Google Analytics: Getting the most out of your Analytics.

Google Analytics: Getting the most out of your Analytics.

Questions for Google Analytics: How many people are visiting my site? Who are they? Where do they come from? How are they finding my site? What content is most relevant to them? Is my website effective? How effective is my advertising? Which advertising is the most effective?

Google Analytics Home New default home page for Google Analytics Not terribly useful Skip to Audience Overview

Audience/Overview Definitions: Sessions: A period of time in which a user is actively engaged in your website. AKA Visits Users: The number of unique individuals or devices used to access your site. AKA Visitors Pageviews: The total number of pages visited by all users. Pages/Session: The average number of pages per session. Average Session Duration: The average length of each session. Bounce Rate: The percent of single page sessions in which there was no interaction with the page. % New Sessions: The percent of users visiting for the first time

Audience/Overview: Date Range Default setting on date range is the last 30 days. Set the date range to review by quarter, year to date, etc... Very useful to see seasonal trends Drill deeper to find causes for peaks and valleys

Audience/Overview: Compare Date Ranges Use the date range features to compare stats from month to month or year to year. Watch for positive and negative trends and act accordingly. Notice a drop in sessions or a spike in bounce rate? Drill deeper to find out why.

Audience/Overview: Demographics Where are you customers coming from? Language and Country are generally not very pertinent for MN Tourism properties with the possible exception of Canada. Check these from time to time for suspicious foreign traffic.

Audience/Overview: Demographic-City Use the City report for a quick view of your major geo markets Add the date comparison to see relative growth: month to month or year to year Most of the other Demo reporting - System/Mobile is only useful to developers. How many users are on Mobile vs Desktop? Go to Mobile/Overview.

Audience/Mobile/Overview What devices are your potential customers using to view your site? The majority of website users are now on mobile devices Is your site responsive or optimized for mobile? If not, you are losing search position and customers.

Audience/Demographics Overview Who are your customers? Age and gender are fundamental demographics captured by Google Analytics. Women are the primary decision makers for family travel. Does your site appeal to this demographic? You must enable Advertising Features to view this data.

Audience/Interests Overview Get to know your customers. What other types of websites do they visit? What TV programming do they watch? This is very good intel for buying TV ads and display ads.

Audience/Behavior: Frequency This report shows how often users are returning to the site Return visits are very important because it is very unusual for users to buy after one visit. It usually takes 2-3 visits or more before users make a decision. 1X visitor figure is inflated: use of cookies, multiple devices, etc...

Audience/Behavior: Engagement Don t be overly alarmed by relatively high number of 0-10 second visits. This data is skewed by visits considered by Google as bounces which are reported as zero seconds. This report gives you a deeper look at average duration from the overview page. Note the high number of of 0-10 second visits. Most of these visits are bounces. Many factors including location of analytics code can skew duration estimates.

Behavior/Overview A good way to double check engagement is to look at Average Time on Page in Behavior/Overview.

Audience/Custom You can create your own custom reports in Analytics. With custom variables, you can define additional segments to apply to your visitors other than the ones already provided by Analytics. We have never needed to use this feature.

Audience/Benchmarking How does your traffic compare to that of similar businesses? Benchmarking reports allow you to compare your data with aggregated industry data from other companies who share their data. In return, you anonymously share your data with other Analytics users

Audience/User Flow Good visualization tool to assess traffic flow to and within your site Pay particular attention to top starting/landing pages and drop-offs Note that your home page is not necessarily the main doorway to your site.

Acquisition/Overview All Traffic/Channels is a Snap Shot of all the types or sources of web traffic: Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, Display, Social, etc...

Acquisition/All Traffic/Channels All Traffic/Channels is a more detailed view of all the types or sources of web traffic

Acquisition: Volume Data Acquisition = Volume. Which channels are producing the highest number of visitors? While important, this is the tip of the iceberg.

Acquisition: Engagement Data Pay close attention to Behavior data. These are measurements of engagement. How relevant is your site to users from various channels? Use this information for fine-tuning your advertising and/or website content.

Acquisition: Conversion Data Conversions shows which channels are resulting in goal completions or sales Note the high conversion rate of Organic Search. This is usually the final channel in the user s decision making process.

Channels/Organic Search Average % of Organic Search: 56% Organic Search shows keywords used to access your site. Note the extremely high number of not provided. Use Search Console - Web Master Tools for more complete data.

Channels/Other Other is a catch-all channel, usually containing ad-driven sessions with improper UTM codes. If you don t find ad traffic under display or campaigns, look here.

Channels/Direct Average % of Direct Traffic: 23% Direct Traffic tracks visits to you site in which the user is keying in your url or has it bookmarked. Usually indicates return visitors or non-digital advertising such as TV. Report shows landing pages, giving an indicator of important content.

Channels/Social Which social media are driving the most visits to your site? Which social media are worth your time and effort?

Channels/Referrals Average % of Referral Traffic: 19% Referrals can be an inexpensive or free source of traffic with high SEO value. Which sites are driving the most referrals to your site? Which paid listings are successful and which aren t?

Channels/Paid Search View keyword performance on PPC/Adwords campaigns right in Analytics. Which keywords are driving the most traffic? Which keywords are producing the best engagement and conversions?

Channels/Organic: Secondary Dimension Which specific search engines are driving the most traffic to your site? Use Secondary Dimension: Source/Medium. To filter out none search, type organic in advanced search.

Channels/Other: Source/Medium Source is the media vendor. Medium is the type of media such as e-mail or display. If you are running multiple campaigns with a single vendor, use Secondary Dimensions to view the relative success of each element.

Channels/Other: Source/Medium Result Which specific campaign elements are producing the best results?

Channels/Other: Advertising/Ad Content Which specific ads are driving the most traffic to my site? Which ads produce the best engagement or conversions. Use Secondary Dimensions: Ad Content to view.

Channels/Other: Ad Content Results Must use UTM codes to gather this data.

Adwords/Accounts View all your Adwords campaigns in GA with engagement data added to basic clicks Must link your Analytics to Adwords to view this.

Search Console/Queries View Search Console queries for more information on keywords that are driving traffic to your site - Impressions, CTR and Average Position. This is extremely valuable information for SEO - must link to Search Console (WMT).

Campaigns/All Campaigns View campaigns to measure relative success of all your digital campaign. Pay attention to engagement as well as clicks or sessions. Use Google Tag manager to accurately track campaigns. (more later)

All Campaigns: Source/Medium Use Secondary Dimensions to get more detail on campaigns such as source/mediums, advertising content or user data such as cities.

Campaigns/Paid Keywords Be sure to link your Adwords with Analytics for better data and results! Which keywords are producing the most engagement and goal conversions?

Behavior/All Pages Which pages are the most popular on your site? Are users visiting your most important pages? Pay attention to engagement as well as pageviews.

Behavior/Landing Pages Which pages are bringing in the most visitors? Landing pages are the first pages visited by users. They are the gateways. Are these pages successfully funneling visitors to goal URLs? What improvements can you make to hold on to users?

Behavior/Page Timings Are you web pages loading quickly enough? Are there specific pages that might be too slow? Slow loading pages can hurt search engine rank and create drop-offs!

Behavior/Events/Top Events Set up Events to measure important actions of users such as phone calls, external links and form submissions. Example shows links to DMO s members.

Behavior/Top Events/Resorts drill down Resort Event Drill-down: External Link, Telephone calls, etc...

Conversions/Goals/Overview Goals are actions taken on your website that result in a desired outcome. Some Suggested goals: E-Commerce tracking for confirmed bookings Contact form submissions Property detail page question submissions Email/newsletter sign up submissions Send property to a friend submissions Email pop-up collection submissions Don t overdo it!

Converions/Goals/Goal URLs Which goal URLs are most frequently visited? Can you calculate a value for these page visits?

Conversions/Goals/Goal Paths What paths are users taking to get to goal URLs? What pages/content are not leading to goal URLs?

Ecommerce/Overview If you have an online reservation system, be sure to use Google s Ecommerce Tracking to track actual revenue by channel, geographic and demographic markets. Fisher Maps Example Revenue Conversion Rate Transactions

Ecommerce/Shopping Behavior Where are users dropping off before making a purchase? Improvements in any phase of the process should result in increased sales.

Ecommerce/Product Performance What products (cabins or campsites) are most popular to your online customers? Are your product detail pages doing justice to the product?

Multi-Channel Funnels It is very rare for users to make a purchase on their first visit. What channels are they using before they buy?

Channels: Conversions with Ecommerce Which channels are producing the greatest revenue and conversion rates?

Channels/Search with Ecommerce Which keywords are the most valuable to you? Can you improve sales by improving keyword ranks?

Channels/Source/Medium with Ecommerce Which media is producing the most sales? Which media have the best conversion rates? What is your ROI?

Channels/Referrals with Ecommerce Which referrers are producing the most sales? What is your ROI on paid listings?

Cities with Ecommerce In which markets are you selling the most product? Which markets are producing the highest conversion rates? Where should you be focusing your advertising?

Creating UTM Codes UTM Codes: Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are five variants of URL parameters used by marketers to track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across traffic sources and publishing media. They were introduced by Google Analytics predecessor Urchin and, consequently, are supported out-of-the-box by Google Analytics. Ask digital ad providers to use UTMs or create your own and ask your provider to use them.

UTM Parameters

UTM Code Sample http://www.ely.org/outfitters/boundary-waters-outfitters? utm_source=ad%20taxi &utm_medium=behaviorally%20targeted%20e-mail &utm_campaign=summer%20tourism &utm_content=canoeing http://www.ely.org/outfitters/boundary-waters-outfitters?utm_ source=ad%20taxi&utm_medium=behaviorally%20targeted%20 E-mail&utm_campaign=Summer%20Tourism&utm_content=Canoeing Send this code along with your ad to your media representative.

In Conclusion... If you don t already have Analytics installed, ask your developer to set it up and give you access. Make sure Analytics is linked to other reporting assets such as Search Console and Adwords. Familiarize yourself with your Analytics. Get into the habit of checking your Analytics with some regularity. Employ UTM codes for digital ad campaigns. Set up goals and events to measure success. If your site includes a reservation system, add Ecommerce. Finally, act on what you learn from Analytics! Good luck!