Google Analytics: top tips to maximise impact and insight
1. Google Analytics: top tips to
maximise impact and insight
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July 2016
Prepared by Mary Butlin for AMA Conference 2016
NOTE: all statistics in this presentation are for illustration only.
2. Introduction to Tonica
Tonica is a marketing insight company led by Mary Butlin who has over
fifteen years’ experience in market research, insight and analysis. We
specialise in three main areas;
• Market Research & Insight
• Quantitative Research, Quant-Qual research & Market Planning
• Data Protection and Customer Relationship Management
• Database Procurement, Data Analysis & Segmentation
• Technology for Marketing & Advertising
• Digital Analytics, Digital Advertising, Web projects
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3. Some of our clients…
Luxury British Lingerie Brand British Haircare Brand
4. Top Tips for Google Analytics
1. Improve Accuracy
2. Gain Insight
3. Build Relationships
4. Referrals & ROI
5. Define Success
6. Optimise your Reporting
7. Focus on your Audience
8. Be inspired
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5. 1 a). Improve Accuracy; Notifications
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• Read the Notifications that appear in the top right of the screen & aim to
resolve as many as possible
6. 1 b). Improve Accuracy; remove Staff visits
• Admin / View drop down / Create New View
• Name your View, e.g. Your Organisation without Staff and Set the Time Zone
• Click Filters / Add Filter. Choose Exclude and ‘traffic from the IP address’ and
‘that are equal to’ from the menus
• Put in your work IP address (check with IT if you’re not sure)
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7. 1 c). Improve Accuracy; use Annotations
• Click the small grey arrow under the Overview Chart and select
Create New Annotation. Once completed you can record key
dates, e.g. Google Places set up, new Season launch
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8. 2 a). Gain Insight – Demographics
• Enable Demographics
• Navigate to Audience / Demographics
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9. 2 b). Gain Insight – Interests
• Enable Interests
• Navigate to Audience / Interests / Overview
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10. 2 c). Gain Insight – Benchmarking
• Add an Industry under Admin / Property Settings
• Access Benchmarking under Audience / Benchmarking
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11. 3 a). Build Relationships – Link Google Adwords
• Once Google Adwords and Google Analytics are linked you can see in-
depth information about your campaigns in GA, including Search Queries
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12. 3 b). Build Relationships – Link Search Console
• Google Search Console shows you how many impressions your search listing is
receiving – and the average position your site is shown in for each search term
• Note: check the stats within Google Search Console to see if they are similar
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13. 3 c). Build Relationships – Link Email Software
• Once linked your Email Campaigns will show in Acquisition / Campaigns
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14. 4 a). Referrals & ROI; Address Spam
• Visit Acquisition / All Traffic / Source Medium
• Use this blog: megalytic.com/blog/how-to-filter-out-fake-referrals-and-other-google-
analytics-spam to remove spam
15. 4 b). Referrals & ROI; Self Referrals
• If your website, your box office system or your payment provider appears as a referral it
could make any ROI calculations impossible. To resolve Self Referrals visit this blog;
online-metrics.com/self-referrals/, for Box Office/Payment referrals talk to your provider
YourWebsite
16. 4 c). Referrals & ROI: Return on Investment
• When Referrals work well and they are combined with Ecommerce
tracking, they will demonstrate the ROI of your activities – for example,
identifying blogs that are boosting your income
17. 5 a). Define Success; Create Goals
• Visit Admin / Goals. Good examples of Goals for Arts organisations are:
reaching the Basket page; completing an Order; Dwell time of more than
5 minutes; visiting the Support pages; and/or visiting the Education pages.
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18. 5 b). Define Success; Ecommerce Tracking
• Ecommerce tracking enables you to track your sales within Google Analytics
• The Ecommerce Conversion rate will help you track improvements to your site
• Ecommerce revenue allows you to track the ROI of your activity
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19. 6 a). Optimise your Reporting; use Custom Alerts
• Admin / Custom Alerts, e.g. set up an alert in case tracking drops out
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20. 6 b). Optimise your Reporting; use Dashboards
• Setting up a Dashboard allows you to collate all your important stats in one
overview – you can set it to auto-email as a pdf on a regular basis.
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21. 6 c). Optimise your Reporting; Quarterly/Annual Reports
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64,855
2 mins 32 secs
Average Session Duration
322,928
Pageviewsweb visits (sessions)
39%
Bounce rate
77%
New visitors
£21,269
Taken in online sales
50,291
users
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24% of visits from
the UK generating
34% of sales
21% of visits
from the US
generating 21%
of revenue
2490 ‘likes’
991 followers, 97 likes,
1212 tweets
23. 7 a). Focus on your Audience; Advance Segments
• Ask key questions for your Quarterly and Annual report, for example; how do High
Value Bookers vary from other website visitors
• Create segments to explore key groups in your data
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24. 7 b). Focus on your Audience; Advance Segments
• In this segment analysis, US visitors were more likely to be referred by Twitter;
26. Case Study; Ecommerce Conversion Rate
• There has been a 450% increase in conversion rate from 2014 to 2015 – this
increase in conversions has been the driving force behind the increased revenue
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Aug 2012 - Dec 2012 2013 2014 2015 (to 8 Dec 2015)
27. Top Tips for Google Analytics
1. Improve Accuracy
– Read the Notifications, remove Staff visits & use Annotations
2. Gain Insight
– Demographics, Interests & Benchmarking
3. Build Relationships
– link Google Adwords, Search Console & your Email software
4. Referrals & ROI
– Address Spam & Self-Referrals and measure ROI
5. Define Success
– create Goals & set up Ecommerce (if applicable)
6. Optimise your Reporting
– use Custom Alerts, Dashboards & Quarterly/Annual Reports
7. Focus on your Audience
– set up Advanced Segments
8. Be inspired - Case Study
– increasing Conversions & ROI 27