INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS A Guide for Associations

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weblinkinternational.com INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

TABLE OF CONTENTS WELCOME. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 STEP 1 « Navigate Your Home Tab. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 STEP 2 « Get to Know the Reporting Tab ���������������������� 7 STEP 2.1 « Dashboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 STEP 2.2 « Shortcuts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 STEP 2.3 « Intelligence Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 STEP 2.4 « Real-Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 STEP 2.5 « Audience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 STEP 2.6 « Acquisition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 STEP 2.7 « Behavior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 STEP 2.8 « Conversions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 STEP 3 « Gather Your Questions and Answers ����������� 53 WEBLINK « About Weblink. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

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INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Welcome

If your organization has a website, chances are that you also have Google Analytics tracking your website’s performance. However, you may not be using it much because the wealth of information can be intimidating. The fact of the matter is that Google Analytics can help you determine your marketing efforts’ effectiveness and lead to better decisions on how to spend your limited time, resources and money. With this in mind, our goal with the following pages is to introduce you to most of what Google Analytics has to offer. In the eBook, you will find basic descriptions on everything from getting around your Home page tab, to reporting, to a short Q&A section on applying the reports to your association. It is our hope that you will be inspired by your acquired knowledge and apply what you have learned here to make better decisions faster. Let’s get started!

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Welcome INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 1 « Navigate Your Home Tab ACCESS YOUR ANALY TICS ACCOUNT »»In your web browser, navigate to www.google.com/analytics and click on Access Google Analytics in the top menu.

»»You will use your Google email and password to access any of Google’s tools, including Analytics. If you don’t have a Google account, create one.

»»Make sure your webmaster has given you access to your

website’s Google Analytics’ account. This can be achieved under the User Management section in the Admin tab.

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Navigate Your Home Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 1 « Navigate Your Home Tab CHECK YOUR MESSAGES »»There are two areas that will contain messages to alert you to new features and suggested and required actions. Always check these areas to make sure you are getting the most from your Analytics account.

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This message alerts the user to upgrade to Universal Analytics, the new operating standard for Google Analytics. Google plans to retire its classic tracking code in the future, and all Google Analytics properties will be required to use Universal Analytics.

2 This message area can be accessed by clicking the bell-shaped icon. Here, you will find out if there are potential problems with your Analytics. NOTE: Only users with edit permission will see these diagnostics messages.

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Navigate Your Home Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 1 « Navigate Your Home Tab SELECT YOUR DATES »»When you log in to Google Analytics, the reporting

dates default to the past 30 days, and the Day view will automatically be selected. In order to get a more accurate picture of your website’s performance over time, change your date selection to see the last quarter, six months or year. Experiment by selecting the Hourly, Day, Week and Month views to see if it helps you to further spot trends. Additionally, you may opt to compare your results to a previous time period.

SELECT YOUR PROPERT Y »»Google Analytics allows more than one property to be associated with your Google account. If you have more than one, you’ll need to choose which property you want to examine.

»»As indicated in the image below, there are two areas from which you may select your property. After selecting your property, you will be taken to the Reporting tab for more detailed analytic information.

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Navigate Your Home Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2 « Get to Know the Reporting Tab THE REPORTING SIDEBAR NAVIGATION »»Upon selecting your property, you will be taken to a default reporting view. Analytics

automatically creates an unfiltered view for your property showing you all data that you have associated with your property. This is important because, without filters, you will get reports on all activity, including your own activity. If you want to exclude your own access of your website, you should create a filtered view. Blog Ambitions created a simple tutorial on how to remove yourself from your Google Analytics.

»»The left sidebar on the Reporting tab acts as a navigation menu allowing you access to

several categories of analytic information, and each category expands to reveal links to various detailed reports.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2 « Get to Know the Reporting Tab USING THE SEARCH BOX »»A search box above the categories provides quick access to many options. You can type

in the name of a report or a keyword that describes what you want to do. Simply start typing in the search box and Google will provide you with options that may interest you. For example, in the image below, the keyword “new” returns options to create a new dashboard, and see new versus returning visitors among others.

»»Simply clicking your mouse into the search bar produces a drop-down list of your most recently viewed reports and eliminates time spent navigating.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.1 « Dashboards USING DA SHBOARDS »»Dashboards can save you time

by providing you with snapshots of activity that are pertinent to your association. Each dashboard can contain up to 12 widgets that give you an overview of the dimensions and metrics you specify.

For help with items in the Reporting tab, click the Analytics Education button below your date selection from within your Reporting tab.

»»To create a new dashboard, click

+ New Dashboard in the sidebar, select either Blank Canvas to create a custom dashboard with custom widgets or Starter Dashboard to create a new dashboard with a default set of widgets that you can then customize. Give your Dashboard a descriptive title and click Create Dashboard. Additionally, you may find it helpful to import an established dashboard by selecting to Import from Gallery on the pop-up dialog box.

This dashboard is an example of one imported from Google’s Solutions Gallery. The gallery provides ready-to-use, popular and useful dashboard configurations that are simple to import into your account.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.2 « Shortcuts USING SHORTCUTS »»Shortcuts remember your report settings so you don’t have to reconfigure a report each time you open it. All report customizations and settings are saved in your shortcuts except the date range. Check the dates each time you use a shortcut to make sure the time period you need is applied.

»»To create a shortcut, find the report from either the Reporting or Customization tab. Configure the report with all your preferred settings.

»»Next, from the menu bar above the report, click Shortcut. Enter a name and click OK to save. Saving the shortcut automatically takes you to the Shortcuts section. You can access, edit or delete the shortcut in the left sidebar menu on the Reporting tab.

Saving a report to the Shortcuts section will maintain the custom segments, dimensions and metrics that you have applied to the report. However, you will always need to choose the date range for the report.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.3 « Intelligence Events USING INTELLIGENCE EVENTS »»The purpose of Intelligence Events is to alert you when there are significant changes in traffic and usage patterns on your website. Google monitors your website’s traffic to detect variations and creates automatic alerts when they occur. There is no set up required for automatic web alerts. If significant events exist, they will appear in the Intelligence Events section.

»»Additionally, you can create your own custom alerts. For example, you can set a custom alert to

appear when traffic from a certain location decreases by more than a specific percentage. You may choose to receive email or text message notifications when the event happens so you will know about it without having to check the reports.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.4 « Real-Time GET TING REAL-TIME INFORMATION »»The Real-Time reports allow you to monitor activity more or less as it occurs on your website. The

reports are continuously updated to show you how many people are on your website and how they are interacting with it.

»»Real-time data pertaining to your website’s traffic, content, events and conversions can be useful when you make content changes or run short-term promotions for which you want real-time performance feedback.

»»The reports continually refresh, and

each pageview is reported seconds after it occurs. A user is considered active if he or she has triggered an event or pageview within the past 5 minutes.

»»The Real-Time Overview report gives you a snapshot of how users are interacting with your website. You will see how many users are currently on your website, their top active pages, referrals and social traffic sources, keywords and locations.

»»Drill down on Real-Time Locations to

see where your real-time visitors are geographically located.

»»Real-Time Traffic Sources will let you

know how your users arrived including who referred them.

»»Real-Time Content shows you the current pages being visited.

»»The Real-Time Events report displays

the top 20 event categories and is sorted by the number of users who have interacted with the event, but event tracking requires additional technical set up.

»»Real-Time Conversions reports NOTE: If you see at least one active user, you will know the tracking code is working.

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conversions from destination and event goals; however, you need to already have established goals to see these conversions in real-time.

Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience GET TING INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE »»Audience reports can give you insight into your audience, including their demographics, interests and

geographic location makeup, how visitors access your content, and their loyalty and engagement with your website.

»»The Audience Overview includes some specifics on demographics, system and mobile statistics. You

can see your audience’s language, country and city demographics. You can also see which browser, operating system and service provider your audience uses. The mobile statistics show your audience’s mobile operating system, service provider and screen resolution. This information can be helpful when you are determining language settings and whether to optimize your website for specific browsers and devices.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE DEMOGR APHICS »»The Demographics Overview report shows your traffic by age and gender. You can use the demographic data to see how converting and non-converting users are different. Note: Since Google may not have demographics associated with all of your users, these reports alone will most likely not represent your whole audience.

To access demographics and interests reports, you must first enable your Display Advertiser Features and Demographics and Interest Reports in the Property Settings Column of your Google Analytics Admin tab.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE’S INTERESTS »»The Interests Overview report returns your users top ten interest categories to include Affinity Categories, In-Market Segments and Other.

»»Affinity Categories look at user lifestyle. For example, some affinity categories include News Junkies, Sports Fans, and Cooking Enthusiasts.

»»In-Market Segments tell you about your users’ product-purchase interests. »»The Other Category provides the most specific user interest information of the three categories by

narrowing the focus of Affinity Categories. For example, a News Junkie in Affinity Categories may be more specifically identified as a person interested in News/Weather or News/Politics.

»»Use the reports to get to know your users’ interests, segment your audience and tailor your content to their interests where possible.

»»Use custom reports to view your users demographics and interests as they relate to other metrics such as engagement and conversions to identify characteristics of your top prospects.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience SEEING YOUR USERS’ GEOGR APHIC LOC ATIONS »»The Geo report shows you the language and location of your visitors. You might use this information to see if you are reaching your intended market or to identify potential new markets.

»»By default, your locations are listed according to the number of sessions (the period time a user is actively on your website) within the Country dimension.

»»Change the primary dimension by selecting the hyperlinks available in the Primary Dimension area below the map.

»»Choose either Country, City, Continent or Sub Continent as your Primary Dimension depending on your geographic preferences.

»»The darker spots of color on the Map Overlay represent the highest concentration of the selected

metric (sessions by default). Hovering your mouse over the Map Overlay will magnify the view of that particular area.

This location report is sorted in descending order by the number of total sessions in each city.

»»To change the sort order in the report

table below the map, click on a column name. For example, if you want to sort the table by location of the majority of your new users, click on the column title “New Users” to re-sort your list. The arrow beside the column name indicates whether your table is sorted in ascending or descending order. Simply click the column name again to toggle between the two sort orders.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience USING THE AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR REPORTS »»The Audience Behavior section helps you determine whether you are acquiring new users, if your firsttime users visit your website again, how frequently and recently they return and how engaged they are with your content.

NEW VS RETURNING VISITORS »»Use the New vs Returning Visitors report to see how many of your sessions within the selected time

period are from new users and how many sessions are from people who have visited you before. Because the numbers can be skewed by users visiting your website on multiple devices, this statistic is best used by comparing its performance over time. Use it to benchmark visitor goals and spot trends.

FREQUENC Y & RECENC Y »»The Frequency & Recency report contains loyalty information with the Count of Visits and the Days Since Last Session. Look for trends and patterns in this report that will help you develop your marketing plan.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience »»Under the Count of Sessions tab on the Frequency & Recency report, those users visiting twice are also

counted in the first row as someone visiting once for the first time. As a result, the number of sessions with the count of “one” is often skewed higher.

»»Another item to note is that while the Count of Sessions shows only sessions that occurred during the

chosen time period of your report, it does not necessarily include the time period of the reporting. For example, if you have selected a 30-day time period for your report and the user is visiting for the second time during the last 30 days, Google Analytics counts the visit only once—as the user’s second visit. The user’s first visit that occurred prior to the 30-day range will not appear in the report.

»»To get a more accurate picture of how many loyal visitors you had in the 30-day period, you can

customize the segment to show you only users with multiple sessions in the time period specified.

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STEP 2.5 « Audience

The Count of Sessions report now shows only your more frequent visitors who have visited your website multiple times in the time period specified.

»»Under the Days Since Last Session tab, you will see the number of days between your users’ latest

visit and their previous visit. The number of visitors with zero days since their last session is often significantly higher than the others. Most likely, your one-time visitors are skewing this number because they will appear in the 0 Days Since Last Session row.

»»To get a clearer picture of your data and avoid counting one-time visitors alongside your loyal visitors, create a new custom segment.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience »»To create the custom segment, click on +Add Segment and a new section will appear. In the new

section that appears, click the +NEW SEGMENT button, and select Custom from the left-hand column.

»»Name your segment something descriptive such as “Sessions not equal to 1.” Select the Behavior

category, choose the “not equal to” symbol and type in the numeral one. Click Save to apply your new segment to the current report and see how the results have changed.

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STEP 2.5 « Audience

After adding your custom segment, you can compare the two segments to compare the difference your segment has made.

Remove the All Sessions segment to only see the sessions excluding one-time visitors, click the arrow on the All Sessions segment and click Remove.

The report now shows only your more loyal visitors and the number of days since their last session.

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STEP 2.5 « Audience DETERMINING AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT »»The Engagement reports provide you with the length of time that unique users spend engaged in activity with your website as well as the number of pages they click. You can switch between the Session Duration and Page Depth tabs to view the data separately.

»»The images below show the two reports side-by-side. Note the correlation between the length of

sessions and page depth. Visitors who spend 0-10 seconds on the site are not going very deep into the site. Your more engaged visitors will generally spend more time interacting with your website and view more pages.

DISCOVERING AUDIENCE TECHNOLOGY »»The Audience Technology reports provide you indepth information about the technology your audience uses to access your website.

»»Keep in mind that visitors

with low connection speed may leave your site on entry (bounce) if it takes a long time to load. Additionally, if your website is not optimized for their screen resolution, browser and flash versions, you are less likely to engage your visitors.

»»Periodically review these reports and make sure your website is optimized to provide visitors with the best possible experience.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience IDENTIF YING AUDIENCE’S DE VICE T YPES »»The Mobile Overview report gives you a breakdown of your audience’s devices by desktop, mobile and

tablet. You can see the sessions broken down by category with percentages in a visual chart simply by clicking the pie shape icon as shown in the image below. This view makes it easy to see the overall breakdown of devices.

»»The desktop category includes desktop computers, laptops, netbooks and game consoles such as

Playstation and Wii. Mobile includes smart phones and hand-held games such as the Playstation Vita and Nintendo DS. The tablet category counts several tablet brands including the iPad, Galaxy Tab and Google Nexus, as well as e-readers such as the Kindle Fire.

»»The Mobile Devices report shows you statistics about the mobile-ready devices that access

your website along with the device’s brand, operating system, mobile provider and other useful information. Compare the devices’ bounce rates to identify potential problems. For example, a consistently high bounce rate among certain devices, operating systems or screen resolutions could indicate that your website is not properly optimized for these devices.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience USING CUSTOM VARIABLES »»The Custom Variables report shows activity by custom segments that you have created by modifying the Analytics tracking code. This advanced feature is replaced by Custom Dimensions in Universal Analytics and requires a more advanced understanding of Analytics.

AUDIENCE BENCHMARKING »»Benchmarking allows you to compare your data with collective data in your industry. In order to see your benchmarking reports, you must anonymously share your data by enabling it in your Account Settings on the Admin tab. Note: Your benchmarking reports are solely based on other companies who also choose to share their data.

»»Once enabled, you can compare your data

against benchmarks for Sessions, % New Sessions, New Sessions, Pages / Session, Avg. Session Duration and Bounce Rate within the Channels, Location and Devices dimensions.

»»The Default Channel Grouping includes data on your social, direct, referral, organic search, paid search traffic, display and email channels.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience »»To see more pertinent results, use the selection menus at the top of each report to define the

parameters for industry category, size by daily visits and geographic location. You can choose from over 1600 industry categories to compare your data with others more closely related to your industry. There are seven traffic size classifications to help you compare your organization to others with similar traffic levels in your industry. If you wish to see your data as it relates to a specific location, you can limit benchmarking data to a specific area by selecting a geographic location.

»»The percentage values in the report’s table show how your property either outperforms or under-

performs the benchmark. A positive value indicates that your property outperforms the benchmark, and a negative value indicates that your property under-performs the benchmark.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience UNDERSTANDING YOUR USERS’ FLOW »»The Users Flow report shows the paths that users took through the various pages on your website

and where along their paths they exited. The graph consists of nodes and connections to help you visualize your data.

»»A node represents one value of the dimension you are filtering, and a connection shows you the path between nodes as well as the volume of traffic along that path.

node

connection

node

connection

node

connection

node

dimension

»»You can experiment with dimensions and drill down on data to find insights that may help with your marketing plan.

»»You will see the volume of traffic to your website based on the dimension you choose and the number

of users in each node along the path as well as the number of drop-offs and where users exit between steps or backtrack along the path.

You can see a popup containing the specific metrics for connections, nodes and node exits by hovering over them.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.5 « Audience

This Users Flow report shows the flow of traffic based on the Social Network dimension. Clicking on a node will allow you to drill down for further insights.

The report now shows only the Facebook segment of the Social Network dimension. For even more information, choose Group details.

The Group details selection returns a list view of the outgoing traffic URLs with the number of Sessions and % of traffic.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.6 « Acquisition FINDING OUT ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE ACQUISITION »»The Acquisition reports give insight into how you acquire users, how they behave on your website

after acquisition and their conversion patterns. Use the Acquisition Overview report for a snapshot of which channels acquire the most users, which channels acquire your most engaged users and which channels acquire users with the most conversions.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.6 « Acquisition VIEWING ACQUISITION CHANNEL S »»The Acquisition Channels report shows you the top sources driving your traffic and may include

organic, paid, display-ad, referral, direct and email traffic. Understanding how each is defined is key to identifying which channels are working best for you.

»»Organic Search channels are the search engines from which traffic originated. »»Referral channels are the domains that referred traffic to you. »»Paid Search channels are the paid keywords, search queries and campaigns that sent you the traffic. »»Display channels are the display-ad content and campaigns that directed users to your website. »»Email channels are the email campaigns that resulted in traffic to your website. »»Most users do not need more than the default group of channels, but you can create your own Channel Grouping if you want to customize your grouping.

GET TING MORE INFORMATION ON YOUR TR AFFIC ACQUISITION »»The Acquisition All Traffic report provides you with another way to look at your traffic. It focuses on the source, medium, keywords, campaign and content that drives users to your website.

»»The Source tells you how people accessed your website.

Sources include search engines, referring websites and direct— where the user has bookmarked your website or manually types your URL directly into a browser. By default, your initial view will be Source/Medium, but you can click on the Primary Dimension links to see other views.

»»The Medium is the way the traffic was referred. A source’s medium could be organic, meaning the

traffic came to your website through an unpaid search. Cost per clicks (CPCs) would represent paid searches. Email would indicate a custom medium you have created, and direct traffic’s medium will be listed as none.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.6 « Acquisition SEEING YOUR REFERR AL S »»The All Referrals report provides you with the sources (referring websites) and the landing pages

associated with your referrals. Looking deeper into your referrals can show you which referrers are driving the most traffic. If you are spending a lot of time trying to build your social media presence, you want to make sure social media is referring enough users to make it worth your while.

Knowing where your traffic is landing can help you identify how specific pages are performing.

»»You can click on the source domain links to see specific pages in the referring domain that are driving traffic to your website.

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Get to Know the Reporting Tab INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

STEP 2.6 « Acquisition USING ACQUISITION C AMPAIGNS »»Campaign tracking in Google Analytics lets you track online advertising campaigns to your website from AdWords campaigns as well as other advertising sources.

»»You can set up your own custom campaign to find out how your internal marketing campaigns

perform. For example, you could set up a custom campaign to see if users are coming to your web site from a link that was included in your newsletter email.

»»The easiest way to build a custom campaign is to generate your own custom URL by using the Google Play URL builder. Fill in the form with your information and click Generate URL to create URLs for website tracking.

You can use the URLs that you create in Google Play URL Builder to track your custom campaigns in Google Analytics.

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STEP 2.6 « Acquisition C AMPAIGN KEY WORDS »»In this section, you will find your keywords separated into paid and organic. If you pay for AdWords, you will be able to see how they perform in the Paid Search Traffic report.

»»In 2011, to protect users’ privacy, Google changed the way it reported keyword data. As a result, the

value (not provided) began appearing for keywords on the Organic Search Traffic report. Depending on how much of your keyword traffic is (not provided), you may opt to not use this report and rely on other reports to determine what interests your audience.

C AMPAIGN ADWORDS »»To see AdWords reporting, connect your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts. The AdWords reports show you metrics about the visitors who click on your AdWords through to your website.

»»The variety of reports in the AdWords section give you several ways of looking at your data. They will help you determine which campaigns are most effective.

NET WORK SOCIAL »»The Social reports give you an idea of the value of your social activity as it relates to your website. As such, you need to have goals set in order for Analytics to assign value.

»»The Social Overview report gives you a summary of your conversions and traffic from social networks. »»The Network Referrals report shows which social networks are driving visitors to your website. You can use it to determine which network gives you more engaged visitors.

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STEP 2.6 « Acquisition »»The Landing Pages report will tell you which pages on your website are getting traffic from social

networks. Click on the page links to see a breakdown of which social networks sent the most traffic to that specific page.

»»The Trackbacks report allows you to see who mentions your site in link form. When someone links to your site, it can benefit you by giving you a new audience and potential new members. It may also result in you gaining credibility and improving your SEO.

»»In the Conversions report, you can identify which social network traffic is leading to the most

conversions on your website. A goal conversion results from a user completing a desired action on your site. You need to have goals set to see conversions.

»»By default, the Plugins report shows you interactions with the Google+1 button (if you are using it on

your website). Google+1 is Google’s version of Facebook’s Like button. If you want to see other social media button interactions such as Facebook Likes and Twitter Tweets, you will need to add some code to your website.

»»Similar to the Audience section’s Users Flow report, the Social section’s Users Flow report depicts the paths your users take through your website. However, the data is specifically centered around social networks as the referrers.

»»To see the Search Engine Optimization reports, you need to have set up Google Webmaster Tools to share data.

»»The Cost Analysis report uses the cost of each campaign and its associated revenue to calculate the

Return on Ad Spend and Revenue per Click. You must upload cost data in order to see these reports.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior IDENTIF YING USER BEHAVIOR »»The Behavior Overview report is a snapshot of how your visitors interacted with your website. Here,

you will see the number of Pageviews and Unique Pageviews, Avg. Time on Page, Bounce Rate and % Exit as well as top Site Content, Site Search and Events information. It’s important to understand your users’ behavior, but make sure you understand the meaning of the metrics so that you are spending your analytic time wisely.

»»Pageviews gives you the total number of pages viewed. If a user repeats a view of the same page in a

single session, it will be counted every time. If you are measuring trends, this number may be helpful, but remember it is not reflective of the number of individuals who were interacting with your site.

»»Unique Pageviews are the number of times that a page is viewed, but each view is only counted once

per user session. If one individual visits the same page repeatedly in a single session, it will only be counted once during that visit, but if the same individual visits again in another session, this will count as another unique pageview. Because of this, unique pageviews does not necessarily equate to unique visitors.

»»Avg. Time on Page tells you the average amount of time users spend on a page. A simplified

explanation of this calculation is that Google counts the time between page load and the time that the user engages in another activity on that page or another page.

»»The Bounce Rate indicates the percentage of visits where users left your website from the same page

they entered without interacting with the page. There are many factors that can affect your bounce rate. For example, a person may have gone to your web page to see a particular item and left without interacting further. You may also have common code implementation errors contributing to your bounce rate. For a more in-depth explanation of factors affecting bounce rate, read Yehoshua Coren’s web article, “Google Analytics Bounce Rate (actually) Demystified.”

»»% Exit shows you how often users exit from the page. In the example below, the events page has a

70.23 percent lower exit rate than the site average. This could be because users are clicking through to other pages for more details on events instead of exiting.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior GET TING REPORTS ON USER BEHAVIOR »»The Behavior Overview report gives you Site Content, Site Search and Events information as well.

Clicking on the links under these categories will change the data displayed beside these metrics.

»»Site Content contains the top 10 most viewed pages by URL path and page title and includes the number of pageviews and the percentage of total pageviews that the specific page received.

»»Site Search tells you the top 10 most searched terms that users enter into your search box on

your website. If you have no search box or do not have the Site Search Tracking turned on in your Site Search Settings, there will be no data to view. To learn how to turn on this feature, see Google Analytics Help.

»»The Events metric on the Behavior Overview report shows you categories of types of events that

occurred as defined by you. Event tracking requires additional technical set up that should be completed by a qualified developer, but provides useful data for understanding how users interact with your website.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior IDENTIF YING BEHAVIOR FLOW »»The Behavior Flow report is similar to other flow reports and shows you users’ paths through your

website. This report can help you determine what content engages users and where they drop off your website.

You can choose your view to see user movement between Automatically Grouped Pages, Events, or both Pages and Events.

»»Note: You must have set up and be tracking Events before they appear in the report. Additionally you must have set up Content Groupings before they appear in the report.

SITE CONTENT ALL PAGES »»The All Pages report shows how frequently each page on your site was viewed. Look for a high ratio of Bounce Rate to Entrances to identify pages that may need improvement in order to encourage the user to engage further with the page or click through to another page.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior SITE CONTENT DRILLDOWN »»The Content Drilldown report shows you activity at the page path (folder) level instead of showing you

specific pages. This can help you compare different sections of your site to identify high performers on a different level. In the report comparison below, the Events section at the folder level receives the most pageviews, but the home index page receives the most pageviews at the page level.

CONTENT DRILLDOWN REPORT

CONTENT ALL PAGES REPORT

SITE CONTENT L ANDING PAGES »»The Landing Pages report shows URLs of your website pages where users entered your site. These

landing pages may be the first experience a visitor has with your website, so they should be easy to navigate, well-designed and load quickly.

»»Check the bounce rate for each landing page individually because bounce rates can vary significantly from page to page. Determine if you will make improvements to the pages with high bounce rates and check progress by comparing each page to its own past performance.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior SITE CONTENT EXIT PAGES »»The Exit Pages report shows you the URLs corresponding to where users exit your website. Not the same as a bounce, exit pages on this report are simply the pages that are most frequently the last page in visitor sessions.

»»Broken down into the number of Exits, Pageviews and the % Exits, this report should be used with

others to determine if specific pages are themselves contributing to the decision of the user to leave your website.

CHECKING YOUR SITE SPEED »»The Site Speed Overview report gives you a quick look at the average page-load time according to the Browser, Country/Territory, and Page.

»»Identify potential problem areas and notify your website administrator to see if there are ways to improve.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior PAGE LOAD TIMINGS »»The Page Timings report lets you perform detailed analysis of individual page performance. »»You have the option to compare various metrics for insights into user behavior that is related to page timings. Experiment with the settings and look for any irregularities. For example, you may want to compare Average Page Load Time and Bounce Rates as compared with the rest of the site. If your page load times are high and your bounce rate is high, this might indicate that users are leaving the page due to long load times.

SITE SPEED SUGGESTIONS »»Google Analytics automatically makes

suggestions to help you improve your site speed. From the Speed Suggestions report, click the link in the Page Speed Suggestions column for a page that contains suggestions. In a new window, the Page Speed Insights web page opens and tells you specifically what you can do to make improvements to your web page.

SITE SPEED USER TIMINGS »»The User Timings report requires extra setup that should be completed by a qualified web developer.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior SITE SEARCH REPORTS »»As explained in a previous section, if you have a site search box on your website and you have

enabled your site search settings in Google Analytics, you can see your Site Search reports in Google Analytics.

SITE SEARCH OVERVIEW »»The Site Search Overview report displays a summary of data on visitors who use the search box on

your website. Beneath these metrics, you can view quick reports for the terms searched, categories and the pages where visitors initiated a search.

»»The Usage report shows statistics on the visits where someone used the search box on your website

and the number of visits where the search box wasn’t used. From this report’s results, you may be able to determine if having a search box increases or decreases your acquisition, behavior and conversion numbers.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior SITE SEARCH TERMS »»The Search Terms report shows you which keywords that your users entered into your website’s search

box. You can see the number of times that each search is performed along with how the user behaved after entering the search term.

SITE SEARCH PAGES »»The Pages report gives you insight into what users are trying to find on your website.

You can see where they initiate a search, what terms they enter and where they end up. Simply click one of the hyperlinked pages in the table to see the search phrases used from that page, and click on a search phrase to see the resulting destination pages. This report may help you identify potential content issues. For example, if users frequently search your home page for your directory, you may want to display it more prominently on your home page.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior EVENTS »»The Events section of the Behavior reports allows you to track specific interactions on your website, such as reading, clicks to calls-to-action, file downloads and video plays.

»»To use events reporting, you’ll need to set up specific event tracking code on your website. Once it’s set up, you’ll be able to use the Events Overview, Top Events, Pages and Events Flow reports.

»»The Events Overview report displays a summary of how your users interacted with the events that you

set up in your event tracking code. You are able to define the category, action, label and value for each event so the data is more meaningful to you in your reports. Additionally, each event can be set to count towards the bounce rate of the page, or not.

»»Categories can be used to identify your events. Categories may include videos, ads, external links, eBooks, call-to-action buttons and polls. For example, you can create a category titled eBooks to correspond to all your user interactions with your eBooks.

»»Actions define how people interact with what you’re tracking. Actions tend to be verbs such as “download, load, play, read and click.”

»»Labels are optional and help to further define your events. Some examples of labels are the names of your videos, ads, the specific URLs of clicked links and eBook names.

»»Values are also optional. Assigning your event a value can help you quantify its performance in

comparison with others and itself over time. Because you only assign a number as a value, you are determining what that value means, whether it is on a scale of one to 100 or a dollar amount.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior TOP E VENTS »»The Top Events report shows the events with the most user interaction. You change the view of the

events by clicking through the primary dimension links: Event Category, Event Action and Event Label.

»»The columnar data displays the primary dimension (Event Category by default), Total Events, Unique Events, Event Value and Avg. Value.

»»Total Events represents the total number of events that were recorded. »»Unique Events represent events with duplicate actions by the same user eliminated. »»Event Value is the total value of the event and is found by multiplying the per-event value by the number of times the event occurred.

»»Avg. Value corresponds to the average value across all events. PAGES »»The Pages report shows events data on your web pages where visitors interact with your events. You may want to place the same events on multiple pages to see which pages get the most interaction.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior EVENTS FLOW »»The Events Flow report shows you the event paths that visitors take on your website. Use it to

visualize the order that users trigger events on your site and discover what content keeps users engaged.

ADSENSE REPORTS »»Google AdSense is a free ad program that allows website owners to earn money by displaying

targeted Google ads on their websites. To start receiving data and access the AdSense reports in your Google Analytics account, you must first link an Analytics property with your AdSense account.

»»Use the AdSense Overview report to see a summary of key metrics. Some metrics are self-explanatory, such as AdSense Revenue and AdSense Ads Clicked. To see what each metric means, hover over it with your mouse and a definition will pop up.

»»To be counted as viewable, at least 50 percent of the AdSense ad’s pixels must be visible in the

browser window, and it must be on screen for one continuous second. If a user scrolls past an ad too quickly, it won’t count. For tips on ad placement, refer to Google’s support page.

»»Two other reports that help you determine your AdSense ad performance are the AdSense Pages

report and the AdSense Referrers report. The Pages report shows you which pages on your site gave you the most AdSense revenue. Use the Referrers report to find out which referring domains contributed most to your AdSense revenue.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior EXPERIMENTS »»Experiments allow you to perform A/B testing for almost any variation to a website property so you can see how it performs in order to optimize a specific goal. At any time, you can have up to 12 experiments per view running. Experiments that ended more than 48 hours ago do not count toward the limit of 12.

»»Once set up, clicking an experiment in the list opens a detailed report for that experiment.

»»Information in the report includes the status of your

experiment, how the pages in your experiment are performing and whether a particular page is clearly outperforming the rest.

»»Once you have started an experiment, you can make certain modifications to it including the percentage of users who see experiment pages and whether email notifications are sent.

IN - PAGE ANALY TICS »»With the In-Page Analytics reports, you can see how users interact with your web pages including which links users clicked.

»»If you have trouble loading In-Page Analytics, it may be due to your browser settings. For a temporary fix in the Chrome or Firefox browser, click the shield icon in the address bar, or use the full-view option.

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STEP 2.7 « Behavior »»Choose your preferred views from the control bar. Select the metric you want to see in the report

and set a threshold for visualizations of that metric. In the example below, the metric and threshold selected is Clicks with more than .10%.

»»Other selections in the control bar include buttons to show and hide bubbles and color scale for

bubbles, a button to turn on and off browser-size visualization and a button to expand and shrink the site view.

»»Google provides another way to see your Analytics information within your website with the Page

Analytics Chrome Extension. With this extension enabled, you simply load your website into your Google Chrome browser to see analytics data in your website. Use the red button to the right of the URL address bar to turn the extension on or off while you are browsing your site.

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STEP 2.8 « Conversions GET TING CONVERSIONS INFORMATION »»You must define goals before you can track goal conversions. A goal conversion occurs once a user completes a desired action on your site. You’ll be able to see the conversion rates and number of completions for each goal you set up. If you set a monetary value for each goal, you’ll also see the value of your conversions.

If you have multiple goals, you can choose to see them all together or one at a time on your report.

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STEP 2.8 « Conversions GOAL URL S »»The Goal URLs report will only show you the performance of the URLs that you set up as destination goals. This report won’t show non-URL based goals so you can isolate and compare which of the specified URLs are behind the most goal completions.

RE VERSE GOAL PATH »»Use the Reverse Goal Path report to find out where the users were before completing the goal. This gives you insight into which of your pages are best at helping you achieve your goals.

This Reverse Goal Path report reflects all goals combined. Also look at each goal individually to compare paths on each goal.

CONVERSIONS FUNNEL VISUALIZ ATION AND GOAL FLOW »»The Funnel Visualization and Goal Flow reports show you how users navigate through your site to complete your destination goals.

»»The Goal Flow report more accurately reflects your users’ path because

the Goal Flow report shows loopbacks. For example, if a user goes back to or refreshes a particular page you see two pageviews. The Funnel Visualization report shows the loopback as an exit. For a detailed comparison of both report types, see Google’s Support article.

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STEP 2.8 « Conversions MULTI - CHANNEL FUNNELS »»You must define goals or collect ecommerce data in Google Analytics for the Multi-Channel Funnel reports to have data. Use the Multi-Channel Funnels Overview report to see how your users who completed goals or transactions came to your website.

A SSISTED CONVERSIONS »»The Assisted Conversions report gives you a summary of how your channels contributed to conversions. If a channel appears on a conversion path (except for last interactions), it is considered an assist for that conversion. The higher the number in the Assisted / Last Click or Direct Conversions column, the greater assist role played by that channel. For example, in the report below, Email assisted conversions at the highest rate.

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STEP 2.8 « Conversions TOP CONVERSION PATHS »»The Top Conversion Paths report shows the unique channel sequence patterns taken to get the

conversion so you can see how channels interact along your conversion paths. Notice the patterns that have the highest number of conversions and look through the list of paths for repeated patterns that may give you insights into your users’ preferences. For example, if you see that two channels work well together, you may want to plan your marketing campaign to use both channels simultaneously.

TIME L AG AND PATH LENGTH »»The Time Lag report shows how many conversions resulted from conversion paths that lasted from zero to 30 days. This is useful for determining the length of your online sales and goal conversion cycles.

»»The Path Length report shows how many conversions resulted from conversion paths that contained one to 11 and 12+ channel interactions. This can help you determine how many interactions are typically required for a sales or goal conversion.

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STEP 2.8 « Conversions CONVERSIONS AT TRIBUTION MODEL COMPARISON TOOL »»The Attribution Model Comparison Tool sets rules to determine how to assign credit for sales and goal

conversions at certain touchpoints in the conversion paths. You can use the Model Comparison Tool to compare how different attribution models impact the valuation of your marketing channels.

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STEP 2.8 « Conversions DETERMINING WHAT MODEL TO USE The Last Interaction model attributes 100% of the conversion value to the last channel with which the customer interacted before buying or converting. When it’s useful: If your ads and campaigns are designed to attract people at the moment of purchase, or your business is primarily transactional with a sales cycle that does not involve a consideration phase, the Last Interaction model may be appropriate. The Last Non-Direct Click model ignores direct sessions and attributes 100% of the conversion value to the last channel that the customer clicked through from before buying or converting. This is the default model used in non-MultiChannel Funnel reports. When it’s useful: If you consider direct sessions to be from customers who have already been won through a different channel, then you may wish to filter out direct sessions and focus on the last marketing activity before conversion. The Last AdWords Click model attributes 100% of the conversion value to the most recent AdWords ad that the customer clicked before buying or converting. When it’s useful: If you want to identify and credit the AdWords ads that closed the most conversions, use the Last AdWords Click model. The First Interaction model attributes 100% of the conversion value to the first channel with which the customer interacted. When it’s useful: This model is appropriate if you run ads or campaigns to create initial awareness. For example, if your brand is not well known, you may place a premium on the keywords or channels that first exposed customers to the brand.

The Linear model gives equal credit to each channel interaction on the way to conversion. When it’s useful: This model is useful if your campaigns are designed to maintain contact and awareness with the customer throughout the entire sales cycle. In this case, each touch point is equally important during the consideration process. Time Decay Model: If the sales cycle involves only a short consideration phase, the Time Decay model may be appropriate. This model most heavily credits the touch points that occurred nearest to the time of conversion. When it’s useful: If you run one-day or two-day promotion campaigns, you may wish to give more credit to interactions during the days of the promotion. In this case, interactions that occurred one week before have only a small value as compared to touch points near the conversion. The Time Decay model allows you to appropriately credit touch points during the day or two leading up to conversion. The Position Based model allows you to create a hybrid of the Last Interaction and First Interaction models. Instead of giving all the credit to either the first or last interaction, you can split the credit between them. One common scenario is to assign 40% credit each to the first interaction and last interaction, and assign 20% credit to the interactions in the middle. When it’s useful: If you most value touchpoints that introduced customers to your brand and final touchpoints that resulted in sales, use the Position Based model.

NOTE: The information on this page was inserted as reference material. The information is copied from a Google Support page concerning attribution modeling.

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STEP 3 « Gather Your Questions and Answers Now that you have been exposed to the features and reports in Google Analytics, you can start asking the questions that will help you better know your audience, and using Google Analytics reporting, you can answer them. This step will pose five common questions and identify some reports that may help answer those questions.

1. WHO ARE OUR TOP USERS OR PROSPECTIVE USERS BA SED ON WHO VISITS OUR WEBSITE?

»»Look at your Audience reports to identify your users and create buying personas describing them.

From their demographics to their location to their preferred browser, Audience Reports will tell you a lot about your website visitors. These reports will also indicate your top users through engagement statistics. You can review these reports on pages 13-27.

»»To increase the accuracy of your persona profiles, you can also survey your members and refer to your member database or Association Management Software to see where there are common traits.

2. WHICH TOPICS GENER ATE THE MOST INTEREST IN OUR INDUSTRY?

»»Your Acquisition and Behavior Reports will help you identify what interests and more importantly,

what content converts your web visitors according to your goals. You can review these reports on pages 28-46.

»»To augment your plan to find more relevant topics, use other tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner.

3. WHAT DO PEOPLE SEE AND LIKE MOST ABOUT OUR ORGANIZ ATION?

»»By looking at your Site Content reports, you can determine how your website visitors are seeing you according to how long they spend on pages, which pages they view most and least and where and when they exit your website. You can review these reports on pages 36-38.

4. WHAT ARE OUR MOST POPUL AR FEATURES AND BENEFITS?

»»Your most popular features can be determined by looking at your Events, Experiments, In-Page

Analytics and Conversions. Knowing what features on your website get the most attention will help you identify your strengths. You can review these reports on pages 42-52.

5. WHERE C AN WE MAKE IMPROVEMENTS?

»»Evaluate your web pages on a page-by-page basis. Look for metrics that indicate potential problems.

Use Benchmarking and User Flow reports to compare your organization to others in your industry and locate potential problems with your website. You can review these reports on pages 24-28. Don’t forget to make sure your site is optimized for your audience’s device and browser and check your site speeds. You can review these topics on pages 22-23 and 38-39.

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