Google Analytics: Tracking the Money

Google Analytics
Master: Tracking the Money
Scott Thomas, AboutTheInn.com Presented at Hospitality Marketing Summit November 2014
© 2014 Scott Thomas, Confidential

Overview
• What do we want to know?
• and how do we track it?
• What reports show this information?
• How can we simplify it?

What do we want to know?
• Who sends visitors to our site?
• Who sends visitors who book?
• How different sources compare in visitors and
bookings?
Follow the Money!

How do we track that?
• Who sends visitors?
• Tracked by default in Acquisition
• Comparison of results by referral source?
• Can be configured as custom Segment
• How many bookings /how much revenue?
• Configure Ecommerce
• Configure Goals
One or the other (not
necessarily both)

Who sends Visitors?
• Acquisition
• Either All Traffic or All Referrals
• Default is sorted by number of Sessions

Compare results by source
• Same screen (Acquisition -‐> All Traffic / All
Referrers)
• Ecommerce or Goal Set view (if available)
• To compare similar sources (directories?)
• Create custom Segment

Create a custom Segment
• Add Segment -‐> New Segment

• Name segment
• Filter Sessions
• List paid Traffic Sources
• Save

• Clicking “Test” will show if data will be created
• After saving, click Add Segment, select your
new segment, Apply
• Compare results of only the sources in your
new segment
• Get the Paid Listings segment at
http://goo.gl/F7FWs1

Why This Is Not Enough
• How do you decide if a source is sending
enough bookings to justify the expense?
• “Seems like they're not sending enough
traffic”

Why This Is Not Enough
• What if Google sends you AdWords bucks to
try?
– How will you know if it sent bookings?
• What if Directory “X” calls to ask you to
upgrade, promising more traffic?
• How will you know it is worth it?
• How do you know if a new paid listing is
bringing new bookings?

The only way to KNOW
• Flying by the seat of your pants isn't good
enough!
• You need to
• Compare bookings
before/after (not
just visitors)
• Compare organic
before/after to
PPC+Organic

The only way to KNOW
Is to
Follow
the
Money!

Tracking the Money
• Using Ecommerce tracking
• Using Goals
• Caution: If you have both set up to track the
same event (booking), be careful that reports
don’t “double-‐dip”
• Your Booking Engine must support GA for both
and must support Ecommerce to track it.

Whichever method you use
• You need to make a small, cut-‐and-‐paste,
change to your GA code on your website (to
allow tracking to include your booking engine)
• If you use Universal Analytics:
• http://goo.gl/LutTMe
• If you use traditional GA:
• http://goo.gl/dTvQIN

Ecommerce Tracking
• Setup
• Admin -‐> View -‐> Ecommerce Settings (ON)
• Set up check-‐out screens for ecommerce
• Must use booking engine that supports
ecommerce, or there will be no data
• If they support ecommerce, this part will
be set up for you

No Ecommerce? Set up Goals
• What we will need:
• URL of the page after a booking is
completed
• Preferably, URLs of pages leading to a
completed booking
• Value of your average booking

Goals
• In GA, Admin -‐> View -‐> Goals
• Click New Goal

Goals
• Provide Goal name
• Set type to
Destination
• Click “Next step”

• Put the
URL for
the goal
in the
box
Goals
• Change “Equals to” to “Begins with” if your
URL has a question mark followed by other
data at the end of the URL, then remove the
question mark and everything after it.

Goals
• Turn on Value, and enter the value of your
average booking in the box.

Goals
• The Goal will work now
• Data will show up after about a day
• If you would like to be able to see where
prospective bookers abandon the booking
process, add a Funnel

Goals -‐ Adding a Funnel
• Turn on
Funnel,
then add
the pages
users
follow to
complete
the goal.
• Save

Viewing Ecommerce Data
• Acquisition -‐> All Traffic, select Ecommerce at
top of page
• Conversions -‐> Ecommerce -‐> Overview, select
Source/Medium (full report is same as #1)

Viewing Ecommerce Data

Comparing Sources
Using our Segment of Paid Sources
Sources bringing revenue

Compare Time Ranges
Before/After (usually year-‐over-‐year)

Giving Partial Credit
• Multi-‐Channel Funnels (MCF)
• Gives partial credit to sites sending visitors
who return multiple times before booking
• Assisted Conversions are conversions a
source participates in without being the
final conversion interaction (Last Click)

Multi-‐Channel Funnels
• Conversions -‐> MCF -‐> Assisted Conversions
• Then click the Channel you want to view
(Referrals, Organic, Direct, Paid Search, etc.)

Multi-‐Channel Funnels

Automate Reports
• Build a Dashboard
• Widgets provide graphs and charts for “At-‐a-‐
Glance” info
• Shortcuts create Bookmarks for favorite
reports
• Email Reports
• Once, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly

Dashboards
Columns for Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions

Dashboards
• Get the sample Ecommerce Dashboard at
http://goo.gl/e2dZxT

Email Reports
• Open a report you want to receive
• Click “Email”
• Enter Recipient email address
• Select format (CSV, PDF, etc.)
• Select frequency
• Add some text
• Send

Email Reports

Summary
• See who sends visitors in Acquisition
• Compare sources using custom Segments
• Evaluate results by Bookings (not visits)
Follow the Money!
• Automate reports with Dashboards, Shortcuts,
Email

Google Analytics
Thank You!

Google Analytics: Tracking the Money

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