Google Analytics workbook

Google Analytics workbook Sub-title here

Google Analytics workbook Overview Google Analytics is just one of many tools available for tracking activity on a website or mobile application. It provides users with an insight to the type and volume of traffic a website gets and more importantly provides a level of understanding as to how users interact with the website. Google works through the use of a specific piece of code being added to the website pages enabling a signal to be passed to the Google Analytics account in order to capture the data. A Google Analytics account can be setup for free at the following website www.google.co.uk/analytics and the user is taken through a simple process to register the website. Once complete the code snippet needs to be added to the website typically within the HEAD section of the webpage. There are a number of different versions of the Analytics Code in operation and Google are slowly moving people towards using the latest iteration referred to as Universal Analytics. If you re starting a new site then the Universal Analytics code is the best to implement as this will ensure you can make full use of all the advanced features within Analytics. Older versions of the tracking code can be migrated to the Universal Code via the Analytics interface. Action 1: Are you using Google Analytics? If you already know your website is making use of Analytics, you can identify which version of the code is in operation by looking at the source code for the page. Locating the Code in Place: 1. Navigate to your website 2. On the page, carry out a right mouse click and select VIEW SOURCE from the menu that appears

3. Search for the code snippet in the page that appears. This page may look very strange to you. The code snippet will either be at the top of the page or at the bottom depending on how the developer has added analytics. If you cannot locate the code as shown then the website is probably not set for tracking in Google Analytics. The code snippet will be similar to one of the following formats. Universal Analytics Latest Version of Analytics ga('create', 'UA-32335123-4', XXXXX.org.uk'); ga('send', 'pageview'); Asynchronous Previous version _gaq.push(['_setaccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']); _gaq.push(['_trackpageview']); Traditional Code var pagetracker = _gat._gettracker('ua-xxxxx-x'); pagetracker._trackpageview(); Urchin Tracking Code _uacct = "UA-XXXXX-X"; urchintracker(); Google Tag Manager <script>(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l] [];w[l].push({'gtm.start': new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getelementsbytagname(s)[0], j=d.createelement(s),dl=l!='datalayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src= '//www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentnode.insertbefore(j,f); })(window,document,'script','datalayer','gtm-tkdwjg');</script> Google Tag Manager is a recent tool that enables site owners to have more control over the implementation of advanced features within Analytics. It allows for pieces of code to easily be added to the tracking code without having to use a developer in some cases. If the website is not using universal analytics you should look at implementing this version. If you re not a technical person you should speak with a developer to assist in adding the new version of the code to ensure things are set correctly. Version of Tracking Code Being used: ACTION: UPGRADE / LEAVE

ACTION 2: Create Analytics Account If no tracking code is found in the website then you ll need to create a new Google Analytics account. To accomplish this you will need an email address (it does not have to be a gmail address). When creating analytics accounts remember the access is against an email address. If this is a personal email address for you / a colleague, what happens when that person leaves the business? Create an account against a generic email address for the business. 1. Navigate to www.google.com/analytics 2. Click CREATE AN ACCOUNT top right corner 3. Fill in the various details in the create account form 4. You ll need access to the email account to verify the account exists click the link to access Analytics sign-up 5. Complete the Analytics Sign-Up Select Website Account Name: Top Level Account Name usually the Name of the Organisation Property Settings: Website Name Website URL (Address) Time Zone 6. Click GET TRACKING ID

7. Agree to Terms and Conditions 8. You re then presented with the Tracking ID this needs to be added to the website page template. Why track analytics? Monitoring and tracking a website performance is vitally important to ensure the site actually provides a useful marketing and sales tool for the business. The role of analytics (website tracking) is the only way to physically measure the effectiveness of the website. Tracking gives use the ability to identify factors such as: Trends on a website? Which customers / channels are most valuable? What traffic channels convert? Where does the traffic come from? What pages do people leave from? What content are people looking at? What do you want to track? There are hundreds of different areas that you can track within a website and when you start to look at Analytics you ll see the wide range of metrics available. To ensure you are tracking the correct items you need to understand the Why? Aspect of having the website What is it there to do? Site objectives may be: Generate more sales leads

Download PDFs / Catalogues More cross selling More Traffic through the site Build relationships All these are valid and will be dependent on the type of website you re operating. ACTION 3: Setting Site Objectives: What are your Site Objectives? What do you want visitors to accomplish? List your main site objectives: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Selecting Site Metrics Metrics are very important as they provide the values that enable you to identify if your website objectives are being met. Linking objectives to key metrics is a useful exercise. It will ensure that you focus clearly on the correct metrics. Remember that a metric is something that will make you change what you are doing when you start to see it increasing Linking objectives to Key Metrics is very important. Examples of Objectives and Metrics working together can be as shown in the following chart.

ACTION 4: Ask yourself the following questions: What things would you like to know about your website?

What types of data are you interested in gathering? What metrics do you believe you need to effectively analyse the effectiveness of the website? The Analytics Interface Google have arranged the Interface into specific sections to assist with locating information. When you access analytics you may see a number of different items clicking onto the grey box will expand the profile allowing you to access the selected website profile.

Analytics will start in the reporting layout with a set date range of 30days. Bear in mind that the data shown is not instant and will by default open with the latest date being the previous day. The interface has been arranged into the following sections: REAL TIME: This provides data on visitors accessing the website at that particular moment in time. It provides access to information such as: How they found the site The pages they are looking at Their location geographically If they completed any actions on the site such as purchase AUDIENCE: The reports in this section provide information regarding visitors to the website. The visitor demographics age / gender etc Location geographically The Web Browser / Operating System etc. Mobile Deveice / Tablet ACQUISITION: This shows how the user reached the website i.e. the Channel they used to enter the website. The reports in this section are very useful for understanding which marketing channels are useful. All Traffic every visitor to the site how they got there. Specific Campaigns Tagged email marketing Adwords data if linked correctly Social Media traffic to the site BEHAVIOUR: This area of reports starts to pull out the behavious of the user on the site, what pages they entered and left from. Content Reports Entry poitns to the website Exit Points to the website How well the site works for speed CONVERSIONS

The conversion section is the key area for Analytics and site understanding. This is where we can look at specific actionable events within the site and start to analyse and drill into traffic that converts. A conversion can be anything you ve specificed as being important for this website. Goals reports how many people donwloaded the pdf catalogue / filled in the contact form E-Commerce tracking of sales through the website Multi Channels the cross interaction of channels within the conversion path When reviewing the various reports you ll start to see some standard words appearing. These are consistent across the majority of analytics tools. Some Key Terms Sessions When a user is actively engaged with the website within the chosen date range. Users Users that have had a least 1 session with in the chosen date range Pageviews Totla number of pageviews repeated page views are recorded in this figure Bounce Rate Percentage of single page views they left from the page they entered ideally this figure should be low, meaning they clicked into another page within the website. There are lots of additional metrics as you start to go through analytics if you are unsure of the meaning then move the mouse over the? by each title and you ll be able to read a simple explanantion of what the data means. When reviewing a report if the text is blue then you can click in to look in more depth at this piece of data.

ACTION 5: Familiarise Yourself with the Interface. Carry out the following tasks to help you understand where key data is located in Analytics. 1. How many sessions has the website received? 2. What channels drive traffic to the website along with percentage and bounce rate 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 3. Have you received any traffic from Social Media Channels? If so which ones and how many pages did they view per session

4. What are the top 5 landing pages within the website with the bounce rate (this gives an impression of how the traffic interacts when it lands. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 5. What are the top 5 geographic locations for traffic? What is the bounce rate of this traffic? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Setting Date Ranges When reviewing data from an analytics profile it s always good to look at more than 30 days of traffic. Analytics enables us to look at a wider date range and also start to compare to other years / months. Date ranges are set at the top of the screen to the right hand side. You can select any dates you wish and then compare to a different date range. When you set a date range this is reflected across all the reports in AUDIENCE, ACQUISITION and BEHAVIOUR, as is a date comparison.

ACTION 6: Quick View Data. The graph below provides a view of the number of sessions on a website. Take a look at the chart - what do you see that is significant? What does the data show? Hopefully you ve pulled out some of the following points. 1. We have some very large changes in the number of sessions. 2. There are regular dips in the data line ignoring the peaks 3. No major spikes during July and August 4. Traffic outside the dips is fairly consistent What could be making these spikes and dips? The profile suggest the following: The business is targeting other businesses drop in traffic on a weekend SAT / SUN

They have a regular marketing activity which by looking at the CHANNELS report would give an idea of the channels being used. This should tie in to areas such as Newsletter sending or email campaigns. This helps us identify if marketing activity is actually generating traffic. No marketing undertaken in JULY / AUGUST if this is the case then that s what we d see, however if they had done some activity then WHY no response which would prompt a review of the marketing material. Traffic is fairly constant, so not really growing new visitors would prompt a review of content strategy / blog and social media marketing are we actually pushing the website and increasing the reach. ACTION 7: Carry out the same exercise for your website. Change the date range for the reports and select the AUDIENCE Overview report and review the charts. What does it say? What do you need to look at in more depth?

Analytics and Goals A goal in analytics is an actionable event within the website. Linking back to the objective you ve highlighted for the website, these will assist with you setting up goals on the website. Some examples GOALS are: People purchasing from the website this goal could be every page in the checkout process or just the start and end page. It depends on how much detail you wish to collect. People filling in a contact form / registering for a newsletter Staying on the website for more the 2 minutes Looking at more than 4 pages GOALS can be anything within the website. Once in place it enables you to start looking at the data in a more efficient way for instance: Which marketing channel purchases or interacts with the site more as I should spend more time and money in that area. Is it NEW or returning customers that purchase more Does my social media accomplish anything within the website Goals are set in the ADMIN area of analytics in order to create a GOAL you have to have the correct permissions at the VIEW level of the Analytics Profile. Google have carried out a lot of work in this area and there is no reason why developers cannot give you the correct level of privilege in order for you to manage and track your data. Accessing ADMIN: Click the ADMIN tab in the top menu within Analytics. You re interested in the GOALS section under the VIEW column as shown.

GOALS are added to a VIEW within the analytics property and you can add 20 goals to a particular VIEW. VIEWS are used to setup specific data sets within analytics, for instance data with just UK traffic, they are very good however they contain no historical data, they only start recording from the day of activation. All analytics profiles will have 1 VIEW created on the day you added Analytics to the website. GOALS come in 4 different types: DESTINATION end up at a page DURATION time based PAGES/SCREEN how many pages per session EVENT clicked a link / watched a video EVENT based goals require advanced functionality and adjustments to how the website works and we will not be covering them in this workbook. We re going to work with a DESTINATION based goal. Setting a DESTINATION GOAL for contact form. The first step is to identify the pages within the goal process. This process has 2 pages Page 1: The Contact Form Page 2: The Thank You Page With contact form tracking it depends on the type of website you have. In some cases the contact form actually posts back to itself, which requires an EVENT, based goal to be created. Where the form posts back to itself you should be asking is the experience of the user when they post the form good or bad. In the majority of cases where this happens the result is a very poorly laid out page with very little content.

Contact Pages should have a specific Thank You page that clearly tells the customer what you are going to do with the form / question they have just posted this can be tailored to meet different scenarios. Assuming the contact form is working as expected the GOAL would be setup as shown below. Take note that the URLs do not contain any website address information. DESTINATION: Is the end point the last page set this as being EQUAL TO. There is an option to use URL BEGINS WITH or a REGULAR EXPRESSION for matching items where the URL string contains different patterns or parameters. VALUE: you can assign a nominal value of how much the form post is worth to the businesses. This brings some additional benefits as it reflects that this is a valid lead that can be converted into an order. FUNNEL: If you want to track activity through the process this works well with checkout or a process where there are multiple steps, to identify where the majority of people drop out and allow you to modify and change information that may be putting the customer off. In the above example the contact form make part start of the process and would provide a very simple funnel.

When the GOALS are in place the data can be viewed in relation to the GOAL activities. This presents a clearer picture of useful traffic to the site and additional information. The above funnel and goal looked at from the traffic source perspective. We can see that DIRECT traffic in this instance converts the majority of traffic.

ACTION 8: Identify a GOAL for you website and setup in Analytics. Goal Name: Goal Activity: Type of Goal: Destination / Time Based / Page Session Destination URL: Pages in Funnel: Analytics is a very important part of tracking your on-line effectiveness for the website / app. It is changing at a rapid pace. This workbook will have given you a brief overview and got you started at adding some focus to your analytics implementation. There are lots more it can do for your tracking and you should look at what else can be achieved by attending further training.