1. Google Analytics Workshop
In today’s session we’re going to be covering a lot of information.
I’m going to attempt to dive into both high level concepts and strategies as well as provide technical explanation as to how to specifically set-up many important features that will allow you to get the most out of your website analytics data.

2. Web analytics is the measurement, collection, and reporting of web site traffic data
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that collects and processes huge amounts of data and provides 100s of standard and customizable reports
Measurement of website traffic is crucial to improve your website’s and marketing initiatives’ performance

3. All Marketing Drives Traffic
All marketing initiatives potentially lead people to your website.

4. Most Companies Use Google Analytics

5. How Companies Use Google Analytics

6. Methodology
It’s important to have a high level understanding of how data is collected and processed before you see it in a report.

7. Four Main Components

8. Collection
Javascript code is placed on every page of the website you want to track
When a user visits a page, the code collects information:
The page itself (which URL and what time)
Information about the user (web browser, geographic location, device, operating system)
Referral information, where the user came from
All data is stored on a Google Analytics server (the cloud).

9. Processing
Converts raw data into something more useful, for example, processing categorizes users’ devices as desktop, mobile, and tablets.

10. Configuration
At the same time Google Analytics applies your configuration settings to the raw data. For example, you can choose to filter certain types of data, like excluding traffic coming from your own employees.
After data is processed and configured, it is added to a database.
Important note: once the data has been added to the database it can not be changed. So if the configuration is wrong important data will be lost forever.

11. Reporting
This is what users see in the interface at google.com/analytics.
Important to note: this works for websites regardless of what device people are using. You can also track activity on mobile apps, there are some subtle differences but the overall process is the same.

12. Data Collection
All data is sent to the Google Analytics server in a long series of text information
Google Analytics uses first-party cookies to identify web browsers
No personally identifiable information is captured by Google Analytics
This text includes information from the browser (screen resolution, operating system, device type)
Also information from the website (page title)
Also time stamp data

13. Why It Matters
Users can disable javascript and/or first-party cookies from their browser, making it impossible to track them
Google Analytics is focused on visitor privacy and allows visitors to have that choice
The majority of people using the web have both features enabled
Due to these limitations, Google Analytics will always under-report data
Consider this when developing and viewing reports, concentrate more on trending and less on hard numbers

14. Set-up
I assume that you already have a Google Analytics account. You can always create new accounts by going to google.com/analytics

15. Account Structure Account Level Manage user access Property Level
Each website or mobile app, all data stored there
Profile Level
Define unique properties for your data
Use configuration settings in account to define each view
Use multiple views for each property for different stakeholders

16. Create at Least Three Views
Remember: once data is processed it can never be reprocessed
New views will only collect data from the day it’s created onward

17. Creating Filters Filters can… Exclude data Include data Change data
Actually change how the data looks in the reports

18. Creating Filters Filters can… Exclude data Include data Change data
Google Analytics is case sensitive. You can set up a lower case filter to force all URLs into lower case.
This actually changes the data to something more meaningful.

19. Setting Up Filters
Filters are rules that transform the data, the rules are called conditions.
Let’s look at how you do this.

20. Setting Up Filters
You can create a new view.
You can create a filter.

21. Setting Up Filters
Start by selecting a specific filter field. Common ones are user IP address, device type, or geographic location.
Next specify the condition (or rules) (there are many different types of conditions)
Finally choose an action

22. Filter Library
Once a filter is created it is added to the filter library for the full account so you can reuse filters for any view.

23. Measuring Objectives
Your website should help your company achieve specific business objectives
Ask yourself: “What is the purpose(s) of our web site?”
Once business objectives are established you can determine how to measure success by assigning KPIs
What are visitors doing on our site?
What aren’t visitors doing on our site?
Different stakeholders within the organization will have different objectives
It’s important to measure success against each objective, determine benchmarks and set expectations
This is one of the most important takeaways from today.

24. Let’s look at some examples of KPIs.

25. Using Conversions to Measure Success
It’s important to measure both macro and micro so you’re equipped with behavioral data to understand what customer experiences help drive the desired outcomes.

26. Creating Goals
Setting up goals to measure conversions is the most important part of implementation.
Goals are the way we map data collected in Google Analytics with the KPIs we determined based on our business objectives.

27. Creating Goals
Always measure both micro conversions and macro conversions.
Macro conversions measure your primary business objectives.
Micro conversions are relationship building activities that lead up to a macro conversion.

28. Features of Goals Goals are configured at the view level
There are four types of goals
Destination (ex: thank-you.html)
Event (ex: played a video)
Duration (ex: 5 minutes or more)
Pages per session (ex: 3 pages or more)
All goals require a slightly different set-up.

29. Destination
Track a specific page that is loaded after a user takes a specific action.

30. Event
Event tracking needs to be set-up separately in order to track PDF downloads, video views, or other events.

31. User Engagement Goals

32. Creating Goals

33. Creating a Destination Goal
You only need the request URI, not the entire URL.
You’ll want to set up separate confirmation / thank you pages for each action that you’re tracking in order to break them out separately.

34. Creating a Destination Goal
The name you give the goal is what will appear in your reports.

35. Calculating ROI
Advertising ROI and average per visit value help you understand the monetary value of a non-ecommerce website.
Value is based on the sales team’s close ratio and average value per lead.

36. eCommerce
You can also turn on ecommerce goal tracking to view sales activity and performance.
This will require a developer creating specific code that will be added to the GA code.
This will pull in product names as well as product transactions, revenue, etc.
More on ecommerce reports:

37. Terminology

38. Terminology There are two types of data.
Dimensions describes characteristics of the users, their sessions, and actions.
Metrics describe quantitative measurements of the dimensions and are expressed as numerical values.

39. Typical Report List of the corresponding metrics
List of values for one dimension
Typical report will show a table with a list of values for one particular dimension.
The rest of the columns display the corresponding metrics.

40. Dimension Examples
Transition: Metrics help you understand the behavior of your users.

41. Metrics Examples
Transition: Metrics help you understand the behavior of your users.
Metrics can be quantitative (how many) like total visitors
Metrics can be qualitative (averages) like pages per visit or conversion rate

42. Dimension Terminology
The number of unique visitors who visit your site during a certain time period
Used to understand the overall size of your audience.

43. Dimension Terminology
Can be segmented in new or returning users.

44. Dimension Terminology
Sessions (used to be visits) are a period of consecutive activity by the same user
A session persists until a user stops interacting with the site for 30 minutes (default setting)
This can be customized in configuration settings

45. Dimension Terminology
If you have a video site with long form videos you would want to change your configuration so that sessions didn’t time out after 30 minutes

46. Metric Terminology
Pageviews – most basic tracking, each time a page is viewed it is counted as one pageview
This will count correctly when the code is placed on each page of the site

47. Metric Terminology
Events – other interactions, like watching a video or downloading a PDF
Tracking Events requires additional customizations to implementation
Google Analytics can track other interactions like watching a video.
Pageviews and events are the two dimensions that keep a session active.

48. Metric Terminology
All time-based metrics rely on the stream of user activity in order to be calculated properly.
Google Analytics tracks the time of each interaction in order to calculate time metrics.

49. Metric Terminology
Bounce Rate – the percentage of sessions with only one user interaction (pageview)

50. Metric Terminology
Important to note – it does not matter how long a user stays on a page
Since Google Analytics does not have a second interaction to use for calculation of session duration or time on page, we don’t know how long bounce visitors spent on the site.

51. Metric Terminology
Question: Is a high bounce rate bad? Answer: It depends.

52. Reports
Now that we understand how data is compiled and the terminology used in reports let’s look at some of the standard reports available in GA.

53. Standard Reports
Optional: Using shortcuts provides fast access to your most commonly viewed reports straight from the Home tab. When you save your report as a shortcut, all of the report configurations will be stored as well. This can include applied filters, advanced segments, dimensions, and more.
Intelligence creates an alert when a metric (such as conversion rate) for a segment (such as AdWords traffic) deviates from the expected range. Automatic alerts (in orange, or blue for automatic AdWords related alerts) are generated without any input from you.
Custom alerts are generated based on conditions you specify.

54. Audience Reports
Who are your visitors

55. Acquisition Reports
How did they get to your site

56. Behavior Reports
What did they do

57. Conversion Reports
Site performance

58. Report Components
Secondary dimensions help drill in further on the primary dimensions.
For example, add source to see which search engines are driving organic visits.

59. Report Components
Filter data by including or excluding any dimensions available.
(for example, how do users on smartphones get to your site?)

60. Report Components
Segments allow you to filter and compare different audience segments.
There are basic segments like paid traffic or the ability to create custom segments.

61. Segment Reports
For example, you may want to see how mobile users engage based on how they got to the site to help determine whether you should develop a mobile app.
This is filtered by mobile users, then segmented by paid traffic, organic traffic, and direct traffic.

62. Report Components
Toggle date range and compare to previous periods

63. Trending Reports
Q4 vs. Q3

64. Trending Reports
Q4 YoY

65. Annotations
Annotations allow you to mark specific days with notes that everyone can see (if you share it).
This allows you to better understand the results of marketing initiatives:
PR pick-up
SEO implementation
TV schedule start

66. Customization

67. Traffic Sources
Two dimensions captured automatically from any visitor to the site.
Source is the name of the website that referred a user to your site.
Medium is the mechanism, or how the user got to your site.

68. Default Mediums There are three default mediums.
But what about tracking the other channels.

69. Link Tagging
Any time you link to your website you should add URL parameters that allow you to track the visit correctly in Google Analytics
Example:
&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign= marketing
*One of the most important pieces of information.
This overwrites the data GA would normally track.

70. Campaign Tagging

71. Campaign Reporting

72. URL Shortener
Bit.ly and Goo.gl are two services that help you shorten long URLs for easier posting in s, on social media, or other areas where you place hyperlinks to your website
The free service changes - m_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=marketing into goo.gl/yrry7x

73. URL Builder
bit.ly/rbj-urlbuilder

74. Tracking Adwords Adwords by default is set to auto-tag.
You have to link up the Adwords account with the GA Property to turn it on.

75. Tracking Adwords
Linking an Adwords account to a GA Property is done in the admin section.

76. Tracking Adwords

77. Tracking Adwords

78. Event Tracking
When code is placed on each page of the site, the only activity being tracked is pageviews
There are other interactive opportunities on pages that you’ll want to track engagement with, such as PDF downloads, video views, embedded Flash and AJAX elements
Event tracking allows you to track all interactions within the pages of the site
Important: Determine in advance all of events you want to track
Remember, once data has been processed it can not be changed. If you don’t track certain events you’ll never have that past data.

79. Event Elements
Category (required) - the name you supply for the group of objects you want to track
Action (required) - a string that is uniquely paired with each category, and commonly used to define the type of user interaction for the web object
Label (optional) - an optional string to provide additional dimensions to the event data
Value (optional) - an integer that you can use to provide numerical data about the user event
Important: Adopt a consistent and clear naming convention that will be understood by all stakeholders
Tracking events requires additional coding and should be implemented by a developer.

80. Event Reporting
Categories are the primary divisions of the types of events.

81. Event Action
Actions could be play, stop, or pause for a video. Or could be download.

82. Event Label Optional piece adds more context to the event action.
Final thought on events – these can also become Goals providing even more powerful reporting opportunities.

83. Custom Reports
Custom Reports allow you to customize the dimensions and metrics you see in a Google Analytics report.

84. Custom Reports

85. Custom Reports

86. Custom Reports

87. Custom Reports

88. Custom Reports

89. Dashboard Reports

90. Creating a Dashboard

91. Creating Widgets

92. Dashboard Report

93. bit.ly/rbjbestoftheweb
To learn more about technical aspects of setting up and creating custom Google Analytics tracking, view the dev guide on this page.
Examples – ecommerce set-up, event tracking, and cross domain tracking.
bit.ly/rbjbestoftheweb

94. Data Analysis

95. Analyzing Data There are many ways to analyze data
There are two techniques that are critical to good data analysis:
Segmentation
Context

96. Segmentation
Aggregated data helps you understand overall user behavior trends.
In order to understand why trends occur over time, segmentation allows you to isolate and analyze subsets of the data.
For example you may want to compare separate advertising channels to understand which initiatives were responsible for specific trends.
Every report within Google Analytics provides the ability to segment.
For example – referral source, day of week, month of year, geographic location, and customer characteristics (such as 1st time vs. repeat customers).

97. Context
There are two types of context: internal and external

98. External Context
External allows you to compare your data against industry benchmarks.
For example, you can see if an uptick in site visits is unique for your company or industry wide.

99. Internal Context
Internal context helps you set expectations based on your own historical performance.
Use benchmarks to set your key performance indicator targets.

100. In Conclusion
There are 100s of reports and numerous ways to view the data, I covered many reports and report types that I think are important
Explore, test, and search to learn which reports work best for your organization’s needs

101. Questions?
Karl Heberger Chief Media Strategist Mason Digital