GOOGLE ANALYTICS Destinee Cushing DIG 4104C Spring 2014

WHAT IS GOOGLE ANALYTICS, EXACTLY? Google Analytics is a service provided by Google that generates detailed statistics about a website’s traffic and traffic sources and measures conversions and sales. It’s FREE, as long as your site generates fewer than 10 million hits per month.

WHY DO YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT? Google Analytics tends to be grouped with marketers, implying that web developers and tech people don’t need to bother with it. Internet Marketing and Web development go hand in hand. If you want a website to be seen by anyone organically, you need to know how it’s performing. Almost every web-related job out there requires at least a basic working knowledge of Google Analytics.

WHY SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO ME? I’ve been working in the Internet Marketing industry for four years as a Data Analyst. My knowledge of Google Analytics is what got me hired my freshman year and it’s the main tool I use to this day, next to Excel. The difference between knowing Google Analytics or not could easily mean finding a job or not.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS MAIN REPORTS 1.Intelligence Events 2.Real-Time 3.Audience 4.Acquisition 5.Behavior 6.Conversions

1. INTELLIGENCE EVENT REPORTS Analytics Intelligence creates an alert when data deviates from the expected range. Two different kinds of alerts: 1.Automatic Alerts Automatically generated without any input from you. 2.Custom Alerts Generated based on conditions you specify.

INTELLIGENCE EVENT REPORTS

2. REAL-TIME REPORTS Data updates continuously and each page view is reported seconds after it occurs. Shows: The number of people on your site right now Their geographic locations The keywords and sites that referred them Which pages they're viewing Conversions as they happen

REAL-TIME REPORTS

3. AUDIENCE REPORTS The Audience reports provide insight into: The demographics of your audiences Your mix of new and returning users and their level of engagement The browsers and networks being used to access your site The mobile devices being used to access your site/app. Laptops are seen as mobile devices.

AUDIENCE REPORTS

4. ACQUISITION REPORTS This section is best for comparing traffic from search, referrals, , and marketing campaigns. Measures how actively users are engaging with your content by reviewing metrics like Bounce Rate, Pages/Visit, and Avg. Visit Duration. Set up goals and look at conversion metrics like Goal Conversion Rate, Goal Completions, and Goal Value.

ACQUISITION REPORTS

SEO PROBLEM In the past, Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) used the Organic Keywords Report from this section of Google Analytics as their bread and butter. Last year, Google and Yahoo hid all of their organic keyword traffic so now it all shows up as (not provided). The keyword data that is left today, from hardly used search engines, is completely useless and can not be used as legitimate statistics because (not provided) keywords make up over 90% of searches online.

SEO PROBLEMS

SEO SOLUTION? There is no perfect substitute for the data that we used to get for our organic keyword performance. However, we can show organic data through landing pages. By using Landing Page Reports, you can see: Which pages users are visiting the most How sticky those pages are in terms of bounce rate Ecommerce conversion data, and more …

SEO SOLUTION

5. BEHAVIOR REPORTS Focused on your site or app’s content, performance, searchability, and interactivity. Site Speed shows how fast your pages load. Site Search reports how successful your visitors are when they search your site. Events show how Ajax and other kinds of interactive elements on your site are being used.

BEHAVIOR REPORTS

SITE SEARCH REPORTS Generated from the search history of a website. Why it’s cool: when people search a site they leave their wish list behind. Experienced users tend to search for exactly what they want. If you don’t have it, you’re losing business. The report shows you which terms generate more revenue and what’s going wrong. You can schedule it to be ed out daily, monthly, or quarterly.

SITE SEARCH REPORTS

6. CONVERSION REPORTS Goals allow you to track the number of conversions you have on your site, track conversion rates, and compare campaigns. Ecommerce reports show you transaction and purchase data and link it with other Google Analytics data to show you what drives your revenue. The Multi-Channel Funnels report allows you to analyze your customer’s conversion paths – the sequence of events that led to conversions.

CONVERSION REPORTS

MULTI-CHANNEL FUNNELS The problem with most reports is that they only report on the last click conversions. Equivalent of only paying the quarterback on a football team. Multi-Channel Funnel Reports are so cool because they show the assists that it took to get that conversion. Analytics goes back up to 90 days in the site’s history and tracks visitor data to see: 1.How many times the user visited the site 2.Where the user came from 3.What pages they visited

MULTI-CHANNEL FUNNELS

EXAM-WORTHY QUESTIONS 1.What are the six main Google Analytics report types? 2.What popular SEO report has been rendered essentially useless by (not provided) keywords? 3.What are the two kinds of Intelligence Event Report alerts? 4.Are laptops seen as mobile devices in Audience Reports?