile Under the Audience section, the Mobile metric can help you see just how high a percentage of your visitors are viewing your site on a mobile interface. Visitors working from a tablet or smartphone who have a hard time navigating your site are far more likely to leave the moment the page loads. Designing your layout or even creating custom templates that identify when a visitor is connecting by a mobile device can greatly increase your visitor retention, especially if your intended audience are largely extension clients and students who are more often on the go and away from a desktop computer. If you are unfamiliar with the needs of a mobile layout for your site, contact CNR IT, we would be happy to meet with you to design the best fit for all your website visitors. Adding Analytics to Your Website Naturally, before any of these metrics can be of use to you, you ll need to apply the Google Analytics code to your site s page. To do so, you ll first need to find the Tracking Code for your website: 1. From any Analytics report, click the Admin tab. The Profile Settings for that report will be displayed. 2. Click the Tracking Code tab the top right of the Profiles tab. 3. Follow the on-screen instructions to find the snippet of code you ll need to apply to your web pages. Page 8 of 10
Copy and place the code snippet Once you find the code snippet, copy and paste it into your web page, just before the closing </head> tag near the top of the page. NOTE: For the best performance across all browsers, Google suggests positioning other scripts on your page before the Google Analytics snippet in the <head> tag. If you are unsure where exactly to place the code in your site, contact CNR IT, we would be happy to guide you through the process. The CNR Shared Analytics Account If you re a content manager making use of a CNR website, there s a good chance Google Analytics has already been added to your pages. To be added to the shared Profile for CNR, simply contact CNR IT with the name of the site you manage and a Google.com email address you would like to have access through. Custom Variables (for advanced users only!) In addition to the wide array of metrics already available in Google Analytics, you also have the power to add additional, custom variables to individual pages to track things like successful form submissions or user group profiles. If you find you need additional tracking beyond what s already available, see Google s guide to Custom Variables at: http://goo.gl/gfm4p NOTE: Given the scripting requirements of Google s Custom Variables, we recommend only making use of this feature if you feel comfortable editing the code of your pages directly. If you need custom variables but do not feel comfortable making code changes, please contact CNR IT for assistance. Page 9 of 10
Help Resources From Google Getting Started Guide: http://goo.gl/vuqi2 Searchable Help Center: http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/ Video Tutorials: http://www.youtube.com/googleanalytics Online Troubleshooter: http://goo.gl/ihgte Free Online Lessons: http://goo.gl/d8beo Contact CNR IT If you still have questions, please contact CNR IT at: cnr_help@ncsu.edu Or through our website at: http://cnr.ncsu.edu/it Page 10 of 10