Google Analytics workbook

Google Analytics

workbook

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:

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 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

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:

• 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

ACTION 4: Ask yourself the following questions:

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ACTION 8: Identify a GOAL for you website and setup in Analytics.

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.