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Getting the most out of Google Analytics

Ben Eveloff // Assistant Professor, Lewis UniversityCMA’s Spring National College Media Conference 3.10.2013

Google Analytics is a powerful web analytics reporting tool.

This discussion shows the key features that student media organizations can use to get the most relevant data for understanding their audience.

Overview

1. Sign up for account

2. Set up account properties

Includes adding time zone, if site had subdomains, or multiple top-level domains i.e. beneveloff.com, beneveloff.org, etc.

3. Set up your tracking code

Getting started

Admin > Tracking Info

Admin > Social Settings

Adding Filters

Account list > Your account > Filters

Filter options

Account list > Your account > Filters

Predefined filters:

Exclude/Include only traffic from the domains: use this filter to exclude/include only traffic from a specific domain, such as an ISP or company network.

Exclude/Include only traffic from the IP addresses: use this filter to exclude/include only clicks from certain sources. You can enter a single IP address, or a range of addresses.

Exclude/Include only traffic to the subdirectories: use this filter to exclude/include only traffic to a particular subdirectory (such as www.example.com/motorcycles).

via support.google.com

Setting up site search tracking

Admin > Profile > Profile Settings

Terms you should know

Visits This metric is a count of sessions (visits) that have been active on your site for the

selected date range. *Visits are tracked until they leave or the session expires (after 30 minutes of inactivity).

New vs. Returning Visitors This report gives you a quick look at the ratio of new to returning visitors by

number of visits and percentage of visits.

Bounce Rate This is the percentage of visits that go to only one page before exiting the site.

Pageviews A pageview is an instance of a page being loaded by a browser. The Pageviews

metric is the total number of pages viewed; repeated views of a single page are also counted.

Direct Traffic Visitors who came directly to your site by typing in the URL or clicking a bookmark.

Referring sites Website that sends you traffic (Non-Advertising).

Organic Non-paid search engine traffic.

via support.google.com

Real-Time

Overview

Locations

Traffic Sources

Content

Audience

Overview

Demographics

Behavior

Technology

Mobile

Custom

Standard Reports

Traffic Sources

Overview

Sources Campaigns

Google Link Builder http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en

&answer=1033867

Search Engine Optimization

Social

Content

Site Content

Site Speed

Site Search

Experiments

In-Page Analytics

Standard Reports Continued

Setting up the Dashboard

+New Dashboard

Have the ability to add widgets

Also, have the ability to share, email and export to PDF

Can now break these down with advanced segments.

Resources // Conversion ULink: google.com/analytics/iq.html

Ben Eveloff

Assistant Professor, Lewis University

& Adviser of TheLewisFlyer.com

Getting in-touch

Website: BenEveloff.com

Email: BenEveloff (at) Gmail.com

Twitter: @Eveloff

Contact