Presentation from DotNetNuke World 2012, covering the topic of connecting the advanced features of Analytics to a DotNetNuke social website to capture the social activity.
2. Agenda
Aim : everyone here to go back and utilise analytics
better on their sites
Background on Web Analytics and Social Sites
What to measure in Social Sites
How to measure in Social Sites
3 Techniques for implementing tracking
Understanding and using your data
3. Social Sites
Social Sites : social features enabled on your
own website
Social Features:
– Membership (friends, follow, groups)
– Activity (Q&A, Forums, Blog comments)
– Any other site-specific user interactions
4. Implementation of Social Sites with
DotNetNuke
DotNetNuke social (6.2 or later)
ActiveSocial
Other custom methods and components
Integration with other social platforms
(Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)
5. History of Web Analytics
(how did we get here)
Early days (early 1990s): hit counting – ‘hit’
being a request for a file on a server, including
images + pages
Hit Counters (mid 1990s) :
Log File Analysis (early-mid 90s): after the fact
collation of data.
Script + cookie based tracking (late 90s)
Pageview emphasis, rather than hits
Launch of Google Analytics (2005)
6. Analytics Now
Real time statistics
Heatmaps, ClickTale reporting
Mobile + desktop application analytics
Integration with e-commerce + advertising
platforms
Extremely widespread since Google Analytics
was made free
Concept of Pageview losing relevance
7. Recent new Features of Google Analytics
Switch to Asynchronous tracking
Real-time data : see traffic as it arrives
Webmaster tools integration
Social Engagement reports
Visitor Flow
Event Tracking
New interface (dashboards, etc)
8. How Google Analytics Asynchronous
Tracking works
Asynchronous prevents page load from waiting
on Analytics code
When page loads, commands are placed into a
‘_gaq’ array.
When analytics script (ga.js) loads and runs,
loops through loaded _gaq array and executes
commands.
Any further additions to _gaq are executed
immediately
9. Analytics and Social Sites
Modern DotNetNuke sites have lots of client-side
operations
Client side operations don’t trigger pageviews
Pageviews don’t give contextual information
External interactions (g+ links, Twitter Buttons)
don’t show up in site Analytics
10. Analytics and Social Sites cont.
Effectiveness of a Social Site is about return
visitors and engagement with the site
Improving the site effectiveness means
measuring success of particular actions
Measuring Success requires measurement of
actions.
Pageviews alone will not provide enough
information
12. Google Analytics Events
Events can have three variables supplied:
– Category
– Label
– Value
.. in addition to the event name or ‘Action’
Each user session is limited to 500 requests
(events + page views)
Events are integrated into Analytics Reporting
15. Using Events to Measure Effectiveness
Measuring effectiveness is
measuring goals against targets
Traditional Pageview based (Url)
goals are clunky
Event goals can measure how much
a visitor is engaged
16. Using Goals and Conversions
Ideas for Goals:
– Friends made / Follows clicked
– Comments – blogs / walls / forum posts
– Groups Joined
– Downloads
– External Links followed
17. How to Track Events in DotNetNuke sites
3 Methods
1. Add specific event tracking code to pages
2. Associate clicks to event tracking function
3. Use event-enabled Analytics Plugin
Skill level : copy/paste – if you can add
Analytics code, you can add event tracking
18. 1. Add specific event tracking code
Assuming Analytics already configured for
Asynchronous tracking
Use code snippet directly in Html using
javascript
Tracks an event called ‘Something’ for the
‘Social’ category, using ‘A1’ as a label
19. 2. Associate Clicks with event tracking
If you can’t directly control html, then use jQuery
to assign click handler to elements on the page
Recommend using the ‘on’ handler as content
might be AJAX loaded, and click needs to be
bound
20. 3. Using event-enabled Analytics Plugin
iFinity Google Analytics 3.0 – free Analytics
plugin
Now updated with event tracking
Use ‘identifying’ mode, click on things to track
Associate Category, Event name and optional
Label or jQuery selector
Test event tracking by using click testing
Code works by associating handler with clickable
elements, and recording matching events
22. Analytics Module Advantages
Integrated external links reporting
Setup tracking across entire portal, or for specific
page
Consistency of Category/Event naming
No need to write Javascript code, but option of
including site / page level custom Javascript for
extra tracking (events, custom vars, etc)
23. Tracking External Social Interactions
Tracking clicks + interactions with External social
sites (LinkedIn, g+, Facebook, etc)
Slightly modified version of Event tracking
_gaq.push(['_trackSocial', network, socialAction,
opt_target, opt_pagePath]);
See Google Analytics Help for more examples
24. Understanding and using your Data
Move beyond ‘visits’ to ‘interactions’ in
measuring data
Determine what is a conversion
Use analysis of existing conversions to
determine
Think in terms of goal funnels – ‘gates’ that
visitors must go through before conversion
Don’t forget to track from point of view of
anonymous visitor to regular contributor
Visits triggering events can be used as a
segment
25. Create Custom Segments from Event Data
Custom Segments created from Event data
Use to track/compare actions where
event was completed
26. Viewing Data by Custom Segment
Showing activity of visits to /Licensing page
Licence Requests vs All Visits
27. Key things to Analyse
Acquisition (paid/organic/other)
Activity (pageviews/events -> see vs do)
Outcome (bounce/conversion/browsing session)
Reduce down to a value/visit metric increase
visitors, increase value (revenue / leads / other)
28. Example Goals for Social Sites
Signup (register) completion
Forum Post
Group Join
Profile Update
Friends Made
29. Conclusions
Social Site success depends on visitor
interaction + repeat visits
Interaction + repeat visits depend on social
activity
Therefore, measuring social activity, and using
that data to improve is vital to site success
DotNetNuke has great social features but these
can’t be measured by pageview, due to ‘single
page’ interactive design
Integrate Event Tracking with your Social
Features to understand your social activity
Use Events to segment visitor data
30. Questions?
Google Analytics 3.0 module install available at
https://dnngoogleanalytics.codeplex.com/
Slides available at
http://www.slideshare.net/brchapman