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GOOGLE ANALYTICSFOR A MARKETING MANAGER

Abilities and algorithmsof web-analytics productive usage

Москва, 20 мая 2010

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IntroductionIdeology of conversions optimization and consideration

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MAIN QUESTION

• Memorize• Contact us• Request information• Download• Subscribe• Register• Respond to sponsor advertising

• Buy (Now or later...).

INTRODUCTION

Do we need the user to click?No, in fact we need him to:

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TYPES OF SITES AND THEIR TASKS

INTRODUCTION

Corporate siteTo provide quick information finding, to get key messages and offers

Store To sell more and spend less on acquiring new customers

Promo-siteTo estimate campaign effectiveness and to secure message delivery

Content-project To attract and retain audience, to monetize traffic

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PROBLEMS AND WISHES OF MARKETING MANAGERS

• Opacity of traffic structure• Low business effectiveness (in particular, high costs of customers attraction)

Wishes• To see clear picture of audience behaviour• To estimate the results of advertising and to prognose the next ones• To understand an overall action plan

IТRODUCTION

Problems

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WHAT A USUAL MEDIA-PLAN LOOKS LIKE

In fact clicks are not important to us. To us the goal completion is important! Their price should be the key point!

INTRODUCTION

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WHAT SHOULD A MEDIA-PLAN INCLUDE ACTUALLY?

Dear boss, we got our 60 thousand clicks from XXX. The price of registration is 30% higher than it was on YYY.I think we shouldn't continue with XXX.

The figures are:We had 42k of visits, 1:06 time spend on the site, 80% bounced, viewed 1,65 pages per

visit, 2574 returning visits, 0.17% conversion to registrations

It means:The price of non-bounced visit is 12 RURThe price of pageview is 1,5 RURThe price of returning visitor is 44 RURThe price of registration 1 583 RUR

INTRODUCTION

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

INTRODUCTION

• Fully measurable users actions (not just page views)

• Integral statistics (including not only site pages, but also incoming and outgoing traggic)

• Segmentable statistics, ability to view different user groups data separately

• Actionable conclusions

• The increase of advertising degree of efficiency, PR, SEO, content, site structure

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What GA allows to do

Define site goals

Measure goals numerically

Define site performance as improvement of goals conversion rate

INTRO

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INTRO

CONVERSIONS MODEL DESCRIBE ONLY A PART OF MARKETING

Not to forget: we are measuring conversions, but not only final steps are important (see Atlas Research http://mediarevolution.ru/audience/behavior/1615.html)

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GA advantages

• Free to use, traffic limitation is not noticeable and only for large sites

• Can define goals and segment audience — both pre-filtered and post-filtered

• Open platform with API, ability of data reorganisation

• Access control

• Nicely designed reports

• Highly customizable

• Several data collection modes

• Campaign tracking

• Multilingual

• Detailed background information

• Support infrastructure (certified specialists and agencies)

• World leader's product with a developed infrastructure and integration with other products

Why GA

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DATA COLLECTION MODES

• Pageviews

• Javascript actions

• Search queries

• Events

• E-commerse

• User defined and custom vars

GA FEATURES

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GA DRAWBACKS

• Not realtime

• Time on site doesn't include last page

• Visits of the same user are reported as separate

• Direct visit is reported with the previous source

• Drops previuos source history (can use &utm_nooverride=1 to keep, but then the current is dropped)

• Doesn't show cyrillic from URLs

• Too complicated, not transparent

• Big traffic chunks sampled

• Traffic limited to 5 mln pageview/month (spend $1 /day to remove limitation)

• Doesn't now Russian federal meta-structure

• Russian translation is bad

• Google doesn't promise to keep data longer than 18 months (although it keeps for now)

GA FEATURES

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Why GA

TRAPS

• Search traffic includes both paid and non-paid• Nearly any report can be split by traffic source via drop-down menu• Visit source doesn't really show where a user came from this time. GA has its priorities, they seem to look like this: cpc > organic > referrer > direct

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Adjacent tools

• SEO: Webmaster Tools (Yandex, Google), Sitemap, Site-Auditor

• Additional counters for control purposes: LiveInternet, Rambler's Top100, Yandex.Metrica, Openstat

• Add-ons for Google Analytics: EpikOne SiteScan (installation check), Firebug и WASP (Firefox diagnostics plugin), Data Feed Query Explorer (manual API queries)

• Integration: Adwords (extended keywords stats), Adsense (for publishers — which pages earn

more)

GOOGLE TOOLS

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EPICONE SITESCAN

• Checks if GA code was broken by CMS

• Recommended by Google

• Only 1000 pages free — enough to catch a

problem if there is any

TOOLS

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GA FEATURES

What we have on screen

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GA FEATURES

SCREEN ZONES

1 — general account settings (including

language selection)

2 — choose an account

3 — choose a profile for this account

4 — choose date range and time scale

for chart

5 — setup segments (left) and choose

ones (upper right)

6 — main reports menu

7 — customizable reports

8 — view visits metrics, goal

conversions, e-commerce transactions

(content efficiency in content

reports,event — in event reports)

9 — choose report type (table, pie-

chart, bar-chart, compare to average,

summary)

10 — drop-down to choose split

parameter

11 — choose parameter (or two) to

graph

12 — extra services: subscriptions,

visualisations, animations, data export

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THREE DATA SETS

Basic metrics• View depth• Bounce rate• Time at site

Goals conversion Sales conversion

Sales page can be counted both in goals and transactions reports. The difference is seen, when the same user has made several orders. There will be one goal and several orders.

GA FEATURES

Content and Events reports have different tabs

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URL BUILDER

For companies with a large number of sources or key words it is recommended to prepare URL in Excel

GA ABILITIES

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MAKING LINKS IN EXCEL

If you use big keywords list in pay-per-click systems, create links in excel:

• Including adwords if accounts are not linked

• Use SUBSTITUTE and CONCATENATE

For example, if link is in column Е, and keyword in column А: =CONCATENATE(E1;"utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=adwordsua&utm_term=";SUBSTITUTE(A1;" ";"_"))

TOOLS

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TOOLS

Which UTM goes where

Mandatory• campaign – Campaigns reports or Campaign in drop-down• source – Source in drop-down• medium – which pie share will be added to, Medium in drop-down. There's also «Source/Medium» report (All traffic sources)

Optional• term – Keywords report, Keyword in drop-down• content – Ad Versions report, Ad Content in drop-down

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HOW TO DEFINE GOALS• Goals work only post-data, can't apply to

previously collected.

• Add goal price to transfer value to pages on the

way to this goal

• Goal could include path — mandatory (not

counted if not through these pages) or

optional (displayed as funnel).

• Different match modes: beggining of address,

part, regular expression.

TOOLS

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REGEXPS

Line start - ^ Line end - $Any character - . Dot - \.Square parenthesis — list of possible characters, intervals with minus, for example [0-9] — all digitsAny number of characters (even zero) - *1 or more of characters - +1 or zero characters - ?

Example:^/item/.*/order$Includes /item/2345/orderIncludes /item/we2d3/orderDoesn't include /item/2345/order/done

TOOLS

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E-COMMERCE — ORDER DETAILS

Includes:• Price (taxes and delivery separately)• City, region, country• SKU, title, type• Number and price of items in order

GA FEATURES

Reports include revenues, conversions, item types, daily sales

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• Not suitable for audit, just for marketing trends analysis

• E-commerce tab appears in reports

E-COMMERCE

GA FEATURES

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AUDIENCE SEGMENTATION

• Most reports are viewable only for certain audience part (segment), which is defined in segment builder

• Segment is viewable separately or with whole

traffic. Can't see just two segments.

Example: we had one campaign with different utm_campaign parameter: • vtv_yandex in Yandex, • vtv_begun in Begun and several AdWords campaigns with names like • «Persons (eng) — search» • «Persons (rus) — net».

GA FEATURES

Segment builder allows to combine them to get combined statistics for this campaign.

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VIEWING REPORTS BY SEGMENTS

• Segments are personal for you, other users of this account can't see them, until you share.

GA FEATURES

• Compare overall and «deep» traffic. Discover that teasers have only 4,73% deep visits, Begun - 12,87%, Yandex - 13,85%!

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REPORTS BUILDER

Custom reports are needed to:• Remove unneeded data• Create missing set

Two types: metrics (measurable like pages/visit) and dimensions (set of kinds, like cities).They intersect. There are some complex rules what can be intersected with what.

GA FEATURES

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WHAT USER REPORTS CAN INCLUDE

Standard reports don’t include everything. Report constructor contains 52 parameters(visitors 15, sources 10, content 8, commerce 7, computers 12), whereas usual reports contain only 23.

For example, I can make a review on a key word Source/medium and see paid and organic clicks from the same search engine separately.

GA ABILITIES

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EXAMPLE OF USER REPORTS — LANDING PAGES VALUE

GA FEATURES

Default landing pages report is just a list. If we have goal prices defined and/or we have e-commerce tracking, then we can see landing pages monetary values.

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ONE SITE — SEVERAL PROFILES

• working• no-filters backup• experimental filters

GA FEATURES

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FILTERSGA FEATURES

Easiest one — not to report own office clicks: your office admins tell what addresses your office use

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EXAMPLE OF COMPLEX FILTERHow to save original keyword

However there is a problem with the Russian language

GA FEATURES

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EXAMPLE OF COMPLEX FILTER — HOW TO SAVE ORIGINAL REFERRER

GA FEATURES

GA cleans Referral path if visit has source defined via utm. But we can use filter to save Referrer to User Defined field. Then for advertisement placement Site.ru

We can create «User defined includes site.ru» and check, who has really come from the site.ru, and who has returned from a different site (GA still shows that source is site.ru for these visits).

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WHAT TO MEASURE

CLICKS are not equal to VISITS

Example

• Visit costs more — not all clicks reach site

• Normal discount is 70-90%

• Discount can be negative, if there are many

returning visits

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QUALITY PARAMETERS

• Viewing depth is important for content sites

• Time on last page isn't measured

• Regular visitors can read for long, or just check the frontpage for updates

and leave..

• Promo-sites can have 2pages/visit, games - 7.

• More active campaign — less depth: check depth separately for new and

returning visitors.

WHAT TO MEASURE

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SCRIPT TO MEASURE TIME ON LAST PAGE

WHAT TO MEASURE

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Visitors of which countries have examined the site longer

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BOUNCE RATE

• Easiest way to assess traffic quality — a user who opens just one page and

then leaves the site.

• Normal bounce rates vary widely: 30-70%.

• Depends on site structure and landing page: if it shows a list, it's bounce rate

will be less.

• More misleading advertising — more traffic, more bounces.

• Check bounce rate separately for new visits.

WHAT TO MEASURE

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EXAMPLE — BOUNCE DEPENDS ON LANDING PAGE

WHAT TO MEASURE

Link leads to an article or an article list. Bounce differs significantly, conversion — not that much.

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TRAFFIC PIE

PR, WOM,partnerships,direct ad buys

ACTIONABLE CONCLUSIONS

SEO, PPC

Improve site structure and content, contests,WOM

Purchase of media traffic: banners and teasers (utm_medium is unknown to GA)

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LANDING PAGE

Many factors affect efficiency

ACTIONABLE CONCLUSIONS

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CONTENT AND STRUCTURE

Do pages work well:

• Which pages lose visitors most (absolure and relative)?• What goal funnels look like?• Do you give users what they look for (keywords, site

searches)?

ACTIONABLE CONCLUSIONS

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MAIN ACTIONS

• Choose the lowest goal price of ad buys

• Use search traffic quality data to adjust SEO and PPC

• Rework pages which lose traffic most

ACTIONABLE CONCLUSIONS

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EXAMPLE OF PPC USAGE

1) Export keyword reports (organic) to XLS.

2) Sort by number of visits, drop low visits lines, sort by bounce rate.

3) Take 500 words with the lowest bounce rate, import to AdWords with 1 cent

bid.

4) Getting good targeted low-frequency traffic cheap in good numbers.

ACTIONABLE CONCLUSIONS

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EXAMPLE - SEO

• SEO companies work with keyword lists. Higher frequency generate more traffic, but they are more expensive as competition is higher.

• Juxtapose organic SEO keywords to goals to decide which keywords are more profitable

to “buy”

ACTIONABLE CONCLUSIONS

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SIMPLIEST CHECKLIST

• Add Russian search engines

• Register site search

• Register javascript actions and sales

• Check setup via SiteScan

• Register Goals

• Link AdWords, AdSense accounts

• Use utm-links (make sure there are no redirects which will drop

them)

TO DO

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HOW TO ADD SEARCH ENGINES

<script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXXXXXX"); pageTracker._addOrganic("mail.ru", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("rambler.ru", "query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("qip.ru", "query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("nigma.ru", "s"); pageTracker._addOrganic("aport.ru", "r"); pageTracker._addOrganic("blogs.yandex.ru", "text"); pageTracker._addOrganic("webalta.ru", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("gogo.ru", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("poisk.ru", "text"); pageTracker._addOrganic("km.ru", "sq"); pageTracker._addOrganic("liveinternet.ru", "ask"); pageTracker._addOrganic("gde.ru", "keywords"); pageTracker._addOrganic("quintura.ru", "request"); pageTracker._addOrganic("akavita.by", "z"); pageTracker._addOrganic("meta.ua", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("bigmir.net", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("tut.by", "query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("all.by", "query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("i.ua", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("online.ua", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("a.ua", "s"); pageTracker._addOrganic("ukr.net", "search_query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("search.com.ua", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("search.ua", "query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("blogsearch.google.com", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("images.google.com", "q"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {} </script>

TO DO

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QUESTIONS?

Alex Gagingagin@promo.ru

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• These data are not for audit, they are needed for the analysis of trends

• In reports appear bookmarks “E-commerce”

ELECTRONIC COMMERCE: ABOUT ORDERS IN DETAIL

GA ABILITIES

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COMPARISON OF “REFUSAL INDEX” WITH ITS AVERAGE LEVEL

As we can see, in this case clicks from Begun are worse than those from Mail.ru.

GA ABILITIES

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EXAMINATION OF DATA ON THE SEGMENTS OF AUDIENCE

• The segments are common for all accounts that are available for you,other users of the profile can’t see your segments.

GA ABILITIES

• For example, let’s look at the whole traffic of those, who have viewed not less than three pages. We can see, that we have 32,7% of such users on Yandex Direct and the amount of such users from the banner on mail.ru is 57,3%!

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COMPARISON OF TIME DIAPASONS

GA ABILITIES

ADVICEIf you correct the date manually, click on the background after that for the button Apply to become active.

We have compared the last weeks of August and July. We can see, that the search traffic has increased (in fact it is a context advertising: GA considers it to be a search traffic, in a search report you should choose an option non-paid to have an ability to view only organic).

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COMPARISON OF TWO PARAMETERS ON THE DIAGRAM OR COMPARISON WITH THE AVERAGE LEVELS OF THE SITE

GA ABILITIES

We compare with the average level, if we take only a part of data. For example, what part of profit comes from Moscow.

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ВОЗМОЖНОСТИ GA

LINKS ON ACCOUNTS

If you copy a link from the URL bar of a browser, then you can send it to another user to show the necessary report (but not the condition of switches inside of it: for example, the time diapason of the receiver will be default). This won’t work for Custom Reports: they are personal.

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PROFILES ARE INSIDE OF THE ACCOUNT

• Profiles can be created for different sites (to be more precise, for counters) within the bounds of one project or company or for a different processing of data from the same counter.

GA ABILITIES

• Stars are used to choose quickly the ones that are necessary from the list. They are personal, other users of the account/profile can’t see them.