On May 25, Sean Rusinko, Director of Search Engine Marketing delivered an information-packed webinar on Google Analytics that was widely attended. The webinar covered many different key functionalities of Google Analytics including how to set up a profile, how to utilize some of the key metrics and how to address and identify filters as well. We have a recorded version of the presentation if you prefer to watch (Getting the Most out of Google Analytics), but if you would rather read through the information, you can find a summary of the presentation below.
As many of you already know, Google analytics is a free, enterprise-class web analytics service, originally developed by Urchin, which was later acquired by Google in 2005. The service is limited to sites with fewer than 5 million pageviews per month and used by 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites in the world.
“It’s very powerful if you know how to leverage some of the custom functionalities that they’re offering users today,” Rusinko said. He then went on to explain some of the statistics that were gathered in a 2009 Forrester Research study, which you can find below:
- A staggering 53% of enterprises use a free technology solution as their primary web analytics tool
- 66% who use a paid web analytics solution would consider a free alternative
- 60% more likely to consider a free tool now because of recent improvements in free solutions
- 52% fail to effectively use more than half of the capabilities offered by their tools
During the presentation Rusinko discussed the following Google Analytics functionalities:
Profile
A Google Analytics profile is fairly easy to set up and one account can hold up to 50 website profiles. You can use one account to track multiple profiles if you have multiple domains or are tracking several subdomains. (i.e. verndale.com/blog)
Filters
Filters are most commonly used to exclude traffic from a specific IP address or subdirectory. An example would be to exclude the traffic coming from users that are within the company. The point of this would be to measure external traffic only.
Rusinko also called out a lot of valuable key metrics during the presentation. He spoke specifically about the following:
Timeframe
The timeframe is always going to default to the last 30 days. You can click on the “compare to past” box to change the range in order to view previous statistics, as well as percent change (compare year-over-year, month-over-month).
Annotations
If you click on the down arrow below the graph on the dashboard, then it will list new annotations, which will identify different initiatives that were implemented and might have affected traffic patterns (ex. Press release = spike in traffic). An annotation may be a preliminary indicator for why traffic jumped.
Intelligence
In the intelligence section of a profile the user can create alerts. (i.e. alerts for traffic spikes) Users can set up custom alerts and automatic alerts as well.
Visitors
In this section Rusinko noted that there is an “advanced segments” tab in the upper right-hand corner which can be used to identify and segment different types of data, whether its pay-per-click traffic vs. organic traffic or new traffic vs. returning traffic. One thing to remember is that the settings will remain locked until you uncheck the boxes.
Traffic sources
Using the same tab at the top (“advanced segments”) you can segment out different keyword performance data. (i.e. branded keywords vs. non branded keywords). It’s also beneficial to export the data into excel so that you can easily separate the branded and non branded terms in order to make comparisons.
- Branded – Keyword phrases from search engines that pertain to the business’ brand name. (i.e. Verndale)
- Non Branded – Keyword phrases from search engines that are more generic and not solely related to the business’ brand name. (i.e. web consulting)
Site Overlay
The site overlay can be found in the content section and allows you to look at the click-through rates based on the actual website profile. The different click-through rates are based on the specific links placed on the page.
Goal Section
The goal section should be used if you have actions that you want your users to take on the page (Checkouts, subscribers, donations) Goals can be set up within the analytics settings, just click edit and add goal.
After Rusinko’s overview of basic key metrics he went on to discuss generating key performance indicators (KPIs).
Generating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
The KPIs that you want to be looking at are “bounce rate” and “average time on site.” You can find this information in the content section as well. You can export this data into excel to compare over and under-performing pages, meaning look at the pages on your site that are performing the best and look at those internal pages, then generate learnings from those pages to optimize underperforming pages. Take a look at top ranking pages in search engines, under key search terms and see what those pages are doing in terms of content. During the presentation Rusinko discussed the following KPIs:
- Optimize Content Types by Most Bounced Pages in Aggregate- In order to download the highest-bounced URLs, look at the top landing pages report within content. Then categorize those URLs into content types and finally optimize around those content types. You will then get an idea of how different sections of the site might have to be looked at in terms of strategy in the way they are being presented.
- Attributing Engine Visibility to Search Referrals- Take a look at referral traffic and compare current data with baseline traffic. This will help you get an idea of which optimization efforts have worked soundly and which need some improvement.
- Social Media Optimization- More than ever it’s important to analyze key performance metrics coming from specifically social media sites. You can download this information from the traffic sources section within Google Analytics. This will show you where you need to focus your social media efforts moving forward.
- Optimizing by Keyword- Take a look at key performance metrics and optimize around top-performing keywords. The best way to do this is to look at the average time on site, the bounce rate, etc.
- Custom Reports- There are thousands of custom reports that you can develop. They deliver a specific, more drilled-down view than the standard metrics that are offered by Google Analytics (i.e. referring keyword performance with conversions report, traffic performance by geographic region report, search referrals by network location).
Conversion Optimization Techniques
- Funnel Visualization is one conversion optimization technique that looks at the path to conversion so you can analyze where users are abandoning the conversion course. This is a very useful technique, but even more critical for ecommerce sites.
- Form Optimization is another technique that is used to understand which fields of the form users don’t like to fill out. Then you can optimize or remove fields with the greatest drop-off rates.There are two implementation methods that you could use including Virtual Page Views or Jquery plug-ins. Both implementations are fairly simple.
- Conversion Link Performance is one technique that measures the performance of two different links going to the same conversion form. Use these techniques to optimize content and improve performance metrics. There are two methods you can use to track individual link performance that goes to the same page including event tracking and campaign tracking.
Advanced Tracking Possibilities
Use advanced tracking techniques if you need to track a link that is not normally tracked by Google Analytics. For example, non HTML pages (i.e. PDFs). There are a few different implementation options you can use to track non-html documents and external links including:
- Add the onClick PageTracker after each link
- Download a Javascript file and paste it onto any of the pages that have external links, then they will automatically be tracked within the content section of Google Analytics.
Tracking Adobe Flash has also become important. There are two different methods that you can use to track different content pieces within the flash file including:
Campaign tracking is a way to identify traffic coming from any link to your site (i.e. newsletter). Use this tracking method to tag your external marketing efforts so that you can measure the performance of your efforts. Use the URL Builder to define the Google Analytics campaign.
Wrapping Up
As the presentation came to an end Rusinko addressed questions from listeners and provided some helpful resources as well. You can find all of this information in the recorded webinar along with a special offer only available from now until July 1, 2010.