Chapter 9 - Analytics

ANALYTICS
• Formal definition of analytics: The process of measuring, collecting, analyzing,
and reporting the behavior of visitors on a website, in order to understand and
optimize web usage.
• Informal definition of analytics: What's the story behind the stats? (And it's a
never-ending one.)
• The online world shifts constantly, so analytics continually monitors and
evaluates website traffic, forever asking: What is working, what isn't, why, and
what are we doing about it?
• It's a myth that analytics is just about data it's actually more about reading
between the lines to interpret that data.
• The challenge is to customize each report for specific needs, then dig out insights
that help to optimize the site, understand the users, and meet business aims.

What Are Goals in Google Analytics?
• Goals in Google Analytics allow you to track specific user interactions
on your site.
• These user interactions can be anything including form submissions,
product purchases, collection of leads, and more.
• When a website visitor performs the specific action that you’ve
defined as a goal, Analytics records that as a conversion.

How Do You Set Up Goals in Google Analytics?
Once you know how to add Google Analytics to WordPress, you can set
up goals in Google Analytics by following these steps:
Step 1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account and select the website
for which you’d like to create a new goal.

Step 2. In the left panel, click Admin and in the View column, click Goals.

Step 3. To create a new goal, click the +New Goal button.

Step 4. Now you’ll be prompted to enter a description and the details of
your goal. You can enter a suitable name and choose the right goal type.

Which Goals are Available in Google Analytics?
You’ll see four goal types in Google Analytics. They are:
• Destination: You can choose this goal type if you want to treat a pageview
or screen view as a conversion.
• Duration: You can measure user engagement by treating time spent on a
page as a conversion.
• Pages/Screens per session: This is another way to measure user
engagement. You can measure the number of page views per session as a
conversion.
• Event: You can treat user interaction like button click, video play, form
submission, ebook download as a conversion.

Let’s specify the name of your goal as Form Submission, and choose
the Event type.

• After you’ve chosen your options, click Continue.
• Now you’ll be asked to enter the goal details and event conditions.
For Category, you can enter forms. And for Action, you can add
Conversions.
• If you’re using a forms plugin like WPForms and have multiple forms on
your website, you’ll have to enter form ID for each, like wpform-form-
187846.
• As for the Value option, you can leave it as it is.

How to Setup and Install Google Analytics on Your
Website
Step 1 – Create a Google Account or Use an Existing One
• If you have an existing Google or Gmail account already established,
you do not need to create a new one and you can skip to the next
step.
• Fill out all of the information in the form and then click “Next Step.”
• Google will then ask you if you would like to create a public Google+
profile. That is optional and you don’t have to set that up if you don’t
want to. Click “Create your profile” if you would like to or click “No
thanks” to skip.

Step 2 – Using your New Google Account to
Setup Google Analytics
• Now that you have a Google account established, we can move on to
setting up Google Analytics.
• While you are still logged in to your account, go to this website
address: http://www.google.com/analytics/.
• Click on “Access Google Analytics” in the top right corner and you will
be redirected to a new page.

Click on “Sign up” on the far right hand side.

• For the purposes of this tutorial, we are going to be setting up Google
Analytics for a website and not a mobile app. Therefore make sure
that “Website” is clicked at the top.

Fill out all of the information on this page.
1. Account Name
2. Website Name
3. Website URL
4. Industry Category
5. Reporting Time Zone
• Finally, click on the blue “Get Tracking ID” button at the bottom

• A Google Analytics Terms of Service Agreement will appear and you
will need to accept this agreement before you can proceed further.

• You will then be presented with a unique tracking code that will need
to be applied to your website.

Step 3 – Installing the Tracking Code
• In order for Google Analytics to be able to report back on a variety of
website metrics, you will need to install the tracking code on every
page of your website. To install the code, you basically need to have it
appear on all pages of your website code.
• If you do not have experience adding code to your website, you
should contact the web design company that manages your website.
• Copy and paste the tracking code to either the header or footer file of
your website.
• If you are adding the tracking code to the header file, make sure the
code is contained before the closing </head> tag.
• If you are adding the tracking code to the footer file, make sure the
code is contained before the closing </html> tag.

Step 4 – Make Sure the Tracking Code is on All Pages
• There is a very handy tool called GA Checker that will scan your entire
website (up to 10,000 pages) to see if the Google Analytics tracking
code exists on all pages.
• All you need to do is enter in your website name and then click the
button that says “Check Your Site.”
• If you installed the tracking code successfully you will see a check
mark next to Google Analytics on all pages.

Step 5 – Learn How to Use Google Analytics
• Now that you have installed the tracking code on all the pages on
your website, it’s going to take 24 hours for Google to start collecting
data from your website.
• Please keep in mind that Google Analytics will always be one day
behind and you won’t be able to view data from the present day.
• Be sure to review the Beginners Guide to Using Google Analytics for
specific information about understanding the data in Google
Analytics.

How to Monitor Traffic Results Using Google
Analytics Goals
• Did you know that you can easily monitor the results of your traffic, using
Google Analytics, by setting up and tracking each stage of your sales funnel?
• You can do this using the “Goals” feature. The first thing you'll want to do it
identify the different steps you want to measure.
• For example:
• Step 1: Optin for newsletter
• Step 2: Download brochure
• Step 3: Visit pricing page
• Step 4: Schedule a consultation
• Step 5: Make a purchase

Step 1:
• Login to your Google Analytics Account and click on “Admin” once you get
to the dashboard. (Located at the top of the page.)
• Once there, look on the third column, under “View”, you will see “Goals.”

Step 2:
• Click on the red button that says “+ NEW GOAL”
• You are limited to 20 goals and you can’t delete one once you’ve set it
up (you can only edit)… so choose wisely.
• Some initial ones could be–
• Signed up for newsletter
• Purchased Product A

Step 3:
• Choose a template-there are 4 main templates to choose from:
• Revenue: Used to track sales generated by a specific product or service;
which requires you to set a destination URL. Meaning, you have to assign a
page that customers will be directed to after they make a purchase. Be sure
your online shopping cart easily allows you to set the destination url after a
purchase before attempting to set this up.
• Acquisition: Used to someone who creates an account or registers as a
user on your website.
• Inquiry: Use this to track inquiry level engagement on your site. In other
words, you can track metrics such as how many people visited your contact
us page. How many people downloaded a sales brochure? How many
people contacted you via live chat?
• Engagement: Use this to track leads or opt-ins to your email marketing list.
You will need to use the thank-you page that your leads land on after
opting in as the destination urls.

Step 4:
• Goal Name: Name your goal something you’ll quickly recognize
• Goal Type: There are four types of goals; URL Destination, Time on Site, Pages/Views,
and Event.
• Destination: Use this goal to determine how many visitors reached a specific page on
your site. For example, how many people reached your thank you page after opting
in.
• Duration: Use this goal to determine how much time your visitors were on a specific
page. For example if you have a page with a 3 minute video on it, you can measure
how many people reached a goal of 3 minutes which could mean they watched the
entire video.
• Pages/Screens per session: One important metric for SEO is the average number of
pages your visitors visit while on your site. Measuring how many people reached a
minimum of 3 pages can help you to improve your SEO.
• Event: Use this goal to measure specific actions on your site such as downloaded a
brochure or watched a video.

The Most Important Google Analytics Metrics To
Track/Monitor
NEW OR UNIQUE VISITOR CONVERSION
• People get many visitors on their websites on daily basis but with Google
analytics for small business, you need to identify the visitors who have
visited your website for the first time and those who have returned after
the first visit.
• Both visitors are different and must be dealt with unique visitor conversion.
• One must determine what is it that catches the attention of a first-time
visitor and work on improving it to provide a better overall experience.
• For this, a lot of successful brands use user-friendly website designs that
help the first-timers to engage with the brand website and have a good
experience

SOURCES FOR INCOMING TRAFFIC
• Normally,your incoming traffic would come from many sources which
include the following:
• Direct Visitors: These visitors come to your website by typing the
exact URL for your website in their search engines or browsers.
• Search Visitors: These are visitors who land on your website through
a search query.
• Referral Visitors: These visitors land on your website after seeing an
ad or blog of your website.

SOURCES FOR INCOMING TRAFFIC
• Although all these three sources make up all your online traffic, but
you have to prioritize the optimal conversion for each one which is
bringing the most traffic on your website.
• So, if your website has low direct visitors then
• change its name so that people can remember it and have direct
access,
• try some advertisement,
• and make it user-friendly.

INTERACTIONS PER VISIT (PAGES/SESSIONS)
• The ultimate goal for Google Analytics for small business is to turn the
visitors into potential customers, but we understand that in the real
world it may be a little complicated.
• There will always be some visitors who don’t turn into your customer,
but you have to monitor their behavior on your website to make the
most of their visit.
• If they spend time on reading, browsing products, like, comment or
share anything then this is interactive, you can get a great feedback
from them this way and change your website by adding something
more.

RETURN VISITOR CONVERSION
• When a visitor returns to your website, then one thing is sure that
he/she was impressed by your website and the second thing is, was
he/she converted into a potential customer for the first time?
• So, if he/she has converted they will definitely make a purchase or
subscription but if he/she hasn’t been converted then it would be a
good idea to offer them exclusive deals or fill out a survey form.
• Anything that can keep them engaging with the brand.

VALUE PER VISIT
• The value per visit can improve if the website strengthens its bond
with the potential customers.
• Evaluating value for every visit is hard, but when a visitor is making a
purchase from your brand then it is definitely the most valued visit.
• But apart from the buying part, one must maintain this metric to
know the potential customer’s value per visit.
• Also, when they buy things and experience your service, they leave a
review, or your brand name spread through the word of mouth then
it is really valuable for a brand website.

BOUNCE RATE
• In Google Analytics for small business, the bounce rate is referred to
as when people visit your website and immediately bounce back
without completing any tasks or browsing.
• If anyone is having this issue then they should try to make the website
landing page a little bit interesting with updated content, eye-
catching pictures, graphics, catchy titles, and a user-friendly method
of logging in and logging out.

LEAD GENERATION COSTS (COST PER CONVERSION)
• This one is regarded as the most important metrics of Google Analytics
for small business.
• It is the cost you are putting on every conversion.
• Normally, when you have to convert a website visitor into a potential
customer, you put a high cost on it but if you fail to do the conversion
that means you spent more than your optimized profit.

EXIT PAGES
• 1st landing pages of a website are not often the reason why people
bounce back to find other websites as there could be many other
factors.
• One of them could be the 2nd or 3rd page where a customer is trying
to browse something, probably a product specification or trying to
finally purchase the product but he/she can’t enter the information
because it is super slow and kind of stuck.
• This kind of incident happens with many business websites. What you
can do is make your exit pages functional and better so that people
would leave it with good reviews.

PAGE VIEWS
• The page view metric for Google Analytics for small business tells you
how often the people get access to your page content successfully.
• When a person visits your website, your page view takes a little time
to display all the features and contents on it and it doesn’t really
count as a page view unless the visitor had seen all the contents and
features of the website page.
• So, this metric depends on the right content and the display of it.

AVERAGE SESSION DURATION
• It means the exact time that a visitor had spent on your website. You
can increase this time by putting up the relevant and right content
what your visitor is looking for on your website.
• As this will help them and they are more likely to browse more or
come back for further knowledge or purchase from your website.

Audience
• Audiences in Analytics are users that you group together based on
any combination of attributes that is meaningful to your business.
• At any one time, you can have a maximum of 50 audiences published
to an Analytics account, and a maximum of 20 published to any single
property within that account.
• Audiences are available only in the view in which you create them.
• You can create broad definitions like all users who at any time
purchased a product, or all users who have purchased within the last
12 months but not during the last 2.

How to create an audience in google analytics
• To create an audience:
1. Sign in to Google Analytics.
2. Click Admin, and navigate to the property in which you want to create
the audience.
3. In the Property column, click Audience Definitions > Audiences.
4. Click + New Audience.
5. By default, your new audience is based on data from the current
reporting view. Any users filtered from the view you use will also be
filtered from the audience.
To change the view, click Edit, select a new view, then click Next step.

• 6. Define your audience. You can: Choose from preconfigured
audience definitions:
• Smart List: Let Google manage the audience for you.
• All Users: All users to your site or app who already have the necessary
advertising cookies or mobile-advertising IDs.
• New Users: Any users who have conducted only one session on your site or
app.
• Returning Users: Any users who have conducted more than one session on
your site or app.

• 6. Define your audience. You can: Choose from preconfigured audience
definitions:
• Users who visited a specific section of my site/app: Click the edit icon, and
enter the URL of a page or directory on your site, or a screen in your app. This
option uses the contains match type, and matches any URL that contains the
string you enter here.
If there are more than 1000 page/screen URLs for your site/app, then Analytics
displays matches as you enter text only if matches are found within the first
1000 URLs. If there are no matches in the first 1000 URLs, then Analytics
displays nothing. In this case, you can copy and paste the URL from a browser,
or from some other source of URLs like a spreadsheet.
• Users who completed a goal conversion: Click the edit icon, and select a goal
from the menu. This option requires that you have previously configured
Analytics Goals.
• Users who completed a transaction: This is already configured to include any
user with more than zero transactions.

How to edit an audience
• Sign in to Google Analytics.
• Click Admin, and navigate to the property in which you want to edit
the audience.
• In the PROPERTY column, click Audience Definitions > Audiences.
• In the list of existing audiences, click the name of the audience you
want to edit.
• Click Edit for Audience source, Audience definition, or Audience
destinations.

How to edit an audience
• When you edit the source (reporting view) or definition, new users
are added based on the new source or definition, and existing users
who were added based on the previous source or definition remain in
the audience until their membership duration expires.
• When you edit destinations, you can close an audience for individual
destinations so that it no longer accumulates users in those contexts.
• You can subsequently reopen an audience for a destination by editing
the audience again.

How to Use Google Analytics Audience Data to
Improve Your Marketing.

Below is a brief description of what data you’ll find in each reporting
section, based on the reporting period you define in the date range
drop-down menu.
• 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.

Below is a brief description of what data you’ll find in each reporting
section, based on the reporting period you define in the date range
drop-down menu.
• 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.

#1: Overview
• The Audience Overview is generally what you see when you first log
into your website’s Google Analytics.
• At the top of the Overview tab is a graph of the number of sessions
performed by website users.

• Beneath the graph are top-level session details showing you the number of
users who have performed sessions on your website, pageviews, pages per
session, average session duration, bounce rate and the percentage of new
sessions.

• At the bottom of the Audience Overview are quick links to top
demographic, system and mobile data, along with a chart showing the
number of sessions on your website from visitors speaking a particular
language.

#2: Demographics
• The Demographics Overview breaks down your visitors by age and
gender.

• You can access the full Age and Gender category reports by clicking the link in
each chart or from the left sidebar menu.
• If you’re tracking goals in Google Analytics, look at the data next to your
conversion rates in these reports to find out which age groups and gender are
mostly likely to convert.

#2: Demographics
• For example, if you’re targeting an audience for social media
advertising, especially on networks like Facebook,
• The table above shows that people in the 18–24 and 55–64 age
groups are your highest converting website visitors.
• Creating ads that are specific to these age groups will increase the
likelihood of making a conversion.

#3: Interests
• Curious what your website visitors are interested in? The Interests
Overview will show you just that.

#4: Geo
• The Geo section covers the language and location of your website
visitors.

• While the Language and Location categories both include the standard charts
showing the acquisition, behavior and conversions data, the Location portion
also has a map that visually displays your visitors’ locations.

#4: Geo
• The map is extremely useful for targeting social and search ads—
especially if you know the locations and languages of visitors most
likely to convert using your Google Analytics goals.
• It can also come in handy for local businesses that want to know if
their marketing efforts are driving traffic from the right regions, and
for publishers who want to create content that is locally focused.

#5: Behavior
• The Behavior section includes detailed category reports New vs.
Returning Visitors, Frequency & Recency and Engagement.
• These reports tell you more about how often a visitor comes to your
website,
• how many days on average it is between sessions for repeat visitors,
• how long visitors stay on your website and how many pages they visit
while they’re there.

• By using goals in Google Analytics, you can track the behavioral patterns of
visitors who are most likely to convert. For example, you’ll know if you’re
most likely to get the most conversions on a visitor’s first visit or returning
visits.

#5: Behavior
• If you notice returning visitors are more likely to convert, do
everything in your power to get first-time visitors back onto your
website by having them subscribe to your blog or email list.
• If you notice new visitors are more likely to convert, aim for
conversion optimization strategies that grab people on their first
visit, such as exit intent pop-ups (like the ones that ask for your email
or offer you a discount code as you’re leaving a site).

#6: Technology
• If you want to learn more about the browsers, operating systems
and Internet service providers your visitors use when visiting your
website, look through the Technology reports.
• There are two category reports in this section: Browser & OS and
Network.

#6: Technology
• If your business creates online tools or software, you can use this to
gauge whether you should be creating Chrome extensions or Mac-
based desktop applications.
• You can also use this to make sure your website is working well in
the top three browsers your visitors use.

#7: Mobile
• Not sure if you should optimize for mobile? This is the area you need
to visit. The Mobile Overview shows you the number of desktop,
mobile and tablet users who visit your site.
• The Mobile Devices category report shows you exactly what devices
those visitors use.
• If you’re interested in creating an app for your business, now you’ll
know if your visitors are more likely to use it on an Apple, Android or
Windows device.

#8: Custom
• This custom audience report goes beyond the standard reports. This
is a more advanced report.
• The other reports here are simple to access. You simply click on the
link to get information.
• With this custom report you have to define your own variables,
metrics and dimensions to create a report. This is too advanced for
this article. We’ll cover this later when writing about custom

#9: Users Flow
• f you’re curious about the path your visitors take through your
website, you can find it in the Users Flow.
• Using the drop-down menu at the top left, you can see the flow of
users based on language, location, browser, mobile device and
similar dimensions of data.
• Follow users from the starting page where they enter through as
many interactions as they make or pages they view on your site.
• It’s an interesting way to see which pages on your website lead
visitors to view even more pages.

Traffic Sources in Google Analytics
• What are traffic sources in Google Analytics, and why do they matter
for your site?
• When you’re determining how to move forward with marketing
efforts for your company or brand, it’s important to determine how
customers and potential leads are landing on your site:
• Which channels are most successful at driving leads?
• Are your social media campaigns successful at drawing customers to
your site?
• The origins of your users can tell you a lot about the success of your
marketing campaigns and can guide you to make strategic changes.

What Are Traffic Sources?
• Simply put, traffic sources indicate where people found your site.
• Here are some examples of traffic sources that could show up in
Google Analytics:
• “google” (the name of a search engine)
• “facebook.com” (the name of a referring site)
• “spring_newsletter” (the name of one of your newsletters)
• “direct” (users that typed your URL directly into their browser, or who
had bookmarked your site)

Understanding where your traffic comes from?
• Traffic sources come in one of seven default groups:
• Direct: A user directly types in your website URL or clicks on a link
from an email, PDF, or saved bookmark. Any traffic that Google
doesn’t have the source information on is also considered direct. This
is why secure-to-unsecure traffic is classified as direct.
• Display: A user clicks on a paid advertisement, such as a banner ad,
that leads back to your site.
• Email: You send out an email campaign to your customers and they
click on a link in the email.

Understanding where your traffic comes from?
• Traffic sources come in one of seven default groups:
• Organic Search: A user comes to your site directly from a search engine
such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. If you pay to advertise on search
engines, those visitors will count as Paid Search instead..
• Paid Search: A user clicks on a paid advertisement in a search engine
(most commonly via Google AdWords) that leads back to your site.
• Referral: A user clicks a link to your site from a page on another
website.
• Social: A user clicks on a link to your site from any major social channel,
such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

Why Do Traffic Sources Matter?
• Traffic sources allow you to understand where success on your site is
coming from. This information allows you to assess:
• Which channels are bringing traffic to your site (specifically which
channels are bringing valuable traffic to your site).
• Which channels bring in traffic most effectively, signaling where you
should focus your marketing efforts.
• For example, if you use both Facebook and Quora to promote content
from your site, you can see which channel brings in more traffic, or which
channel draws more converting users. You may find that the number of
followers on social channels doesn’t always correlate with traffic volume
to your site.

Why Do Traffic Sources Matter?
• How specific types of content perform on different channels.
• For example, you might find that short-form content and infographics
perform well on Twitter, but not as well on LinkedIn. This will help guide
where to promote your content.
• How your content is performing based on effort.
• For example, if you are spending 80% of your social media effort on
Facebook and only 20% on Twitter, is Facebook bringing in 4x the
visitors/conversions? Alternatively, if you spend $10 on search ads and
$100 on social ads, are social ads driving 10x the amount of traffic? This
will help determine the ROI on your efforts and whether you are bringing
in the expected number of leads.

Traffic Sources- Summary
• Knowing where people find your content or your site helps you
decide where to focus your efforts and investments, as well as track
marketing campaigns.
• To understand your users, take a look at your engagement across
traffic sources and change up your distribution accordingly.
• If some channels are performing better than others, those may be a
smarter place to focus your efforts.
• In Google Analytics, the breakdown of where users found your site is
known as “traffic sources”.
• According to Google, every referral to a website has an origin, or
“source”, and there are many possible sources

Content
• We all know that content is a key part of a website, but do you
regularly analyze performance of content to see what’s working and
what hasn’t hit the spot?
• Whatever your website, you’ll find the Site Content reports very
useful. This post will focus on all four sections:
• All Pages: For detailed interaction data on all pages.
• Content Drilldown: Data broken down by subfolder.
• Landing Pages: Pages on which visitors entered the site.
• Exit Pages: Pages which have been the final page of a session.
• You can access these reports under Behavior > Site Content.

Content Report Metrics
All Pages:
• Here you will find a list of all the pages of your site that have been
viewed during the date range you have set.
• If there are pages missing from this list, they either didn’t get viewed
or the tracking code isn’t installed properly.
• You can break the data down by Page or Page Title.
• If your URLs don’t help you easily understand what the Page is then
Page Title might be for you.
• If some pages have the same title as each other, their data will be
combined under the Page Title view.
• Consider how you can filter this report to compare similar pages
together based on what’s in the URL or title.

All Pages:
• The data shown for each page gives you a picture of the interaction level of the
page:
• Pageviews: How many times the page was viewed.
• Unique Pageviews: This de-duplicates pageviews to show how many sessions
contained a view of the page.
• Avg. Time on Page: Uses the time metrics available for the page and works out
the average across the pageviews.
• Entrances: How many times this page was the first page in a session.
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of entrances on this page where the user did not
interact with the website any further.
• % Exit: The percentage of pageviews that were the final page in a session.
• Page Value: Calculated using ecommerce and goal values, this divides the total
value by the number of pageviews for this page.

Content Groupings:
• If you have set up Content Groupings you will have the added
advantage of being able to analyze the different types on content on
your site against the others.
• This gives you aggregated data for the content within each group.

Navigation Summary:
• This report shows you the pages that users were on before and after a
pageview of the selected URL.
• Allowing you to see common trends and spot discrepancies in user
journeys.
• Be aware that the percentages shown are calculated on the 10
showing at that time.
• Searching in this area won’t tell you the true percentage so you may
need to increase the number of rows to see granular information.

In-Page Reports:
• This is a very visual way to understand your content and on page
activity.
• It uses a view of your live website and overlays percentages to tell you
which pages saw the most views after this one.
• This can be very helpful for working out which banners work, which
pages don’t need links from the menu, and much more.

In-Page Reports:
• This example shows that no one is clicking the Contact page or Cart page and
the most popular page is the Shop page. This means that the menu should be
re-ordered to make Cart less prominent.
• Remember to look closely and hover over the numbers to check which page
they relate to, especially if you have a number of links close together.
• The percentages are often shown a little further away that you image, and
always to the top left of the link.

Content Drilldown:
• Here we see the same data as in the All Pages report, but this time it
is broken down by sub folder.
• This will only be useful to websites that use a consistent sub folder
structure in their URLs, or if the URLs are re-written to be suitable
through a filter.

• You can see that the images next to the dimension state whether this is a
page or subfolder. By clicking through on the blue links you will reach a more
detailed breakdown about the subfolders or pages within the one clicked.

Landing Pages:
• One of the most useful reports for any website, it’s all about which
pages users entered the website on.
• Knowing which pages are gathering the most visits is very useful
when assessing marketing performance.
• Landing pages are the only pages in these content reports that show
you a conversion rate.
• This is because multiple pages will be viewed within visits before a
conversion happens but there will only ever be one landing page.

Exit Pages
• As mentioned briefly above, these are the final pages within users’ visits.
• Ideally you will see your checkout complete page high up this list, or
equivalent end of journey pages, but you will also see pages that have
higher levels of views as these are likely to lead to more exits than pages
with less views.
• Monitoring this report for any pages which could be improved to keep
users on the website and drive them toward conversions will be of
benefit to your site.
• Keep an eye out for pages with out of stock products or error messages;
these are quick wins for improving the performance of your website.

Bounce Rate Analysis
• If, in any of the standard reports above, you wish to review bounce
rate, sort the data by this and then use the Sort Type drop down to
select Weighted Sort.
• This then calculates the best and worst bounce rates without the data
being skewed by pages with very low pageviews.

Advertising Analytics
• Analytics Advertising Features is a collection of features that takes
advantage of the Google advertising cookies so you can do things like:
• Create Remarketing Audiences based on specific behavior,
demographic, and interest data, and share those lists with Google Ads
• Use demographic and interest data in your Analytics reports
• Create Segments based on demographic and interest data

Remarketing with Analytics
• Remarketing with Analytics lets you create audiences of your site
users and deliver relevant ads for your Google Display Network and
Search-ads campaigns based on the actions those users took on your
site.

Demographics and Interests reporting
• With Demographics and Interests reporting in Analytics, you can:
• Understand how your site audience breaks down by Age, Gender,
and Interests.
• Better target your ad spend. Once you’ve used the reports to identify
who visits your site, and who converts, you can target your ads to
those specific audiences. (The Age, Gender, and Interests dimensions
correspond exactly to the demographic and interest data available for
targeting in Google Ads.)
• Use Age, Gender, and Interests to build Segments for your reports.
• Use Age, Gender, and Interests to build Remarketing Lists.
• These reports are located in the Audience section of Analytics.

Segments
• Segments let you isolate and analyze subsets of sessions and users.
When you enable Advertising Features, you have the additional
options of isolating data by age, gender, and interest so you can
uncover more detailed information about your audience.

Conversion
• A completed activity, online or offline, that is important to the success
of your business.
• Examples include a completed sign-up for your email newsletter (a
Goal conversion) and a purchase (a transaction, sometimes called an
Ecommerce conversion).
• A conversion can be a macro conversion or a micro conversion.
• A macro conversion is typically a completed purchase transaction.
• In contrast, a micro conversion is a completed activity, such as an
email signup, that indicates that the user is moving towards a macro
conversion.

Reporting
• Reporting is “the process of organizing data into informational
summaries in order to monitor how different areas of a business are
performing.
• Analytics is “the process of exploring data and reports in order to
extract meaningful insights, which can be used to better understand
and improve business performance.”
• Google Analytics standard reports are the preset reports listed down
the left-hand side of your dashboard, divided into the segments Real-
Time, Audience, Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions.

What’s an Analytical Report?
• It’s a report that helps you evaluate your business decisions based on
data insights.
• But, what makes an analytical report different is that it gives you
recommendations instead of just plain numbers.
• Analytical reports are based on historical data, statistics, and
provide predictive analysis for a specific issue.

An analytical report gives you:
• A better understanding of business and operational activities;
• Being able to view, understand, and summarize a large amount of
information about your business through data visualization;
• Letting the end-user view multidimensional charts and interact with
data using data visualization tools;
• Being able to weigh options between multiple solutions.

To write a successful analytical report, make
sure you follow these instructions:
Identify the Problem:
• The first step to creating an analytical report is identifying the
problem and the people affected by it.
• Make sure you describe the problem by including information on
where it began, what techniques were used to solve it so far, and the
effectiveness of them.

Explain Your Methods:
• Secondly, you should list the methods you’ve used in the report to
determine your actions’ success.
• You should also add one or two new methods to try instead.
• For example, a report done on a failed ad campaign may reveal that
the success factor was determined by surveys conducted on a sample
population.

Analyze Data:
• Analytical reports display a detailed analysis of the information
collected through the research methods employed.
• As you know, the report was built to sort out a specific issue and
decide on alternative methods to try.
• So, you should analyze the success or failures of the solutions you
tried in the first place.

Make Recommendations:
• Lastly, your analytical report should include solution
recommendations.
• And, you should place these solutions at the bottom of your report.
By coming up with a few recommendations, you’ll be able to make
data-based decisions instead of guessing.

Custom Reports
• A Custom Report is a report that you create. You pick the dimensions
(City and Browser, for example) and metrics (Sessions, Pageviews,
and Bounce Rate, for example) and decide how they should be
displayed. You must specify at least one dimension and one metric.
• To see Custom Reports:
• Sign in to Google Analytics.
• Navigate to your view.
• Open Reports.
• Click CUSTOMIZATION > Custom Reports.

Report Types in Google Analytics
• Explorer: This is the basic report. It includes the line graph and the
data table below, which you’re very familiar with.
• Flat table: This is one of the most common custom report types. It’s
essentially a sortable data table.
• Map overlay: This is simply a global map with colors to indicate
engagement, traffic, etc.

Review
• To review means to look back over something for evaluation or
memory.
• Reviewing is any process that helps you to make use of personal
experience for your learning and development.
• These reviewing processes can include:
• reflecting on experience
• analysing experience
• making sense of experience
• communicating experience
• reframing experience
• learning from experience

How to review Google Analytics?
• Visit http://www.google.com/analytics and login with your username
and password.
• You’ll see a list of any Web site or blog you’re tracking as Google
allows tracking of multiple sites within an account.
• Click on “View Reports” next to the site you wish to review and you’ll
be taken to the Dashboard.

Google Analytics Glossary
Analytics solutions:
• Google Analytics solutions refers to an umbrella term encompassing
all products both paid and free that are part of the Google Analytics
product family.
• Users can differentiate between a paid product and a free product
easily: paid products include the “360” modifier after the product
name, free products do not. For example:
• Google Analytics 360 (paid product)
• Google Analytics (free product

Analytics solutions
Paid products
• Audience: large enterprises.
• Google Analytics 360: Develop
insights into how users engage
with your business online and
offline.
Free products
• Audience: small- and medium-
size businesses.
• Google Analytics: measure how
people engage with your
business online via your website,
app and other online and offline
touchpoints.

Analytics solutions
Paid products
• Google Tag Manager 360: Use an
enterprise workflow to manage
web and app tags from a single
interface.
• Google Optimize 360: Run website
experiments and personalize
content for different audiences.
• Google Surveys 360: Create online
surveys.
Free products
• Google Tag Manager: easily
manage and update website and
app tags.
• Google Optimize: run website
experience with this A/B testing
tool.
• Google Data Studio: turn data into
visual dashboards and informative
reports that are easy to share.

Analytics tag
• The Analytics tag is a snippet of JavaScript that collects and sends
data to Analytics from a website.
• You can add the Analytics tag directly to the HTML of each page on
your site, or indirectly using a tag management system such as Google
Tag Manager.

Attribution
• The process of assigning credit for sales and conversions to touchpoints in
conversion paths.
• Attribution allows marketers to quantify each channel's contribution to
sales and conversions.
• For example, many people may purchase on your site after searching for
your brand on Google.
• However, they may have been introduced to your brand via a display ad or
a blog.
• A marketer uses attribution to appropriately distribute monetary credit for
purchases among the many marketing channels that may have contributed
to each sale

Attribution model
• A rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and
conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths.
• An attribution model is the rule, or set of rules, that determines how
credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints
in conversion paths.
• For example, Last Interaction attribution assigns 100% credit to the
final touchpoints (i.e., clicks) that immediately precede sales or
conversions.
• First Interaction attribution assigns 100% credit to touchpoints that
initiate conversion paths. These are two examples of attribution
models.

Channel Grouping
• A roll-up of traffic sources in the Acquisition reports that groups
several marketing activities together.
• Channel groupings allow you to view and compare aggregated metrics
by channel name, as well as individual traffic source, medium, or
campaign name.
• In the Acquisition section's Overview and Channels reports, you can
see your data organized according to the Default Channel Grouping, a
rule-based grouping of the most common sources of traffic, like Paid
Search and Direct.
• This allows you to quickly check the performance of each of your
traffic channels.

Content Grouping
• A roll-up of content in the Behavior reports that groups several pages
or screens together to better reflect the structure of your site or app.
• Content groupings allow you to view and compare aggregated metrics
by content group name, as well as individual URL, page title, or screen
name.
• Content Grouping lets you group content into a logical structure that
reflects how you think about your site or app, and then view and
compare aggregated metrics by group name in addition to being able
to drill down to the individual URL, page title, or screen name.
• For example, you can see the aggregated number of pageviews for all
pages in a group like Men/Shirts, and then drill in to see each URL or
page title.

Custom Dimension
• A user-defined descriptive attribute or characteristic of data.
• Custom dimensions can be used to describe data not included in the
default dimensions in Analytics.
• There are several ways to get custom data into Analytics, such as
modifying your tracking code, uploading it using Data Import, or
sending it via the Management API or Measurement Protocol.

Data Set
• A container that holds the data you upload to Analytics.
• Data Sets are an essential component of the Data Import feature.
• A Data Set's type corresponds to the specific type of data you want to
import. For example, there are Data Set types for User Data, Cost
Data, Content Data, etc.
• When you create a Data Set, you define a schema, which is the
structure that joins the data you upload with the existing data in your
hits.

Dimension
• A descriptive attribute or characteristic of data. Browser, Landing Page
and Campaign are all examples of default dimensions in Analytics.
• A dimension is a descriptive attribute or characteristic of an object that
can be given different values. For example, a geographic location could
have dimensions called Latitude, Longitude, or City Name. Values for
the City Name dimension could be San Francisco, Berlin, or Singapore.
• Browser, Exit Page, Screens, and Session Duration are all examples of
dimensions that appear by default in Analytics. Dimensions appear in all
of your reports, though you might see different ones depending on the
specific report. Use them to help organize, segment, and analyze your
data.

Event
• Event is a type of hit used to track user interactions with content.
• Examples of user interactions commonly tracked with Events include
downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX
embedded elements, and video plays.

Goal
• A configuration setting that allows you to track the valuable actions,
or conversions, that happen on your site or mobile app.
• Goals allow you to measure how well your site or app fulfills your
target objectives.
• You can set up individual Goals to track discrete actions, like
transactions with a minimum purchase amount or the amount of
time spent on a screen.
• Each time a user completes a Goal, a conversion is logged in your
Analytics account.

Hit
• An interaction that results in data being sent to Analytics. Common hit
types include page tracking hits, event tracking hits, and ecommerce
hits.
• Each time the tracking code is triggered by a user’s behavior (for
example, user loads a page on a website or a screen in a mobile app),
Analytics records that activity.
• Each interaction is packaged into a hit and sent to Google’s servers.
Examples of hit types include:
• page tracking hits
• event tracking hits
• ecommerce tracking hits
• social interaction hits

IP address
• Short for Internet Protocol address. Used to identify computers on
the Internet.
• When your computer or device sends a request, like a search on
Google, it tags the request with your IP address. That way Google
knows where to send the response. It works like a return address
would on a piece of mail.
• You can find the public IP address you are currently using by
searching "what is my ip address" on google.com.

Measurement Protocol
• A standard set of rules for collecting and sending hits from any internet-
connected device to Analytics.
• The Measurement Protocol lets you send data to Analytics from any
internet-connected device.
• It's particularly useful when you want to send data to Analytics from a
kiosk, a point of sale system, or anything that is not a website or mobile
app.
• Because, while the Analytics JavaScript and mobile SDKs automatically
build hits to send data to Analytics from websites and mobile apps, you
must manually build data collection hits for other kinds of devices.
• The Measurement Protocol defines how to construct the hits and how to
send them to Analytics.

Metric
• A quantitative measurement of your data. Metrics in Analytics can be
sums or ratios.
• Metrics are individual elements of a dimension that can be measured
as a sum or a ratio. For example, the dimension City can be associated
with a metric like Population, which would have a sum value of all the
residents of the specific city.
• Screenviews, Pages per Session, and Average Session Duration are
examples of metrics in Analytics.

Pageview
• A pageview (or pageview hit, page tracking hit) is an instance of a
page being loaded (or reloaded) in a browser.
• Pageviews is a metric defined as the total number of pages viewed.

Permission
• The right to perform administrative and configuration tasks, to create and
share assets, and to read and interact with report data.
• In order to use certain features in Analytics, you must have the appropriate
permission. There are 4 permissions:
• Manage Users
• Edit
• Collaborate
• Read & Analyze
• Each permission can be granted at one or more levels: account, property or
view.

Property
• A sub-component of an Analytics account that determines which data
is organized and stored together.
• Any resource tagged with the same Property ID is collected and
stored together.
• A single property can be used to track one website or mobile app, or
be a roll-up of the data from multiple sites or mobile apps.

Reporting API
• A set of protocols and tools designed to extract data from your Analytics
account into custom scripts or programs for more automated and
efficient reporting and analysis.
• API is short for Application Programming Interface.

Roll-Up Reporting
• A feature of Roll-Up Properties, which aggregate data from multiple
source properties into a single property.
• Roll-Up Reporting is a special kind of reporting that lets you analyze
the aggregated data that's in a Roll-Up Property. Roll-Up Reporting is
only available for Analytics 360 Accounts, and only works on
designated Roll-Up Properties.

Sampling
• The practice of selecting a subset of data from your traffic and
reporting on the trends detected in that sample set.
• Sampling is widely used in statistical analysis because analyzing a
subset of data gives similar results to an analysis of a complete data
set, but can produce these results with a smaller a computational
burden and a reduced processing time.

SDKs (Software Development Kit)
• The tracking-code snippet is only for collecting data from websites.
• Use the Analytics SDKs to collect data from mobile apps, and use the
Measurement Protocol to collect data from other digital devices like
ticket kiosks and game consoles.
• The SDKs and the Measurement Protocol need to be set up by a
developer.

Segment
• A subset of sessions or users that share common attributes.
• Segments allow you to isolate and analyze groups of sessions or users
for better analysis.
• Segmentation allows you to isolate and analyze subsets of your data.
• For example, you might segment your data by marketing channel so
that you can see which channel is responsible for an increase in
purchases.
• Drilling down to look at segments of your data helps you understand
what caused a change to your aggregated data.

Session
• The period of time a user is active on your site or app.
• By default, if a user is inactive for 30 minutes or more, any future
activity is attributed to a new session.
• Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes are counted
as part of the original session.

Solutions Gallery
• Lets you share and import custom reporting tools and assets, like
dashboards and segments, into your Analytics accounts.

Source / Medium
• Source: the origin of your traffic, such as a search engine (for
example, google) or a domain (example.com).
• Medium: the general category of the source, for example, organic
search (organic), cost-per-click paid search (cpc), web referral
(referral).
• Source/Medium is a dimension that combines the dimensions Source
and Medium. Examples of Source/Medium
include google/organic, example.com/referral, and newsletter9-
2014/email.

Tag
• A snippet of JavaScript that sends information to a third party, such as
Google. The Analytics tracking code is an example of a tag.
• A tag is snippet of JavaScript that sends information to a third party,
such as Google.
• Tags collect data, target your ad campaigns, track ads, and perform
other functions.
• The Analytics tracking code is an example of a tag.
• If you don't use a tag management solution such as Google Tag
Manager, you need to add these snippets of JavaScript directly to the
source code of your site.

Tracking ID and property number
• The tracking ID is a string like UA-000000-2. It must be included in
your tracking code to tell Analytics which account and property to
send data to.
• The tracking ID is automatically included in the JavaScript snippet for
websites, but also needs to be included in other tracking technologies
like the SDKs and the Measurement Protocol for Analytics to work.
• The first set of numbers (-000000, in the example above) refers to
your account number, and the second set of numbers (-2) refers to
the specific property number associated with the account.

Universal Analytics
• Universal Analytics is the most current data collection technology for
web-based Analytics.
• It uses the analytics.js tracking code for websites, an SDK for mobile
apps, and the Measurement Protocol for other digital devices.

User ID views
• A special type of reporting view that only includes data about the subset of
traffic that has a user ID assigned.
• User ID views include a set of Cross Device reports, which aren’t available in
other reporting views. The Cross Device reports give you the tools you need
to analyze how users engage with your content on different devices over
the course of multiple sessions. All other standard reports and tools are also
available in User ID views.
• User ID views do not include all of your data. To analyze all of your data, use
a different type of reporting view.
• User ID view are only available to Universal Analytics properties in which
the User ID is enabled. You must also create User ID views. They do not exist
by default in your account.

View
• A view or reporting view is a subset of an Analytics account property that
can have its own unique configuration settings. You can create multiple
views for a single property and configure each view to show a different
subset of data for the property.

View filter
• A configuration setting that allows you to add, remove or modify your
data during processing before it is displayed in your reports.
• View filters allow you to limit and modify the traffic data that is
included in a view.
• For example, you can use filters to exclude traffic from particular IP
addresses, focus on a specific subdomain or directory, or convert
dynamic page URLs into readable text strings.

Chapter 9 - Analytics

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Chapter 9 - Analytics