Andrew Marks presents Google Analytics Essential Training at the InterContinental Sydney on 8th March 2017.

1. Google Analytics
Essential Training
Andrew Marks
@entreprenerds

2. Welcome
• We'll cover the most essential out of the box functionality
from account creation to reporting fundamentals
• We’ll learn how to glean insights from the vast array of data
available
• We’ll learn how to interpret each analytics report
• We’ll touch on the foundations of goal tracking
• We’ll look closely at how to use dimensions and segments to
go deeper in your reporting.
• And also learn how to track conversions and ROI
What we will achieve today:

3. What is Google Analytics?
• It shows the routes people take to reach your site, the content
they viewed, and even the devices they use to get there
• It can also measure sales and goal conversions
• With advanced tools such as funnels and attribution, you can
see exactly how all the pages on your site are working with or
against you
• At its core, Google Analytics helps you understand what's
working and what isn't.
Google Analytics is free service that helps you
analyze visitor traffic and paints a complete picture
of who your audience is and what their needs are

4. How does Google Analytics work?
1. Data collection
2. Data processing
3. Configuration
4. Reporting
There are four components to how the Google
Analytics system works:

5. Key Definitions
• Dimension – descriptive attribute
browser, landing page, location, sessions
• Metric – quantitative measurement of data
sums or ratios, eg. screen views, pages per session, an average session
duration
• Segment – subset of sessions or users
You might segment your data by marketing channelor geographic location
• Pageview
• Session (30 minutes)

6. Key Definitions cont.
• Source – the origin of your traffic
for example: google.com.au or thetrainingcollective.com.au
• Medium – the general category of the source
for example: organic search or social
• Goal
• Event
• Conversion
• Attribution

7. An Overview of Accounts

8. An Overview of Accounts cont.
• Typically, you create separate Accounts for
unique businesses.
• Within your Account, you can have one or
more Properties. Each Property gets a unique
tracking ID.
• Within each Property, you can create different
Views for your data. A View is how you'll
access reports.

9. An Overview of Accounts cont.

10. Properties and Views
• For example, within a single Property you
might have:
– A View of all the data for mysite.com
– A View of only AdWords traffic for mysite.com
– A View of only traffic to a subdomain, like
sales.mysite.com

11. Properties and Views cont.
By default, you have one unfiltered View that is
automatically generated when you create a
Property. You won't want to apply any settings
or configurations to this View, since it's really
just the backup for your data. Once you delete a
View, it's gone forever, so having a backup View,
like the unfiltered data View, is very useful.

12. Creating your account
• http://www.google.com/analytics
• Sign in with a Google account, or create one

13. Installing your Tracking Tag

14. Installing your Tracking Tag cont.
Other implementations: PHP implementation, Dynamic content
implementation, and Google Tag Manager

15. Is Google Analytics tracking?

16. Google Tag Manager
google.com/tagmanager
• Install code on your site instead of Analytics
• Add and edit tags using Tag Manager, instead
of installing code each time
• Add Google and non-Google tags
• Set rules for each tag

17. Understanding Reports
• Audience Reports
– Insights into your audience
– Who they are
– What devices they’re using
– What their interests are
– What their location is

18. Understanding Reports cont.
• Acquisition Reports
– Reveal where your users are coming from
– Outline their behaviour on the site
– Provide their conversion pattern
• Behaviour Reports
– How users interact with your website
• Conversion Reports
– Demonstrate how all your channels work together
to drive your goals and your sales

19. Dimensions and Metrics
• Every report on Google Analytics is made up
of dimensions and metrics
• Audience / Geo / Location
• Primary Dimensions

20. Dimensions and Metrics cont.
• Add a Secondary Dimension
Take a quick look at the Customisation main menu item. You can create custom
reports and select individual metrics and dimensions.

21. A Quick Look at Sources
Acquisition / All Traffic / Channels / Source
• Every source will have a different type of user
• Compare metrics for sources – what do you
notice?

22. Exploring the Interface
Reporting / Audience / Geo / Location

23. Exploring the Interface cont.
Reporting / Audience / Geo / Location

24. Adding a Secondary Dimension
Reporting / Audience / Geo / Location

25. Configuring a Date Range
• All reports based on date range selected
• Select the box in the top right
– Select entire month by click on month above calendar
– Use arrows to navigate different months
– When a date input is highlighted, you can click on the calendar or type
in a date
– Date range dropbox – today, yesterday, last week etc
– Compare to (custom, previous period, previous year)

26. Using Annotations
• From Explorer tab (graph view)
• Choose dropdown arrow center below graph
• Create new annotation

27. Interacting with Graphs
• The graph is going to display the metric you’ve selected
• Choose a different metric from the pulldown above left
• Select Day, Week or Month view from above right
• Graph type icon above right – line chart vs motion chart
• Motion chart options on right
• Change view from tabs above right

28. Interacting with Graphs cont.
• Compare one metric with another – Line chart, Select a metric
• Try sessions vs bounce rate (use search to select bounce rate)
• Try sessions vs new users
• Click on ‘x’ next to 2nd metric to return to single metric view
• Take some time to explore with adding metrics

29. Using the Data Table
• Below the graph on nearly every report
• Primary dimension – Country, City

30. Using the Data Table conts.
• Use check boxes + Plot Rows button to add to graph
• Add secondary dimension (try country + operating system)
Remove the secondary dimension by clicking ‘x’ next to column label.
• Sort table by clicking on column title
• Use search to find specific results
• Use advanced to add new dimensions and metrics
(we’ll look at this in detail later)
• Above right – table display icons
• Bottom right of every report - refresh

31. Segmentation
• Key in the first step in any analysis
• Looking at a large data set isn’t always useful
• A segment is a series of individual filters that
create a well-defined slice of all of your data
• You can apply segments to your reports and
dashboards

32. Segmentation cont.
• A state is a “segment” of data for a country
• Click on state then city to view segment data
• Breadcrumbs allow easy navigation
• To create a Segment:
– click Add Segment
– New Segment, or select a pre-defined segment

33. Basic Filters
• Acquisition / All Traffic / Source/Medium
– Search box – “referral”
• Advanced – “all referral traffic, except yahoo”
– Include “Source/Medium” containing “referral”
– Add a dimension or metric
– Exclude “Source/Medium” containing “yahoo”
– Apply
– Include “Bounce Rate” greater than “50%”

34. Setting up OR vs AND filters
• Show Source/Medium containing Yahoo OR
Facebook
– Use one filter “Matching RegExp” with a pipe
“yahoo|facebook”
• AND filters are created using “advanced”
– Above filter AND exclude Source/Medium
containing “organic”

35. Setting Account Properties
To return to this page, select Admin from the bottom
of the left sidebar

36. Setting Account Properties cont.
Filters
• Exclude your IP address
– View / Filter / Predefined / Exclude
• Force URLs to lowercase
– View / Filter / Custom / Lowercase / Request URI
Verify this filter shows you what will change
Clean Up Analytics Spam
• https://www.ohow.co/ultimate-guide-to-removing-
irrelevant-traffic-in-google-analytics/

37. Setting Account Properties cont.
• Filter order matters – the output of one filter
becomes the input of the next
• For example, filter to include Australia and
New Zealand
• Instead of 2 filters, use 1 filter with an ‘or’ (|)
– Filter / Custom / Include / Country / Australia|New Zealand

38. Audience Report - Overview
• Best place to start your day
• Click on the “at a glance” mini graphs below
• This becomes really powerful with date
comparisons
• Look at month view
• Mini graphs show % change
• Other options below

39. Audience Report
• Active Users
• Cohort Analysis – groups users by acquisition date
• User Explorer - examine individual rather than aggregate user
behavior
• Demographics & Interests – must be enabled

40. Audience Report cont.
• Geo – language and location
• Behaviour – new vs returning, frequency, recency, engagement
• Technology – browser, OS, network
• Mobile – devices
• Benchmarking – is a seasonal trend affecting all similar business
• Users Flow – graphic representation of all the paths users have
taken through your site

41. Geographic Data
• Click on Australia to see states; cannot click on
states in Australia (can in USA)
• Visitor map often looks like census map of
population density – more people, more clicks
• Pageviews and sessions not that useful, but
session duration would be useful.

42. Using Behaviour Report to see Engagement
• Audience / Behaviour / New vs Returning
• Frequency and Recency – behaviour of returning visitor
Count of Sessions / Days Since Last Session
• Engagement –
Session duration / Page Depth

43. Using Technology Report to see Devices
• Audience / Technology / Browser & OS
• Select browser to see versions
• Audience / Technology / Network
– Not particularly useful unless there are network
outages
• Audience / Mobile / Overview
• Audience / Mobile / Devices
• Look at Primary Dimensions

44. Acquisition Report
• Acquisition / Overview
• Top Channels – buckets of generalised
information
• Channels can be edited “Edit Channel
Grouping”, but default grouping is fine
• Acquisition / All Traffic / Source/Medium –
add Secondary dimension “Default Channel
Grouping”

45. Acquisition Report cont.
• Acquisition / Overview
• Change Primary Dimension to Source/Medium
• View Bounce rate against Source

46. Viewing All Traffic report by Channels
• Acquisition / All Traffic / Channels
• View sessions per channel, bounce rate
• Compare to site average (4th button top right)
– Compare sessions to site average, then bounce
rate, pages per session etc
• Back to table view, add landing page as
secondary dimension
• Which channels have the worst bounce rate?
Order by bounce rate.
• Filter (advanced) – Include sessions > 100

47. Viewing All Traffic report by Source & Medium
• Acquisition / All Traffic / Source/Medium
• Show more rows below table
• Click on individual referrals – maybe they
wrote a blog post about you?
• Add secondary dimension – Age, then filter by
age group

48. Exploring Referral Traffic
• Acquisition / All Traffic / Referrals
• If a link has a redirect, it might be classified as
“direct”
• Add landing page as a secondary dimension
• Change secondary dimension to “referral path”
• Change secondary dimension to “full referrer”

49. Social Reports
• There are 3 elements we’ll want to track:
– Social that sends traffic – just a referral
– Social that happens on your site – like button
this can be tracked with a plugin – beyond the scope of today’s session
– Social that happens on the social network
– Google has created social hub – Facebook, Twitter etc don’t share data with that hub

50. Social Reports Overview
• Acquisition / Social / Overview
• Tracks the value of social referrals – need to
create a goal
– Total conversions
– Contributed social conversions
– Last Interaction social conversions
• Summary to the right, details below

51. Social Dashboard
• Customisation / Dashboards / Create
– Import From Gallery
– Social Media Dashboard by Justin Cutroni
• Create your own Dashboards and add Widgets
yourself

52. Network Referrals
• Acquisition / Social / Network Referrals
• Sessions via social referrals compared to total
sessions

53. Landing Pages
• Acquisition / Social / Landing Pages
• Aggregates data across all social networks
• Note: social media users are primarily mobile
• Low session duration? Page may not be
mobile friendly

54. Search Console
• Acquisition / Search Console (this is new!)
• Must be linked to Webmaster Tools (now
called Search Console)
• Queries, not keywords
• Acquisition / Campaigns / Organic Keywords
• Landing Pages (also impressions)

55. Behaviour Report
• Behaviour / Overview
• Pageviews vs Unique Pageviews
• Behaviour / Behaviour Flow
• Browse how visitors browse your website
• You can add additional dimensions (country)

56. Site Content Report
• Behaviour / Site Content / All Pages
• Metrics per page
• Behaviour / Site Content / Content Drilldown
• Groups content by sub directory
• For example, /blog/ might be responsible for
lots of traffic, but each individual post is small
• Click into sub directory
• Like at pie chart view

57. Landing Pages Report
• Behaviour / Site Content / Landing Pages
• Look at bounce rate on each landing page
• Behaviour / Site Content / Exit Pages
• Look at which pages are the last page viewed

58. Site Speed Report
• Behaviour / Site Speed / Overview
• Behaviour / Site Speed / Page Timings
• Consider adding annotations whenever you
make a change to a page, to see how that
change affects load speed
• Map overlay – see where pages load slow
• Behaviour / Site Speed / Speed Suggestions
(PageSpeed score)
• User Times – requires custom code

59. Configuring Goals
• Conversions / Goals / Overview
• First, create a Goal:
Admin / Account / Property / View / Goal / New Goal
• You may see templates (based on selected
industry), otherwise choose custom
• Give name “new email subscriber”
• Chose Type:
– destination / duration / # per session
• Note: destination cannot be clicked to

60. Configuring Goals cont.

61. Configuring Goals cont.
• Goal Details – give destination without
domain, eg /thankyou.html
• Optional Value
• Optional Funnel

62. Setting Up a Funnel

63. Funnel Conversion Rate

64. Event Tracking
• Behaviour / Events / Overview
• This is an advanced feature that can be set up
to track downloads, clicks, submissions etc
– Click on the graduation cap to learn more

65. Emailing Reports
• Navigate to the report you want emailed
• Select “Email” under title
• Enter email address, subject, and choose PDF
• Select Frequency
• Send yourself a report by selecting “once”
• Advanced – Active for timeframe
• Enter some text

66. Real time Reports
• Overview
• Locations
• Traffic Sources
• Content
• Events
• Conversions

67. Adding Custom Campaign Tracking
Google UTM tracking
• How to measure the result of tweeting a link
• Create a “campaign” for each tweet / post
• utm_campaign, utm_source, utm_medium
mysite.com/?utm_source=Website&utm_medium=Sidebar&
utm_term=Widget&utm_campaign=Offer
• Acquisition / Campaigns / All Campaigns

68. Adding Custom Campaign Tracking cont.
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/