Kelvin Newman, Creative Director, SiteVisibilityWeb Analytics tools like Google Analytics are great for measuring data, but sometimes it can be harder to extract actionable insight.

1. 5 Instantly Actionable Insights
from Google Analytics
Internet World 2012
Kelvin Newman – Director of Strategy
SiteVisibility
@kelvinnewman

2. Who am I, though?
• Director of Strategy at SiteVisibility
– Natural Search, PPC, Social Media & Analytics
Agency
– Organiser of BrightonSEO Conference
– Host of UK most popular internet marketing
podcast
– My twitter is twitter.com/kelvinnewman

3. The worlds information is
doubling every two years
The challenge is no longer ‘do I have
the data?’ it’s instead ‘what do I do
with that data?’
http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/data-infographic/

4. Google Analytics Is Installed On
More Than 10 Million Websites
We’ve never known more about how our sites
perform, but how do we turn that into insight.
And better yet how do we turn that into
actionable insight.
http://marketingland.com/google-analytics-is-installed-on-more-than-10-million-websites-9935

5. Google Analytics is powerful
but overwhelming
I’m going to take you through five
interesting reports which answers
strategic questions you may be
facing.

6. Keywords and Landing Pages
WHAT PAGES DO I NEED TO
IMPROVE AND WHY?

7. Organic Search Keywords by
landing page
• We’re going to look at what keywords are
sending traffic
• Then what pages that traffic ends up on.
• Then what percentage of it bounces.
– Bouncing is traffic which views just one page and
then leaves. On most sites this is seen as a
‘measure of failure’

8. First Select Traffic Sources
• This is one of the menu
items of the left hand
side of the screen

9. Then Select Sources
• As you click this section
the arrow will move
from pointing
horizontally to vertically

10. Do the same to select Organic
Search
• This will now tell you
what you most popular
keywords sending you
traffic from Google
Organic Search

11. You’ll see a screen like this one, select the
secondary dimension.
This allows you to look at two metrics at the same time.

12. In the search box type Landing
Page
• This will search through
all the secondary
metrics you could add
to the report.
• This will now show top
organic keywords and
which page of the site
they visited first

13. My top keyword has a bounce rate of 35%
not exceptional, but my second keyword
has 95% bounce rate.
In this case clearly the search engines think this page is relevant for the
term but my users are telling me otherwise. I need to revisit this page
as if I was visiting with this keyword and revise accordingly.

14. Bounce Rates by Device Type
WHICH MOBILE DEVICES IS MY
SITE BROKEN ON?

15. Mobile Devices with Higher than
Expected Bounce Rates
• We’re going to look at what individual mobile
devices are sending traffic
• Then what percentage of it bounces.
– Bouncing is traffic which views just one page and
then leaves. On most sites this is seen as a
‘measure of failure’
– You could also look at conversion rates.

16. First Select Audience
• This is one of the menu
items of the left hand
side of the screen

17. Then Select Mobile then Devices
• This report shows me
what my most popular
devices are and how
they perform on the
site

18. I can see all these different devices have a
higher than average bounce rate but the
Sony Xperia is particularly high
I now need to review how the site appears on this device and make the
nesecery developmental changes. Interestingly, in this example other
Android devices have lower than average mobile bounce rates.

19. Conversions City based Geographic Reports
WHICH CITIES SHOULD I BE
TARGETING WITH OFFLINE ADS

20. Traffic Broken Down to a City
Level
• We’re going to look at what traffic comes from
what city.
• This then would allow us to carry out many
forms of localised offline marketing,
– Radio
– Local Press
– Outdoor

21. First Select Audience
• This is one of the menu
items of the left hand
side of the screen

22. Then Select Demographics then
Location
• This report shows what
countries my traffic
currently comes from.
The darker the colour
green the more people
visit from that location

23. I now switch my Primary Dimension from
Country/Territory to City
This will now group my traffic based on the city Google Analytics believes
them to be located in. This is far from fool proof, our office is Brighton is
according to GA is in Redhill, but in aggregate it is pretty reliable.

24. I now select the performance visualisation
option, using the bar graph icon.
This will show me what proportion of the overall traffic comes from each
of the cities.

25. I know a campaign based in London,
Brighton, Manchester and Leeds would
cover a significant proportion of my typical
customers.
This report typically illuminates unexpected location where your website
is popular, for example Sydney & New Dehli, I’ve had customers
launch successful overseas offices based on this insight

26. Conversions by Operating Systems
SHOULD I BUILD AN APP FOR
ANDROID OR IPHONE FIRST?

27. Traffic based on which
Operating System the Visitor is
Using
• We’re going to break down the traffic based
on which mobile operating system our
customers are using.
• This will allow us to make app development
decisions based on data rather than just gut
feel.

28. First Select Audience
• This is one of the menu
items of the left hand
side of the screen

29. Then Select Technology then
Browser & OS
• This report shows what
different type of
operating system or
browser my visitors
where using. It rolls
multiple devices
together.
– i.e. All Android devices
etc.

30. I now switch my Primary Dimension from
Browser to Operating System
This will now group my traffic based operating system. If seperates the
different Apple devices but combines all the different Android devices. It
will also show you how many visitors you have from other mobile devices
like Windows Mobile, Blackberry etc.

31. I know that around 3% of my traffic comes
from iOS compared to 1% from Android, I
should plan my apps accordingly
Instinctively you might expect Apple devices to dominate these reports
but that’s not always the case parity does happen frequently and
occasionally Android does beat iOS.

32. Filtering Search Queries based on Questioning Words
WHAT BLOG POST SHOULD I
WRITE NEXT

33. What questions are currently
sending us traffic despite
content not answering that
question.
• If we can understand the traffic we are
receiving with minimal effort, we are well
placed to identify the ‘low hanging fruit’ we
could reach with targeted content.

34. First Select Traffic Sources
• This is one of the menu
items of the left hand
side of the screen

35. Then Select Sources
• As you click this section
the arrow will move
from pointing
horizontally to vertically

36. Do the same to select Organic
Search
• This will now tell you
what you most popular
keywords sending you
traffic from Google
Organic Search

37. You’ll see a screen like this one, select the
secondary dimension.
This allows you to look at two metrics at the same time.

38. In the search box type Landing
Page
• This will search through
all the secondary
metrics you could add
to the report.
• This will now show top
organic keywords and
which page of the site
they visited first

39. I want to filter these search queries and
associated landing pages based on
questioning words like ‘how’
Search by all the common ‘question words’ like how, why. When, who
etc.
A question makes a great blog post, often with decent search volume and
in many cases low competition.

40. I am looking for results like this one, here
we have a question which the page
doesn’t really answer, yet still ranks.
This is an opportunity for a new blog post, for additional ‘brainy-points’
when your article is written edit the URL above and link to the new
article.

41. How am I supposed to
Remember This?
• The slides are already available on
http://www.slideshare.net/kelvinnewman
• We’re also releasing a series of video podcasts
covering exactly these processes at
http://www.sitevisibility.com