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#musedata
Introduction to Google Analytics
MCN SIG Data & Insights
Brian Alpert (@balpert) & Elena Villaespesa (@elenustika)
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Our Workshop Today
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• Introduction to digital analytics • Navigating Google Analytics reports• Setting goals and targets• Google Analytics features
– Segmentation – Custom reports – Event tracking – Views and filters – Dashboards – Resources & tools
• Q&A
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Introduction to digital analytics
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Search EnginesSEO SEM (PPC campaigns)
Optimization
Referring sites Usual Unusual Trends / Insights
Create relationships
Direct / OtherEmailBanners
Audience
Visits/Sessions
Demographics
Behaviour (time on site, new vs. returning, bounce rate, loyalty, recency, browser, mobile…)
Segmentation
Where are they coming from?
Who they are? What are they visiting?
Content
Page views
Top pages, key areas, promo panel success, click path, internal search…
Test, customise
How are they converting/engaging?
Conversion (shop, tickets, membership, donations…)
Email subscription
Comments
Sharing content
Downloads
Registration
Optimise processes (funnels, page optimisation)
What can we do with Google Analytics?
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GA reports – User interface
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GA reports – MetricsUsers (Visitors) - measures the number of unique users that visit your site during a certain time period. This metric is most commonly used to understand the overall size of your audience.
Sessions (Visits) - are defined as a period of consecutive activity by the same user. By default, in Google Analytics, a session persists until a user stops interacting with the site for 30 minutes.
Average session duration - The time an average user spends on site in a given time period. This is calculated as total time on site/sessions, where time on site for a session is calculated by the time difference between when the first and last hits of the session.
Average Pages/Session - The average number of website pages viewed by a user in one session.
Bounce rate - A bounce is a one hit session. Bounce rate is simply the percentage of all sessions that bounce.
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GA reports – Audience
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GA reports – Acquisition
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GA reports – Behavior
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GA reports – Conversions
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GA reports – Real time
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Universal Analytics
• Universal Analytics is the latest version of Google Analytics. It replaces the asynchronous version (classic analytics)
• New features are only being developed for the new version (Enhanced ecommerce, integrations of offline transactions, users tracking across devices, new options for custom dimensions…)
• Google will disconnect the classic analytics but the date has not been announced yet.
• To upgrade:– Recommendation: use Google Tag Manager and run both codes in
parallel – Change the GA code– Update ecommerce, event tracking
Universal Analytics upgrade centerhttps://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/#upgrade-guides
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Google Tag Assistant
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Web analytics is often about:
“So What?”
Getty Images
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What web analytics is really about:
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Your goal: use data to tell a story
What was happening. What it meant. What you did. What’s happening now.
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forbes.com
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There is a systematic, step-by-step process
Articulate your program’s goals. Decide strategies to achieve
those goals. Decide tactics to pursue the
strategies. Decide what and how to measure
to validate the tactics. Benchmark to get a sense of
what’s normal.
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homedit.com
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Articulate specific goals Express what you’re trying to
accomplish. Make high-level goals more
specific: “Increase influence” - too broad. “Become the definitive source on
Smithsonian history” - more specific.
Specificity makes it easier to identify strategies and tactics.
Not too many!
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It’s a Wonderful Life
Start the conversation! Articulate goals & next steps on your own; work with management to finalize.
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Determine strategies & tactics Strategies – the plans you make to achieve the goals.
Employing social media is a strategy. Tactics – the things you do to advance the strategy.
Producing a specific type of content is a tactic. Individual channels (facebook, twitter) are tactics.
Per the example: Goal: “Become the definitive source on Smithsonian history.” Strategy: Increase engagement with history of the Smithsonian
content. Tactic: Make SI-history content more findable and measureable.
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Decide how to measure your tactics Choose measurements to learn
if your tactics are succeeding. Choose a few measurements. Trend them over time.
Per the example: Strategy: increase engagement with
SI history website content. Tactic: make website history
content more findable / measureable.
Make a “history-content” segment and measure for engagement:
Visit frequency Visit depth Bounce rate
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History-related visits
All visits
“Deep history visits” were 94% higher!
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You can’t set targets w/o benchmarks
You need at least six months of data. Data is seasonal.
Depends on your traffic.
Balance targets with factors beyond your control: Are the improvements you’re
seeking difficult to achieve?
How much resources will you have to implement tactics?
Drinks Enthusiast
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Keep it simple!
Don’t do too much! Minimize the number of
measurements. If they turn-out to be
inconclusive, change up. It’s an ongoing process!
arvinddevalia.com
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No actionable data Sessions (previously Visits) Users (previously Visitors) Pages (a.k.a. Pageviews)
Establish scope / context. Measure growth / acquisition. You can’t improve your site by
measuring these. Reporting them out of context can be
misleading.
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Satisfy your boss!The inevitability of “Quantity of Stuff”
Source: Occam's Razor
“All data in aggregate is crap.”
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AAA wanted to make their content more accessible to younger students.
They worked with Wikipedia to expand their offerings.
We compared segments of Wikipedia visitors to other visitors.
Wiki-referred visitors were increasingly less likely to (need to) visit the AAA site many times.
This contrasts with the stable trend of all visits.
All visits, high frequency
Wikipedia visits, high frequency
Validation!Archives of American Art Wikipedia Case Study
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Here is the bottom line! Your measurements validate your
tactics (or not). To work the process and improve
your site, you need meaningful data: Engagement metrics Segments Goal completion / Conversion rates A-B tests Qualitative data (surveys)
If your goal is purely audience acquisition, you can use “quantity-of-stuff” metrics to tell your story.
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NY Daily News
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GA features
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Improve your program!Segmentation: GA’s most powerful feature?
Analyze subsets of traffic. Search engine visits Social media visits Demographics
Import expert-made segments from the “Gallery”!
Google Blog Kissmetrics Overview Examples (Cutroni) Examples (Kaushik)
Segments are accessed from this pull-down arrow.
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User segments are a big step forward
“A user is the tool’s best-guess of an anonymous person.”
User segments represent all data associated with a user.
I.E., all session data the user generated during the timeframe.
Built-in segments: Single-visit users Multi-visit users
Create your own: "Users in Massachusetts who spent > $100." User segment: facebook
mobile users who stayed >30 seconds.
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There are various types of User Segments
Under Demographics Traffic Sources Ecommerce Conditions Sequences
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Create your own reports. Import expert-made
custom reports from the “Gallery”!
Reports can be scheduled for delivery via email.
Create and manage Custom Reports (Google)
12 Awesome Custom Reports Created by the Experts (Kissmetrics)
3 Awesome, Downloadable, Custom Web Analytics Reports (Kaushik)
5 Google Analytics Custom Reports FTW! (Kaushik)
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Create and access Custom Reports from the ‘Customization’ tab.
Improve your program!Custom Reports can save you time & effort
Careful! Custom Reports make it easier to mismatch dimensions and metrics!
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More sophisticated Goals typically involve creating “Events”: External links Sign-ups, form submissions Downloads Many types of conversion goals
To use Events: Define and categorize your events. Configure and add the javascript code, usually right in the link (not always). Many social-share widgets automatically add Events. Google Analytics Event Organizer (Michelle Herman) The Complete Google Analytics Event Tracking Guide Plus 10 Amazing Exa
mples (old code, good examples)
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Improve your program!‘Event Tracking’ is super-important
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Views (profiles) - Filtering your traffic
- Unfiltered- Main profile- Main profile showing full URLs (useful for microsites,
subdomains) - Specific website section (e.g. Online Collection, Blog,
Visit, microsite…)- Users using your website at the museum (filter via IP
address of the Wi-Fi)- Mobile, Tablet, Desktop traffic- SEO (filter organic traffic only)
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Create a view that has no filtering of any kind.
Leave it alone – it is protection against unintended consequences.
GA filters are powerful, but irrevocable – if your data is hosed by a bad or misapplied filter you are out of luck.
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Marquette Educator
An add’l ‘playground’ view is a good idea too, to test those new filters (and anything else)
You need an unfiltered backup view
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Filter – IP address (eg. Exclude internal traffic, Wi-Fi at the museum…)
What is my IP address?
GA Create an IP address filter: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034840?hl=en
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Filter – Website sectionExample: Online collection http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection
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Filter – Mobile traffic
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Building a dashboard
• Selection of metrics• Type of dashboard: strategic, tactical, operational• Automation and update process• Share options (internal / external dashboard) • Frequency of updates (real time, weekly, monthly, snapshot of the
year) • Data sources (Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics,
Surveys…)• API available?• Type of widgets (number, graphs, text, real time feed, embeds…)• User interface • Design and brand
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Google Analytics dashboards
Examples: Overview, Ecommerce, Mobile, Social Media, SEO, PPC, Content, Online Collection, Real Time dashboard
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How to create a GA dashboard
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Adding widgets
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Adding widgets from the GA reports
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Google Analytics Solutions Gallery
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Share your dashboard
Share the template or give access to the whole team > Shared dashboards
Schedule emails to send the dashboard in PDF format
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Resources & tools Google Analytics Academy Google Analytics Blog Absolute Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics (moz.com) Avinash Kaushik’s “Occam’s Razor” Analytics Talk (Justin Cutroni) Cardinal Path Training Kissmetrics Lunametrics blog Lunametrics Training Universal Analytics Upgrade Guide Supermetrics Data Grabber Automate Analytics (Supermetrics) Google Group Analytics Edge Discover the Google Analytics Platform (advanced tools)
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Dashboard and data visualization tools• Data wrapper • Google charts• Raw• Picktochart• Canva• Infogram• Venngage• Easelly• Google Analytics apps • Tableau• Ducksboard• Geckoboard• Chartio• Dash This• Silk • Power BI
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Google Tag Manager
• Tags: Google Analytics, third party tags, custom html tags
• Trigger: when and where to activate the tag (e.g. PDF download, purchase a product, share on social media)
• Variables: information obtained from the web page (e.g. URL, PDF clicked, element clicked, page shared…)
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Omnibug: web metrics debugging tool
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Google’s “Analytics Academy” Free video-based courses
Digital Analytics Fundamentals
Google Analytics Platform Principles
Ecommerce Analytics: From Data to Decisions
Mobile App Analytics Fundamentals
Google Tag Manager Fundamentals
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analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com
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Supermetrics Commercial Excel add-on. Easy-to-use and customize. Exceptional charting capabilities. Schedule reports to run
automatically. 14 days free. $348 per year. Limited documentation and
support. Free version for Google
Sheets now available.http://supermetrics.com
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Supermetrics Custom Dashboard The two spreadsheets work
together. ‘Engagement’ oriented metrics
Visit Frequency Visit Length Visit Depth New vs. Returning Visits Bounce Rate Conversion Rate Search Engines
A foundation to make data actionable “Key Trends and Insights” “Impact on Site/Museum” “Steps Being Taken”
The easily updated, trended data is what makes the dashboard powerful.
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All Visits data tells a nice story...
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Minimal frequency group (purple) downward trend indicates improving content engagement
High frequency group (blue) upward trend indicates same
Impact of this Data on the Site or Program• This good-looking chart may indicate high content engagement and/or perceived value • This data may correlate to increasing conversion behaviors
Acting on this Data• Identify moderate and high loyalty pages as a means of duplicating, or improving others • Examining conversion behaviors of these segments may yield add'l insights • Correlating high bounce rate pages to one-time visits may yield add'l insights• Test different content types in an attempt to move 'minimal' visitors into 'moderate' group
Key Trends and Insights
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This Impact of this Data on the Site or Program• Organic search listings are driving poorly-targeted traffic• Will result in decreased organic search performance over time
Acting on this Data• Refocus title tags, meta-description tags and page content for important pages• Perform link analysis to see where other SEO improvements can be made
Minimal frequency group upward trend indicates organic listings are not appropriately targeted
Moderate frequency group downward trend indicates same
High frequency group trending slightly downward, in contrast to previous chart’s upward slope
Key Trends and Insights
…But applying segmentation tells a different story
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Google Sheets Spreadsheet Add-on Create (simple) dashboards
and visualizations. Being well-versed in Google
Sheets’ data manipulation features helps a lot.
Schedule reports to run automatically.
Embed visualizations on websites with automatic refresh!
Introductory video ‘Building a Dashboard’ video Google Group
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Google Sheets spreadsheet add-on
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Analytics Edge Excel Add-on Wizard-driven interface is clean
and (relatively) intuitive. Auto-refresh and schedule reports. Import data from text files,
worksheets or other workbooks Support via online community. Free and paid versions:
Free Social Shares connector. More features - $6/month. Optional connectors - $4/month.
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http://www.analyticsedge.com
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Questions?
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Thanks! @balpert @elenustika
