Google Analytics Training - Viget Labs

What Is Web Analytics?

 Web Analytics answers two major questions

1.  How do visitors arrive at your site?
2.  What do visitors do on your site?

 The third question requires you, and it’s the
most important

3.  Why do visitors do what they do?

© Copyright 2010 Viget Labs
9

What Is Web Analytics?

 Google Analytics gives you data such as
•  Number of visitors
•  How long visitors spend on your site
•  Popular pages
•  Problem pages
•  Search engine keywords use to ﬁnd your site
•  Visits from sites linking back to yours
•  Conversion rates

10

Common Terms

 CPC: Cost-Per-Click

 PPC: Pay-Per-Click

 Organic: Free search

 Trafﬁc Source: Where the trafﬁc came from

14

Landing Page

 The entrance page of a visitor

 Often landing pages have a trafﬁc source of
referral or search

15

Terminology – Unique Visitors

 Unique Visitors represents the number of
unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to
your website over the course of a speciﬁed
time period. A Unique Visitor is determined
using cookies

 Or….

 Τους σωστά περιεχόμενα αν έχω, στο να
μαγικά προκαλείς. Τα φράση επιδιόρθωση
από.

16


 Unique Visitors
•  Counts the amount of people who visited your site within the
speciﬁed date range
•  If I visit your site 5 times from the same computer, I will still
only be counted as 1 unique visitor
•  In other words, visitors can make multiple visits
•  Tracked by cookies

17


 Contingent on date range
•  Sunday + Monday + Tuesday + Wednesday + Thursday + Friday +
Saturday Unique’s ≠ Unique’s for one week

•  If I visit on May 31st and June 1st…

May 1 – May 31 June 1 – June 31 May 31 – June 1

Monthly unique visitors: 1 Monthly unique visitors: 1 Monthly unique visitors: 1
May 31 daily unique June 1 daily unique May 31 daily unique
visitors: 1 visitors : 1 visitors: 1
June 1 daily unique
visitors : 1

18


The Big Takeaway

 Absolute Unique Visitors are the amount of
individuals who visited your site within the
selected date range. That’s it. Nothing
more, nothing less.

19

New vs. Returning Visitor

 This report classiﬁes by visitor type (new or
returning)

 Counts visits not visitors

20

Terminology – Bounce Rate

 Bounce Rate: A one page visit
“I came, I saw, Yuck, I am out of here…”
– Avinash Kaushik, Google Analytics Evangelist

Back Button
Landing Page Exit Link A Bounce
Advertisement

21

Terminology – Exit Rate

 Exit Rate: The page a visitor exited from in
a two or more page visit

Exit Link
Prior Page Advertisement An Exit
Quits browser

22

Terminology – Goal

 Goal: An action you deﬁne triggered by a
pageview or a click
•  Ecommerce: Purchase conﬁrmation
•  Lead Generation: Contact form submission
•  Whitepapers: PDF download
•  Blogs: Clicking an outbound link (advertisements)
•  Reservations: Hotel bookings

 GA goals can also be used for internal
testing
•  Measuring an internal click tests site’s function but might not
directly achieve a business goal

23

Terminology – Conversion

 Conversion: A completed goal
Visitor Visitor Visitor Visitor Visitor
Visitor Visitor Visitor Visitor
Visitor

Homepage
60 % exit Landing Page
Visitor

Shopping Cart
Contact Form
Visitor Services Page
Blog Post
50% exit Booking Widget

Conversion Purchase
Form Submission
20% conversion PDF Download
rate Clicked Ad
Booked Reservation

24

Visitors – Unique Visitors

•  If I visit your site 5 times from the same computer, I will still
only be counted as 1 unique visitor
•  In other words, visitors can make multiple visits
•  Tracked by cookies
•  Sunday + Monday + Tuesday + Wednesday + Thursday + Friday
+ Saturday Unique’s ≠ Unique’s for one week

42

Visitors – New vs. Returning

•  Measures visits not visitors
•  A visitor can complete a new visit and a returning visit in the
same month
•  One visitor can count as multiple return visits, but only one
new visit

43

Trafﬁc – Medium & Source

Medium Source
How did they arrive? Where did they come from?
cpc, email, banner, referral, none Who brought them to your site?
Airplane Who is ‘pushing’ your message?
Google? MSN? Yahoo!? ESP?
Jet Blue

46


Medium Source
Airplane Who brought them to your site?
Jet Blue

banner Washingtonpost.com

cpc Google, MSN, Yahoo

email ESP

none Direct

referral Facebook.com

47

Trafﬁc - Direct

•  Visitors enter URL directly into browser
•  Browser bookmarks
•  Desktop email clients
•  Desktop Twitter clients

48

Trafﬁc - Referring

•  Links on other domains
•  Web-based email clients (Gmail, Yahoo! etc.)
•  Social sharing

49

Trafﬁc - Search

•  Search engines
•  Organic search Change search medium

•  Paid search
•  Keywords

50

Trafﬁc – Google AdWords

51

Trafﬁc - Keywords

•  Does not display exact paid search keywords – only what you
are bidding on
•  Make sure to separate paid from organic Change search medium

52

Trafﬁc - Campaigns

•  Campaigns are self-deﬁned using a special URL
•  You create the medium, source, and give it a name
•  Not to be used on your own site

•  Campaign Name: Holiday Santa Banner
•  Source: http://ChristmasIsAwesome.com
•  Medium: CPC

•  Campaign Name: Save Darfur Email
•  Source: Bronto (Email Service Provider Name)
•  Medium: Email

•  Campaign Name: Fender Jaguar Widget
•  Source: Social Media
•  Medium: Referral
53

Content – Top Content

•  Displays most visited pages by URL
•  One of the most insightful reports

55

Content – Content Title

•  Displays content by title tag
•  Aggregates all pages with duplicate title tags
•  Exact same data as “Top Content”

56

Content – Top Landing Pages

•  What pages generated the most visits
•  When visitors arrived, where did they arrive?

57

Content – Top Exit Pages

•  What pages caused visitors to exit the site?
•  This includes “bounces”
•  Counts exits not exit rate
•  Often mirrors “Top Content”

58

Content – Site Overlay

 Aggregates clicks vs. counting clicks by
individual links

 All links that go to “/example” will have the
same number

 All links that exit the domain will have the
same number

 Not very useful

 Breaks easily

59

Terminology – Goal

 Goal: An action you deﬁne triggered by a
pageview or a click
•  Ecommerce: Purchase conﬁrmation
•  Lead Generation: Contact form submission
•  Whitepapers: PDF download
•  Blogs: Clicking an outbound link (advertisements)
•  Reservations: Hotel bookings
•  NEW! Engagement Goals: Time on Site and Pageviews

 GA goals should be used for internal testing
as well
•  Measuring an internal click tests site’s function but might not
directly achieve a business goal
63

Terminology – Conversion

 Conversion: A completed goal
Visitor Visitor Visitor Visitor Visitor
Visitor Visitor Visitor Visitor
Visitor

Homepage
60 % exit Landing Page
Visitor

Shopping Cart
Contact Form
Visitor Services Page
Blog Post
50% exit Booking Widget

Conversion Purchase
Form Submission
20% conversion PDF Download
rate Clicked Ad
Booked Reservation

64

Goals – Overview

•  A snapshot of all goals
•  Conversion rate is aggregate of all goals

65

Goals – Head Match

 Three Pageview Based Goal Types:
1.  Head Match
•  Input the text after the domain (text after domain: URI) and it
will track anything that starts with your input regardless of
what comes after
•  /head_match will track
http://example.com/head_match
…and
http://example.com/head_match/this_counts_too
•  Use when your site has dynamically generated URL’s
•  Does not accept regular expressions
•  Never use full URL’s (http://example.com/head_match)

66

Goals – Exact Match

2.  Exact Match
•  Input the URI and it will track anything that starts with your
input but nothing after
•  /exact_match will track
http://example.com/exact_match
…but not
http://example.com/exact_match/this_wont_track
•  Use when you know the exact URL
•  Does accept regular expressions
•  Never use full URL’s

67

Goals – Regular Expression Match

3.  Regular Expression Match
•  Allows any part of the URI to be mashed together
•  .*Viget.* will track
http://example.com/example/Viget
http://example.com/example_Viget/about
http://example.com/Viget/about
•  Use when URL’s vary or contain query parameters
•  Use ‘top content’ report to test regular expressions
•  Never use full URL’s
•  For additional information on regular expressions, see appendix

68

Goals – Building Goals

 
Names and steps should be descriptive

 
Turn goal on

 
Select match type

 
Goal value is optional

 
Funnel not required

 
‘Required ﬁrst step’ affects the funnel
visualization report only

  Funnel data is “backﬁlled”

  Data is not retroactive
69

Goals – Building Goals

 URL Goal

 Time on Site

 Pages per Visit

70

Goals – Engagement Goals

 Enter a Time

 Goal Value is
Optional

 Turn Goal On

 Use a Descriptive
Name

71

Goals – Engagement Goals

 Enter Pages

 Goal Value is
Optional

 Turn Goal On

 Use a Descriptive
Name

72

Goals – URL Based Goals
Match type

Conversion URL

Name goal

Optional value

Funnel only Funnel only

Name steps

Conversion URL
73

Goals – Funnel Visualization

•  A visualization of
user ﬂows

74

Required First Step = Yes Required First Step = No
Conversions: 1 Conversions: 2

Visitor #1 Product Visitor #1 Product

#1 #1

Visitor #2 Purchase Visitor #2 Purchase

#2 #1 #2 #1

Conﬁrmation Conﬁrmation

#2 #1 #2 #1

75

Required First Step = Yes
Conversions: 2
Visitor #1 Visitor #1
Product
Visitor #2

#2

Shopping Cart

#2

Visitor #1 Purchase

#2 #1

76


•  A visualization of
user ﬂows
•  What’s wrong with
this picture?

77

Goals – URL Based Goals

  What’s wrong with
this picture?
•  Goal is turned off
•  All URL’s are the same
•  Regular expressions
•  Poor naming

78

Goals – Additional Ideas

 Goals can be any pageview

 Track clicks as pageviews
/internal-links/red-button

http://www.viget.com/engage/how-to-track-internal-links-in-google-analytics

http://www.viget.com/engage/how-to-track-internal-links-as-goals-in-google-analytics/

79

Ecommerce – Sources / Medium

•  Use this report to measure most effective trafﬁc type

81

Ecommerce – Product Overview

•  Change sorting to tell a different story

82

Ecommerce – Visits to Purchase

•  How many visits does it take before a purchase?
•  Do visitors know what they want? Or are they in research mode?

83

Ecommerce – Days to Purchase

•  How many days does it take before a purchase?

84

Integrating Marketing

 Tracking all marketing initiatives is key to
understanding their overall impact

 GA offers custom ways track additional
marketing tactics
•  Banners
•  Email
•  Yahoo! and MSN paid search
•  Magazine Ads
•  TV ads
•  Direct Mail

86


Medium Source
Airplane Who brought them to your site?
Jet Blue

banner Washingtonpost.com

cpc Google, MSN, Yahoo

email ESP

none Direct


87

Trafﬁc – Mediums

 Google Analytics only has four native
mediums:

organic Google, MSN, Yahoo

cpc Google only

none Direct


88

Segmentation setCustomVar

 User Deﬁned report

 _setCustomVar(index, name, value, opt_scope)

91

Campaign Report
Campaign Source

Medium Ad Content

92


 Campaign Name
•  Required
•  Answers the “Why?”
•  Why did visitors come to your site?
•  The name of the campaign should answer that question
•  “I came for the holiday promotional” = Holiday 2010
•  utm_campaign

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

93


 Campaign Source
•  Required
•  Answers the “Who?”
•  Who is ‘pushing’ your message?
•  Google? MSN? Yahoo!? ESP?
•  “I came via Google” = Google
•  utm_source


94


 Campaign Medium
•  Required
•  Always use lowercase
•  Answers the “How?”
•  How did visitors get to your site?
•  cpc, email, banner, referral, none
•  “I came from a banner ad ” = cpc
•  utm_medium


95


 Campaign Content
•  Optional
•  Use to label banners: 200x300 White Banner
•  Use to further clarify marketing: Yahoo! Ad Group Name
•  utm_content


96

The Tabs

•  Source, Medium, and some Visitor reports let you
compare against goals and ecommerce (if installed)

102

The Data Views

•  Use different data views to see data from different angles
•  Is this page a problem?

Bounce Rate

Time on Site vs. Site
Average

103

Navigation Summary

•  Shows visitor path to previous 5 pages, and next 5 pages
from the current page
•  Clicking each page opens the Navigation Summary for the
selected page

104

Entrance Paths

•  Confusing report – not actually entrance paths

The page you’re on

105

Entrance Sources

•  Shows where visitors came from (Jet Blue vs. Airplane)

106

Site Search – Overview

 What are visitors searching for?

 Which pages inspire searches?

 Do visitors reﬁne their search?

 Dig deep!
•  Change sorting
•  Click into additional dimensions

109

Site Search – Overview

110

Site Search – Usage

•  How many visitors used search?

111

Site Search – Search Terms

•  What did visitors search for?

112

Site Search – Start Pages

•  Which pages inspired searches?

113

Site Search – Destination Pages

•  What pages did visitors ﬁnd through search?

114

Site Search – Search Terms

•  Dig deep! Click a search term, change “Analyze” dimension

115

Segmentation

 Why Segment?
•  Segmentation allows the full use of Google Analytics on specific
user types
•  Analyze behavior based on content and visitor type

Do new visitors behave differently than returning visitors?
Does national traffic convert more often than international?
How is the blog performing?
Are the product pages causing roadblocks?
Is the direct mail campaign in Washington, DC working?
Does organic search bring more engaged traffic than paid
search?

117

Advanced Segments Beta

 GA’s Advanced Segments Beta
•  Filters data retroactively
•  Easy interface
•  Mash up data in unique ways

119


Dimensions Metrics
Data types/names Numbers

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=99021 http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99118

120


 Mobile Trafﬁc

121

Using Proﬁles and Filters

 Filters + Proﬁles is the most powerful and
accurate segmentation
•  Filters are processed before you see the data
•  Filters are processed in order from top to bottom
•  Always use regular expressions

122


123


 Segment the Viget Engage Blog http://
viget.com/engage

 Include ﬁlters exclude everything except
what you’ve included

124


 Exclude the Viget Engage Blog http://
viget.com/engage

 Excludes only exclude the sub-directory

125


 Include organic search trafﬁc

 Learn more about using regular expressions
to create custom proﬁles
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55582

126

Additional GA Resources

 The Google Analytics Interface:
•  http://galearning.com/ga_learning/gainterface/map.htm

 The Missing Google Analytics Manual:
•  http://www.grokdotcom.com/2010/02/16/the-missing-google-
analytics-manual/

 Firefox plug-ins:
•  http://www.vkistudios.com/tools/ﬁrefox/betterga/index.cfm
•  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/ﬁrefox/addon/748
•  http://www.viget.com/engage/sweet-greasemonkey-script-for-
google-analytics
•  http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/31584
137

Additional GA Resources

 Regular Expressions
•  http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?
hl=en&answer=55582

 Tracking Internal Links
•  http://www.viget.com/engage/how-to-track-internal-links-in-
google-analytics
•  http://www.viget.com/engage/how-to-track-internal-links-as-goals-
in-google-analytics/

 Google UTM URL Builder
•  http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?
hl=en&answer=55578
138

Google Analytics Training - Viget Labs

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Google Analytics Training - Viget Labs

Similar to Google Analytics Training - Viget Labs (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Google Analytics Training - Viget Labs