google analytics for store owners - basic
DESCRIPTION
Miva Merchant Conference 2012 Breakout Session by Kimberly Hodel.TRANSCRIPT
CONFERENCE 2012March 7 - 10, 2012
GOOGLE ANALYTICS 101: A PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN
GETTING TO KNOW THE BASICS
Kimberly Hodel
What is Google Analytics?
What is Web Analytics?
• Data vs. Information• Turning meaningless data into actionable
information
• Google collects the data… • …But it's up to you to make it useful.
Understanding the data
What does Web Analytics do?
What does it measure?
• Each page on the site and how visitors navigate through them
• How the visitor arrived (keyword, search engine)• When they last came/how often they come back• Where they came from (geographically)• If they achieved the goals you set for them
Web Analytics is a process
Take Action
Learn
Measure
Taking Action
Action = $$$• Why don't more organizations take action?
• Don't know what to do(lack of web analysis understanding)
• Don’t have someone to do it(lack of resources to execute changes)
•Understand what's important(…and what’s not.)•Put data in context•Segment and analyze data•Find actionable insights
What do Web Analysts do?
What is the goal of your site? Lead generation, mailing list, information (blog), or in our case –
Ecommerce
•“Dollar Impact” that's not an immediate conversion•How do I categorize & determine the value on traffic?
There is actionable economic value for
every action
Google Analytics Menus
GA 4
GA 5
What can we measure?
Audience: Who came to our site
Where do they live?
Have they been here before?
How often do they come back?
Did they share with any friends?
Getting Started with Google Analytics
Tracking Code
So, how does it work?
• Cookie based, but may move towards server based (time stamps) in the future
• If the visitor leaves the site, and searches again… GA Will count it as a new visit if they come back through a different source, and more than 30minutes has elapsed since their previous visit
User Access Types
View reports only• Cannot make
configuration changes, such as creating goals or adding other users
Account administrator• Has complete
control over the account and all of the profiles within
• There is no “audit trail” with these accounts, so be careful. (no way to track who did what when)
You can specify access on a profile-by-profile basis
Account Overview - USER
Login does NOT have to be a
Gmail account
Note: User login MAY have access to multiple GA accounts
Account Overview - PROFILE
Separate “buckets” of data
within an account
Can create different
profiles for different websites
Can collect different set of data, filtered a different way, for the same
website
Dashboard
Good snapshot, but the data is very dependent on context
Site Usage Metrics Definitions
Visits: Number of distinct sessions in which someone interacted with the site
• Within a 30 minute period of time• “Number of times people enter the front door of a store”
Pageviews: Number of times pages on your site were loaded
• If this number is 1, it's a bounce
Pages/Visit: Average number of pageviews in a single visit
• “I come to your site, I puke, and I leave”• Lower is better (less visits bounced)• Can be misleading when taken out of context
(For instance: high bounce rate on a contact information page that contains a phone number)
Bounce Rate: Percentage of single-page visits
Site Usage Metrics Definitions
Time on site: length of time a visit lasted, from first pageview to last pageview
• Aggregate/not useful alone • Great when in conjunction with engagement reports
% New visits: percentage of visits my visitors who had never been to the site
• Segmentation: new folks vs. returning• Users have a different experience when it's their first time/when they've been to the site before• Getting people to log in helps show truly returning visitors, because it shows the different devices the same visitor might use
Conversion Rate: #of conversion/# of visits
• “Did they do what we wanted them to do?”(Fill out a form, buy something, etc)
• “Convert” them from a mere visitor to a “Customer”
Site Usage Metrics: Good and Bad
Mostly interested in comparing different groups of visitors or trends over time Don’t focus on absolute numbers
Info is ALWAYS dependent on context:What type of site you have?
What really matters is moving in the right direction“Is it better than (last month)?”
Choosing the Metrics that Matter:
What metrics might help measure your success?
• Ecommerce: Conversion Rate (purchases, form sign-ups)• Content sites: Time on site, Pages/Visit
Don’t forget the intermediate steps to success:
• Did they go past the landing page? (bounce rate)• Did they view a key page of information? (conversion rate)
Putting it All Together Into a Story
Traffic SourcesHow Did They Get Here?
Why do we care how they got there?
Marketing people: are their marketing/advertising efforts
successful in generating traffic?
SEO people: is the site getting enough attention through search engines?
Partners/affiliates: how much traffic are they
channeling to your site?
Basically, a good idea of the “health” of the site
Overview – The 3 Big Buckets
Direct: URL typed directly in to an address bar, or a bookmark• As far as GA can discern, you didn't come from somewhere else• Bookmark might not be direct! It depends on where/when you got your cookies
Referring: Followed a link from another site• Social media, email, advertisement, etc
Search Engines: searched by typing a keyword and clicking on a result• Can be organic or CPC (paid)
All Traffic Sources Report
All Traffic Sources Report - DEFINITIONS
Medium - “How”
• The channel through which the visitor came (referral, direct, etc)• Good to keep broad/general
Source - “Who”
• Where the came from – what other site, what search engine (specifics)
All Traffic Sources Report
Dimension: a ROW in reports = label
• Represents a variety of labels applied to the data, such as where they came from or what page they viewed
Metric: a COLUMN in reports = measurement
• Represents a measurement made on a visit, such as time on site or bounce rate
All Traffic by Medium
Tabs: same data, different measurements
Ecommerce
Goal Set
Site Usage
Use the different chart views available
Performance view – “Performance in a visual manner”
Digging in to Traffic Sources:
Using the chart over time: Measuring trends
•Use the calendar to set date ranges •Make sure to compare not just the same number of days, but instead line up weekday to weekday to get the most accurate info•Don't use it “Daily” - go by week/month
Digging in to Traffic Sources
•“As far as GA can tell, you came right to the site.”
Direct
•Shows what sites, and then goes in to expanded detail•View “Individual referring pages” to see what pages visitors are coming from
Referral
Percentage View
“Quantity in a pretty chart”
Paid vs Organic
Paid:
sponsored
ppc (pay-per-click)
cpc (cost-per-click)
Filter by Keyword
Campaign Traffic Tracking your marketing and advertising
Important Questions to Ask
How did the visitor get to my
site?
Which
source
brought the
most?
Which
source
was the
most profitable
?
Which
source
had the
highest
bounce
rate?
What was the ROI on
that ad
campaign?
Getting in to the right bucket
Be consistent!Use the same words you chose to follow certain campaigns
GA will count “Seminars” and “seminars” as different things
Helpful Reminders
Don't make things more complicated/granular than you have to
Use ONLY for external marketing links! - Using this within your own site will make a mess of your data!
Outlook links will show as direct, Gmail/Ymail/web based mail will show as referral – tagging this information gives you usable segments
Campaigns in AdWords will automatically populate here as long as your accounts are properly linked
Remember, these are just the basics...
Campaign, Source, Medium, and Content
Campaign:•Aggregate overall of marketing initiative•Biggest “bucket” - “spring2012” or “seminars”
Source:•Who brought them to my site?•Newsletter, New York Times, Yahoo
(Yes, Yahoo – manually set “where” the traffic source is coming from to make sure your info goes in to the right bucket.)
Medium•How did they learn about my site?•Radio, TV, print, email
Content•What did they click on?•You can track the how many people click on an ad banner vs. a button•Determine which visual items are getting more attention
So... How do we do this?
• Control the link you use so that it doesn't pollute other info!• Example: Campaign: spring2012, Source: newsletter, medium:
• Link address the user sees: www.domain.com/SpringDeals
• The real link address: www.domain.com/SpringDeals?utm_campaign=spring2012&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
..Gosh, that's an ugly link...
Google's URL Builder Tool
Content: What did they look at on the site?
Content creators care about what content is popular• Helps judge the success of existing content
and on how to decide on new content to add to site
Merchandisers care about what products visitors are exposed to
Marketers care about landing pages for campaigns and whether they draw visitors
further in to the site
Content Overview - “Aggregate Health Check”
Content Reports: Identifying Pages
URL •This is base URL, i.e. www.domain.com/category/product.html
Title •Designated by your meta title
URL by subdirectory •Content Drilldown
Top Content
All the top pages viewed, regardless of where they're located in the site
Content by TITLE
Unique page titles are important!
• If multiple pages have the same title, GA will lump them together in this report
Content Metrics
•This does not include page reloads, or the same customer viewing the same page multiple times in one visit
Unique Pageviews: The number of visits during which the
page was viewed
•A high exit rate on your final checkout URL would be good!•...A high exit rate on your landing page would be bad.•Actionable insight:•% Exit isn't always useful – every one leaves the site from somewhere•…But it can be useful in regards to navigational pages designed to lead visitors down a certain path
% Exit: The portion of visits for
which this page was the last page
viewed
Top Landing Pages
Entrance Keywords
Terms like “(not set)” more common now due to Google’s new “secure search”
Site Search – I spy what you spy
Best Practice:Track Internal SearchesVisitors tend to
have a more specific mindset
when searching on a site vs. in Google
Learn exactly what your visitors are
looking for
Site Search Metrics Definitions:
Total Unique Searches: The number of searches performed
• Does not count identical searches within one visit
Results Pageviews/Search: Number of result pages viewed in the search
• “Are the visitors looking for things I don't offer?”• “Am I reaching the right audience?”
Search Exits: Percentage of visits that exited the site after the search
• “Am I losing the people who actually came searching for what I offer?”• “Why did I lose the sale?”
Site Search Metrics Definitions:
% Search refinements: Percentage of searches that resulted in another search
• People trust search engines so much that they're more likely to modify their search terms than the are to go to page 2 of a search• “What are they REALLY looking for?”
Time after Search: Time spent on the site after a search was completed
• How long does it take them to find the content they're searching for?
Search Depth: Number of pages viewed after a search
Audience: Who’s out there?
Demographics: It's a small, small, world...
Geographic and Language data “Language” is what language
the physical computer is set to
Behavior
New vs. Returning Have they ever been here before?
Frequency & Recency How often do they come back?
EngagementHow long did they stay
How many pages did they look at?
Technology and Mobile Reports
What devices, browsers, operating systems are your visitors using?
Social Reports
Conversions: Goals & Ecommerce
•What are the measures of success for visitors on your site?•Negative goals can be used to check for and associate problems
Goals: Did they do what
we’d hoped?
Two Types of Goals
URL Goals:
Visitor reaches a particular page
Configure funnels if there are a certain number of
steps that leads the visitor to this conclusion
Engagement Goals:
Metric reaches a numeric threshold
“Non-impulse oriented”
Pages/Visit, Time on site
Ecommerce
• How is conversion rate determined?• Number of conversions divided by the number of visits
• What does Ecommerce tracking do?• Tracks transactions (products, quantities, dollar value,
shipping costs, etc)• Tracks the success of your website by sales/revenue
Goal FunnelsVisualize your goal completions and identify possible abandonment issues
Sharing is caring
• Communicate your data• Remember – you can configure users who can either
view OR modify reports
• “Potential Value”• the data needs to get in to the hands of the people who
can take action on your insights.
Apply the knowledge!