Christy Mannering
University of Delaware
College of Agriculture & Natural Resources
Web Developer
 Learning Analytics, because we are
not the people in that picture!
 So you can share your insights, know
what you’re talking about and
improve your website all at the same
time!
 We spend a lot of time trying to share our message with the public, much of this is
now done via digital media.
 Time spent creating and posting content should be measurable.
 Keeping up with your site analytics helps you know when you need to tweak your
message.
 Analytics show you how an end user navigates your site.
 Think about what you want to get data on a
specific campaign you’re running, a new page
you created, etc.
 Think about the time period you measure in, by
default Google measure by month.
 The number of people who visit your site
 There are plenty of paid analytics tools out there
but today we’re going to talk about the free ones.
 Google Analytics
 Google Webmaster
 Definition: Digital analytics is the analysis of
qualitative and quantitative data to drive continual
improvement of the online experience for your users.
 It’s free!
 Learn more about your audience
 Their demographics, interests, the devices they
use, their language and where they are located
 Behavior flow
 Landing pages, exit pages, site speed, views on
specific pages
 In-page analytics
 Overview—A top-level view of user metrics
 Demographics—The age and gender makeup of your website
audience
 Interests—User behaviors segmented by affinity and marketing
categories
 Geo—The languages and locations of your website audience
 Behavior—Comparisons of new and returning visitors, how often
return visits occur and how long visitors spend on your site
 Technology—The browsers, operating systems and networks of
your website visitors
 Mobile—A breakdown of devices used to access your website
 Custom—Reports you define
 Users Flow—A visualization of how users move through your
website
 The overview of this section will break down
how many people view your site via mobile,
tablet or desktop.
 The Google Analytics mobile button tells you
what devices are being used and how many
people are using mobile devices to view your
website.
 This is important because you need your
website to be responsive to a variety of devices.
 Do you have new visitors, are your visitors
returning? How frequently? How many pages
do they go through?
 Most of our visitors go through two pages.
 We are hopeful this means they found what they
needed quickly.
 We get about 50% new visitors each month
and about 50% are returning.
 The general overview page will let you know
your number of pageviews, the top most
viewed pages and the average amount of time
on a page.
 Visits. The total number of times this was the first page a visitor saw.
 Percentage New Visits. What percentage of these visitors were on your site
for the first time?
 New Visits. The total number of first-time visitors to that page.
 Bounce Rate. The percentage of visitors that viewed only this page, and did
nothing else.
 Pages/Visit. The average number of total pages viewed by people who hit
this landing page.
 Average Visit Duration. Total time spent on the website.
 The Exit Pages report shows the last pages people visit before exiting
your website. These are the pages you want to look at to see what you
can do to keep visitors on your website longer.
 A good way to do this would be to make sure you have cross references to
links elsewhere on the site.
 Example: when you are on a site and it has links to related articles or content.
 If they exit the site, make sure they exit to subscribe for more
information or visit your social media.
 Site speed – average time it takes for your
page to load, it breaks it down by browser.
Some browsers have so much going on behind
the scenes that pages take longer to load.
 Look to see if there is a certain time of day
during which your site runs slower, maybe you
can speak with your server host.
 Speed suggestions! Google Analytics will
break it down by page and give you
suggestions for each page on mobile AND on
desktop.
 You have an option to add secondary
dimensions to the analytics. So when
you click on Behavior > Site Content >
Content Drilldown
 You will first see where a visitor started
next you can add a second layer, like
“Next Page Path” to find out where they
went next, or did they say on that page?
 You have to use Google Chrome for this
to be effective but it’s a fun part of this
tool. Think Heat Map!
 I have had people sit with me while I’m
navigating the site to show them what is
being clicked on the most. Sometimes it
is my defense on why a page might not
be needed.
 Traffic Sources > Social > Landing Pages
 This data will provide some insight towards how
much your fans are sharing links online, and how
many people are clicking them.
 Traffic Sources > Social > Network
Referrals
 You can see the original referring websites and
their flow upon landing on your page: Traffic
Sources > Social > Visitors Flow.
 It’s FREE!
 This tool does far more than track datasets,
it also crawls your site for issues and
errors. So it is perfect a person who
maintains a website.
 Find search queries
 Crawl errors
 Who is linking to you?
 Sitemaps
 Just how does a user get to your site?
 With this data I have been able to strongly
advice faculty to keep their faculty pages
updated, because a great number of people land
on our website after searching a faculty name.
 They also search by topic: food science,
entomology, summer scholars
 This will tell you exactly how many clicks took
someone from a search query to your site. In
the last 30 days exactly 30 people came to us
by searching for “food science”
 Another way to think about the search
queries is as a keyword. If you maintain
a website which has a shopping cart
feature for example knowing the most
searched for product is helpful.
 If you pay for Google Ad Words or
another pay-per-click advertising
system it’s helpful to know which
words will get you more bang for your
buck!
 Crawl errors include server errors, access
denied errors and broken links.
 You’ll find out the exact page that is broken and
when it was reported broken because someone
tried to access it.
 This is CRITICAL if you’re restructuring your site.
 If you see a broken link you can tell Google
Webmaster that you do not want it to appear in
search results.
 You want to make sure your website has a
sitemap and you want to make sure it is a
functioning sitemap. You can ask Google to
crawl it and if there are problems it will alert
you of the issues.
 It will also show you how many of your pages
are actually indexed. Sometimes Google will
not index a page if it has duplicative content.
 Remember blog rolls?
 Who links to your site?
 What is your most linked
content?
 How is your data linked?
Does it just say “click here”
or does it have a descriptive
link?
 Find out which of your pages
you cross reference the most.
It will likely be your home
page but it’s always nice to
see which content you are
giving the most attention,
because you might not know
you’re doing it.
 You will be able to see exactly which of
your pages are not responsive. It will
even tell you if elements on your page
are too close.
 You can also do this on specific pages
using this link:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/
tools/mobile-friendly/
 It’s important to block off time for you
to go through these tools monthly or at
least bi-monthly. You can create stellar
reports and be able to track changes
(hopefully growth) over time.
 I consider this part of my job.
Fortunately, I am a self-proclaimed
nerd.
 Google offers FREE lessons on Google Analytics
 https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/explorer
 Please feel free to contact me at any
time, Christy Mannering,
cmanneri@udel.edu
Twitter: @bringmeupmusic