7 ways to get more from Google Analytics

7 ways to get more from
Google Analytics
Ian Miller, Search Director
@millerian

• Ian Miller, Search Director at Crafted
• Google Analytics Qualified Individual
• Full service digital agency with a team of 40+
• Dedicated search team spanning
organic SEO, paid media, analytics, social, copy
• Clients across a wide range of industries
Hello @millerian
crafted.co.uk @craftedmedia

So what is Analytics?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76

Not quite

What it comes down to
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marfis75/

What can analytics tell me?

Executives can learn
• Which marketing initiatives are most effective
• Accurate website traffic patterns/trends
• Which customer and customer segments are most valuable
Marketing professionals can learn
• Where visitors come from and what do they do on the site
• How can the website convert more visitors into customers
• Which keywords resonate with prospects and lead to conversions
• Which online ad or creative is the most effective
Content & developers can learn
• Where people leave the site
• Which pages retain visitors the longest
• What search terms people use to find the site
Who’s interested?

Basic layout

Be careful out there
• Analytics can be very powerful, it can also be wrong
• Trust data you can prove, then scale up – not the reverse
• Look for comparisons rather than absolute data
• Sample size matters
Lies, damned lies and statistics

7 ways to
get more from
Google Analytics

Advanced Segments
Carve up your data so it tells you more
• Segment traffic based on criteria
• Applied to the current view
• Easily edited and applied
• Multiple segments can be viewed together
• Extremely powerful
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Advanced Segments
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Default segments
• All Visits
• New Visitors
• Returning Visitors
• Paid Search Traffic
• Non-paid Search Traffic
• Search Traffic
• Direct Traffic
• Referral Traffic
• Visits with Conversions
• Visits with Transactions
• Mobile Traffic
• Non-bounce Visits
Advanced Segments 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Default segments
• All Visits
• New Visitors
• Returning Visitors
• Paid Search Traffic
• Non-paid Search Traffic
• Search Traffic
• Direct Traffic
• Referral Traffic
• Visits with Conversions
• Visits with Transactions
• Mobile Traffic
• Non-bounce Visits
Advanced Segments
Custom segments
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Custom Dashboards
Define and create
• Who needs to know what?
• What’s the most useful “at a glance” data?
• How can it make your life easier?
• What are the repeat requests?
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Custom Dashboards
How to create a dashboard
1. Select the report you’d like to include
2. Click “add to dashboard
3. Select dashboard
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Custom Dashboards
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Custom Dashboards
Make it your own
• Enter filters and refine
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Custom Dashboards
Share it
• Whether automatically or ad-hoc, save time!
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Link to Webmaster Tools
Why are we getting traffic?
• Linking gives additional information:
– Queries users typed to reach your site
– Number of impressions of your website's URLs in search results pages
– The number of clicks on your website's URLs from search results pages
– The ratio of clicks to impressions for your website's URLs
– The average position of your website's URLs in search listings
– The pages visitors landed on when clicking on search results listing your site
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How to create the link
1. Click the SEO section
2. Presented with this message
3. Click “Edit”
4. Select property
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What does it look like?
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What can I use it for?
• The data is aggregated, for better or worse
• It serves as a useful overview, but don’t sweat the details
• Identify trends
• Gives you an indication of search volumes & demand
• Consider click through rate – are you relevant & enticing?
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Real time data
See what’s happening on your site right now
• Monitor launches
• Social media stories
• Impact of instance advertising such as TV
• Response to direct marketing emails
• Partnerships and mentions
• PR and news activity
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Real time data
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Real time data
What can you use it for?
• Immediate feedback
• Event monitoring
• Reacting to site changes
• Identifying trends during the day
• Data can be surprising
• Don’t be alarmed if numbers are low
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Custom reporting
The exact data you need
• Standard reports are limited to the default views
– Can’t combine metrics
• Custom reporting is like your own Analytics, make it what you want
• The reports can then shared and included in a dashboard
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Custom reporting
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Metrics
Dimensions

Custom reporting
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Metrics - numbers Dimensions - attributes
Visits Landing page
Pageviews Keyword
Goal completion rate % Browser
Revenue Source
Bounce rate % Medium
Average time on site City

Custom reporting
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Custom reporting
• Create common reports you need often, as well as new insight
• The power is often in drilling down
– Group landing page with referrer
– City to keyword
• http://crftd.md/customreporting
• http://www.customreportsharing.com/
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Export to Excel
What’s the benefit?
• Analytics is poor a manipulating data
• You can’t group things very easily within Analytics
• Difficult to combine reports, especially across domains
• Metrics are broadly limited to totals
• Faster, much faster
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Export to Excel
Define your data
• Choose your report view
• Apply custom segments
• Filter if required
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Export to Excel
Number of rows
• Default view is 10 rows
• 25, 50, 100, 250, 500 available via dropdown
• Hack the URL for more rows
1. Change view to >10
2. Look for the number at the end of the URL
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/#report/trafficsources-all-traffic/a431143w710102p685592/%3Fexplorer-
table.rowStart%3D0%26explorer-table.rowCount%3D25/
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/#report/trafficsources-all-traffic/a431143w710102p685592/%3Fexplorer-
table.rowStart%3D0%26explorer-table.rowCount%3D3000/
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Export to Excel
• Getting smarter with data
• Combining sources and controlling
• Board reporting
• Pivot tables can be incredibly powerful
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Create Intelligence Alerts
Get notified of changes on your site
• Automatic reporting of metrics
• Early visibility of issues
• Monitor site behaviour, especially after code changes
• Option to have alerts emailed to you
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How to set them up
1. Click the Intelligence events section 2. Manage custom alerts

• Auto reporting of sales trends
• Monitor enquiry volumes
• Site changes – good or bad?
• Traffic monitoring
• Beware of becoming blind to them
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7 ways to
get more from
Google Analytics
Tomorrow

Recap
1. Use advanced segments
2. Create custom dashboards
3. Link with Webmaster Tools for more data
4. Know real time reporting
5. Set up custom reports for the data you need
6. Export data to Excel to manipulate it quickly
7. Automatic alerts of changes to site behaviour

Ian Miller
Search Director
ian.miller@crafted.co.uk
Ipswich Studio
32 Fore Street,
Ipswich, IP4 1JU
T. +44 (0) 1473 213222
E. hello@crafted.co.uk
www.crafted.co.uk
Thank you for listening

7 ways to get more from Google Analytics

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