Google AnalyticsPrepared for Boston PHP Meetup

15 December 2010

Jay Murphy jmurphy@trionia.com

Google Analytics Class Schedule

2

Agenda

Overview of Google Analytics

How to install

Review of reporting capabilities

Goals, Custom Reporting and Adwords

Making business decision

Audience

Who is interested in measuring a website?

Owners

Online and Offline Ad Agencies

Site Developers – Design & Technical

Online Marketing Specialists

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Marketing

Email Marketing

Display Ads – and more3

Answers

Question Analytics can help answer

Who is visiting my site?

How are people finding the site?

What will bring more people to the site?

What are people doing on the site?

Are people accomplishing the site goals?

How can the website be improved?

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Analytics – a brief history

Hit Counters

Log File

Page Tagging - Javascript/Cookies

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Analytics Tools

The Big Three

Google Analytics

Omniture

Webtrends

A few open source choices:

AWStats

Webalizer

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Accuracy?

No analytics tool is perfectly accurate –however trends in data are the most useful information.

If you use two or more metrics tools do not reconcile the data – it will be different

If some of your metrics are critical for your business

For example how much advertisers pay per click : agree on measurement in advance

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How to Install

Google Analytics is easy to install:

Using your Google Account, access Analytics:

http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html

Add JavaScript code before the </head> tag8

Google Analytics JS Code

The code is:<script type="text/javascript">

var _gaq = _gaq || [];

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxxxxxx-x']);

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

(function() {

var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type =

'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;

ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ?

'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';

var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];

s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);

})();

</script>

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Installation Check

Check on your Google Analytics

Analytics Settings > Profile Settings > Tracking Code

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How it works

JavaScript that uses first party cookies

Sends an invisible GIF to the analytics server for processing

Users that delete cookies will be seen as a new visitor

No personal identifying information is saved

Cached pages are still tracked if visitor is connected to the internet

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Google Analytics Cookies

__utma

Used to measure unique Visitors – 2 year

__utmb

Session/Visit measure – 30 minute timeout

__utmc

Session/Visit with __utmb – no expiration

__utmz

Stores referral information. Including Source and Medium. 6 months from set/update.

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Google Analytics Cookies(continued)

__utmv

Contains information passed by the _setVar() Google Analytics method

__utmx

Used by the Website Optimizer.

More Detail at: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsCookies.html#cookiesSet

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REPORTING INTERFACE

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Reporting Interface

In your account click on the "View report" link to see the report interface

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Reporting Dashboard

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Dashboard

User Configurable view of up to 12 user defined reports.

All Reports – including the Dashboard

Exported in PDF and XML format.

Emailed – one time or scheduled

Additional Control is offered by:

Date Ranges

Daily, Week or Monthly data points

Advanced Segments17

Reporting Categories

Visitors

Traffic Sources

Content

Goals

Additional Reporting Features

Intelligence

Custom Reports

Advanced Segments

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Visitors

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Definitions

Visits

A visit is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes between each page request. So for a user who visits at 11:00 AM and then again at 11:20 this user counts as a single unique visit; if the user clicks on a new page at 11:35 it now counts as two visits. (Some analytics packages use the term session in place of visit.)

Unique Visitors

A unique user who accesses a Website, while people cannot be identified by analytics, we substitute computers. So a single computer that accesses a website is deemed to be a Unique Visitor. (Most analytics tools use cookies, small files saved by a browser, to determine if a machine has been to a website before. Since many users, estimated to be 25% or so, remove cookies on a monthly basis, unique visitors can be overstated.)

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Definitions(continued)

New Visitors

A visitor that has not made any previous visits. Again, since New Visitors are also determined by the use of cookies saved on a visitors computer; visitors that delete cookies show as new visitors.

Bounce Rate

The percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page without visiting any other pages on the site in between. (In general a higher bounce rate is not a good sign – but some websites are designed for a single page view before leaving, for example blogs. Use bounce rate to analyze your site based on your site’s users goals.)

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Definitions(continued)

Average Pages per Visit

The average number of page views a visitor views before ending their visit. It is calculated by dividing total number of page views by total number of visits.

Average Time on Site

Average amount of time that visitors spend on the site each time they visit. (This metric can be complicated by the fact that analytics programs cannot measure the length of the last page view, since the time is measured by start time of second page minus the start time of the first page.)

Page Views

A request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. An occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server.

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Visitor Reports

Answers these questions (and more)?

Where are my visitors coming from?

Are they new visitors? How many are new?

When do my visitors come to my site?

What browsers, version of flash, java… do they use?

How do our visitors compare to other sites?

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Visitor ReportsMap Overlay

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Visitor ReportsNew vs. Returning

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Visitor ReportsVisitor Trending

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Visitor ReportingBrowser Usage

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Traffic Sources

Answers these questions:

Where did people find out about my site?

What proportion of visitors come to the site:

Directly, through search engines and through referral websites?

For search engine traffic – what keywords?

Which referrals provide the ‘best’ traffic?

What campaigns are most effective?

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Traffic SourcesOverview

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Traffic SourcesSearch Engines

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Traffic SourcesKeywords

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Traffic SourcesReferring Sites

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Traffic SourcesDirect

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Content

Answers these questions:

What are the entrance pages (landing pages)?

What keywords were used to reach these pages? Or what or referrals?

Where did people leave the site? (Exit Pages)

Further detail to determine if a user goal was satisfied or it was a failed visit.

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Content Overview

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ContentNavigation Summary

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ContentEntrance Keywords

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ContentIn-Page Analytics

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OTHER TOPICS

User Management, Goals, Custom Reports, Advanced Segments and Data Access API

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Users

Use the User Manager to add new users –administrators and users

Administrators can create profiles, filters,goals and add users

Users have read only access to the reports and can be restricted to specific profiles.

For multiple accounts:

Make a new account with a client Google user;

Assign your account as an administrator

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User Setup

Best Practice:

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Account 1

Profile 1www.site1.com

Account 2

Profile 1 anothersite.com

Custom Profiles

Filtering

Google allows filters to be set for each profile

Filtered data is stored for each profile – keepan unfiltered profile for each account

IP filtering is very useful for filtering out all traffic from an IP ranges

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Account 1

Profile 1www.site1.com

Profile 2 – no Agency traffic

Goals

Used to track specific actions on your website.

These can be:

Site registration

Sign up for a download, webinar, newsletter…

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Setting up GoalsStep - 1

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Setting up GoalsStep - 2

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Setting up GoalsStep - 3

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Setting up GoalsStep – 4

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Goals on all Reports

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Integrating with Ad Words

Link AdWords and Analytics accounts together

One AdWords with one Analytics account.

One account for each client

Autotagging helps analytics track your AdWords clicks.

This adds a gclid value to your query string

http://mydomain.com?clid=1234321

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AdWordsReporting

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Other Ad Sources

Use the Google URL builderhttp://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

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Multiple Campaign Tracking

Visitors can visit from multiple campaigns.

In the standard setup, the most recent campaign will get credit for a conversion.

How to assign credit to the first campaign?

Setting utm_nooverride=1 in your campaign URLs will attribute the conversion to the first campaign.

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Custom Reporting

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Custom ReportingDimensions & Metrics

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Custom ReportsDimensions & Metrics

Dimensions

Visitor

Campaign

Content

Ecommerce

Internal Search

Custom Variables

Events

AdWords

Metrics

Visitor

Campaign

Content

Ecommerce

Internal Search

Goals

Events

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Custom ReportingDimensions & Metrics Samples

SEM Custom Report

D: Campaign, Keyword

M: CPC, CTR, Revenue

Internal Search Test of Video Pages

D: SearchKeyword, SearchDestinationPage

M: TimeOnPage, TimeOnSite

Member / Non-Member Navigation Comparison

D: CustomVariable – Member/Non-Member

M: LandingPages, ExitPages56

Custom ReportExample – Avinash Kaushik

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Advanced Segments

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Advanced Segments

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Data Access API – from PHP

GAPI – Google Analytics API PHP5 Interface

Supports arrays for Dimensions and Metrics

Returns results in a PHP object

Date ranges and filtering provided

For more detail see:

http://code.google.com/p/gapi-google-analytics-php-interface/

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Data Access API – from PHPSample Code

$ga = new gapi('email@yourdomain.com','password');

$pId = 11223344; // Profile ID

$metrics = array('country','city');

$dimensions = array('pageviews','visits','newVisits');

$ga->requestReportData($pId,$metrics,$dimensions);

foreach($ga->getResults() as $result) {

echo '<strong>'.$result.'</strong><br />';

echo 'Pageviews: ' . $result->getPageviews() . ' ';

echo 'Visits: ' . $result->getVisits() . '<br />';

echo 'New Visits: ' . $result->getNewVisits() . '<br />';

}

echo '<p>Total pageviews: ' . $ga->getPageviews() . ' total

visits: ' . $ga->getVisits() . '</p>';

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GOOGLE ANALYTICSLEARN MORE

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Google Analytics Classes

Trionia is offering classes hosted by CDIA BU

Introduction to Google Analytics - GA101

Setup Google Analytics on your website, learn about reporting and business analysis, goals for your website.

Advanced Google Analytics - GA201

Use your own sites metrics – to better understand visitors, website performance and how to better measure and improve you website.

Complete Details, Schedule and Signup

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Other Resources

Blogs

Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Books

Web Analytics Demystified – Eric T. Peterson

Web Analytics and Hour a Day – Avinash Kaushik

Education

Google’s Conversion University

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Other Resources(continued)

Twitter

Follow the #measure, #analytics and #ganalytics hash tags

Organizations

Web Analytics Association

The Analysis Exchange – Students and Mentors team up to assist Non-Profits

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BOSTON PHP – CASE STUDY

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Business Decisions

Step #1: Visit the website. Note objectives, customer experience, suckiness.

Step #2: How good is the acquisition strategy? Traffic Sources Report.

Step #3: How strongly do Visitors orbit the website? Visitor Loyalty & Recency.

Step #4: What can I find that is broken and quickly fixable? Top Landing Pages.

Step #5: What content makes us most money? $Index Value Metric.

Step #6: How Sophisticated Is Their Search Strategy? Keyword Tag Clouds.

Step #7: Are they making money or making noise? Goals & Goal Values.

Step #8: Can the Marketing Budget be optimized? Campaign Conversions/Outcomes.

Step #9: Are we helping the already convinced buyers? Funnel Visualization.

Step #10: What are the unknown unknowns I am blind to? Analytics Intelligence.

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From Avinash Kaushik’s Recent Blog Post:

Beginner’s Guide to Web Data Analysis: Ten Steps to Success

Case Study – Boston PHP

Website Goals

New Members

Event Attendance

Interaction

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BostonPHPVisitor Geography

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BostonPHP Visitors - Massachusetts

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Boston PHPVisitor Loyalty +

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Boston PHPVisitor Recency +

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Boston PHPVisitor Length of Visit

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BostonPHPNew versus Returning

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BostonPHP

What do we know about our users?

They are primarily from the Boston metro region – including RI, NH and CT.

A good number visit from other states including NY.

An engaged membership – large percentage of return visitors. Engaged visitor patterns.

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BostonPHP

What new would we like to learn about our users?

How can we promote membership?

Will live casts/video extend our geography?

Can we connect with groups in other regions?

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Boston PHPWhere are people coming from?

Acquisition Strategy – Traffic Sources

Overall – good balanced traffic.

Search Engine Marketing? Non-profit status?

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Boston PHP6 Month – Traffic Sources

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BostonPHPWhy the spike in traffic -18th November?

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BostonPHPWhy the spike in traffic -18th November?

Facebook, email, GreenHornConnect, twitter, meetup, BostonWP and php.net

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GreenHornConnect

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Case Study – BostonPHPWhy the spike in traffic - 18th November?

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BostonPHP Video Usage

How many people are viewing the videos?

How do people find videos?

Could we improve the video experience?

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BostonPHPVideo

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BostonPHPVideo Continued

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BostonPHPVideo Continued

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BostonPHPVideo Continued

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Video Summary

We have great referrals – w3.org!

Internal traffic is too low. Ideas to improve:

Create a Video Menu Item – is the too much real estate?

Video link on the homepage

Standard link on all past meetings

Video views are too short

Create shorter snippets – video highlights

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Questions?