[LECTURER NOTES] I have specifically highlighted all areas because Analytics is invaluable to all areas of digital marketing. It can evaluate digital

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5 I have specifically highlighted all areas because Analytics is invaluable to all areas of digital marketing. It can evaluate digital campaigns and channels, but it can also be used to inform your planning. You will likely have already come across Analytics in your other modules throughout the course. 5

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8 Going beyond the click. Understanding what is not working is nearly more important than understanding what is working. Use what is working, to improve what is not working. Not only should you justify and encourage investment, but also use your investment wisely based on what you know works or needs to be improved. Assigning a value to your website, different sources of traffic, or even a page, is invaluable when it comes to forecasting returns on marketing spend. Turning numbers into a story about your customers and your business. Using that story to improve the experience for your users, and thus business performance. 8

9 The benefits of Analytics include: - The ability to get closer to the customer - The ability to understand your users - The ability to gain insights from real customer activity - The ability to forecast using trends and patterns in consumer behavior - Stronger focus and prioritization of resources, leading to better conversion rates and enhanced ROI. Gaining a return from analytics is an ongoing process of monitoring, analysis and enhancement. 9

10 Understand your users who are they? What do they do when they are on the site, what do they like about the site, what don t they like about the site? Users vs Customers who visits the site, and who actually makes a purchase? Is there a lot of traffic on our site not converting? Starting point how did they find our site, where did they come from? Web Analytics helps us to create a picture of and story about our customers, and our site. It helps us to understand how they interact with our site, and how we can give them a good experience. 10

11 Analytics can answer almost any question you can think of about your website. The data is all there it s about how you reimagine the question, to find the report that will answer it for you. 11

12 Or rather Web Analytics is useful for everyone. The problem is not enough people use it. Not everyone will use it, or need to use it in the same way, depending on your role in the business. The role Analytics can serve will be different for everyone. 12

13 Users don t always make a purchase or take a valuable action on your site, the first time they visit. There is a research process that takes place, and users can often visit the site multiple times before they make a decision. Analytics allows you to see the journey that users take on the path to purchase, from: 1. Visiting via multiple channels before making a decision. 2. Engaging with different areas of your site before purchasing. 3. Reading a number of pages of content about your products before making a decision. 4. Taking a free trial or getting a quote. 13

14 There are a number of Web Analytics packages available this chart outlines some of the most popular ones, and an analysis of their position in the market (Source: Forrester, 2011). Though this chart is from 2011, it is still relevant today. Adobe and IBM would be two key market leaders, but they are paid packages. Google sits nicely in the middle as a strong performer, and is a free product but also has a paid version which could sit in the leader s bracket (in my opinion). 14

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16 Access Google Analytics through: Universal Analytics: Universal Analytics is the latest version of Google Analytics, which allows for richer data to be imported, and greater customization of reporting within the interface. The User ID creates an association between multiple sessions and one user using a unique ID, and allows for tracking of unique users across devices. Universal Analytics allows for the creation of custom dimensions (e.g. member) and metrics (e.g. yes, no) for greater flexibility in reporting. Data from offline sources (e.g. campaign data, in-store/offline sales), can be imported using the Data Import feature of Universal Analytics. You can track any digital device that can access the internet (e.g. information kiosks, games consoles) using the Measurement Protocol feature of Universal Analytics. More on Universal Analytics read here: 16

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19 Account: You need at least one account so you can have access to Analytics. Property: When you add a property to an account, Analytics generates the tracking code that you use to collect data from that property. The tracking code contains a unique ID that identifies the data from that property, and makes it easily identifiable in your reports. Profile/ View: A view is a defined perspective of the data from a property, and provides access to the reports for that property. It helps to organize visitor data (origin, source, pages viewed etc.) into a defined view about a website. 19

20 User access is provided at the account, property or view level. Access is hierarchical if you have access to an account, you will have access to all properties and views within it. If you have access to a view, you will not be able to see the full property or account above it. 20

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22 Requires a Google account either Gmail or Google AdWords existing login, or set one up at 22

23 Fill in the details above. Knowing what we know about how accounts are structured, you would name your account in line with your business name, and the property should correspond to the website name. 23

24 Set your time zone the time zone you choose is important as this will affect how your data is reported. E.g. if you have your time zone set to Dublin, GMT, all your data will be reported as per that time zone, not the time zone of the country the user is visiting from. If a user visits from Chicago at 6pm Chicago time, it will show the visit as 11pm in Analytics, as it s based on the GMT time zone. Data sharing choosing who to share your data with. This is also very important! You must select with other Google products only so you can link to AdWords and Webmaster tools. You may choose to select Technical Support and Account Specialists temporarily if you are dealing with Google Support to troubleshoot issues with Analytics. You can change Data Sharing settings at any time you can t change your time zone. 24

25 Embed code on ALL Pages. Paste it immediately before the closing </head> tag. Depending on your website setup, you may need to customize the code. For example, tracking movement between a domain and sub-domain ( & blog.example.com). 25

26 Configure settings such as session timeout length, site search, default URL. Apply cost data & exclude URL query parameters. E-commerce site selection. Admin tab is where you will carry out all configuration for your Google Analytics account. Configuration can be done at the Account, Property or View level. Goals are always set up at view level. 26

27 It is possible to generate a report to cover any of the main sections within Analytics: users, channels, behavior, conversions, event tracking and attribution. Common reports include: visitor overview report, geographic report, new versus returning visitors, mobile devices, visitor flow, channels etc. 27

28 Dimensions describe data: descriptive attributes or characteristics of an object that can be given different values: Browser, Exit Page, Screens. Metrics measure data: individual elements of a dimension that can be measured as a sum or a ratio, e.g.: Pages per Session, Average Session duration, Bounce Rate, Sessions, Users, Percentage New Sessions, Page views. First time visits are considered using cookies. If a cookie for this particular Google Analytics code that is on the website being viewed has not been fired on the device which the user is using within the last 60 days, then it is counted as a new visit. 28

29 Sessions (formerly Visits) - A session is a group of interactions that takes place on your website within a given time frame. Users (formerly Unique Visitors ) - The number of individual (nonduplicate) visitors to a site over the course of a specific time period. Pages per session (average) Average number of pages viewed in a single session. Average session duration The average time spent per session on the site (usually expressed in minutes). Bounce Rate - The number of single page visits expressed as a % of total visits. % New Sessions - An estimate of the percentage of first time visits. 29

30 Conversion A completed activity that contributes to the success of your business. Goals A defined conversion that allows you to measure the number of times or rate at which your site converts. Goals are usually non e- commerce sales, and can be based on a landing page, session duration, pages per session, or an event (discussed later in module). Transactions Completed purchases on your site (for e-commerce sites only, requires additional code). Conversion rate The rate at which your website converts (total goals or transactions divided by total sessions, expressed as a %). Conversion rate can be expressed in the context of Goals or Transactions. 30

31 This is the default view you will be brought to when you log in. All accounts, properties and views you have access to will be available to see here. If you have access to a lot of accounts/properties/views, you can star your favorites and elect only to see those when you log in. 31

32 All standard reports are found within the reporting tab. 32

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35 This slide is an overview of top level report categories in Google Analytics, and a breakdown of what can be found within them. Left hand side shows the left navigation bar of Google Analytics as you would see it in the interface. Real Time: shows visitor s activity as it happens. Reports continuously updated seconds after the activity occurs on your site. If a social media post has gone up, this can be used to see if there is any immediate reaction. Audience: demographics (for logged in users), interests, location, language, technology used to access the site. Acquisition: how visitors found the site by channel Direct, Search, Referral Traffic and Display (if linked up). Behavior: overview of all web pages activity on the web page. Conversions: Must define goals in Analytics or have e-commerce tracking set to evaluate conversions. 35

36 Overview of top-level report categories in Google Analytics, and a breakdown of what can be found within them. Left hand side shows the left navigation bar of Google Analytics as you would see it in the interface. 36

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38 Demographics: age and gender profiles of website users. Interests: categories of websites that users visited prior to visiting your site. Geo: language and location (based on browser & IP address). Behavior: reach and frequency, new vs returning and engagement metrics. Technology: browser, Operating System, network. Mobile: devices used to visit site, performance by device. Benchmarking: site performance against other sites in the same category as yours. Here you can answer questions like: Which groups make up my high value users? 38

39 Which groups convert well but don t visit in sufficient numbers? What is my top performing country? What browser drives the majority of my visits? How do I compare versus my competitors? Demographics and Interests require additional code to be implemented. 38

40 To make demographics and interests data available in Google Analytics, follow the steps here: Client example: Client (Irish Insurance Brand) were targeting females, age in their offline marketing. However a demographic analysis showed us that there was a more even split between male and female, and that males were more likely to get a quote. This allowed them to adjust their marketing strategy that was driving users to the site, to ensure they captured the audience that would convert! 39

41 Location and language are important to figure out if there are unidentified key markets you can capitalize on. Are people visiting your site from other countries? Maybe you should consider shipping your product there. Are people visiting your site speaking another language? Consider developing your site in that language too. 40

42 Here we can see that New Visitors provide the highest engagement (low bounce rate, high pages per session and session duration). 41

43 Understand if users are having issues with your site on different browsers or operating systems. Look at areas that have a high bounce rate/ low conversion rate to see if you can improve your site on those browser sizes/operating systems. 42

44 Here we can see that despite mobile having almost the same amount of traffic as desktop, it has a much higher bounce rate, and lower average session duration and pages per visit. As a result, we need to take action to improve the user journey on the site, or give users an alternative way to convert via mobile (e.g. a phone number). see how your site renders in different browsers. - see how your site renders on mobile, and get recommendations for improvement 43

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46 Channels: performance by each individual channel that users visited the site from. Campaigns: provides data for AdWords, plus any campaigns that have been manually tagged (e.g. , Display). AdWords: allows a deep-dive on Google AdWords campaigns for linked accounts. Search Engine Optimization: allows linking of Webmaster Tools in order to see SEO performance. Social: allows linking of Social Channels in order to analyze their performance. Campaigns: allows analysis of other campaigns, e.g. Digital Display or campaigns, if they have been tagged using the URL builder. Here you can answer questions like: - What is my most valuable marketing channel? - What site interactions does my AdWords traffic complete? - Have any of my SEO efforts paid off? 45

47 - What sites are linking to my site? - What s the ROI of my AdWords investment? - What % of my overall orders does drive? 45

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49 First image shows each of the various channels that are driving traffic to this particular website. Direct Traffic: when a user directly types in a URL into the browser, e.g. Direct traffic is influenced by awareness of your brand, and your domain name. If domain name is short, easy to remember, simple to spell, it s more likely to be typed in correctly! Direct traffic is often influenced by offline campaigns you will see traffic increase when you are active with TV, for example. Search Engine traffic is traffic driven from web searches. Factors that influence search engine traffic include: quality of search engine, website optimization, quality of AdWords campaigns (PPC). 47

50 Now we can see organic search traffic across all search engines, and see if there are certain engines that perform better than others. We can see that Google is definitely the top performer here, with high pages per session, average visit duration and low bounce rate. 48

51 Referrals sites that link back to your website. Traffic referred from sites is influenced by the quality of the site that is linking to you and the relevance of the content they were browsing on that site to what you offer. From an SEO perspective, referrals can also tie in quite nicely to a linkbuilding analysis/strategy. If a particular site generates a strong engagement on your site, and is relevant to your brand, you could consider requesting them to link to your site more permanently. 49

52 You don t just have to use the AdWords tab to optimize your AdWords campaigns. Please see case study at end of this module on SuperValu Ireland (supermarket chain) showing how I have optimized their campaigns using data from other reports. The AdWords tab is best used to report specifically on campaigns, and your efforts. 50

53 It s not necessary to use every report, just focus on the ones that make sense for your business, and give you the data that you need for your business. 51

54 You must link to AdWords before you can report on AdWords campaigns within Analytics. Integrating Analytics with AdWords allows you: to identify high performing campaigns, Ad Groups and keywords. to identify goal completions or e-commerce transactions by campaign. 52

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56 Factors influencing SEO traffic: quality of search engine, active search engine optimization. Google introduced secure search in mid October 2011 that did not pass query data in the referral string. It was done by Google for privacy - Google is suggesting that those searching using a secure Google connection would not want their search term to be passed on to the destination site. Your search will be secure if: - You're signed into a Google account - that could be your Gmail, YouTube, Google Reader, Google Drive, Analytics, AdWords or Google+ account. - You've just signed out of a Google account, as you will remain on secure pages. - You're using Firefox 14 or above which now makes all Google searches secure. - You simply opted to use secure search for your own reasons. 54

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59 You can use the Google URL builder to configure a specific URL for the campaign you are creating. The attributes of the URL that you can configure are: source, medium, content and term. It is important to use a consistent naming convention for your campaign URLs so that you can easily analyze performance across multiple campaigns. For more on the Google URL Builder, see: 57

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61 Behavior Flow: shows users movement throughout the site in a flow chart. Site Content: shows user engagement with pages on your site, including where they entered, what the top pages are, and where they exited. Site Speed: analyzes the speed of your site and offers suggestions to improve performance. Site Search: how users engage with the search functionality on your site (if present requires additional setup). Events: reports on any events (non standard tracking) you have set up in your account. Requires additional configuration. AdSense: for anyone who runs advertising on their site. Experiments: Analysis of Google experiments. Requires additional configuration. In-Page Analytics: heat map reporting to show interaction within a page. Requires additional configuration. Here we can answer Questions like: - What page on my site drives the most visits (sessions)? - What page on my site do users exit from most frequently? 59

62 - What is the load time of my most popular pages? - What s the usage of the site search functionality on my site? - What page drives most of my site searches? Custom Events: - Button Clicks - Link Clicks - On Page Interactions 59

63 Important Metrics: 1. Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. 2. Exit Rate: The percentage of visitors to a site who actively click away to a different site from a specific page, after having visited any other page(s) on the site. 3. Average Time on Page: Average amount of time users spent viewing a particular page. 4. Page Value: Page Value is calculated using the value of your transactions and your goals. The higher the value, then the more influential that page is versus all other pages. 60

64 Bounce rate is important to consider as it can be indicative of irrelevant content, poorly structured pages or badly rendered websites. However if the goal of your site is for users to find information quickly, or to complete an offline action (call you) then a high bounce rate could be positive the user found exactly what they needed on the first page. Context is key! 61

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66 Tools to help with Site Speed: Pingdom Tools (tools.pingdom.com), Google PageSpeed Insights. 63

67 Access the above through Behavior > Site Search. 64

68 Some elements cannot be tracked on site with normal Google Analytics code, if the action does not go to a confirmation page of an action. In order to report on these, Event Tracking is used. These include: PDF Downloads Interactions with various tools e.g. Pension calculator. Mouse Movements Video Plays, pauses, volume change etc. Interaction with Flash Mail to as clicks Click aways from site Social Media profiles. Case study: Insurance client wanted to improve the user experience on their quote application process. Added event tracking to every section of the form, so that when users entered their details, ticked a box, or clicked in/out of a from field, the code would fire. We were able to see which sections of the form users were having the most trouble with it turned out to be the address matching function. They are now implementing a new address matching function to improve 65

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70 Insurance client wanted to improve the user experience on their quote application process. Added event tracking to every section of the form, so that when users entered their details, ticked a box, or clicked in/out of a from field, the code would fire. We were able to see which sections of the form users were having the most trouble with it turned out to be the address matching function. They are now implementing a new address matching function to improve this process. 66

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72 A Google Analytics Conversion is the completion of an activity on your site that is important to the success of your business, i.e.: 1. A completed sign up for your newsletter (a Goal conversion) 2. A purchase (a transaction, sometimes called an e-commerce conversion) Goals: provide in-depth detail on goal completions, funnels, and steps to conversion. E-Commerce: provides insight on product performance for e-commerce sites, including transactions and revenue generated. Multi-Channel Funnels: show Top Conversion Paths, assisted conversions, time to conversion and number of paths to conversion. Attribution: provides insight on various Attribution models and how changing models would impact the credit various channels get. 1 - Goal Conversions: 68

73 - Goal conversions are the primary metric for measuring how well your site fulfils business objectives. - Occurs once a user completes a desired action on your site, such as a registration or download. - Does not have to have anything to do with a purchase. 2 - e-commerce Conversions - To analyze online sales effectiveness, you'll need to track e-commerce conversions.* - Code linked to your shopping cart & transactional information. - Allows you to see the value of your traffic. *Note: this requires a change to your tracking code 68

74 Goals can be set up around areas such as: visitors, content, leads, conversions etc. Different types of goals include: URL destination (this indicates a positive action on your site once a user reaches it), Time on Site, Page/ Visit, Event, Social Interaction, Registrations, Inquiries, Calls, Sales or Subscriptions. 69

75 To set up a goal, add a goal name, select a goal type and add the goal conditions. Always use the Request URI when creating goals or funnels if your site is you always enter whatever comes after the.com E.g. becomes /thanks when creating your goal/funnel. 70

76 To set up a goal, add a goal name, select a goal type and add the goal conditions. Tips for setting duration to trigger a goal: 1. Use current session duration, set anything higher than that to trigger a goal. 2. Segment (covered in later slides) data to show those who complete a success action such as a purchase or signup, and see what the average session duration is for just those visitors. This indicates a highly engaged audience, close to conversion, and you want to replicate that in all visitors! 71

77 To set up a goal, add a goal name, select a goal type and add the goal conditions. Tips for setting duration to trigger a goal: 1. Use current pages per session, set anything higher than that to trigger a goal. 2. Segment (covered in later slides) data to show those who complete a success action such as a purchase or signup, and see what the average pages per session is for just those visitors. This indicates a highly engaged audience, close to conversion, and you want to replicate that in all visitors! 72

78 To set up a goal, add a goal name, select a goal type and add the goal conditions. In order to create an event tracking goal, you must first have event tracking set up on your site and tracking with Analytics. We will cover how to do this in a later section of this module, within Conversions. When you create your Event, you will specify a Category, an Action and a Label. This will be unique to each event, and will allow you to then create the goal above based on these conditions. Social Interaction goals can also be created using Event tracking by placing your event tracking code on your social sharing buttons, and then creating an Event tracking goal based on this Event. 73

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80 Always use the Request URI when creating goals or funnels if your site is you always enter whatever comes after the.com E.g. becomes /thanks when creating your goal/funnel. Step 1 can be required or not required if a user has to land on that page before they can get to the next stage, then make it required. The last step in the funnel should always be the success page your Goal page. Never make your homepage the first step in the funnel. Start your funnel at the first step in the conversion process. 75

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84 Attribution is the process of assigning a value to each channel that played a role in a conversion. Time lag and path length are also good reports to use when trying to understand the user journey and path to purchase. How long on average does it take someone, from first interaction with your site, to decide to buy something? 79

85 There is no one magic attribution model it s different for each business based on their KPIs. However, moving away from last click is the most important step you ll take towards better attribution. Last click: credit is given to the last channel the user interacted with before they made a purchase. This tends to be Search or Direct traffic. First click: full credit is given to the first channel the user interacted with on their journey to purchase. Linear: gives equal credit to all channels that played a role. Time decay: distributes the credit according to how close to conversion the user was i.e. the channel furthest from conversion will get the least amount (but still some) of the credit, while the final channel will get the most (but not all) of the credit. Position based: gives credit to the first and last channel in the path to purchase, and nothing in between. You can use the Attribution model comparison tool to view the value given to each channel in the path to conversion, based on the model chosen. 80

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89 Views: To filter out certain IP Addresses When segment is long term Break out sections of a site e.g. particular product categories By Certain Sources if more detailed analysis is to be done Tracking Separate Sub Domains Including or Excluding certain events on the site Search & Replace Feature Advanced Segments: Better for comparing 2 or more types of traffic e.g. Mobile v Desktop, Paid v Non Paid, Social Network v Search Engine Traffic (searches driven from web searches). If you need to use conditional circumstances such as customer spent xx or 1 minute on site then use advanced segments. Default Advanced Segments exist in Google Analytics. New Custom Segments can be created. 84

90 Advanced Segments: Better for comparing 2 or more types of traffic e.g. Mobile v Desktop, Paid v Non Paid, Social Network v Search Engine Traffic. If you need to use conditional circumstances such as customer spent xx or 1 minute on site then use advanced segments. Default Advanced Segments exist in Google Analytics. New Custom Segments can be created. 85

91 You can add a meaningful name to the view in the Reporting View Name section. 86

92 This is an example of an IP address filter we are filtering out traffic from a specific IP address. One of the most commonly used filters, usually to filter out internal traffic. You could also create a new view and filter in only internal traffic, which would allow you to see what your internal staff do on your company intranet, for example. Some commonly used filters: - IP address filters - PPC traffic only - Search traffic only - campaigns - Filter by country (for large websites with multiple operating countries) - Social traffic 87

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101 These are what are know as Micro Conversions: Important page viewed Time on Site Event Triggered Newsletter Sign Ups Macro Conversions are the ultimate goal of the site: Sales or Ecommerce Tracking Loan Applications 96

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103 The above is an example of how you can bring what you have learned together, into a model that is actionable and meaningful. [CUSTOMIZATION] Super Valu Ireland is a supermarket chain in Ireland. 98

104 The above is an example of how you can bring what you have learned together, into a model that is actionable and meaningful. [CUSTOMIZATION] Super Valu Ireland is a supermarket chain in Ireland. 99

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106 Guidebook to EU data protection: Data protection in US guide: varies from state to state: More information on Data Protection Worldwide: Global Data Protection Handbook: 101

107 of_analytics_paper.pdf Google Terms of Service are available here: 102

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112 If you have any feedback on these slides, please 107

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