This document discusses how analytics can help website owners better understand their audience through data. It provides an overview of common analytics terminology like visits, unique visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, and landing pages. It also recommends Google Analytics as a good free analytics package and includes examples of how analytics data from a blog can be analyzed to draw conclusions and inform improvements. Plugins for analytics integration in WordPress are also highlighted.

1. Analytics
and You

2. How To Better Understand
Your Audience Through Data

3. About Russell Heimlich
★ Sole developer at the
Pew Research Center
★ Creator of
dummyimage.com
★ Frontend and
Backend Developer
★ @kingkool68

4. I Like Burgers

5. So you’ve built a great site...
Now what?

6. You Probably Have A Few Questions...
★ Who is visiting my site?
★ Where are my visitors coming from?
★ What are my top pages?
★ Are visitors finding what they’re looking for?
★ Is my website achieving it’s goal?

7. Analytics Can Help!

8. What do you mean Analytics?
“...the measurement, collection, analysis and
reporting of internet data for purposes of
understanding and optimizing web usage.”
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

9. In other words...
Gathering data to inform our decisions.

10. Which sounds better?
★ I think we should change the navigation.
It’s not working.
★ Based on the data, visitors aren’t clicking on
items in the navigation.

11. So where do I start?

12. Picking An Analytics Package
★ Omniture
★ Mint
★ Piwik
★ Woopra
★ Google Analytics
★ List of Web Analytics Software

13. When in doubt...

14. The Plan
★ Signup
★ Get JavaScript Tracking Code
★ Add Tracking Code To Your Website
★ Collect Data
★ Analyze
★ Make Decisions

15. Even if you don’t think you need analytics
★ Add it anyways!
★ You can always ignore it...

16. Google Analytics Terminology
See the Google Analytics Glossary

17. Visits
“A period of interaction between a visitor's browser
and a particular website, ending when the browser
is closed or shut down, or when the user has been
inactive on that site for a specified period of time.
(30 minutes)”
Unique visitors make visits, visits make pageviews.

18. Unique Visitors
“Unique Visitors represents the number of
unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your
website over the course of a specified time period.
A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies.”
Unique Visitor = A Person (sort of)

19. Pageview
“A pageview is an instance of a page being loaded
by a browser.”
Every time the tracking code is loaded, that counts
as a pageview.

20. Pages/Visit
Average number of pages visited during a visit.

21. Bounce Rate
“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page
visits or visits in which the person left your site
from the entrance (landing) page.”
Visitor lands on a page, then leaves your site.

22. Landing Page
“The first page that a user views during a session.
This is also known as the 'entrance page.”
Where the visitor enters your site.

23. Exit Page
Where the visitor left your website and went
somewhere else on the Internet.

24. Top 5 Metrics
★ Unique Visitors
★ Pages per Visit
★ Visits (How often visitors come back)
★ Bounce Rate
★ Average Time on Site

25. Analytics In Practice
Practice Makes Perfect

26. Meet My Blog

27. www.russellheimlich.com/blog/
★ Listing of posts
★ Single posts (these have ads)
★ Each post has related posts and tags
★ My first WordPress project :-)
★ One day it will be awesome...

28. All of the Important Metrics

29. The Top Content

30. Most People Stop Here!
Keep Going, There’s More Data!

31. Details of a Popular Post

32. How Did They Get Here? And Leave?

33. Lots of Entrances
★ I wonder which sites are referring them?

34. What Keywords Are People Using?

35. Conclusions?
★ “Roach Gel” is a pretty good keyword
★ “Combat Gel” not so much!
★ Bing visitors seem more engaged than Google
★ Consider buying ads on Bing for “Roach Gel”!

36. Search is Valuable!
“Duh!” – Google

37. Search Can Read Minds
★ Tells what your audience is looking for
★ Reveals what they thought was the best answer

38. Key Search Questions
★ Are the terms broad or specific?
★ Is a particular term showing up a lot?
★ Can I promote an area of my site more?
★ Am I using the right labels/description?

39. Read These A List Apart Articles
★ Internal Site Search Analysis: Simple, Effective,
Life Altering!
★ Testing Search for Relevancy and Precision
★ Beyond Goals: Site Search Analytics from the
Bottom Up

40. Random Slide

41. Nifty WordPress Plugins

42. Google Analytics for WordPress
★ By Joost de Valk
★ All-in-One Tool
★ Lots of Features
★ Easy to Use
★ Will Insert the Tracking Code for You
★ 2 Million+ Downloads

43. Google Analytics for WordPress

44. Google Analytics Dashboard
★ By Carson McDonald
★ View analytics data in WordPress dashboard
★ Shortcodes and Widgets for sharing stats
★ See Sparklines in Post Listings Admin Page

45. Google Analytics Dashboard

46. Google Analytics Dashboard

47. JetPack
★ By Automattic
★ Stats cloud powered by WordPress.com
★ Not Google!
★ No additional load on your server
★ An official plugin

48. JetPack

49. AddThis
★ By Aaron Jorbin
★ Analytics on Sharing
★ Which content is shared the most?
★ How is your content shared?
★ Learn what interests your audience

50. AddThis

51. CrazyEgg
★ See Where People Click (even non-links)
★ Generates Heatmaps
★ Costs Money
★ Has a WordPress Plugin

52. CrazyEgg

53. ChartBeat
★ Real-time analytics
★ See what content is popular RIGHT NOW!
★ Twitter, Locations, Uptime, Page Load Speed
★ Hypnotic
★ Costs Money
★ Has a WordPress Plugin

54. ChartBeat

55. Wrapping Up
The Important Take Aways

56. Analytics...
★ Gives you data to inform decisions...
★ Are easy to implement...
★ Come in different flavors...
★ Not as complicated as you might think.

57. Thank You!
★ Slides are available!
http://www.slideshare.net/kingkool68
★ Twitter or Google +1 or Chat or Whatever...
Kingkool68