1. GOOGLE ANALYTICS AND OTHER
PROMINENT WEB ANALYTICS
Submitted By:
Shubha Brota Raha
EMBA 2011-14
SIBM, Bangalore
2. 1) GOOGLE ANALYTICS
1.1 INTRODUCTION:
Google Analytics is one of the few โfreeโ analytics tools available today. Google Analytics
has the power to track multiple metrics, and also the same metrics as most other analytic
tools out there today.
This tool has the power to give you the insight you need in order to optimize your website
properly. Not only is Google Analytics powerful, it is free. There is a premium version that
can be purchased that offers more features and more tracking. It also lets you measure
user interactions with your business across various devices and environments. This will give
you various options that you can use at your disposal. This platform also gives you the
option of tracking your Google AdWords performance. This is convenient because this tool
gives you all the data that you would like to see, all in one place.
Figure below depicts google analytics dashboard in a glance.
1.2 WHAT METRICS DOES GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACK?
Google Analytics allows you to measure multiple metrics on your site including (but not
limited to):
๏ผ Page Tracking
o Page views
o Page views per visit
o Unique page views
o Time on page
o Average time on page
o Etc.
๏ผ Session Tracking
o Visits
o Bounces
o Entrance bounce rate
o Visit bounce rate
o Time on site
o Average time on site
3. ๏ผ Visitor Tracking
o Visitor
o New visits
o Percent new visit
๏ผ Site Speed Tracking
o Page load time
o Page load sample
o Average page load time
o Domain lookup time
o Page download timeโ
o Etc.
๏ผ Traffic Sources
o Organic searches
๏ผ Event Tracking
o Total events
o Unique events
o Event value
o Etc.
1.3 FEATURES OF GOOGLE ANALYTICS:
โข Intuitive User Interface
โข In-Page Analytics
โข Navigation summary
โข GeoTargeting / Location Reporting
โข Improved Advanced Visitor Segmentation
โข Funnel Visualization
โข Exporting Reports/ Scheduled Email Reports
โข Social Media Tracking
โข Google AdWords Tracking
โข Campaign Tracking
1.4 USER INTERFACE:
Google Analytics has a user friendly interface
that lets you:
โข Customize your interface
โข See the most valuable data all in one place
โข Gives you graph visualization
โข Easy access to all areas within the tool
โข Also gives you easy access to the help
centre right on the interface
4. 1.5 IN-PAGE ANALYTICS:
This feature simply overlays a variety of information over your site within the iFrame in the
Google Analytics dashboard. This feature will be able to tell you:
โข What parts of the page that users are click on
โข Which parts of the page are being used more often
โข Percentage of clicks on each link on your page
โข Gives you the options of adding filters to this feature
1.6 NAVIGATION SUMMARY:
5. The navigation summary feature lets you see the navigation paths that visitors take
while on your site. This includes:
โข Entrance/previous pages
โข Exit/next pages
Of course you can view visitor path within the visitor flow report, but this feature offers a
more granular view into your user behaviour.
1.7 GEO TARGETTING / LOCATION REPORTING:
The geo-targeting feature allows you to pick and choose which geographical areas you
would like for you site to be viewable in. This is in relation to Google Search. For
example:
โข If you have a restaurant in Canada, you would probably want to target people who live
around the area, or who are just from Canada in general.
Location Reporting gives you, insight into what locations your site is being viewed from.
You can view locations ranging from country/territory, state, city, or continent.
1.8 IMPROVED ADVANCED VISITOR SEGMENTATION:
This feature allows you to segment out your traffic. Google Analytics offers some predefined
segments, for example:
โข Paid traffic
โข Visits with conversions
โข First time visitors
6. This feature also allows you to create customized segments. This feature can be leveraged
in order to give you more insight on your traffic.
1.9 FUNNEL VISUALIZATION:
This feature gives you a visual of your onsite conversion funnel. This funnel allows you to
see how many visitors go to each step of a process and shows how many leave at each step.
7. 1.10 EXPORTING REPORTS/SCHEDULED E-MAIL REPORTS:
Google Analytics lets you export the reports you want and need in different
formats. The formats available for exporting these reports include:
โข PDF
โข CVS
โข TVS
Google Analytics gives you the option of emailing reports. You can email a report in the
following formats:
โข PDF
โข CSV
โข CSV for Excel
โข TSV
You also have the option of scheduling a report to be sent via email to you or
multiple people on a:
โข One time basis
โข Daily basis
โข Weekly basis
โข Monthly basis
โข Quarterly basis
Google analytics also lets you put an โexpiration dateโ on you scheduled
reports.
1.11 SOCIAL MEDIA TRACKING:
Google Analytics lets you monitor and measure your social media efforts. Some of the social
media sites that you can track within this feature include:
โข Google+
8. โข Digg
โข Read It Later
โข Echo
โข Delicious
โข And a few more
This feature will give you, insight into who interacts with your content on your social
channels
1.12 GOOGLE AD-WORDS TRACKING:
Google Analytics gives you the option of linking your Google AdWords account to your
Google Analytics account. With this feature in place, you will be able to track and see
the following:
โข Impressions
โข Ad Clicks
โข Ad Cost
โข CPM (cost per thousand impression)
โข CPC (cost to advertiser per click)
โข CTR (click-through-rate)
Google Analytics also allows you to track some calculated metrics including:
โข Cost per transaction
โข Cost per goal conversion
โข Cost per conversion
โข RPC (revenue-per-click)
โข ROI (return on investment)
โข Margin (overall transaction profit margin)
1.13 CAMPAIGN TRACKING:
9. Google Analytics allows you to accurately track visitors from a variety of sources. There are
5 dimensions that Google Analytics allows you to track within online campaigns including:
โข Source (referrer)
โข Medium (email or print)
โข Term (term or keyword entered into search engine)
โข Content (version of advertisement)
โข Campaign
1.14 BENEFITS OF USING GOOGLE ANALYTICS:
๏ผ Free version available (can purchase premium version)
๏ผ You gain more insight into user behaviour on your site
๏ผ It is easy to use and navigate
๏ผ Can track multiple websites
๏ผ Google analytics offers search engine marketing media
๏ผ This tool allows you to target your online visitors
๏ผ You can measure the results of your marketing campaigns
๏ผ Customizable dashboard
๏ผ Easy To Track Users Who Generated Leads for Your Business
10. 2) OTHER WEB-ANALYTICAL TOOLS
2.1 Simply Measured
Simply Measured provides a very comprehensive social media reporting platform that
supports a broad range of social networks.
How much will it cost you?
To give you a taste for the platform you can start off using the free reports, which are quite
useful.
To access the paid reports, pricing starts at $500 per month for 10 social profiles with an
audience of up to 250k. After this the pricing is tiered e.g. $1,500 per 20 social profiles,
$2,500 for 50 social profiles. If you are an agency you will need to get a quote.
What are the main features?
๏ผ Supports โ Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vine, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, Twitter
and LinkedIn
๏ผ Wide range of standard reports are available for each platform
๏ผ Web traffic and conversion analysis โ You can connect to Google Analytics and view
detailed information
11. ๏ผ Competitive analysis and benchmarking โ Run reports against your competitors to
review your performance
๏ผ Influencer and Trend Analysis โ Figure out who are the key influencers that you need
to connect with and track trend
๏ผ Brand, Keywords and Hashtag monitoring โ Get email alerts based on criteria you set
๏ผ Professional reports, all of which are available in Excel and Powerpoint
๏ผ Multi-channel analysis so you can compare many accounts at the same time โ for
example, compare multiple Twitter accounts
๏ผ Scheduled reporting โ Get reports delivered to you automatically.
How does it work?
When you connect your social profiles you have a choice of a wide range of standard
reports. On the left hand side select the category you want. For example, select Twitter if
you only want to view reports that are relevant to Twitter.
Overall Opinion
Simply Measured is a really powerful social media analytics platform that provides an
extensive range of really nicely designed reports that are available either online, or through
Excel and Powerpoint.
Their free reports are a great starting point and definitely worth using.
The fact they support such a broad range of social media platforms, together with their high
starting price point, means that itโs really suitable for the larger brands, and they do have
some very large brands already as clients.
2.2 Rival IQ
Rival IQ is a platform for competitive intelligence. You create one or more landscapes of
competitors or clients and track their performance across both social media and the web.
The platform is really nicely designed and easy to understand so youโll get benefit from it
very quickly.
How much will it cost you?
Pricing starts at $99 with support for Facebook and Twitter plus competitor analysis for 1
landscape (a landscape is a way of grouping companies you want to monitor). At $199 you
get support for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ and 2 landscapes. At $399 you can
expand your competitor analysis from 2 to 5 landscapes.
What are the main features?
๏ผ Supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+
๏ผ Track multiple markets or clients through the use of landscapes
๏ผ Monitor social metrics across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+
๏ผ Analyze data relevant to SEO
๏ผ Monitor and improve on social bio information
12. ๏ผ Monitor the best performing content shared by you or your competitors
How does it work?
When you login to Rival IQ you are asked for the website address of the competitors you
want to track. This forms your โlandscapeโ which will probably consist of you and a group of
competitors.
You can click on any competitor and view information related to that competitor. For
example, here we can see the content getting the most engagement that was shared by
Social Media Examiner over the last 7 days.
You can also view other information such as:
๏ผ What changes have been made to their website
๏ผ A link to all their channels
๏ผ Statistics on performance of each of their channels
๏ผ Similar companies to Social Media Examiner you might want to track
You can also view information based on your landscape. For example, when you are
viewing a landscape select the Social menu option followed by Twitter.
The SEO section provides some basic information related to SEO. While this is certainly not
a replacement for an SEO tool, it does provide you with some valuable high level
information.
Any of the reports can also be exported to a Powerpoint presentation, enabling you to
produce some great management reports that contain nice graphs and statistics for each of
your competitors.
13. Overall Opinion
This is a very intuitive platform with good social media analytics. Iโd like to see integration
with Google Analytics as it would also be great to see the traffic generated and results
achieved from your social media interaction. Iโd also like to see more detailed SEO analytics,
for example, being able to drill down on the most popular external links from competitors.
This is a nice to have feature as opposed to an essential feature!
If you are a very large brand you are likely to require support for platforms other than the
big 4 (Twitter, Facebook, Google + and LinkedIn). You may also like more detailed social
media analytics which is provided by other platforms, however, it does also provide some
great functionality not provided by the pure analytics providers.
2.3 Zuum
Zuum is a tool used for benchmarking performance against competitors, finding the most
engaging content and identifying key influencers.
How much will it cost you?
Pricing starts at $250 per month which gives you access to all platforms up to 350k fans and
up to 5 brands ($315 for 10 brands). Price goes to $350 for up to 1 million fans etc.
What are the main features?
๏ผ Analytics support for Facebook, Twitter and limited support for Instagram, YouTube and
Google+ (additional support being rolled out next week)
๏ผ Compare your posting activity with your competitors
๏ผ Leader-board showing your performance in comparison with your competitors
๏ผ Discover the posts driving the highest engagement so you can determine the topics you
should be writing about
14. ๏ผ Reports exportable to CSV (not Excel or Powerpoint)
๏ผ Influencer report showing the most influential users which can be sorted by likes,
engagement, shares etc.
๏ผ Integration with Google analytics
๏ผ Set up daily, weekly or monthly email reports
How does it work?
When you login the menu on the left allows you to select the social media channel and area
you want to view analytics for. The initial screen shows a dashboard showing fan/follower
count for each competitor across all channels supported. This leaderboard table is available
for all platforms supported.
Overall Opinion
Zuum provides you very good Twitter and Facebook anlaytics that allows to figure out what
is working/not working on your accounts. Good detailed analytics that is very easy to use.
Currently there is less support for YouTube, Google+ and Instagram but this is currently
being added (I have a release that will be out next week that now has this functionality).
2.4 Socialbakers
Socialbakers provide a suite of modules including analytics, social media management, ad
analytics and monitoring.
Their analytics module provides industry and competitive benchmarking across a range of
platforms.
How much will it cost you?
15. Pricing starts at $50 per month for one profile (e.g. a Facebook account), $100 for 3
accounts, $200 for 7 accounts, and $400 for 20. This pricing is just for the analytics, however
Socialbakers does provide other modules (e.g content management platform, monitoring
solution and ad analytics) at an additional cost.
What are the main features?
โข Supports Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google+
โข Industry Benchmarking โ Provides country and brand level reporting
โข Customized reports exportable to PDF
โข Competitive analysis โ compare your page against your competitors
โข Key influencer reports โ identify the people engaging with your content the most
How does it work?
When you go to Socialbakers there is some analytics available for free that allows you to
look at the performance of brands across countries, and categories (e.g. media). If thereโs
an interesting brand you can drill down and view more information. Some of this is
available for free and some with a paid account.
Here is an example report showing the top performing pages in the media category for
Twitter.
If thereโs anything of particular interest you can drill down and view analytics for each
brand.
The dashboard is where you track the information related to your brand or the competitors
that you follow. Once you connect up your social profiles youโll see a dashboard similar to
the following.
16. Here is an example of part of the PDF report that you can produce.
Overall Opinion
Socialbakers provides very comprehensive industry benchmarking analytics and good
competitive analysis, along with a wide selection of analytics specific to your page.
17. 2.5 Crowdbooster
Crowdbooster is an analytics tool for Facebook and Twitter. It provides analytics with
recommendations on how to make improvements including the timing of when you should
send your updates. It also provides the facility to share scheduled content across the
platforms.
How much will it cost you?
Prices start at $9 per month for one Facebook page and Twitter account with up to 50,000
fans/followers, which is quite reasonable. The prices go up to $49 for 10 social media
accounts and $119 for 30. Enterprise pricing is also available for bigger accounts.
What are the main features?
๏ผ Find your best content โ Analysis on what is the best content you have posted
๏ผ Alerts and recommendations โ It will track any spikes or unusual activity and also give
recommendations based on the analytics collected. For example, suggestions on the
best times to post.
๏ผ Automatically schedule content โ You can publish content to Facebook and Twitter and
let Crowdbooster automatically schedule the content
๏ผ View the users that are interacting with you the most e.g. comments, likes etc.
๏ผ View analytics on each individual tweet or Facebook update
How does it work?
When you connect up your Facebook or Twitter accounts you immediately see data about
your accounts. In the following example it gives an overall view of Twitter activity for a
week. It then shows the tweets that were most effective. The ones higher up the chart got
the most impressions and the ones over to the right got the most retweets.
18. Based on this report you can then drill down and view the actual tweets. You can also see a
similar graph for Facebook and when you drill down to see the actual Facebook updates this
is what you would see.
You can also find your most engaged users on Twitter or Facebook. This is useful as these
are people you may want to follow and/or engage with.
Overall Opinion
Crowdbooster is a well-designed application with good functionality and their tips for
making improvements are useful. The only reservation Iโd have is that I would prefer to use
a social media analytics platform that supports all the major social networks (only
Twitter/Facebook supported) or use a full social media management platform that includes
a lot more functionality.