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, email,
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 emailed 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?