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Google Analytics Concepts

marzo de 2.010

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Introduction

With Google Analytics we can:

● make informed site and content decisions

● increase conversions

● measure keyword and ad performance

● track a wide variety of metrics

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How Does GA Work?

● Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) JavaScript in each page of our site

● Google Analytics only uses first-party cookies

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What happens if ...

someone who blocks their cookies

→ not tracked

someone who deletes their cookies

→ tracked but identified as a new visitor

someone who disables JavaScript

→ not tracked

cached pages → tracked if connected to the internet

JavaScript error on the page → not tracked if the error occurs before the tracking code is executed

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GA Tracking Code

● You'll sometimes need to paste the GATC at the top of the page:

● tracking ecommerce transactions

● tracking across multiple domains or subdomains

● using iframes

● using custom JavaScript functions that may conflict with ga.js

● New asynchronous tracking code.

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Interpreting Reports

● Create context● compare with other metrics

● look for trends

● Data driven decision making

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Pageviews, Visits and Visitors [1]

pageview: is counted every time a page on your site loads

visit (session): period of interaction between a browser and a website. Closing the browser or staying inactive for 30 minutes ends the visit.

visitor: is uniquely identified by a Google Analytics cookie

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Pageviews, Visits and Visitors [2]

unique pageview: number of visits during which page was viewed

absolute unique visitor: each visitor is counted only once during the selected date range

new and returning visitor

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Pageviews, Visits and Visitors [3]

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Time Metrics [1]

time on page (n) = timestamp (n+1) – timestamp (n)

The time on page of the last page on a visit is always 0, because there's not timestamp GA can use to calculate the time.

time on site = sum(time on page) for a visit

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Time Metrics [2]

avg. time on page = time on site / (pageviews – exits)

pages with time on page 0 are excluded from the calculation

avg. time on site = sum(time on site) for all visits / visits

pages with time on page 0 are not excluded from the calculation

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Traffic Sources

● where the traffic is coming from on the internet?

● which source is sending the best quality traffic?● e.g. small bounce rate

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Traffic Sources

direct traffic: bookmark or URL typed directly into the browser

referral traffic: via a link in any web site

search engine traffic: click in a search results link in a search engine

organic: non-paid

paid: ads

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Keywords

● What were visitors expecting to find on your site?

● You fail to meet their expectation:● high bounce rate

● low goal conversion rate

● e-commerce per visit value

● Which landing pages are being used for a keyword?

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Campaign Attribution

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GA Accounts [1]

● One Google username:● up to 25 GA accounts

● can be added as an administrator to an unlimited number of GA accounts

● Administrators can:● create filters, profiles, goals

● add users

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GA Accounts [2]

● Users:● read-only access to reports

● can be restricted to specific profiles

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Profiles [1]

● Profile: set of rules that define what data is to be included in the reports

● Examples:● subdomains

● sections of a site

● filtered data (access control)

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Profiles [2]

● The settings of a profile include:● user access

● goals

● filters

Each domain has a unique tracking code number (property number)

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Campaign Tracking and AdWords Integration

● Autotagging:● reports are automatically populated with click, cost,

… of every keyword you buy

● if autotagging is not enabled, unpaid and paid clicks will look they came from the same source: google/organic

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AdWords Data● Clicks

● Cost

● CTR (Click-through Rate) = ( clicks / impressions ) * 100

● CPC (Cost per Click)

● RPC (Revenue per Click)

● ROI (Return on Investment) = ( E-commerce Revenue + Total Goal Value - Cost) / Cost

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Data Discrepancies

● Clicks (AdWords) vs. Visits (GA)

● Browser preferences (JavaScript, cookies)

● Unable to load GATC or GATC missing

● AdWords filtering

● Report data sync

● Destination URLs not tagged

● Redirects

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Tracking Online Marketing

● You can add tags with campaign identifying to your destination URLs in paid links:● keyword links

● banners

● links inside emails

● Manual URL tagging => query string

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Tags● Always:

● utm_source: advertiser (google, yahoo, …)

● utm_medium: marketing medium (cpc, banner, email, …)

● utm_campaign: campaign name

● Optional:● utm_term: paid search keyword

● utm_content: ad version

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Tagging Examples

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Goals [1]

● Goal: website objetive

● Types:● URL destination goal

– head match (/offer1/)

– exact match (/offer1/signup.html)

– regexp match (/.*/signup\.html)

● Time on Site goal

● Pages/Visit goal

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Funnels

● Funnel: ● the set of steps, or pages, that

you expect visitors to visits on their way to complete the conversion

● URL destination goals

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Funnel Numbers

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Goals [2]

● Goal Value (optional): assign monetary value to non-ecommerce goals

● During a visit: ● goal conversions => once

● e-commerce transactions => multiple times

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Filters

● Modify data:● remove data from internal sources

● restrict data for a profile or user

● segment data

● Customize reports

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Filters and Profiles [1]

● Filters are applied to profiles

● It is recommended to maintain an unfiltered profile

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Filters and Profiles [2]

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Filter Types

● Predefined filters:● exclude traffic from a domain

● exclude traffic from a IP address

● include only traffic to a subdirectory

● Custom filters:

filter type | filter field | filter pattern

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Custom Filters

● filter type:

● exclude

● include

● lowercase / uppercase

● search & replace

● advanced

● filter field:

● request URI

● hostname

● page title

● …

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Cookies [1]

● Cookies are text files that describe a small piece of information about a visitor or the visitor's computer.

● Google Analytics:● first-party cookies

● your site can uniquely but anonymously identify individual visitors

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Cookies [2]

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__utma: Visitor Identifier

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__utmb & __utmc: Session Identifiers

● Session (or visit) => 30 minutes of inactivity

● Each time de GATC is executed, __utmb is set to expire in 30 minutes.

● When the visitor loads a page, the GATC checks for both the __utmb and __utmc cookies. If either one is missing GA knows it's a new session.

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__utmz: Campaign Values [1]

● The session number increments for every session during which the campaign cookie gets overwritten.

● The campaign number increments every time you arrive at the site by a different campaign or organic search, even if it is within the same session.

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__utmz: Campaign Values [2]

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__utmv: Visitor Segmentation

● Only set if the site calls the _setVar() method

● _setVar() => deprecated

● _setCustomVar()

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E-commerce Tracking [1]

● Enable e-commerce reporting in your website profile

● Add the GATC

● Add some additional code to track each transaction

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E-commerce Tracking [2]

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Revenue Metrics

● Calculated based on:● the goal values:

– Per Visit Goal Value

● the e-commerce revenue:– Revenue

– Average Value (of an e-commerce transaction)

– Per Visit Value

● goal Values + e-commerce revenue:– RPC, ROI, Margin, $Index

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$Index

● $Index is a way of ranking the pages that have the most impact on site profitability

(Goal Value + E-commerce Revenue) / Unique Views of Page Before Conversion

● Useful as a way of ranking pages

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$Index Example

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Tracking across Domains [1]

● Add the following lines to the GATC on all pages of both domains:

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Tracking across Domains [2]

● Add _link() to all links between domains:

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_linkByPost()

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Tracking Subdomains

● Add the following line to the GATC on all pages of each subdomain:

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Best Practice #1

● Create separate profiles for each subdomain:

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Best Practice #2

● To differentiate between visits to identically named pages:

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Domains with Subdomains● Add:

● _link() & _linkByPost()

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Advanced Segmentation

● Isolate and analyze subsets of your traffic:● visits from California

● visits with purchases of $100 or more

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Advanced Segments vs. Filtered Profiles

● Advanced Segments:– can be applied to historical data

– are available across all domains and profiles

– can be compared side-by-side in the reports

– are easier to create

● Filtered Profiles:– to permanently alter or restrict the data that appears in a

profile

– if you need to restrict user access to a subset of data

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Internal Site Search

● Analyzing internal search can help you identify:● missing or hidden content

● ineffective search results

● keywords not previously identified for search campaigns

http://javiervidal.net/?s=hola+mundo

query parameter: s

(Can be provided up to 5 query parameters)

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Site Search Reports [1]● Site Search Usage: compares performance of users

who use site search versus those who do not

● Site Search Terms: only includes visits where a search is performed

– can compare metrics between internal search queries

– useful for identifying new keywords– can be combined with segmentation

● Search Refinement: View the keywords visitors used to refine their original searches

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Site Search Reports [2]

● Search Navigation: See where visitors who search on a specific keyword go after viewing the search results page

● Start Pages: Shows you where visitors begin using the search function (useful to assess the effectiveness of landing pages)

● Destination Pages

● Trending

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Goal Conversion and Site Search

● Goal conversions in the Site Search reports are based on visits that include at least one search

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Event Tracking & Virtual Pageviews

● Cases where a pageview is not generated:● Flash

● AJAX

● file downloads

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Virtual Pageviews

● Call _trackPageview(filename)

● Best practices:● Adopt a consistent and clear naming convention

● Filter out the virtual pageviews in a separate profile, for example, use a virtual directory, /virtual

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Event Tracking

● Event tracking will not generate an extra pageview

● You can easily organize your events in:● categories

● actions

● labels

● values

● _trackEvent()

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_trackEvent()

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Advantages of Event Tracking

● Analyze user interactions in much greater detail

● Avoid inflating your pageview count

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Custom Visitor Segmentation

● Predefined segmentation variables: City, Language

● Custom segmentation variables● _setVar() => only one (visitor-level)

● _setCustomVar()

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Member vs Non-Member

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_setVar() [deprecated]

● __utmv cookie

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_setCustomVar()

_setCustomVar(index, name, value, scope)

● index: slot 1-5

● scope:● 1: visitor-level

● 2: session-level

● 3: page-level

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Interesting URLs

http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/?hl=en

http://www.seorabbit.com/google-analytics-individual-qualification-test-notes

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/915172/GAIQ_examples.zip

¡gracias!