Google Analytics The New Metrics: Measuring What is Important With Google Analytics

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What is Google Analytics (GA) ?

• GA is a free web statistics product from Google’s suite of webmaster tools

• Derived from Urchin, a commercial product • At most basic, it allows for the measurement of visitor

traffic and demographics of your web users

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How does it work?

• GA uses AJAX Javascript calls with a unique ID to send data relevant data to the Google servers

• Code: <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> try{ var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {} </script>

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Terminology

• KPI – Key Performance Indicator - a metric – either organically defined, defined by your organization, or is industry defined and expected

• Bounce Rate – how quickly a user arrives on, then leaves a page • Landing Page – a page commonly used by users to enter the site • Goals – defined, desired behaviors • Funnels – paths (defined and organic) taken by users to reach Goals • Conversion – the point where a user reaches a desired/defined goal,

and ‘converts’ from a web surfer to a ‘customer’ • Segments – a self-defined or Google defined portion of the overal

user base • Dimension - An attribute of the visitor to your website

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How GA Can Help Your Library ( 1 ) …

• Visualize, track, and understand the… • Who (user demographics, user segments) • What (devices used to access) • Where (origination of requests – where visitors are coming

from) • When (traffic & usage related to time) • How ( How are people using your site)

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How GA Can Help Your Library ( 2 ) …

• For a library, GA can be used at two levels: • To track statistics for accreditation and organizational

reporting and basic performance determination

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How GA Can Help Your Library ( 3 ) …

• For instance, GA can easily supply you with ARL survey data: ARL asks for (with regard to web stats): • Number of sessions (logins) to databases or services • Number of searches (queries) in databases or services • Number of full-text article requests • Number of virtual visits to the library’s website • Number of virtual visits to the library’s catalog

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How GA Can Help Your Library ( 4 ) …

• OR, with a little planning, GA can easily provide you with all sorts of advanced activities for much more accurate determinations of the performance of your website • Define goals of site • Create specific scenarios of desired user activity • Use GA tools to track activity and count ‘conversions’ • Determine troublesome site areas, troubleshoot possible

issues, improve performance and conversions.

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Google’s First steps

See which pages drive the most pageviews on your site from the Top Content report.

This report can answer questions you have about your most or least effective pages - for example, a high bounce rate indicates a landing page that should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it. [Google Analytics Website]

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How to make GA Benefit you - First steps

See which groups of visitors became ‘customers’ – (achieved a defined goal in non-profits) or did something else important to the success of your organization? You can get key insights for these questions by setting up goals.[Google Analytics Website]

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How to make GA Benefit you - First steps

Grant other people in your company or organization access

Can be restricted to viewing reports in a profile or given full access to help manage your entire account as an administrator.

You can even create auto-emailed reports of any number of special items or created reports. [Google Analytics Website]

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How to make GA Benefit you - First steps

Over 80 reports with customizable, drag-and-drop interfaces to represent what YOU want to see (or what is important to your library) .

You can also create your own reports with Custom Reporting, create the segments you want to see with Advanced Segmentation, or view multi-dimensional views of your data with Motion Charts.. [Google Analytics Website]

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Advanced Examples

• Define website goals, e.g. • Goal one – provide easy and quick access to our databases –

increase or keep visitors at X amount over X period of time • Set up a defined goal in GA as a visit to the databases page • Assign a ‘value’ to this goal • Watch the value success of this goal at a glance, see trends • Also, simply track conversions from arrival to clicking-

through to a DB product

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Advanced Examples

• Define website goals, e.g. • Set up conversion tracking as well (same process, basically) • Define desired ‘conversion funnel’ – eg, the desired path

you want users to follow to get to the defined goal / conversion.

• If goals are not being met, you can see where / what user did on the way to the goal, determine the weak point, and then use more focused views of the page or link in question to ‘fix’ the issue.

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Advanced Examples

• Use GA to determine search and search result issues • Observe and fix landing page problems • Track real-time activity • Track effectiveness of email link-through campaigns • Segment users into different groups (organic vs. referrals,

mac vs PC, etc). – track each segment and see what they are doing/what is important to the different segments

• Filter profiles - set up a profile that filters users based on available describing data – like IP range to determine off- vs. on-campus user actvity, etc.

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Advanced Examples

Track Social Media Integration “The new Google Analytics additions allow you to not only identify the top referring social media sites, but also give you the option to dive deeper into your data and find out if visitors to your site are engaging with your content or exiting immediately upon arrival. Read more: http://www.v3im.com/2012/04/measure-social-media-roi-with-google-analytics-social/#ixzz1t5EshpRi”

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Advanced Examples

Track Social Media Integration • “Create Advanced Segments … “you can create an Advanced Segment

for each of your top referring sites in order to capture a deeper level of data.”

• “If you create multiple segments, you can compare them to explore the differences in how visitors interact with your website depending on the referring source…”

• Read more: http://www.v3im.com/2012/04/measure-social-media-roi-with-google-analytics-social/#axzz1t5EkVY2t

- www.v3im.com • Also, set up social media goals and conversions…. • Read more: http://unbounce.com/social-media/measuring-social-media-

roi-goal-conversions-with-google-analytics-5/

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Conclusions

• GA can provide basic stats needed by all organizations and accrediting agencies

• GA can dig a lot deeper, and help libraries determine the specific meaning of their website, and track goals and KPIs that determine whether the website is successful in fulfilling that specific meaning/mission\

• GA can alert of you trouble or success automatically • GA, with its dashboard and pre-created reports can get data

to whomever needs whenever they need it.

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More from Google

• Help - https://www.google.com/analytics/support/index.html • GA Blog - http://analytics.blogspot.com/ • User Forum -

http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!overview

• YouTube Channel - http://www.youtube.com/googleanalytics?hl=en

• Developer Resources - https://www.google.com/analytics/developers/index.html

• Conversion U - https://www.google.com/analytics/iq.html

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