Google analytics overview
- 2. What is Google Analytics? Google Analytics is a FREE web analytics tool that gives detailed statistics on website activity. Google’s Definition: “helps you analyze visitor traffic and paint a complete picture of your audience and their needs, wherever they are along the path to purchase/conversion.”
- 3. A Little History ● 2006 - Google launches Google Analytics to all Google users ● 2011 - Real Time analytics launches allowing you to see users on your site “real time” ● 2015 - Universal Analytics launches which organizes the way data is collected in your Google Analytics
- 4. Why We Use Google Analytics Google Analytics give us the ability to review data and evaluate marketing efforts to show ROI. A Marketer’s Dream!
- 6. Installing Google Analytics ● Using Your Gmail Account Go To: https://analytics.google.com ● Sign Up!
- 7. Installing Google Analytics ● Input your Company/ Website Information ● Click “Get Tracking ID” ● Accept Terms of Use
- 8. Installing Google Analytics ● Upload tracking code right below the <head> section in the header.php file of your website. ● This ensures all pages will be tracked
- 9. Installing Google Analytics ● Install at the top of the <head> ○ Using Wordpress CMS as an example. ○ Appearance > Editor > header.php > place code right below <head> ● If you do not have Wordpress, same principles apply: add Google Analytics tracking code to header.php, right below <head>
- 11. Using Google Analytics Important Metrics & How To Access Them
- 12. Basic Navigation 1. Change Property and/ or Data View 2. Search or “pls halp im lost” 3. Dashboard 4. Customization, if you’re into that… 5. What’s happening on your site right now 6. Who is visiting your site? 7. Which marketing channel are people viewing your site from? 8. What are people doing once on your site? 9. Who is taking right actions on your site? 10. Resource center 11. Settings live here 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
- 13. Date Range! *Can only see data post installing Google Analytics tracking code View site metrics on a month-to-month, week, year, etc. basis to understand seasonality or when users are more likely to frequent your site.
- 14. Section View Navigation 1. What’s being reported on 2. Additional breakdown controls 3. Change the graphic type (table, pie chart, bar chart, etc.) 4. Acquisition: how many users in each primary dimension got to your site? 5. Behavior: what did the user in each primary dimension do on your site? 6. Conversions: filter the primary dimension by Conversions 1 2 3 4 5 6
- 15. 1. Real-time Overview ● Pageviews ● Top Referrals ● Top Active Pages ● Top Social Traffic ● Top Locations ● Top Keywords Locations ● Locations of real-time users. Traffic Sources ● How the users are getting to your site. Content ● Which page(s) are the users on
- 17. 2. Audience Quantitative insights into site visits. ● Sessions ○ Number of user engagements on website ● New Users ○ Number of first time users ● Bounce Rate ○ Percentage of single page interactions ● Pages/Session ○ Average number of pages viewed per session ● Average Session Duration ○ Average time spent on site per session
- 18. Stop & Think: Why might we care how many site visitors are female vs. male? Demographics Age & gender of site visitors can be broken down by Key Metrics that include: ● % New Sessions ● Avg. Session Duration ● Bounce Rate ● Pages / Session ● Sessions (most common) !
- 20. Interests This is where GA gets creepy. Affinity Categories: groups individuals based on their Google search history. ● Top of purchase funnel In-Market Segments: based on what users are actively seeking (see image) ● Bottom of purchase funnel In-Market Segmentation for Firetoss.com: Is this good or bad?
- 22. Geo Useful for assessing your brand’s visibility. Especially useful for Ecommerce stores. Play around with the dimensions!
- 24. Technology What Browser are users using most when visiting your site? Play around with primary dimensions! There are some really cool insights on this page pertaining to UX.
- 25. Mobile People have smartphones, and they use them! HUGE actionable insights! More mobile users than desktop? → place importance on mobile UX
- 27. Benchmarking See how your website compares to others in the industry Channels: ● How do you stack up organically? Paid? Direct? Location: ● Are you getting a significant portion of traffic in your geographic area? Devices: ● Mobile vs desktop traffic
- 29. 3. Acquisition Traffic channels are broken up into 7 “Channel Groupings” 1. Organic Search 2. Direct 3. Paid Search 4. Referral 5. Social 6. Email 7. Other (or “not set”)
- 31. All Traffic Channels: ● Site visit data broken down into the previous 7 categories Source/Medium: ● Granular view of specific traffic sources & accompanying metrics. Two examples: •Facebook Ad Traffic •Organic Google Traffic vs. Bing Organic Traffic Referrals: ● Did someone visit your site directly from another site? You might like to know…(see previous slide)
- 32. Social Network Referrals: ● What social network brought visitors to your site? Landing Pages: ● Which site page did social referrals land on? Conversions: ● Did social referrals contribute to your bottom line? (bottomlinearmy.com) Plugins: ● Forget it Users Flow: ● How do users from social networks interact?
- 33. 4. Behavior Granular view of site traffic metrics and how users are engaging. ● Behavior flow ● Page engagement ● Site Speed ● Site Search ● Events
- 34. Behavior Flow Shows the most popular “path” users take throw a website. This is often messy data especially for larger websites. ● Are users dropping off the site on a specific page? ● Great way to help prioritize changes needed to be made to the website - Put billboards on your highways, not your streets
- 36. Page Views What are your most popular pages? Great data to understand which pages to put emphasis on when making website changes. Tell your users the most valuable information where they visit the most!
- 38. Site Speed Site speed is a factor for both SEO and UX. A slow site makes you look bad and annoys users. Resource: Pingdom (https://tools.pingdom.com/) Avg. Page Load Times of <1sec are considered excellent. 3 - 4 sec load speed is good
- 40. Site Search If your site has a search bar (most Ecommerce stores do), the search data will display here. Make sure most searched items are easily accessible within navigation.
- 42. Events Events are any site action you care to track that (usually) doesn’t contribute to the client’s ROI, but are useful for UX and tracking your site’s effectiveness. Types of Events: 1. Downloading a file 2. Scrolling down on a page 3. Viewing of a video 4. Clicking on a button 5. Clicking on an image 6. Logging in 7. Sharing content to social media 8. And many more...
- 44. 5. Conversions Just when you thought things were getting interesting… Advanced Google Analytics insights: ● Goal completions ● Product performance ○ # of transactions ○ Revenue ○ Much more ● Multi-Channel Analysis ○ How does your paid advertisements influence other channels of traffic?
- 45. REPORTING DATA STUDIO - A Google Tool datastudio.google.com
- 46. Create Custom Reports Create custom reports to tie relevant data together. Show the big picture. Transform data into more useful values → A Marketer’s Dream!
- 48. Parting Notes ● Don’t let the abundance of data overwhelm you. Start with a question and find the solution! ● Use Google Analytics to provide data behind decision making. ● If you can’t find the answer to your question Google it! ○ There are unlimited amounts of articles and videos to help you find the answers you are looking for.