This document provides an overview of web analytics and Google Analytics. It defines web analytics, discusses ways to analyze data both traditionally and through the web analytics paradigm. It also covers setting up goals and funnels in Google Analytics, using segments, alerts and enhanced ecommerce tracking. A key section discusses attribution modeling and how to set up a custom attribution model based on an understanding of your business and customer journey.

1. Understanding Web
Analytics
BY THEODORE HAYES AND PRATHAMESH KULKARNI

2. What is Web Analytics?

3. Formal and wordy definition
(1) the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your website and the competition,
(2) to drive a continual improvement of the online experience that your customers, and
potential customers have,
(3) which translates into your desired outcomes (online and offline).

4. OLD Ways of Analyzing data
Insights
Clickstream

5. WEB ANALYTICS PARADIGM
Insights
Competitive
Intelligence
Voice of Customer
Experimentation and
Testing
Multiple Outcomes
Analysis
Clickstream
The What
The How Much
The Why
The What Else
The Gold!

6. Web Analytics 2.0

7. Digital Marketing and
Measurement Model

8. Steps…
Step 1: Identify the Business Objectives.
◦ Why does your website/campaign exist?
Step 2: Identify Goals for each Objective.
◦ Goals are specific strategies you'll leverage to accomplish the business objectives
Step 3: Identify the Key Performance Indicators.
◦ A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric that helps you understand how you are doing against your objectives.

9. Cont…
Step 4: Identify the Targets.
◦ numerical values you’ve pre-determined as indicators of success or failure.
Step 5: Identify valuable Segments for analysis.
◦ A group of people, their sources, onsite behavior, and outcomes.

10. Focus on 3 key areas of marketing
Acquisition.
◦ How are you anticipating acquiring traffic for your website
◦ Did you cover all three components of successful acquisition: Earned, Owned, Paid media?
◦ Where are you spending most of your efforts?
Behavior.
◦ What is the behavior you are expecting when people arrive?
◦ Should they visit repeatedly?
◦ Are there certain actions they should take?
Outcomes.
◦ What outcomes signify value delivered to the business bottom-line?

11. Exercise

12. Take any site for your liking
Why does the site exist?
◦ Macro And Micro conversions
What parts of the website should you focus on first?
◦ What content on the website is directly tied to driving Macro and Micro Conversions?
◦ What sections of the website might be most valuable to the visitors?
◦ What does the top nav and left/right nav groupings tell you about priorities?

13. How smart is their digital marketing strategy?
◦ SEO rankings, are they doing any paid search, do they have a facebook page?
How well are they doing in context of their competition?
◦ Use google trends, similarweb
Is it Mobile Optimized?
What is the fastest way to have the impact on the business?

14. Analytics NINJA
THE SECRETS

15. The secret to being an AGILE analytical
ninja
Ask a lot of Questions
Make VOC analysis your daily habit
Solve for customer problems not just KPIs
Maintain a database of all significant changes that affect data.
Be in the Loop
Avoid random optimization at all costs.

16. Google Analytics
COLLECTION, CONFIGURATION, PROCESSING, AND REPORTING

17. How it works

19. Contents
1. Quick Glossary
2. Understanding Google Analytics Account Structure
3. Universal – What is it?
4. Understanding and using custom Dimensions and Metrics
5. Understanding Filters and how to use them effectively
6. Regular Expression
7. Understanding and setting up goals and conversion funnels
8. User Interface – Live Example
9. Campaign tracking
10. Alerts
11. Creating Segments
12. Creating Custom Reports
13. Data Driven Attribution

20. Quick glossary
Bounce Rate
Session
Exit Rate
Dimensions
is the percentage of single page visits
is a group of interactions that take place on your website
within a given time frame. (default 30mins)
is the percentage of pageviews for a page that
were the last in the session.
is a descriptive attribute or characteristic of an
object or user

21. Quick glossary
Users
New Sessions
Hit
Entrances
Users whom have had at least one session in the
selected date range.
An estimate of the percentage of first time visits
An interaction that results in data being sent
to Google Analytics.
is incremented on the first pageview or
screenview hit of a session

22. Google analytics data model

23. Account Structure

24. Basic FrameWork Account :- your access point for Analytics, and
the topmost level of organisation.
Property :- Website, mobile application, blog,
etc. An account can contain one or more
properties.
View :- Your access point for reports; a defined
view of data from a property. You give users
access to a view so they can see the reports based
on that view's data. A property can contain one or
more views.
• Users:- You add users to an account.
You can assign four different
permissions to a user (Manage Users,
Edit, collaborate, or Read & Analyse),
and you can assign different
permissions at the account, property,
and view levels.

25. Universal and cookies

26. Cookies explained – ga.js and dc.js
_utma cookie
“Persistent” cookie, 2 years, distinguishes users and sessions.
◦ _utmb cookie (and _utmc urchin.js)
“Session” cookie, 30 mins, used to determine new visitors/sessions
• _utmz cookie
“Source” cookie, 6 months, record how users reach there site.
• _utmv cookie
“Custom Variable” cookie, 2 years, used to store visitor level custom variable data.

27. Google Analytics Tracking Code
(GATC)
100% Client side
Session-based
4 Cookies:_utma _utmb _utmc,
_utmz
Universal Analytics Measurement
Protocol (UAMP)
Client side via analytics.js
Server side via measurement
protocol
Visitor-based
1 cookie with a unique visitor
id:_ga
Ecommerce tracking requires
separate JavaScript
GATC VS UAMP TECHNICAL DIFFERENCES

28. AND SO? – Universal upgrade

29. CROSS DEVICE TRACKING

30. Online and Offline purchases using
loyalty cards can be correlated
A voucher printed from your website is
redeemed in a physical store. A
scanable bar code and store purchases
can be connected to website behaviour
CONNECTING ONLINE AND OFFLINE
• Passing the encrypted FedID will link offline and Online

31. Connecting
Devices
During a telephone order or store
purchase user ID is captured. This can
be correlated to website data with the
same user.
E-shop returns
CONNECTING SYSTEMS AND DEVICES

32. Custom Dimensions and
metrics

33. Custom dimensions and metrics
In UA, custom variables are called custom
metrics and dimensions
20 custom dimensions and 20 custom metrics
per account (200 in premium accounts)
Custom dimensions and metrics have to be
recorded with another data type in universal
analytics (like a pageview, event or ecommerce
transaction), they cannot be recorded on there
own.

34. Goals Conversion and
funnels

35. Macro Conversion on an ecommerce site: add a product to the cart and complete a purchase.
Micro Conversions are other desirable interactions / communications, including:
• Download a catalog .pdf
• Request a catalog via mail
• Get Special Offers & Savings
• Review a product
• Add to wishlist
• Call to order
RECOMMENDED: Setup Conversion Goals for each of the Micro Conversions. Tweak design, content, Calls to Action, then follow
with multiple A/B and Multi-Variate (MV) Testing experiments to achieve the best Conversion Rate for each task. This testing process is the key
to continuous improvement via Conversion Optimization.
Ultimately, assign revenues to each conversion, as each will provide a measure of value and that will help focus your efforts.
MACRO AND MICRO CONVERSIONS

36. Goal settings
Only 20 goals per view.
Try and create a view for every type of Macro Conversion. Then you have 19 goals for all the Micro
Conversions.
This way your account set-up will start to replicate your business structure.
Don’t try and analyse too much at once segmentation is key!

37. Goal Setup
Assign a monetary value to goals. This extra measurement
allows economic value reporting.
First step to predictive analysis.

38. Regular Expression
SOME BASICS TO GET YOU STARTED

39. Some Basics – MetaCharactersStart of String
End of String
Escape following character
Match zero or many
Match one or many
Match either one (or)
Group
Range
Match any single character
^
$
*
+
|
()
[a-b] [1-5]
.

40. SMALL REGEX EXERCISE192.168.1.2
192.0.2.12
192.168.1.3
192.0.2.22
192.168.1.4
108.12.13.5
108.12.13.1
108.12.20
192.168.1.2
192.168.1.3
192.168.1.4
192.0.2.12
192.0.2.22
108.12.13.5
108.12.13.1
108.12.20
192.168.1.[2-4]
192.0.2.[1|2]2
108.12.13.[1|5]
108.12.20

41. All Ips IN ONE LINE
1(92.(0.2.[1|2]2|168.1.[2|4])|08.12.(13.[1|5]|
20))

42. Filters and effective use

43. Filters
Filters:-
allow you to limit and modify the traffic data that is included in a view. For example, you can
use filters to exclude traffic from particular IP addresses, focus on specific subdomain or
directory, or convert dynamic page URLs into readable text strings.
1. Predefined Filters
2. Custom Filters
Exclude
Include
Lowercase
Uppercase
Search and Replace
Advanced

44. Adding Filters

45. Campaign tracking
URCHIN TRAFFIC MODULE

46. Campaign tracking
Adwords will be tracked automatically provided you have specified within Adwords (auto
tagging).
All other referring campaign traffic sources need parameters adding where practical.
Example:- http://iprospectc2.com/reports/search-engine-
optimisation?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=generic&utm_campaign=bestever
Variable Meaning
utm_campaign The name of the marketing campaign, e.g. World Traveler Credit
Card
utm_medium Media channel (E.g. cpc, organic), What is the ‘distribution
method’ that is used to get our message out to our customers?
utm_source Who are you partnering with to push your message. A publisher,
Google, Yahoo etc.
utm_content The version of the ad (Used for A/B Testing). You can identify two
version of the same ad using this variable.
utm_term The search term purchased (if your not buying keywords).

47. Campaign tracking – Cont..
Default Channel Groupings Definition
Direct
Source exactly matches Direct and Medium exactly matches (not set)
Or
Medium exactly matches (none)
Organic Medium exactly matches organic
Referral Medium exactly matches referral
Email Medium exactly matches email
Paid Search
Medium matches regex ^(cpc|ppc|paidsearch)$
And
Ad Distribution Network does not exactly match content
Other Advertising Medium matches regex ^(cpv|cpa|cpp|content-text)$
Social
Social Source Referral exactly matches Yes
Or
Medium matches regex ^(social|social-network|social-media|sm|social network|social media)$
Display
Medium matches regex ^(display|cpm|banner)$
Or
Ad Distribution Network exactly matches Content
Note:- Channel groupings are case sensitive, Google / CPC will fall into (other) NOT Paid Search.

48. Check (other) for incorrect UTM_Parameters
Tag is incorrect
This happens when text
ads are used on the
display network,
consider creating
another default channel
utm_parameters are
case sensitive
Adding utm_parameters to banners
overwrites original source/medium
Over 13.36% of traffic
has been incorrectly
defined.
Check spelling
Display Channel has been user
defined to ‘DisplayCPC’ auto-
tagging will be affected.

49. DO’s and Don’ts
Do
◦ Always use small case characters when creating UTMs
◦ Always escape special characters
◦ Use URL builder
◦ Create additional default channel for sms campaigns
◦ Adhere to set naming conventions
Don’t
◦ Tag internal banners or elements on the website.
◦ Create your own utm_mediums. (Exception sms campaigns)
◦ Create utm_source which is difficult to identify.

50. Tracking methods in ga

51. Tracking methodolgies
GATC and UATC or ‘Tag/code snippet’
◦ Urchin.js
◦ Ga.js
◦ Dc.js
◦ Analytics.js
Event Tracking – Action, Category, Label, Value
Virtual Pageview
Ecommerce

52. Creating Segments

53. Creating Segments

54. 1. Segmentation by Referrer/Traffic Source.
Paid, Natural, Paid brand and non-brand
By number of keywords -2,3,4
Social Media
2. Segmentation by Visitor Type
New. Returning & Registered Visitor
3. Segmentation by Engagement
5 Pages
<3 Pages
4. Segmentation by Content Viewed
Key Landing Page
Product Page
Checkout Complete
Folders for Large organisations
5. Segmentation by Landing Page Type
6. Segmentation by Event
Conversion goal types and E-commerce
7. Segmentation by Platform (less important)
Browser
Screen Resolution
Mobile
8. Segmentation by Location
Main Markets
UK
US
FIGS
ROW
CREATING SEGMENTS

55. Conversion funnels
Every online business has steps that people must take to become a customer.
Use Conversion funnels to:-
Determine what steps are causing customer confusion or trouble.
Figure out what language or copy might be altering our customer’s emotional behaviour
during checkout or sign up.
To be aware of bugs, browser issues and other technical nuisances.

56. Conversion funnels
Funnels Provide Greater Insights than Goals Alone
As essential as goals are in Google Analytics, they serve by themselves more as basic KPIs (key
performance indicators) than as actionable starting points for conversion optimisation.

57. Alerts
INTELLIGENCE REPORTS

58. Essential Alerts
Significant Traffic Drop
Traffic Spikes
• Significant Drop in Goal
Completions
• Analytics has flatlined

59. Essential alerts
Spike in goal Completions
Significant drop in Google Referrals
Direct Traffic bounce rate over 70%
◦ When you create a custom alert, that alert is visible only to you in your current view and in any other views to
which you apply the alert.
◦ Period: Select the frequency at which the alert can be generated (Day, Week, Month).

60. Alerts

61. alerts
When you create a custom alert, that alert is visible only
to you in your current view and in any other views to which
you apply the alert.
Apply to: If you want to apply the alert to additional views, open the other views menu, then select the check
box for each view to which you want to apply the alert. The alert is then available to you in any of the other
views you select.
Period: Select the frequency at which the alert can be generated (Day, Week, Month).

62. Enhanced ecommerce
/ENHANCEDECOMMERCE.APPSPOT.COM

63. Enhanced ecommerce – web tracking
(analytics.js)
The enhanced ecommerce plugin for analytics.js enables the measurement of user
interactions with products including product impressions, clicks, viewing details and adding a
product to shopping cart, initiating checkout process, transactions and refunds.
Can send multiple types of ecommerce data using analytics.js. Impression, Product,
Promotion and Action data.

64. Enhanced ecommerce data

65. Attribution models
DEEPER DIVE

66. Last interaction/last click interaction
model
Standard attribution model in all web analytics tools (except Google Analytics)
•Very unfair attribution
model.

67. Last non-direct click attribution
All standard reports in GA give 100% of conversion credit to the last “campaign” prior to
conversion.
• This model is also the
irritating reason why none
of your standard analytics
reports match your multi-
channel funnel reports.
• This model under values the
direct channel.

68. Last adwords click attribution
This model is profoundly value-deficient.

69. First interaction/click attribution
Reverse of last click – gives all credit to first click.
•This model makes even less
sense, than the last click
model.
• First click attribution is akin
to giving your first girlfriend
100% of the credit for you
marrying your wife

70. Time decay attribution
A Much Better Attribution Model
• The media touch point
closest to the conversion
gets most credit.
• This passes a common
sense test and is a simple
and more accurate model.

71. Position based attribution
This attribution model is a customizable model.
• Don’t forget the
default model is not
to be used. You need
to have a good
understanding of your
business to allocate
credit.

72. Custom Attribution
modelling

73. Understanding the business.
Key questions you need to ask.
◦ What type of user behaviour do you value?
◦ Is there an optimal conversion window you are solving for?
◦ What does the repeat purchase behaviour look like historically?
◦ Are there any micro-conversions defined with engagement type goals, tied to the economic value?
◦ Are offline conversions being sent back into GA using Universal Analytics?

74. Step 1
Select the Baseline Model.
◦ Good to start with position based model,
◦ Here is a good model setup which applies to a lot of industries.

75. Step 2
Select the look back window.
◦ Good rule is to pick close to the upper limit of the number of days to conversion, excluding outliers + a
bit more.
◦ B2B have longer conversion look back windows, B2C such as ecommerce have much shorter.

76. Step 3
Select the Engagement based credit option.
Page depth is a better metric for engagement as time on site is not calculated for bounce visits etc.
This means campaigns with higher engagement will get more credit.

77. Step 4
Apply Custom Credit Rules. (Tricky Bit)
◦ Here you can apply any custom rule you want, so this is to tweak your attribution model to more
accurately fit the business.
• This custom rule is ensuring
ads that get clicks to be
extra rewarded and, in this
case, get 1.4 times the credit
of other campaigns in the
conversion paths (in
comparison to ads that just
get impressions)..

78. Summary
Experiment with the custom rules to see what fits.
Use common sense when creating your attribution model.
Ask the important business questions.
If you use common sense, your attribution model even if not perfect will be a lot more accurate
than a last click model.

79. Thank You