Implementing Google Analytics on a Drupal site

Scaling Drupal Implementing Google Analytics

Starting Point
Drupal 5.2
Google Analytics
AWStats

Drupal Google Analytics Module
Not updated in a timely fashion when GA js is updated
Not recommended!

Recommended Implementation
Load GA js on all pages via template file
Invoke GA js as low as possible on each page
Reporting results tweak
Move GA js to web server
Load GA js from web server
Invoke GA js as high as possible on each page

Implementation Validation
AWStats
Configure to generate accurate page view counts e.g. exclude xmlrpc.php, *.js, *.css, etc
May be higher than GA number, because of:
Visitors that bounce from the site before the GA script runs
Visitors that disable js and cookies
Misc

Setting up a GA account
Register at http://www.google.com/analytics/
Add GA js to pages
GA can take up to 24 hours for data to populate at first *and* thereafter

Extending your analytics
GA User Defined Segments
Anonymous vs. registered vs. other
GA Benchmarking
Google Webmaster Tools
CrazyEgg, Quantcast, Alexa, Etc
Voxant - video
Clearspring - widgets

Analytics Highpoints
Pages per visit 5+ good, 10+ great
Time on site 5 minutes+ good, 10 minutes+ great
Bounce rate < 30% fantastic, 30% - 50% good, 50% - 70% room for improvement, 70%+ something is wrong
Bounce rate under 5% means you have a fantastic site or something is wrong, under 1% something is definitely wrong

Summary
Always validate Google Analytics numbers
There is no such thing as a free lunch
Google Analytics is great at some point(s) in a company’s lifecycle, but eventually you’ll need to move to commercial tools
Test in multiple browsers to make sure the GA placement is optimal
When adding javascript to pages retest GA functionality

Contact
Arman Anwar, Director of Systems Development
[email_address]
Marc Benton, Director of Product Development
[email_address]
Andy Forbes, CTO
[email_address]

Implementing Google Analytics on a Drupal site

by Andy Forbes on Jun 29, 2008

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