From Event to Action: Accelerate Your Decision Making with Real-Time Automation
Google Analytics Introduction
1.
Introduction to Google Analytics
Jeff Wisniewski
University of Pittsburgh
Darlene Fichter
University of Saskatchewan
Computers in Libraries 2012
2. By the end of this session
Have an analytics account
Have tracking code to add to your site
Understand basic web metrics
Understand the GA dashboard and other reports
Create goals and funnels
Create custom reports to track mobile and social media
Learn how to export, mail and schedule reports
Computers in Libraries 2012
3. Poll
Write down two specific things about your website
you hope GA will help you to better
understand/answer
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6. Mandatory Wikipedia Definition
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis
and reporting of internet data for purposes of
understanding and optimizing web usage
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7. Reasons to measure?
Usability
Resource
Institutional
Other?
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8. We can learn…
Who is coming to our site
What they’re doing
How long they stay
The systems they’re using to access our site
If they’re able to complete tasks
How they find us
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9. Two flavors
Log file analysis
Page tagging
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10. Log files…
Are big
Take a long time to ingest
Take a lot of computing power to process
Take up space
Require that you be able to access them
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11. Poll
Do you have experience with another analytics
tool? Which? Pros and cons?
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12. Why GA?
FREE
Industry standard
Lots of folks use it
Easy to use
Web based
Visual
FREE
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13. Google account
If you do not have a Google account please register for
one now
Google.com/accounts
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14. Getting Started
1. Google account
2. Website
3. Access to website code
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15. GA Account
Log into
Google.com/analytics
Let’s GO!
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24. * TIP
The tracking code can be “included” as part of your
page template
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25. *TIP
Create TWO profiles for your site, one the “master”
profile and the second the “working” profile
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27. *TIP
You can create multiple profiles for the same site, for
example different subsections, to speed reporting
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29. Menu translation
Menu item English translation
Dashboard General overview of site activity
Intelligence Email and/or text alerts
Visitors How man people, where they come
from, what systems they’re using
Traffic Sources How people are getting to and/or
finding your site
Content What do people look at on your site
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31. The Dashboard
Provides an overview of site activity
Many of the metrics here appear elsewhere in GA
as well
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32. Key metrics
METRIC DEFINITION NOTE
Bounce rate % of visits that High bounce rate can be
immediately left good or bad
Goal Page someone reaches
once they’ve completed
some task
Hit Request for a file from a Artifically inflated
webserver
Pageview Display of a complete
webpage
Visits Series of pageviews from Within 30 minutes
same visitor
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39. TIP!
You can customize the dashboard…just click
to add a panel or click the “X” in the right hand corner
to remove from dashboard
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40. Intelligence
Alerts
Can be applied to most any event/metric
Email and/or txt message
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42. *TIP
When you first begin collecting data, or
change/add, set an alert for verification that it’s
working as expected
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43. Visitors
Some Visitors section info repeated in Dashboard
Benchmarking?
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44. *TIP
New vs. returning, unique visitors, visitor loyalty all
rely on cookie data. Caveats:
Browser specific
They expire
They can be blocked or deleted
Public computers
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45. Rule of thumb
TRENDS in the data are more important than the
numbers themselves
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46. Visitors
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53. *TIP
Google analytics can also track mobile APP (android
and iOS) usage:
http://code.google.com/mobile/analytics/docs/
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54. Traffic Sources
An overview of the different sources that send
traffic to your site
Direct
Referring
Search engines
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55. Traffic Sources
Direct
Access via a bookmark or type in URL directly
Referring
Click to your site from another site
Search engines
Click to your site from search engine results
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56. Traffic Sources
Keywords:
Terms used to “find” your site via search engines
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66. Goals
A “goal” is the page which a visitor reaches once
they have completed a desired action, such as a
registration or download.
A “funnel” is the pages they need to visit on the
way to a goal.
EXAMPLE: Library legislative history course sign up
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67. Goals: Setting up goals and funnels
1. Name the goal something intuitive. In this example it might be “Class
Registration”
2. Choose whether or you want the goal to be active (on) now
3. Choose a type of goal. Most library scenario goals will probably fall under
the “URL Destination” type, meaning the goal is to get the user to a
specific place, in this case the “thank you for registering” page.
4. Enter the URL for this goal page
5. Under “Goal Funnel” click yes
6. On the following page add the URL(s) of the page(s) along the path a user
would take to get from the homepage all the way through to the thank
you page.
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72. Exercise
Visit your library website. Fully define two (or
more!) goals.
GOAL NAME
GOAL URL
FUNNEL
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73. Advanced segments
Let you group certain types of visits together
User defined
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75. Advanced Segments Examples
iPad users visiting your events calendar
How much traffic is coming from Facebook?
Twitter? Both?
How many site visitors connect using dialup?
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76. Advanced Segments Notes
In some cases GA will suggest variables (operating
system for ex.)
Advanced segments take AND &OR statements
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77. Advanced segment: Mobile
To see all mobile traffic aggregated:
1. Click on the Advanced Segments > Create a new custom
segment
2. Under Dimensions click on Visitors
3. Drag the green Mobile rectangle into the dimension or
metrics box.
4. Make sure the Condition equals “Matches Exactly” and
the Value equals Yes
5. Name the segment and save
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78. Advanced segment: Specific mobile
To see data for one or more specific mobile platforms:
1. Click on the Advanced Segments > Create a new custom
segment
2. Under Dimensions go to Systems > Operating Systems
3. Drag the green Operating Systems rectangle into the
dimension or metrics box.
4. Make sure the Condition equals Matches Exactly
5. Choose a mobile OS from the dropdown
6. Name the segment and save
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80. Advanced segment: Social media
1. Go to Advanced Segments > Create New Custom
Segment
2. Choose Dimensions>Traffic Source>Source and drag to
the main panel
3. Under matches choose Matches regular expression and
enter something like this (including the pipes):
facebook.com|twitter.com|delicious|linkedin|(Customize
for the specific sources you’d like to track)
4. Name the segment and save
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81. *TIP
Each social media source can also have it’s own
segment so that you can track individually
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86. Useful: Tracking outbound links
Many links on library sites are to third-party
destinations
Catalog
Ejournals and databases
Other sites
Cannot, by default, track click activity on outgoing
links
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87. Useful: Tracking outbound links
1. Insert some code into the <head> of the page(s) on which you want
to track outbound links to delay the link by a fraction of a second to
give the page tracking code time to load. Google has a script for this:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an
swer=55527
2. Tag the specific link(s) you want to track so that the activity will be
recorded in GA using a javascriptonClick statement.
3. Wait 24-48 hours to give GA a chance to collect some data then:
4. IN GA go to Content > Event Tracking > Categories. There should now
be a category there called “outbound links”, and within the
category, data for each link.
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88. Useful: Tracking outbound links
1. Insert some code into the <head> of the page(s) on which you want
to track outbound links:
<script type="text/javascript">
function recordOutboundLink(link, category, action) {
_gat._getTrackerByName()._trackEvent(category, action);
setTimeout('document.location = "' + link.href + '"', 100);
}
</script>
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89. Useful: Tracking outbound links
Tag the specific link(s) you want to track so that the activity will be recorded in
GA using a javascriptonClick statement:
your link
<a href="http://www.example.com" onClick="recordOutboundLink(this,
'Outbound Links', 'example.com');return false;">
the category the link label
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90. Reporting
Analytics allows you to export any of your reports
into:
PDF - portable document format. You'll need the
free Adobe Reader software in order to view this
file.
XML - extensible markup language.
Excel - Microsoft Excel-formatted spreadsheet.
TSV - tab separated values. This format can be read
in most spreadsheet applications or text editors.
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91. *TIP
Analytics will export the report with the settings
currently showing on your screen, so make sure
that your date range and other settings are as you
would like them
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92. Reporting
To export a report:
1. Navigate to the report you'd like to export.
2. Click Export, below the report title.
3. Select one of the four export format options
4. Your file will be generated automatically.
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93. Emailing
Reports can be emailed immediately or scheduled
Like exporting, you need to be viewing the exact
report you want to email
Note that scheduled reports send data based on
the previous day, week, month, or quarter
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96. Questions?
After the session contact us at:
Jeff Wisniewski
www.facebook.com/wisniewski.jeff
Darlene Fichter
darlene.fichter AT usask.ca
Computers in Libraries 2012
98. Resources
Google Analytics Help:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/
Google Code (Technical Documentation):
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/
Google Analytics Blog:
http://analytics.blogspot.com/
Official Discussion Groups:
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/groups.html
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