A Useful Guide to Google Analytics
- 1. A useful Guide to Google Analytics
- 2. Why Are We Here? Data Driven Decision Making
- 5. Pay attention after a redesign too After a redesign, monthly traffic to a group registration form decreased by almost 80% (July 1, 2017 – October 3, 2017)
- 6. Configuration Tips In order to use the data to make decisions, you have to make sure the data is actually good.
- 7. CASE STUDY: GREAT EXPECTATIONS NEW WEBSITE
- 8. HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!
- 9. WE NEEDED TO EXCLUDE OURSELVES….
- 10. Annotations
- 11. Google Tag Manager Making analytics easier
- 12. Tag Manager
- 13. Tag Manager • Auto-Event Triggers Set a tag to fire based on certain on-site events — page views, clicks, form submissions, errors, timers, and more — without any extra code. • Click Set a tag to fire when a particular element is clicked — for example, when a user clicks “download buttom” inside your site or a ‘learn more’ button or a link that leads away from your site. • Custom Event Set a tag to fire based on a custom logged event, such as a user watching a video on your site or scrolling to a certain point on the page. • Form Submission Set a tag to fire when a particular form is submitted — no additional code required. • Page View Set a tag to fire when a particular page is viewed, like when the page URL matches your thank-you page.
- 14. Campaigns Measure your traffic coming from email, social media, advertisements, and other non-website sources
- 15. Campaign Codes
- 16. Campaign Codes
- 17. Important Metrics What are the most important pieces of data to look at?
- 18. Important Metrics We are overloaded with data. All data is not the same.
- 19. “Vanity Metrics” Pageviews is not actually terribly important. This is the modern version of the 1990s counters. Every site has its own most important metric depending on the content/audience/etc. Identify that that is for your sites.
- 20. Important Metrics So what then is important to know? • Sessions - better than Pageviews • Visitors - unique visitors, new vs. returning • Acquisition Channels - where is your traffic coming from? • Bounce Rate - how engaged are your users?
- 23. Adding a segment
- 24. Segments can... Let you use all of the standard dashboard reports...on just the content that you define in the segment.
- 25. Goals & Conversions Have a way to measure success
- 26. What is a goal? Tracked measurement of an action on your page that you have determined is valuable.
- 27. Types of goals When most people hear goal or conversion they think of tracking revenue. “GOAL” = $
- 28. Types of goals MANY different types of events you can track in Google Analytics like: • Downloads of a named PDF (ie. brochure, student handbook or PPT) • Views of a specific page (ie. application confirmation, event registration) • Completions of a form (ie. feedback form, inquiry form, newsletter sign-up form) • Engagement measurements (ie. specific time on site, # pages per visit, amount of time watching a video)
- 30. More info about goal completers
- 31. Data Studio “Beautiful data visualization starts here.” - Google
- 34. CASE STUDY: MESSAGE WHAT HAPPENED WITH HARVEY?
- 35. Questions? Erick Beck ebeck@tamu.edu Joe Prather joeprather@tamu.edu Diana Tomlin dtomlin@txamfoundation.com GoWeb Documentation https://goweb.tamu.edu/groups/analytics/
- 36. Erick Beck | Joe Prather Marketing & Communications Diana Tomlin Texas A&M Foundation April 20, 2018