Google Analytics for Store Owners - Basic
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The document summarizes a presentation about using Google Analytics to understand website traffic. It discusses what Google Analytics is and how it collects data to provide insights. It explains how to understand key metrics like visits, pageviews, bounce rate, and conversion rate. It also covers how to analyze traffic sources like direct, referring, and organic search traffic. The presentation provides guidance on setting up profiles and users, navigating the interface, and choosing the right metrics to measure business goals and success.
Google Analytics for Store Owners - Basic
- 1. CONFERENCE 2012 March 7 - 10, 2012
- 2. Kimberly Hodel GOOGLE ANALYTICS 101: A PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN GETTING TO KNOW THE BASICS
- 3. What is Google Analytics?
- 4. 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.
- 6. 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
- 7. Web Analytics is a process Take Measure Action Learn
- 8. 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)
- 9. • Understand what's important (…and what’s not.) What do Web • Put data in context Analysts • Segment and analyze data do? • Find actionable insights
- 10. What is the goal of your site? Lead generation, mailing list, information (blog), or in our case – Ecommerce There is • “Dollar Impact” that's actionable not an immediate economic conversion value for • How do I categorize every & determine the action value on traffic?
- 11. Google Analytics Menus GA 4 GA 5
- 12. What can we measure? Audience: Who Traffic sources: How Content: What did Goals: Where came to our site did they get here? they look at? they successful? Did they Where do they Bookmark Which pages? complete the live? goal? Have they Where did they If not, where been here Link enter and did we lose before? leave? them? Search engine How often do What did they (keyword? they come search for Paid or back? (inside the site) organic?) Did they share Email with any marketing friends? AdWords campaign
- 13. Getting Started with Google Analytics
- 14. 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
- 15. User Access Types View reports only Account administrator • Has complete control over the • Cannot make configuration account and all of the profiles within changes, such as creating goals or adding other users • 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
- 16. Account Overview - USER You can assign any email address as a GA login Note: User login MAY have access to multiple GA accounts Login does NOT have to be a Gmail Know who account your Better to not users/admins use a personal are (maintain email, when control over possible your accounts)
- 17. Account Overview - PROFILE Separate “buckets” of data within an account Can collect Can create different set of different data, filtered a profiles for different way, different for the same websites website
- 18. Dashboard Good snapshot, but the data is very dependent on context
- 19. 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 Pages/Visit: Average number of pageviews in a single visit • If this number is 1, it's a bounce Bounce Rate: Percentage of single-page visits • “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)
- 20. 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”
- 21. 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)?”
- 22. 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)
- 23. Putting it All Together Into a Story “Recently I visited Coolstuff.com for the first time (new visitor). I arrived there by clicking on a link from another site (traffic source). I only looked at the one page before leaving (bounce).”
- 24. Traffic Sources How Did They Get Here?
- 25. 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
- 26. 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)
- 27. All Traffic Sources Report
- 28. 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)
- 29. 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
- 30. All Traffic by Medium
- 31. Tabs: same data, different measurements Site Usage Goal Set Ecommerce
- 32. Use the different chart views available Performance view – “Performance in a visual manner”
- 33. 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
- 34. Digging in to Traffic Sources • Shows what sites, and • “As far as GA can tell, then goes in to you came right to the expanded detail site.” • View “Individual referring pages” to see what pages visitors are coming from Direct Referral
- 35. Percentage View “Quantity in a pretty chart”
- 36. Paid vs Organic Paid: Organic: sponsored non-paid ppc (pay-per-click) “natural” cpc (cost-per-click)
- 38. Campaign Traffic Tracking your marketing and advertising
- 39. 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?
- 40. 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
- 41. 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...
- 42. Campaign, Source, Medium, and Content Campaign: Source: • Aggregate overall of marketing • Who brought them to my site? initiative • Newsletter, New York Times, Yahoo • Biggest “bucket” - “spring2012” or (Yes, Yahoo – manually set “where” “seminars” the traffic source is coming from to make sure your info goes in to the right bucket.) Medium Content • How did they learn about my site? • What did they click on? • You can track the how many people • Radio, TV, print, email click on an ad banner vs. a button • Determine which visual items are getting more attention
- 43. 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: email • Link address the user sees: www.domain.com/SpringDeals • The real link address: www.domain.com/SpringDeals?utm_campaign=s pring2012&utm_source=newsletter&utm_mediu m=email ..Gosh, that's an ugly link...
- 44. Google's URL Builder Tool
- 45. 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
- 46. Content Overview - “Aggregate Health Check”
- 47. Content Reports: Identifying Pages • This is base URL, i.e. URL www.domain.com/category/product.html Title • Designated by your meta title URL by • Content Drilldown subdirectory
- 48. Top Content All the top pages viewed, regardless of where they're located in the site
- 49. Content by TITLE Unique page titles are important! • If multiple pages have the same title, GA will lump them together in this report
- 50. Content Metrics Unique Pageviews: The • This does not include page reloads, or the same customer viewing number of visits the same page multiple times in one visit during which the page was viewed % Exit: The • A high exit rate on your final checkout URL would be good! • ...A high exit rate on your landing page would be bad. portion of visits • Actionable insight: for which this • % Exit isn't always useful – every one leaves the site from page was the somewhere • …But it can be useful in regards to navigational pages designed last page viewed to lead visitors down a certain path
- 52. Entrance Keywords Terms like “(not set)” more common now due to Google’s new “secure search”
- 53. Site Search – I spy what you spy Best Practice: Track Internal Searches Visitors tend to have a more specific mindset Learn exactly what your when searching on a visitors are looking for site vs. in Google
- 54. 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?”
- 55. 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
- 56. Audience: Who’s out there?
- 57. Demographics: It's a small, small, world... Geographic “Location is” based and on the visitors IP Language data “Language” is what language the physical computer is set to
- 58. Behavior New vs. Have they ever been here before? Returning Frequency & How often do they come back? Recency How long did they stay Engagement How many pages did they look at?
- 59. Technology and Mobile Reports What devices, browsers, operating systems are your visitors using?
- 60. Social Reports
- 61. Conversions: Goals & Ecommerce Goals: • What are the measures of Did they success for visitors on your site? do what • Negative goals can be used to we’d check for and associate problems hoped?
- 62. Two Types of Goals Engagement URL Goals: Goals: Metric reaches a numeric Visitor reaches a particular threshold page “Non-impulse oriented” Configure funnels if there are a certain number of steps that leads the visitor Pages/Visit, Time on site to this conclusion
- 63. 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
- 64. Goal Funnels Visualize your goal completions and identify possible abandonment issues
- 65. 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.
Editor's Notes
- #4: In the world of Ecommerce, there's a technical side and a business side. Analytics falls in between, giving you technical information that can help improve your business. Web AnalyticsDefinition: (Per Wiki) The study of online behavior in order to improve it
- #6: Think of it this way - have you ever taken your car to a auto parts store and had them plug in the fancy machine that spits out codes to tell you what's going wrong where?If you're like me, you have no idea what those codes mean. One step further, even if someone were to tell me exactly WHAT the code means, I still wouldn't know how to fix the issue.In GA101, I want to teach you to be able to understand what the readings tell you. If you decide to join me for GA201, you'll have the opportunity to dig a little deeper and find out how to address some of the issues that you may become apparent after you've learned what the reports are and how to read them.
- #7: Putting it all together into a story:People who typed in “t-shirts” on Google arrived on our t-shirts landing page and 1.5% of them made a purchase.Visits are not the goalMaking sure the visitors do what you want them to do when the arrive at your site is the goal
- #8: Measuring for the sake of measuring isn't useful.Use the data, do it and apply it well!
- #19: Not actionable dataCan indicate need for further investigation
- #28: “All traffic sources sent XXX visits via XXX sources and mediumsTabs available: Site usage, Goals, Ecommerce
- #31: “All traffic sources sent XXX visits through 4 mediums”Use the additional tabs to help determine what traffic is worth
- #32: Site usage tab: shows total of WHICH medium is bringing in WHICH trafficGoal Set tab: shows how the traffic performed in regards to the goals you've configured (what you set GA to track as per what you wanted them to do)Ecommerce: shows how much the value of the traffic in regards to conversion rate
- #33: Just because a medium drives a high number of traffic doesn't mean it's the most valuable traffic – Use your metrics!Traffic Sources > all traffic sources (show: medium, Ecommerce tab, performance view) Comparison view: Site (*profile) average – how does the traffic compare?Traffic Sources > all traffic sources (show: medium, Ecommerce tab, comparison view) (Tip: In general, green is good, red is bad)
- #35: Referral Actionable insight: Use the Referring Sites report to see where people are talking about and linking to you online. You may be able to build relationships, joins discussions, or find customers by checking out these referring sites
- #36: Percentage view – (still need to look for quality, but gives a good overview)
- #38: Filter by keyword – Quick and simple! Use it to filter out Branded keywords
- #39: You can track email marketing, banner ads, PPC advertising, partner/affiliate programs, etc.You can track ANY link to your site that you control/have the ability to set
- #41: Best Practice: use all lowercase, no spacesTry to come up with standards that everyone in your organization can adhere to
- #45: Links created here will override defaultsAlthough campaign tagging isn't “set up” in GA, GA understands the info and can make sure your data goes in to the correct “Bucket”
- #46: Why do we care?Every step is important – you can lose a potential customer anywhere
- #47: (not actionable)
- #48: Actionable insight:Use these reports in combination with Bounce Rate to find what content might be underperforming
- #52: -This is where Bounce Rate matters-Find what pages are drawing the most people, and what pages are losing the mostHow can I use this info?- Your pages matter... but which page matters most?-Pay as much attention to top entry pages as you would to your homepage- Consider testing multiple versions of pages that experience a high bounce rate- Use the tools: Landing Page Optimization
- #53: Keywords from search traffic - Unfortunately, you'll see “(not set)” more often now due to Google’s new “secure search”Consider this the “insight bubbling up” report How did people find your page?What keywords brought visitors that converted? What keywords had a high bounce rate?Do your landing pages draw traffic for the keywords you're targeting in your SEO?Could the content of the landing page incorporate other content to better serve visitors who land there? Are we targeting the right audience?
- #54: See which search terms lead to which pages Does the information on the page fulfill what the visitor was looking for? Is there anything that stands out and shows people exiting the site?
- #57: Your browser willingly spits out all sorts of information about you - Whenever Java script asks - Without you knowing it's doing itWhat the data can show us: -Geographic location -Frequency and recency -What organization they work for (possibly) -What devices they useWhat we still need a magic 8-ball for: -Age, sex, household income, etc (It can only report back the data it has access to… not read minds)
- #58: Geographic info can help target your advertising (online or offline).Can also show you whether or not visitors are finding the appropriate localized content for their region.Language can be useful for determining whether to localize your site in certain languages.
- #59: Visitor loyalty is important for repeat sales. Consider strategies for getting stuck in their head and getting them to return (email marketing, advertising, etc)
- #60: What devices, browsers, operating systems are your visitors using?High bounce rate for a particular browser? Maybe the page isn't displaying correctly.High amount of traffic from mobile devices? Maybe it's time to optimize your site for mobile viewing. Primarily useful when you are doing a redesign a)Know what your audience is using to access your site b)Know what technological variables to test c)Know what to optimize for
- #61: One of the best new additions to Google AnalyticsFind out if your visitors shared with friends a) With a bit of extra code work and you can track how your visitors share your site over varying social networks b) Before, you could only track these things via the referral reports c) Now you can not only see where on your site they engaged, what action they performed, where they shared it, and who they shared it with.
- #62: Goals can be used to distinguish traffic, good AND bad.It's your opportunity to tell your GA what data is really important to you.
- #63: …If reading an article is your goal for a visitor, use this report in combination with event tracking. You can set an event to not register a visit as a bounce if the user remains on the page for 30 seconds. Note:Goals are profile specific
- #64: Don't overlook the Ecommerce tab in your standard reports!NOT a replacement for order tracking or accounting software.A good tool even if your site isn't an Ecommerce site (track your trends by assigning values to goals that aren't direct income generators).
- #66: Take the time to de-mystify your data – spread understanding, not just statistics. Don't lose the message of your insight by sharing too much data …but remember to keep your data in context!
- #67: All of this data is more than just statistics, or pretty charts and graphs – this data represents actual human interaction on your website. Listen to your customers, keep an eye on trends, and make sure your website is delivering what they want