Thoughts about“Google Analytics Tips:

10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!”by Avinash Kaushik

Dana ChinnLecturer

@danachinn

2

What people say they did what they thinkand

why as captured by surveys, focus groups, social media, usability studies

Two types of analytics data

Behavioral research

What people did as captured by an action taken on a keyboard or mouse

Attitudinal research

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Unique visitors

visit a site

and generate

page views

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What actions indicate engagement?

Visit, regularly

View content, a lot

Interact, often -- rate, print, vote, take a poll, click on an ad -- share, e-mail, comment, contribute

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Start with an overall view

of visits by week

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15visits

Google “Analytics measures both visits and visitors in your account.

“Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site.”

Google Analytics: The Difference Between Clicks, Visits, Visitors, Pageviews, and Unique Pageviews

or sessions

Analytics Measurement Model – E-commerce

Market Motive/Avinash Kaushik

Visits that come from…

Start here

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Segment…

…or die!

-- Justin Cutroni, Cardinal Path

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Segment #1: Sources Overview report

Where did an external visitor come from?Did they come based on actions we took?

Needs to be custom coded

Visits that come from…

10Graphs from “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik

Balanced Too reliant on search

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Facebook, Twitter and other third-party social media services are considered “referring sites”

Too reliant on social media?

Or a site architecture / Google Analytics set-up issue?

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Segment: Visits that came from branded vs. unbranded search terms

Brand name

Topic you want to be known for

Name of your CEO

Advertising slogan

Topic you don’t want to be known for

Topic you didn’t know you were known for

Visits from people who were signed in into Google

Visits from branded search

Visits from unbranded search

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Segment #2: Landing Pages report

Visits that came from search or Facebook or from a bookmark or from an e-mail campaign…

Where did they land?

What happened when they got there? Did they stay? Buy? Leave?

14A bounce: a visit with only one page view

Bounce rate The percent of visits

with only one page view

“I came. I saw. I puked.”-- Avinash Kaushik on bounce rate

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Site bounce rate “Forty-six percent of the 11.1 million visits that came to our site in the last 12 monthsbounced.

In other words, there were five million times someone came to the site, looked at one page, and left.”

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Site bounce rate: Interesting…

…but ultimately not actionable

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Landing page bounce rates by traffic sourcegive actionable insights

How many people came to the site directly….

…and landed on the home page…

…and bounced?

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Segment #3: Goals report

Visits that came from search or Facebook or from a bookmark or from an e-mail campaign…

…and resulted in a micro-conversion

vs.

a macro-conversion

vs.

?

19Images from Market Motive and “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik

Goals and goal values differ by company and project

Goals need to be set up in Google Analytics

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“Funnels provide a wealth of actionable information that can have an immediate effect on website success.

“Any defined processes, no matter how small, should be measured using a funnel.”

-- Justin Cutroni

Segment #4: Conversion funnels report

From “Applying Google Analytics Goal and Funnel Techniques,” by Justin Cutroni, Public Media Metrics

Landing page with internal search window

Of all of the visits that came in directly, how many converted, or resulted in a sale?

Internal search results

Product description and price

Product added to cart

Account sign-in

Review / pymt.

Purchase confirmation

page

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3

4

5

6

22From “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics” (third edition), by Brian Clifton

100% conversion Most common Optimal

Ill-defined Poorly converting

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Segment #5: Multi-Channel Funnel Assisted Conversions Report

From “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik

Visits from

…that resulted in a conversion

“If all your campaigns always include campaign tracking parameters, this report is really good at answering this critical question:

Is channel x more likely to be at the end of the conversion process or drive traffic that might convert later via a different channel?

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80% of visitsdid NOT use a mobile device

20% of visits DID use a mobile device

Should we use a mobile-optimized,responsive design for our site?

20%

20%

80%

Segment #6: Mobile Devices Report (mobile web)

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4

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Visits to a mobile site result in different behavior and outcomes…

Old mobile web site – same as full-sized site

New mobile web site New full-sized web site

…and thus need to be analyzed differently – and separately

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Segment #7: In-Page Analytics Report

Image from “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik

How do these click percentages differ by traffic source and landing page?

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Only small percentages of visits to our site come from cities and states we’re targeting with our new marketing campaign.

Segment #8: Location Report

So what?

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U.S.53%80,354

India8%11,439

China5%7,188

Canada, UK5%7,393 All other

29%45,008

“All other” includes 183 countries, each with 1 percent or less.“Other U.S.” includes other states, each with 5 percent or less.

Calif.24%36,639

OtherU.S.29%43,715

Get the data out of Google Analytics and put it in a format that’s meaningful for your company’s business goals

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Segment #9: Site Search Terms Report

What were they looking for that they didn’t see on the landing page? What search terms did they use?

Did the search results give them what they wanted? Did they leave the site when they saw the results? Did they search again?

Visits that use your site’s internal search engine:

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Are the external search terms – paid and organic – the same as internal search terms?

Brand name

Topic you want to be known for

Name of your CEO

Advertising slogan

Topic you don’t want to be known for

Topic you didn’t know you were known for

Visits from people who were signed in into Google

Visits from branded search

Visits from unbranded search