extreme analytics

Extreme Analytics #12NTCanalytics

Jo Miles Food & Water Watch @josmiles

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Analytics: It’s a jungle in there

…though we do not know the way

We’re going on an adventure

We’ll cover a lot of ground

1. Where are we going?

2. Planning the trip

3. Navigating the jungle

4. Don’t forget to explore

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Before starting any journey, pick your destination!

What do these tell you?

What are your online goals?

Raise Money

Drive Advocacy

Build Email List

You should have goals defined for your website

Turn goals… into actions

Raise Money Complete a

Donation Form

Drive Advocacy Complete an

Advocacy Form

Build Email List

Complete a Sign Up Form

Turn actions… into analytics

Complete a Donation Form

donate-thank-you.html

Complete an Advocacy Form

action-completed.html

Complete a Sign Up Form

sign-up-thanks.html

Analytics is about goals

• Your data should help you reach your goals

• If it doesn’t, get better data

Your Data

Your Goal

Good data is

• Specific

• Comparable

• Relevant

• Actionable

Which kind of data are you using?

Bad data: “42% of our visitors are new!”

Good data: “Only 5% of our visitors come from Facebook, but 70% of Facebook visitors are new, and 45% of them take action! That’s much better than our average visitor. Let’s invest more energy in Facebook.”

What does this even mean?

PLANNING THE TRIP

This is your website

Viewed any article on fracking

Interacted with a widget

Watched a video

Clicked an important

button

Took any action

Signed up for email

Made a donation

Viewed our annual report

What you want to track

You mean I need MORE data?

Wait a minute.

Ok, then. How do I track all of this?

Goals

Everyone (including you!) should use goals.

Use goals to:

– Identify your most important pages

– Measure conversion rates

– Track bailout

Goals can have funnels

Use funnels to look at for bailout in processes that are:

– well-defined

– multi-step

– E.g. shopping cart

View cart

Enter shipping info

Enter billing info

Complete checkout

A simple goal and funnel

Donation Form – Step 1

• Funnel Step 1 (not your goal)

Donation Form – Step 2

• Funnel Step 2 (not your goal)

Thank You Page

• Goal URL (This IS your goal!)

For even more powerful goals, learn regular expressions

Why are goals so great?

• They show up in almost every report

• You can measure, compare, and improve conversion rates!

Your homework

When you go back to your hotel tonight:

– Find the thank you page for your donation form

– Set up a donation goal

– Extra credit: Create a funnel for your goal

Events

Good for tracking most “stuff” that’s not a page:

• Clicks

• Interactions

• Dynamic content

• Widgets

• Videos of baby polar bears

How to create an event

• One line of easy JavaScript: _trackEvent(category, action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)

• Attach it to any trigger:

– Click

– Form submission

– Function call

– Any place you can call JS

Naming your events

• You get 4 fields – use them consistently!

• An event for playing a video:

– Category = “Videos”

– Action = “Play”

– Label = “Video Name”

– Value = Seconds watched

• In action: <a href="#" onClick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Videos', 'Play', 'Polar Bear']);">Play</a>

New! Event-based goals

• Create a goal to match any event!

– Or a set of events

• Treat interactions like conversions

eCommerce

• All goals are equal

• But all donations are not

• Treat your donations as transactions

– Record the amount!

– Find your most valuable donation sources

$1500 $50

$100

Custom variables

Like events… but not exactly

– 3 “scopes” – they can persist

– Only 5 “slots”

When in doubt,

use events instead

Tracking: The Balancing Act

NAVIGATING THE JUNGLE

The Landscape of the New Version

• New interface looks like the old one…

– Except everything has moved

• Handy tools and shortcuts…

– If you know where to look

Reports are reorganized

Navigate from the top and side

New navigation

New visitors, technology, geography, and visitor flow

Just what it sounds like

Just what it sounds like, plus SEO

Pages, site search, events

Goals, eCommerce, and multi-channel

Reports in sneaky places

Watch out for “tabs” within reports in the new version

Filters Hide useless data. Focus on what matters.

Viewing & Sorting

View your data as a pie chart, performance comparison, and more

Sort by any column

The Timeline

Graph two metrics at once

Graph by day, week, or month

Add annotations for reference – when you make changes, or when big events happen

The 2nd Dimension

Add depth to your data by picking a second field (instead of drilling down)

Goals, right in your reports

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Advanced segments

Apply common segments to your reports:

– New/Returning visitors

– Search/Direct/Referrals

– Visits with conversions

– Mobile

– Non-bounce visits

Custom segments

Make and save your very own segments… based on any criteria you can think of

A Segmented Report

Set your advanced segments from any report!

…and now, see them in context

Put it all together

To find high-performing referring sites, you could:

– View traffic source report

– Add landing page as second dimension

– Sort by goal conversion rate

– Filter out traffic from sites you own

– Filter out sources with less than 100 visits

– Segment to show only new visitors

A side-trip: Cross-domain tracking

Where did these people really come from?

Why it happens

• Google Analytics uses cookies

• Cookies are single-domain

– Only the domain that created a cookie can read that cookie

• But your website has multiple domains!

Why it happens

• You think you’re one visitor on one site

• But GA thinks you’re two visitors on two domains!

• Solution: cross-domain tracking!

A story about cross-domain

You’re going on a cross-Atlantic flight. Before leaving SFO, you take out $1000 in cash.

But your plane crashes on a mysterious island!

You’re greeted by strange people called the Dharma Initiative.

You need to buy supplies…

But they won’t take your US money!

What do you do?


You exchange $1,000 for $687 Dharma-Bucks, of course!

Now, you can go about your business.


The need for cross domain tracking

In this story:

– The USA and the Island are two different web domains

– Money is your GA data

– Cross-domain tracking is the exchange rate

Setting up for Multiple Domains

1. Update your GA code to allow cross-domain:

_gaq.push(['_setDomainName','foodandwaterwatch.org']); Allows tracking across sub-domains

_gaq.push(['setAllowLinker','true']); Gives permission for cross-domain tracking to be used…

2. Write code to handle cross-domain linking. Call GA’s “link” function:

Every time you link to another domain you own

Every time a form submits across domains

While you’re at it…

As long as you’re setting up cross-domain tracking, you can detect and track other kinds of links:

– External links

– PDF downloads

– Other file downloads

EXPLORING THE JUNGLE

The Analytics Mindset

Be on a mission…

…and be an explorer

at the same time.

Look for the weird

• What is “unusual” for you?

– A huge spike in traffic?

– A very high conversion rate?

– A sudden increase in bounce rate?

• Look for a reason – don’t assume the best (or worst)

• Look below the surface…

What’s this?

Surprise!

What does this mean?

When you see an anomaly, dig deeper!

– Filter

– Segment

– Find related occurrences

A cautionary note

• As you look at smaller segments, data may lose significance.

• A 50% conversion rate is:

– Amazing, for 50,000 visitors

– Just a coincidence, for 10 visitors

USEFUL TOOLS AND WILD NEW FEATURES

Know where you are: Make useful dashboards

Your personalized dashboard

• Keep it simple

• Two questions to ask yourself:

– Is this report related to my goals?

– Is this a report I should look at often?

Some useful dashboard reports

• Topline goal conversion rates

• Top keywords this month (excluding branded keywords)

• Top traffic sources to action pages (excluding email)

• Top articles, blog posts, and action pages

• Top donation sources

Know your content

Use these 3 kinds of content reports:

1. Pages report

– What are they looking at?

2. Landing page report

– How did they get here? Is “here” the right place for them to be?

3. Exit page report

– Why did they leave? Is this a natural exit point, or did they lose interest?

Site search: Read your visitors’ minds!

How to set up site search (in 30 seconds or less)

1. Do a search on your site

2. Look at the results URL: – http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/?s=fracking&x=0&y=0

– Your search parameter is “s”

3. Plug all search parameters into Site Search settings, and enable!

Visitor flow

Now that’s a jungle!

Real-time reporting

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Multi-channel funnels

• Normally, you look at activity just before a conversion

• But what if other channels helped them convert?

Multi-channel conversions

Questions we couldn’t answer before:

– How long did it take them to convert?

– How many ways did they reach our site?

– What is the true value of each channel?

• SEO

• Advertising

LET’S GET OUR FEET BACK ON THE GROUND…

Three steps to plan your analytics journey

1. What’s my destination? (What am I trying to accomplish with my website?)

2. What route do I take? (What specific parts of my site should be making this happen?)

3. What tools do I need? (How do I track those parts?)

Make your plan, then follow through

• Get all your tracking in place first

• Then, start your journey!

– Explore your data

– Keep an eye on your goals

The End?

Not really.

This journey has no end.

Thank You!

Jo Miles

Food & Water Watch

[email protected]

@josmiles

Please review this session! #12NTCanalytics at www.nten.org/ntc/eval

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