top 10 google analytics reports
DESCRIPTION
Google Analytics can help you understand what content is getting traction: what gets viewed, what sends traffic and what converts to action.. Dana Chinn, web analytics lecturer at Annanberg USC and Sally Falkow, President of PRESSfeed, the social online newsroom, cover the top10 Google Analytics reports.TRANSCRIPT
Online Newsrooms and Content Strategy
• “Newsrooms – if done right – can be an excellent source for new content. However, in this renewed age of content marketing, it can’t just be the press releases.
• Whatever content gets put up has to be compelling enough for people to want to share. It should not simply report facts, but should have some sort of human element explaining what this news means to the target audience.”
- Thom Craver https://twitter.com/thomcraver
THOUGHTS ABOUT“GOOGLE ANALYTICS TIPS: 10 DATA ANALYSIS STRATEGIES THAT PAY OFF BIG!”BY AVINASH KAUSHIK
Dana Chinn
@danachinn
5
What people say they did what they thinkand
why
as captured by surveys, focus groups, social media, usability studies
Two types of analytics data Behavioral research
What people did as captured by an action taken on a keyboard or mouse
Attitudinal research
6
Unique visitors
visit a site
and generate
page views
7
What actions indicate engagement?
Visit, regularly
View content, a lot
Interact, often -- rate, print, vote, take a poll, click on an ad -- share, e-mail, comment, contribute
8
Start with an overall view
of visits by week
9
15visits
Google “Analytics measures both visits and visitors in your account.
“Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site.”
Google Analytics: The Difference Between Clicks, Visits, Visitors, Pageviews, and Unique Pageviews
or sessions
Analytics Measurement Model – E-commerce
Market Motive/Avinash Kaushik
Visits that come from…
Start here
11
Segment…
…or die!
-- Justin Cutroni, Cardinal Path
Sources Overview
13Segment #1: Sources Overview report
Where did an external visitor come from?Did they come based on actions we took?
Needs to be custom coded
Visits that come from…
14
Graphs from “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik
Balanced Too reliant on search
15
Facebook, Twitter and other third-party social media services are considered “referring sites”
Too reliant on social media?
Or a site architecture / Google Analytics set-up issue?
16
Segment: Visits that came from branded vs. unbranded search terms
Brand name
Topic you want to be known for
Name of your CEO
Advertising slogan
Topic you don’t want to be known for
Topic you didn’t know you were known for
Visits from people who were signed in into Google
Visits from branded search
Visits from unbranded search
Landing Pages
18Segment #2: Landing Pages report
Visits that came from search or Facebook or from a bookmark or from an e-mail campaign…
Where did they land?
What happened when they got there? Did they stay? Buy? Leave?
19
A bounce: a visit with only one page view
Bounce rate The percent of visits
with only one page view
“I came. I saw. I puked.”-- Avinash Kaushik on bounce rate
20
Site bounce rate “Forty-six percent of the 11.1 million visits that came to our site in the last 12 monthsbounced.
In other words, there were five million times someone came to the site, looked at one page, and left.”
21
Site bounce rate: Interesting…
…but ultimately not actionable
22
Landing page bounce rates by traffic sourcegive actionable insights
How many people came to the site directly….
…and landed on the home page…
…and bounced?
Goals
24Segment #3: Goals report
Visits that came from search or Facebook or from a bookmark or from an e-mail campaign…
…and resulted in a micro-conversion
vs.
a macro-conversion
vs.
?
25
Images from Market Motive and “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik
Goals and goal values differ by company and project
Goals need to be set up in Google Analytics
Conversion Funnels
27
“Funnels provide a wealth of actionable information that can have an immediate effect on website success.
“Any defined processes, no matter how small, should be measured using a funnel.”
-- Justin Cutroni
Segment #4: Conversion funnels report
From “Applying Google Analytics Goal and Funnel Techniques,” by Justin Cutroni, Public Media Metrics
Landing page with internal search window
Of all of the visits that came in directly, how many converted, or resulted in a sale?
Internal search results
Product description and price
Product added to cart
Account sign-in
Review / pymt.
Purchase confirmation page
123
4
5
6
29
From “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics” (third edition), by Brian Clifton
100% conversion Most common Optimal
Ill-defined Poorly converting
MCF Assisted Conversions
31
Segment #5: Multi-Channel Funnel Assisted Conversions Report
From “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik
Visits from
…that resulted in a conversion
“If all your campaigns always include campaign tracking parameters, this report is really good at answering this critical question:
Is channel x more likely to be at the end of the conversion process or drive traffic that might convert later via a different channel?
Mobile Devices Report
33
80% of visitsdid NOT use a mobile device
20% of visits DID use a mobile device
Should we use a mobile-optimized,responsive design for our site?
20%
20%
80%
Segment #6: Mobile Devices Report (mobile web)
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4
34
Visits to a mobile site result in different behavior and outcomes…
Old mobile web site – same as full-sized site
New mobile web site New full-sized web site
…and thus need to be analyzed differently – and separately
In Page Analytics
36
Segment #7: In-Page Analytics Report
Image from “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik
How do these click percentages differ by traffic source and landing page?
Location Report
38
Only small percentages of visits to our site come from cities and states we’re targeting with our new marketing campaign.
Segment #8: Location Report
So what?
39
U.S.53%80,354
India8%11,439
China5%7,188
Canada, UK5%7,393 All other
29%45,008
“All other” includes 183 countries, each with 1 percent or less.“Other U.S.” includes other states, each with 5 percent or less.
Calif.24%36,639
OtherU.S.29%43,715
Get the data out of Google Analytics and put it in a format that’s meaningful for your company’s business goals
Search Terms
41Segment #9: Site Search Terms Report
What were they looking for that they didn’t see on the landing page? What search terms did they use?
Did the search results give them what they wanted? Did they leave the site when they saw the results? Did they search again?
Visits that use your site’s internal search engine:
42
Are the external search terms – paid and organic – the same as internal search terms?
Brand name
Topic you want to be known for
Name of your CEO
Advertising slogan
Topic you don’t want to be known for
Topic you didn’t know you were known for
Visits from people who were signed in into Google
Visits from branded search
Visits from unbranded search
Social Media
Network Referrals
As your content is shared it's important to understand how visitors from different social sources engage with your newsroom
Conversions
Shared content URLs become the entry points into your site or newsroom, driving traffic from social sources.
Measuring the conversion value of this traffic will help you understand the impact of Social on your business.
Landing Pages
People increasingly engage with, share, and discuss content on social networks.
It's important to know which pages and content are being shared, where they're being shared, and how
Social Plug-ins
Adding Social Plugin buttons to your site (for example, Google "+1" buttons) allows your users share content to social networks directly from your site.
Your social plugin data shows you which content is being shared, and on which networks.
Social Visitor Flow
• Top social referrers• Top landing pages• Page drop-off rate. • By comparing the drop-
off rate of social traffic to other traffic sources, you can determine which traffic referrers are sending the most qualified visitors to your website.
The Social Online Newsroom