The document provides an overview of 10 data analysis strategies for Google Analytics that can provide valuable insights. It discusses segmenting traffic sources, landing pages, goals, conversion funnels, mobile vs desktop, in-page clicks, locations, and site search terms. Understanding these metrics can help optimize the user experience and identify opportunities to improve conversions.

1. Thoughts about
“Google Analytics Tips:
10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!”
by Avinash Kaushik
Dana Chinn
Lecturer
@danachinn

2. Two types of analytics data
Behavioral research
What people did
as captured by
an action taken on a keyboard or mouse
Attitudinal research
What people say they did
what they think
and
why
as captured by
surveys, focus groups, social media, usability studies 2

3. Unique
visitors
visit a
site
and generate
page
views
3

4. What actions indicate engagement?
Visit, regul
arly
View
content, a lot
Interact, often
-- rate, print, vote, take a poll, click on an ad
-- share, e-mail, comment, contribute
4

5. Start with an overall view
of visits by week
5

6. 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.”
15
visits
or sessions
6
Google Analytics: The Difference Between Clicks, Visits, Visitors, Pageviews, and Unique Pageviews

7. Analytics Measurement Model – E-commerce
Start here
Visits that
come from…
Market Motive/Avinash Kaushik

8. Segment…
…or die!
-- Justin Cutroni, Cardinal Path 8

9. Segment #1: Sources Overview report
Where did an external visitor come from?
Did they come based on actions we took?
Visits that come from…
Needs to be
custom coded
9

10. Balanced Too reliant on search
Graphs from “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik
10

11. 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?
11

12. Segment: Visits that came from branded vs.
unbranded search terms
Visits from people
who were signed in
into Google
Brand name
Visits from
Advertising slogan branded
search
Name of your CEO
Topic you want to be known for
Visits from
Topic you don’t want to be known for unbranded
search
Topic you didn’t know you were known for
12

13. Segment #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?
13

14. Bounce rate
The percent of visits
with only one page view
“I came. I saw. I puked.”
-- Avinash Kaushik on bounce rate
A bounce: a visit with only one page view 14

15. Site bounce rate “Forty-six percent of the 11.1 million visits
that came to our site in the last 12 months
bounced.
In other words, there were five million
times someone came to the site, looked at
one page, and left.”
15

16. Site bounce rate: Interesting…
…but ultimately not actionable
16

17. Landing page bounce rates by traffic source
give actionable insights
How many people came to the site directly….
…and landed on the home page…
…and bounced?
17

18. Segment #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.
?
18

19. Goals and goal values
differ by company and
project
Goals need to be
set up in Google
Analytics
Images from Market Motive and “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by
Avinash Kaushik 19

20. Segment #4: Conversion funnels report
“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
From “Applying Google Analytics Goal and Funnel Techniques,” by Justin
20
Cutroni, Public Media Metrics

21. Of all of the visits that came in
directly, how many converted, or resulted
in a sale?
1 Landing page with internal search window
2 Internal search results
3 Product description and price
4 Product added to cart
5 Account sign-in
Review /
6 pymt.
Purchase
confirmation
page

22. 100% conversion Most common Optimal
Ill-defined Poorly converting
22
From “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics” (third edition), by Brian Clifton

23. Segment #5: Multi-Channel Funnel Assisted
Conversions Report
“If all your campaigns
always include
campaign tracking
parameters, this report
Visits from is really good at
answering this critical
question:
Is channel x more
likely to be at the end
of the conversion
…that resulted in a conversion process
or
drive traffic that might
convert later via a
different channel?
From “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik
23

24. Segment #6: Mobile Devices Report (mobile
web)
Should we use a mobile-optimized,
responsive design for our site?
20% of visits
DID use a 20%
mobile device
80%
80% of
visits
did NOT use
a mobile
device
20%
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4
24

25. Visits to a mobile site result in different behavior
and outcomes…
Old mobile web New mobile web site New full-sized web site
site – same as
full-sized site
…and thus need to be analyzed differently – and
separately 25

26. Segment #7: In-Page Analytics Report
How do
these click
percentages
differ by
traffic
source and
landing
page?
Image from “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik
26

27. Segment #8: Location Report
So what?
Only small percentages of
visits to our site come from
cities and states we’re
targeting with our new
marketing campaign. 27

28. Get the data out of Google Analytics and put it in
a format that’s meaningful for your company’s
business goals
India
China 8%
11,439
5%
7,188
Canada, Other
U.S.
UK
U.S. 29%
5%
All other 53%
43,715
7,393
29%
80,354 Calif.
45,008 24%
36,639
“All other” includes 183 countries, each with 1 percent or less.
“Other U.S.” includes other states, each with 5 percent or less. 28

29. Segment #9: Site Search Terms Report
Visits that use your site’s internal search engine:
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?
29

30. Are the external search terms – paid and organic –
the same as internal search terms?
Visits from people
who were signed in
into Google
Brand name
Visits from
Advertising slogan branded
search
Name of your CEO
Topic you want to be known for
Visits from
Topic you don’t want to be known for unbranded
search
Topic you didn’t know you were known for
30