Posts Tagged ‘google analytics’

This entry is part of VOCO Creative’s occasional series on using Google Analytics for marketing and branding.

So…you’ve set up Google Analytics and started learning more about the terms and concepts that make GA go.  Now it’s time to make actual use of the site with my five favorite Google Analytics tools.

• So-Cool Site Overlay:  This tool offers you an incredible amount of information on actual user behavior.  Located under the Content section, the Site Overlay tool shows you where clicks land on a page.  What a great way to find out that nobody cares about your “free widget discount” button or that your users are surprisingly curious about your portfolio.  Use the site overlay tool often and with a sense of strategy:  In order to take full advantage, you should be willing to change in response to the information it yields.
• Real Keyword Insight:  This is an SEO-oriented marketer’s best friend.  Located under the Traffic section, the Keywords tool shows you the searches people use to get to your site.  You may discover some strange surprises here…but you also may get extremely valuable information that allows you to tailor content to popular searches.  By optimizing to popular keywords, you ensure higher rankings across a variety of searches that reflect real user behavior, not wishful thinking.
• Fabulous Filters:  Sick of Ukranian spambots hitting your blog?  Want to see real results that don’t reflect your checking for comments 23523523235325 times a day?  Filters are your friend.  To install a filter, you’ll need to know the IP address of anyone you want to exclude from Google Analytics stats.  Create a filter by going to Analytics Settings>Filter Manager>Add New Filter, then follow the steps.  Here’s a Google guide to creating a filter if you need more help.
• Mindboggling Link Ninja Action: Ever wonder just how many people download your PDFs or podcasts?  Wonder no more with file tracking via Google Analytics.  By adding a tiny slice of code to your tags for links, you’ll be able to see download results among the slew of information Google Analytics serves up by default.
• Robotic Automated Traffic Emails:  Harness the power of Google Analytics and take advantage of their option to send scheduled e-mail reports.  Just go to the report you want to receive, click Email beneath its title, and edit the schedule settings.  Google will email to you when you want it in the format you like (currently, PDF, CSV, Excel, and XML are all represented).  This is a great way to make sure that traffic stays at the top of your radar.

Photo via kalandrakas

Welcome back!  In our first Google Analytics for technophobes, Web stalkers and small business owners, we reviewed how to set up this powerful program.

Now comes the hard part:  actually analyzing your results.  Of course, the longer your code has been around and in business (it is working, right?), the more results you’ll have to analyze.

Though the Google Analytics dashboard is full of exciting stuff, it can feel mighty overwhelming if you don’t know what the heck it is you’re looking at.  Here’s a whirlwind tour and glossary of the site and important terms:

Dashboard – this is the heart of the site and where you’ll find the most important information of all:  visits, pageviews, bounce rates, average time on site, and percentage of new visits.  Note:  the information portrayed on the dashboard is governed by the time perameters you set at the top of the page.  The longer the time you specify, the more visitors, etc. you should see.

• Visits and pageviews:  These are the nuts and bolts of GA.  A visit is essentially a session:  a period in which a user is visiting your website.  Google defines visit as ending when the site is navigated away from or the browser remains inactive for 30 minutes or more.  A pageview is one instance of a browser loading a page on your website.  Important note:  a visit is not a visitor.
• Bounce rate is the rate at which visitors left your site without clicking on any other pages.
• Average time on site:  No-brainer.  The average time  a visitor spends on your site.
• Percentage new visits:  The percentage of visits that were new (i.e. had never visited your site before).

Visitors – this is the section that allows you to analyze visitor behavior:  who they are, which browsers they use, where they are.  Google offers services such as benchmarking (comparing your statistics against others in your industry), trending information to help you find out more about your visitors, loyalty information, and information you can define yourself.

Traffic Sources – this section is the alpha and the omega when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and understanding more about how people find your site.  It includes subsections on direct traffic (traffic that comes to your site without being referred through another website), referring sites (sites that include links to your site that funnel in traffic), search engines, keywords, Google AdWords, and campaigns you can define yourself.

Content – this section focuses on the content of your site and can show your top content, top landing and exit pages, and even a nifty site overlay that shows who clicks where on your site.

Goals – in this section, you can set and track conversion goals for your site.

Your assignment:  familiarize yourself with the Google Analytics dashboard and interface. Click everything you can to get an idea of what it does.  Never fear…in our next sessions, we’ll talk about creating goals, analyzing traffic and user behavior, and more!

“Measure your results!”  It’s the cry of any marketing person worth their salt…and a frustrating refrain for the people who are still figuring out the Internet, social media, and the vast slanguage of the field.  (Did I just say “slanguage?”) As a  brand strategist and marketer, I’m all about the low-hanging fruit, i.e. do what you can with what you have…but for many solopreneurs and small business owners, the “what do you have” category is often all too bare.

Enter Google Analytics, the perfect tool for actual results without any economic output.  Introduced in 2005, this free tool has become a sort of gold standard for free Web resources.  It’s not one of those sites that’s an inch deep and a mile wide…it’s about a mile deep and a mile wide in terms of usefulness and potential, if you know how to use it.

Here’s the scoop:  after reading this series, you WILL know how…whether you’re a stalker who wants to see if your nemesis has been accessing you online, a technophobe who’s scared of wrangling a mouse, or a small business owner.

Let’s start with the basics (come back tomorrow if you already have your account set up)

Your to-do list for Day 1:

• If you don’t already have one, get a Google Account.  You can do that here.  Suggestion:  create a username/password that isn’t the one you use for every account.  Hopefully you’ll be growing and adding help to your stable of resources soon, right?
• Set the dang thing up.  You’ll need access to your website structure for this, so make sure you have a talented Web person or some knowledge of your own.  Go to the Analytics start page and hit “sign up.”  Add the Web address of the site you’d like to track, give it an easy-to-use name, and select the proper time zone.  Once you agree to the terms of service, you’ll see a page for Tracking Code.  Follow the instructions to install this code to every page of your site before the </body> tag.  (Migrating from legacy to the new code?  Here’s a resource for you [.pdf])
• Be patient.  It can take up to 24 hours for your tracking code to start working.

In our next edition, we’ll learn about how to use the dashboard before getting into the many fun goodies GA has to offer.

Photo courtesy of laverrue