Introduction to google analytics


Introduction to Google Analytics

Jeff Wisniewski
University of Pittsburgh

Darlene Fichter
University of Saskatchewan

Computers in Libraries 2012

By the end of this session

 Have an analytics account

 Have tracking code to add to your site

 Understand basic web metrics

 Understand the GA dashboard and other reports

 Create goals and funnels

 Create custom reports to track mobile and social media

 Learn how to export, mail and schedule reports


Poll

 Write down two specific things about your website
you hope GA will help you to better
understand/answer


Introductions


Housekeeping


Mandatory Wikipedia Definition

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis
and reporting of internet data for purposes of
understanding and optimizing web usage


Reasons to measure?

Usability

Resource

Institutional

Other?


We can learn…

 Who is coming to our site

 What they’re doing

 How long they stay

 The systems they’re using to access our site

 If they’re able to complete tasks

 How they find us


Two flavors

Log file analysis

Page tagging


Log files…

 Are big

 Take a long time to ingest

 Take a lot of computing power to process

 Take up space

 Require that you be able to access them


Poll

 Do you have experience with another analytics
tool? Which? Pros and cons?

Photo by mcw026 cc some rights reserved

Why GA?

 FREE

 Industry standard

 Lots of folks use it

 Easy to use

 Web based

 Visual

 FREE


Google account

If you do not have a Google account please register for
one now

Google.com/accounts


Getting Started

1. Google account

2. Website

3. Access to website code


GA Account

Log into

Google.com/analytics

Let’s GO!


General Info

Site URL

Account name

Time zone info


Contact info


EULA

(Please take two hours and carefully review the end user license
agreement before clicking through)


Add tracking


* TIP

The tracking code can be “included” as part of your
page template

Photo by BigTallGuy cc
Computers in Libraries 2012 some rights reserved

*TIP

Create TWO profiles for your site, one the “master”
profile and the second the “working” profile

Photo by Stéfan, Some rights reserved

*TIP

You can create multiple profiles for the same site, for
example different subsections, to speed reporting

Photo by merwing✿little
Computers in Libraries 2012 dear, some rights reserved

The GA interface


Menu translation

Menu item English translation
Dashboard General overview of site activity
Intelligence Email and/or text alerts
Visitors How man people, where they come
from, what systems they’re using
Traffic Sources How people are getting to and/or
finding your site
Content What do people look at on your site


The Dashboard

 Provides an overview of site activity

 Many of the metrics here appear elsewhere in GA
as well


Key metrics
METRIC DEFINITION NOTE

Bounce rate % of visits that High bounce rate can be
immediately left good or bad
Goal Page someone reaches
once they’ve completed
some task
Hit Request for a file from a Artifically inflated
webserver
Pageview Display of a complete
webpage
Visits Series of pageviews from Within 30 minutes
same visitor


Dashboard

 LIVE!


TIP!

You can customize the dashboard…just click

to add a panel or click the “X” in the right hand corner
to remove from dashboard


Intelligence

 Alerts

 Can be applied to most any event/metric

 Email and/or txt message


*TIP

 When you first begin collecting data, or
change/add, set an alert for verification that it’s
working as expected


Visitors

 Some Visitors section info repeated in Dashboard

 Benchmarking?


*TIP

 New vs. returning, unique visitors, visitor loyalty all
rely on cookie data. Caveats:

 Browser specific
 They expire
 They can be blocked or deleted
 Public computers


Rule of thumb

TRENDS in the data are more important than the
numbers themselves


Visitors

Photo reserved by Scott ClarkSome rights

Visitors

 Visitor technical information
 OS
 Browser
 Screen color & resolution
 Flash
 Java
 Network properties
 Connection speed
 Mobile


Visitors: Browser


Visitors: Mobile


Benchmarking?


Visitors

LIVE!


*TIP

 Google analytics can also track mobile APP (android
and iOS) usage:
 http://code.google.com/mobile/analytics/docs/


Traffic Sources

 An overview of the different sources that send
traffic to your site
 Direct
 Referring
 Search engines

Computers in Libraries 2012 Photo by lambchopsSome rights reserved

Traffic Sources

 Direct
 Access via a bookmark or type in URL directly
 Referring
 Click to your site from another site
 Search engines
 Click to your site from search engine results


Traffic Sources

Keywords:

Terms used to “find” your site via search engines


Traffic Sources: Referrers


*TIP

Most tables in GA can
be searched to find a
specific entry


Traffic Sources

Live


Content


Content: Top Content


Content: In page analytics


Content

LIVE


Goals

 A “goal” is the page which a visitor reaches once
they have completed a desired action, such as a
registration or download.

 A “funnel” is the pages they need to visit on the
way to a goal.

 EXAMPLE: Library legislative history course sign up


Goals: Setting up goals and funnels
1. Name the goal something intuitive. In this example it might be “Class
Registration”

2. Choose whether or you want the goal to be active (on) now

3. Choose a type of goal. Most library scenario goals will probably fall under
the “URL Destination” type, meaning the goal is to get the user to a
specific place, in this case the “thank you for registering” page.

4. Enter the URL for this goal page

5. Under “Goal Funnel” click yes

6. On the following page add the URL(s) of the page(s) along the path a user
would take to get from the homepage all the way through to the thank
you page.


Goals


*TIP

Exact match has to be EXACTLY the same as the
URL….even leading or trailing spaces will cause it to
fail


Exercise

 Visit your library website. Fully define two (or
more!) goals.

 GOAL NAME
 GOAL URL
 FUNNEL

Photo by photofarmer
Computers in Libraries 2012 Some rights reserved

Advanced segments

 Let you group certain types of visits together

 User defined


Advanced Segments


Advanced Segments Examples

 iPad users visiting your events calendar

 How much traffic is coming from Facebook?
Twitter? Both?

 How many site visitors connect using dialup?


Advanced Segments Notes

 In some cases GA will suggest variables (operating
system for ex.)

 Advanced segments take AND &OR statements


Advanced segment: Mobile

To see all mobile traffic aggregated:
1. Click on the Advanced Segments > Create a new custom
segment
2. Under Dimensions click on Visitors
3. Drag the green Mobile rectangle into the dimension or
metrics box.
4. Make sure the Condition equals “Matches Exactly” and
the Value equals Yes
5. Name the segment and save


Advanced segment: Specific mobile

To see data for one or more specific mobile platforms:
1. Click on the Advanced Segments > Create a new custom
segment
2. Under Dimensions go to Systems > Operating Systems
3. Drag the green Operating Systems rectangle into the
dimension or metrics box.
4. Make sure the Condition equals Matches Exactly
5. Choose a mobile OS from the dropdown


Advanced segment: Social media

1. Go to Advanced Segments > Create New Custom
Segment

2. Choose Dimensions>Traffic Source>Source and drag to
the main panel

3. Under matches choose Matches regular expression and
enter something like this (including the pipes):
 facebook.com|twitter.com|delicious|linkedin|(Customize
for the specific sources you’d like to track)



*TIP

Each social media source can also have it’s own
segment so that you can track individually


Advanced segments

LIVE


Useful: Date comparisons

Photo by TheBusyBrainSome rights reserved


Comparisons

1. Choose first date range

2. Click “compare to past”

3. Choose second date range

4. Apply


Useful: Tracking outbound links

 Many links on library sites are to third-party
destinations
 Catalog
 Ejournals and databases
 Other sites

 Cannot, by default, track click activity on outgoing
links



1. Insert some code into the <head> of the page(s) on which you want
to track outbound links to delay the link by a fraction of a second to
give the page tracking code time to load. Google has a script for this:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an
swer=55527

2. Tag the specific link(s) you want to track so that the activity will be
recorded in GA using a javascriptonClick statement.

3. Wait 24-48 hours to give GA a chance to collect some data then:

4. IN GA go to Content > Event Tracking > Categories. There should now
be a category there called “outbound links”, and within the
category, data for each link.



1. Insert some code into the <head> of the page(s) on which you want
to track outbound links:

<script type="text/javascript">
function recordOutboundLink(link, category, action) {
_gat._getTrackerByName()._trackEvent(category, action);
setTimeout('document.location = "' + link.href + '"', 100);
}
</script>



Tag the specific link(s) you want to track so that the activity will be recorded in
GA using a javascriptonClick statement:

your link

<a href="http://www.example.com" onClick="recordOutboundLink(this,
'Outbound Links', 'example.com');return false;">

the category the link label


Reporting

 Analytics allows you to export any of your reports
into:
 PDF - portable document format. You'll need the
free Adobe Reader software in order to view this
file.
 XML - extensible markup language.
 Excel - Microsoft Excel-formatted spreadsheet.
 TSV - tab separated values. This format can be read
in most spreadsheet applications or text editors.


*TIP

Analytics will export the report with the settings
currently showing on your screen, so make sure
that your date range and other settings are as you
would like them


Reporting

To export a report:

1. Navigate to the report you'd like to export.

2. Click Export, below the report title.

3. Select one of the four export format options

4. Your file will be generated automatically.


Emailing

 Reports can be emailed immediately or scheduled

 Like exporting, you need to be viewing the exact
report you want to email

 Note that scheduled reports send data based on
the previous day, week, month, or quarter


Questions?

After the session contact us at:

 Jeff Wisniewski
www.facebook.com/wisniewski.jeff
 Darlene Fichter
darlene.fichter AT usask.ca


Thank you


Resources

Google Analytics Help:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/

Google Code (Technical Documentation):
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/

Google Analytics Blog:
http://analytics.blogspot.com/

Official Discussion Groups:
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/groups.html


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