This webinar covered best practices for using Google Analytics to understand website activity and performance. Matt Schulte from Metropolitan Group discussed how Google Analytics can provide insights into website traffic sources and behavior. He emphasized defining goals and key performance indicators to guide the use of analytics data. Alex Bernardin from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation then demonstrated how to navigate Google Analytics reports and extract useful information about traffic sources, user behavior, and areas needing improvement.

1. Welcome to the Webinar!
New Media Best Practices: Google Analytics
We will begin shortly…
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

2. Today you’ll be hearing from…
Ma8
Schulte
Vice
President
of
Digital
Strategy
Metropolitan
Group
Lisa
Peterson
New
Media
Educa/on
Specialist
CHL/CALPACT
Alex
Bernardin
Digital
Content
Manager
San
Francisco
AIDS
Founda/on
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

3. Agenda
• Review of session objectives
• Housekeeping
• Matt Schulte ~ Metropolitan Group
• Alex Bernardin~ San Francisco AIDS Foundation
• Conclusion
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

4. Objectives
• Understand
how
to
access
your
Google
Analy/cs
data
and
generate
reports
• Iden/fy
/ps
for
understanding
what
the
numbers
mean
for
your
organiza/on
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

5. Tweet the event!
Use
#calpactNM14
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

6. Metropolitan Group
Ma8
Schulte
Vice
President
of
Digital
Strategy
Metropolitan
Group
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

7. What is (are?)‘Google Analytics’
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

8. ● Google Analytics captures your website’s activity,
and measures your website’s performance.
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs
SIMPLY PUT...

9. New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs
It’s a tool…not a strategy

10. • Capturing, measuring, analyzing and what-not
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs
Seems like a lot of stuff...to know?

11. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming…
Even the basics can be enormously helpful for your
organization.
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

12. WHAT KIND OF ACTIVITY?
For instance:
● How many visitors has your site had in a specific
date range?
● How did they get there? (From search? From
Facebook? Other websites?)
● What pages get the most visitors?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

13. HOW ABOUT WEBSITE PERFORMANCE?
For instance:
• What pages do visitors LEAVE your site from?
• Average visitor time on your website?
• What browsers are visitors using to access your site?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

14. There IS a lot there!
But even those data points can give you a quick
snapshot...and somewhere to start!
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

15. Let’s Go to Google Analytics and Explore:
* Dates
* Intelligence events (snapshot)
* Real time
* Interests
* Technology
* Referrals
* Behavior
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

16. Google Webmaster Tools is a free web service by
Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check
indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites.
An additional piece of code to add...
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

17. New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs
Submit your site to Google
Check for technical problems that may be stopping
Google from indexing certain pages
Check on links pointing to your site
See popular keywords for your site
Check for malware or other intrusive technologies
affecting your site

18. Data...without strategy or analysis won’t mean
much...won’t help much.
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

19. STRATEGY!
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

20. Data / analytics will be most useful when your
website has carefully defined goals/objectives.
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

21. What does your website do (or need to do) to
advance your business or brand goals?
What do you want your site visitors to DO?
What ACTIONS do you want them to take?
...leading to what GOAL?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

22. ➔ Downloads?
➔ Sign-ups?
➔ Comments?
➔ Traffic?
➔ Social media campaign?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

23. New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs
Objectives
Goals
KPI
Targets

24. Objective:
Attendance at health seminars
Goals:
Increase web sign-ups for health seminars
Key Performance Indicators:
# of Sign-ups
# of Individual Organization Memberships
Target:
Sign-ups: 200 per seminar
Memberships: 100 per month
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

25. * CONTENT Strategy *
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

26. CONTENT
● Does your organization have an editorial calendar to
organize/prioritize your content?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

27. CONTENT
● Does your organization have an editorial calendar to
organize/prioritize your content?
● Are you using social media?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

28. CONTENT
● Does your organization have an editorial calendar to
organize/prioritize your content?
● Are you using social media?
● Does your content have ‘calls to action?’
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

29. New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs
CONTENT
Analytics can help you assess the success of your
site’s content, as long as…

30. New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs
CONTENT
Analytics can help you assess the success of your
site’s content, as long as…
...you’ve defined success.

31. Key Takeaways
★ Start with the basics, understanding your
dashboard
★ How you use Google Analytics will be (should be)
connected to a content strategy
★ Objectives - Goals - KPI - Targets
★ Webmaster tools
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

32. Q & A for Matt
• Send
a
ques/on
or
comment
using
the
chat
box
func/on
• Click
“raise
hand”
bu8on
to
be
taken
off
mute
and
ask
a
ques/on
verbally
Ma8
Schulte
Vice
President
of
Digital
Strategy
Metropolitan
Group
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

33. San Francisco AIDS Foundation
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs
Alex
Bernardin
Digital
Content
Manager
San
Francisco
AIDS
Founda/on

34. Google Analytics Nitty Gritty
Two Common Scenarios for GA Use, with real data:
1. Doing an Audit/Assessment
How to get a holistic sense of a website
2. Answering specific questions
a. where does our traffic come from?
b. does our site work alright on mobile?
c. is our Facebook promotion helping?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

35. Housekeeping
Pro Tips: I’ll point out more advanced techniques, but
you will probably need to do some more research on
your own...
Some additional resources will be available at:
http://alexjbconsulting.com
(not my day job; I am not a full-time consultant)
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

36. Are we tracking?
For the sake of time, I’m going to assume that
someone has gone through and verified that your site
tracking is well set up.
This is often not the case.
If you’d like to research it for yourself, there’s a list of
common configuration pitfalls / things to think about
here: http://alexjbconsulting.com/ga-pitfalls
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

37. Let’s Go to Google Analytics!
http://analytics.google.com
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

38. Step 2: Reporting
The GA report grouping matches visitor flow:
A - Audience & Acquisition
B - Behavior
C - Conversions
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

39. Report: Audience -> Overview
• We have traffic (yay!)
• Adjust timeline to show more data
• Note obvious spikes/troughs
DEEPER:
• Geo sub-report tells us where visitors live
[PRO] Behavior->Engagement sub-reports
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

40. Report: Acquisition -> Overview
Good snapshot report, but weird to read
TAKEAWAYS:
• Where is your traffic coming from? And, possibly,
how do they behave when they’re there?
• You want diversity in your sources
[PRO] Channels sub-report for tabular view
[PRO] connect AdWords and Webmaster accts
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

41. [PRO] Report: Acquisition -> All Referrals
TAKEAWAYS:
• If your own site is in here, you’ve got tracking
issues and are losing data
• Strange-looking websites might be link-farms,
which can hurt your Search Engine ranking
• Good referral sources are opportunities for
reciprocal relationships
• Referrals often explain traffic spikes
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

42. Report: Behavior Overview
Probably spend most of your time in the Behavior
reports. Follow your nose…
TO TRY:
• Play with the report timeframe
• Switch to week or month view to get quick
averages or to smooth out trendline
• Switch the main trendline metric to the ones
arrayed directly below it
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

43. Report: Behavior Overview
KEY CONCEPTS:
• Pageviews vs Unique Pageviews
• Note spikes and troughs
• Consider annotations
[PRO] Segments:add mobile & tablet
[PRO] Experiment with other segments
○ Either vs comparable segs, or vs ‘all traffic’
○ Don’t compare apples to staplers
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

44. Report: Behavior Overview
TAKEAWAYS:
• Traffic patterns - by week? month? year?
• Overall trending up or down?
• Main metrics on this page are good candidates for
site-level KPIs
• Bounce Rate as an aggregate metric is not great,
and gets worse the more pages your site has,
because it’s an average, but it’s very indicative at
the individual page level
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

45. [PRO] Report: Behavior -> Site Search
Does your site have search? Is it tracked? People use
site search when they can’t find what they want
through navigation, or if they feel lost.
TAKEAWAYS:
• Huge potential insights for visitor intent
• From what page are people initiating?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

46. [PRO] Report: Behavior -> Events
Event tracking offers the ability to track visitor actions
that are not a pageview.
CONSIDER:
• In-page interactive features, esp. Javascript-driven
• Mailto: links, PDF-downloads or offsite links
• Specific clicks that you might consier a ‘conversion’
• From what page are people initiating?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

47. Report: Behavior -> Site Content -> All Pages
This is where I’m likely to spend the most time, as it
is the gateway to reports on individual pages.
TRY:
• Expand list to more than 10 (try 100+)
• Focus on Unique Pviews, Entrances, Bounce Rate
• Click on icon next to URL to open the page
• Switch Primary Dimension to Page Title
• Skim for odd-looking URLs - really long, or hard to
read, or have ID numbers - consider Profile Filters
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

48. Report: Behavior -> Site Content ->All Pages
TAKEAWAYS:
• What pages are in your top five? Any surprises?
• Narrow to a week or month with a traffic spike to
see which page shows as the top hit
• What’s the spread between the top pages and the
next-level? Any order-of-magnitude deltas?
• A high bounce rate for a page might mean “I
came, I puked, I left”
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

49. Report: Conversions
• Notice that there is no Conversions Overview report.
Conversions is the most subjective analytics
reporting concept.
• This section requires a variety of configurations in
the Admin section - defining Goals and Funnels and/
or turning on e-commerce tracking, all of which
require more than a few minutes to walk through.
• Goals are an excellent way to have GA reports
reflect your org’s priorities (donations, sign ups,
education).
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

50. Audit Wrap Up
A - Audience & Acquisition
B - Behavior
C - Conversions
Going through the ABCs of Analytics will almost
always result in lots of questions, but you’ll also have a
broad sense of what’s going on with your site.
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

51. Answering Questions with Google Analytics
Once you’re confident that the data in your GA is
reliable and reasonably complete, you can start
focusing your attention on specific metrics.
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

52. Google Analytics
When would you do this process?
• Answer specific questions
• Monitor/check KPIs
• Measure the effectiveness of a recent change
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

53. Questions for Google Analytics
Our site works fine for mobile users, right?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

54. Questions for Google Analytics
Our site works fine for mobile users, right?
Audience->Mobile->Overview
Look at: % of uniques from desktop/mobile/tablet
Look at: bounce rate, pages/visit or time on site
OR:
Use Segmentation on any report to see mobile/tablet visitors
alongside All Traffic, such as home page, or other very
important page, or Goal Conversions
OR: [PRO]
Audience->Behavior -> Frequency/Recency (segmented)
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

55. Questions for Google Analytics
How many pageviews did we get this month?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

56. Questions for Google Analytics
How many pageviews did we get this month?
STOP! This is a bad, bad, bad question.
REDIRECT: How many people visited our site?
Audience -> Overview
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

57. Questions for Google Analytics
We should put this on the homepage so that
everyone coming to the site will see it.
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

58. Questions for Google Analytics
We should put this on the homepage so that
everyone coming to the site will see it.
Behavior->Site Content->All Pages
Look at: relative traffic to homepage vs other pages
OR:
Behavior->Site Content->Landing Pages
Specifically shows the top site entry points
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

59. Questions for Google Analytics
Does posting to Facebook/Twitter/Google+ send
traffic to our site?
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

60. Questions for Google Analytics
Does posting to Facebook/Twitter/Google+ send
traffic to our site?
Acquisition->Social->Network Referrals
[PRO] set Secondary Dimension to Landing Page
OR:
Use Segmentation on any report to see All Referral traffic
OR:
Create Custom Segment for referral from specific site
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

61. Q & A for Alex
• Send
a
ques/on
or
comment
using
the
chat
box
func/on
• Click
“raise
hand”
bu8on
to
be
taken
off
mute
and
ask
a
ques/on
verbally
Additional Resources/References:
• h8p://alexjbconsul/ng.com/google-­‐analy/cs
• h8p://analy/cs.blogspot.com/
Alex
Bernardin
Digital
Content
Manager
San
Francisco
AIDS
Founda/on
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

62. Speaker Contact Information
Matt Schulte
mschulte@metgroup.com
Alex Bernardin
alexjb@alexjb.com
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

63. What action step will you take after the webinar?
• What do you think you can do in the next month to
further your goals with Google Analytics?
• Let us know ~ we’d love to check back with you and hear how
it’s going!
• We appreciate your feedback!
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs

64. Thank you!
Have questions? Contact us at sphcalpact@berkeley.edu
To learn more about other trainings in this series visit:
http://chl.berkeley.edu/events/newmedia/2014-new-media-trainings/sessions.html
New
Media
Best
Prac/ces:
Google
Analy/cs