Word camp ga 2017 4

Editor's Notes

1. A good set-up is pretty fast and includes seven elements: Load the code properly. Google analytics has given you a UA # that collects all the statistics on your website. It is important to have this code in the header php file immediately before the closing </head> tag. User Type Filters remove traffic that you don’t need to track. For example, you will not want website administrators use of your website included in your GA…. They are testing to ensure functionality of website so you don’t want their clicks and traffic to skew your GA data. Set Domain – this just makes sure that GA only tracks your website. File Downloads. How many in the room have PDF’s, or other files that your website visitors can download? Tracking these downloads shows you how these files are contributing to your goals and what you want people to do on your website. Outbound Links: How many in the room have links to other websites like social media icons or links to complimentary sites? It is important to understand how these items are helping your business. Site Search: How many in the room have a Site search on their website? This is a great source of new keywords, or content people are looking for and you could provide on your website. Goals and Goal Values: Goals are what you want people to do on your website. We are going to spend a lot of time on that one later.
2. So here is the story behind why I am so passionate about tracking marketing results. About three years ago I was working at a large company, managing a large marketing budget. My team’s job was to generate qualified leads for the sales force. When the recession hit I was told to cut 10% from my budget. After speaking with a lot of people and reviewing Google Analytics and other data I concluded that most of the savings could be made from cutting Google Advertising and some email marketing. I had buy-in for my plan from the VP, CEO, my team and Sales management.
3. At the beginning I told you about my first experience with GA… A VP who made a compelling business case to invest in a new website. A few years later I was working for a much bigger company, managing a marketing budget. When the recession hit, I was told to reduce my budget by $10K. So I spoke to a lot of people about where to cut and have the least impact. I also looked at my Google Analytics and it seemed the best things to cut were some advertising and email lists we were buying. Everyone agreed these were good cuts to make and the plan was approved by senior management. Then Eddie our Web Master came to see about the cuts. He said I was making a mistake. He showed me his GA which had goals. If I made those cuts we risked losing half our leads. Eddie showed me that cutting our social media and banner advertising would save the same amount of money and not risk nearly as many leads.
4. So once you have your GA configured how you want it….. It’s time to start looking at reports. We’re going to look at the three main reporting areas of Google Analytics.
5. These are all found down the right hand side of your GA menu.
6. Acquisition tell you where your website users came from. This report uses Channels to group how users found this website. It identifies how the MOST visitors were acquired.
7. Sometimes the default reports are hard to read, especially when you just want a couple of pieces of information, like which traffic sources brought the most sessions (popular) and which traffic sources brought the most goal converting traffic. In the top left above the table (highlighted and circled) you can change the report format. In this case we clicked the pie chart.
8. This is the same report as the previous slide, but notice how the report has a lot less information and is much easier to read. The circled item is where you can choose (drop down arrow) which one of your goals to apply to the report.
9. So back to the A B C’s of Google Analytics Reporting: A is for Acquisition – how people get your website. B is for Behaviour – what people do once they get to your website.
10. Behaviour looks at what people do once they are on your website. What pages they viewed, what events they used This report shows the pages that were viewed the most. It is sorted by the number of page views.
11. Goal Values Tell you How Valuable Each Web Page is to Each Goal: Goal values were originally established for eCommerce websites where monetary transactions are taking place. However, even when there is no monetary value to the goal, such as completing a form or viewing a number of pages, a goal value nonetheless shows the value of pages relative goal completions. When there is a monetary value on a goal, Universal Analytics calculates the contribution of each website pages toward completing a goal / conversion. The result is a page value for each goal (as seen in page view reports). The calculation is based on the number of goal completions relative to the pages website users passed through on the way to completing the goal. For example, if one page was used by all visitors completing the goal, that page would have a very high value relative to other pages. For example if a goal has a $100 value; a very compelling page might be worth $50 and some supporting pages worth less.
12. This is the same report, but now it is sorted by page value. Notice that the pages are significantly different. These are the pages being used the most by visitors who convert, or achieve the goal we are looking at. We want visitors to get to these pages because they improve the likely of the visitor achieving our goal. Suggestions for using this information: 1. Navigation – since these are the pages most likely to trigger a conversion, how easy is it to find them in your navigation? Compare this report to your navigation. 2. Review messaging on valuable pages and see if that can be moved to pages that get more traffic
13. Back to the A B C’s of Google Analytics Reporting: A is for Acquisition B is for Behaviour And, C is for Conversion – did people do what you wanted them to do on your website?
14. The Top Conversion report shows us which traffic sources “assisted” in goal conversions. In this case, all of the goal conversions came from “Direct” traffic (people who typed in the website address, or booked marked the site). However, some of the visitors learned about the site from Paid Search and Organic search – those two traffic sources “assisted” in the conversions.
15. So there you have it; the ABCs of Google Analytics Reporting. A is for Acquisition – how people get to your website B is for Behaviour – What people do on your website C is for Conversion – did people do what you wanted them to do – meet your goals.
16. This is the goal set-up screen. The types of goals you can have are here. Let’s take a closer look at the goal types and how to use them: Destination goals: This measures how many of your visitors are getting to a webpage you want them to get to. For example; after making a purchase or a donation the user goes to a “Thank you” or, “Confirmation Page”. You will tell Google Analytics that these pages are important, so count every time a visitor get to this page. Duration and Pages per session goals measure engagement with your website; for example count the number of times visitors view more than 3 pages while on the website. Event Goals measure things that happen on your website when click does not change the page such as clicking a video, a form field, even a PDF.
17. Google Analytics has four types of Goals: Duration Goal measures engagement with your website. You set a time that you think demonstrates engagement with your website Pages per session goal also measures engagement; the more pages viewed while on the site the more engaged a person is. You set this goal based on how many pages should be looked at to demonstrate engagement with your website. Destination goals are specific pages you want people to reach while on your website. For an Ecommerce website it would be the order confirmation page, for other actions such as a registration or email sign up it might be a thank you page. Just remember it’s a page you want people to reach. Event goals are for clicks on specific buttons or actions such as a download, video, link. We’re going to spend this entire session talking about event goals.