Web Analytics for Communicators, created for University of Minnesota Communicators Forum, 2015. Some slides have been removed to protect the identity of the clients.

1. Web Analytics
for Communicators

2. Why do we communicate?
• Why do you have a website?
• What’s your message?
• What will you measure?
• Is it SMART?
Specific, Measurable, Achievable (or actionable),
Relevant, Time-bound (timely)
• Will you be able to act upon your findings?

3. Before you measure:
Is content student/client-focused?
Self-focused
• Inform, persuade
• Increase registrations, purchases,
subscriptions
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase status, build a following,
start a movement
• Customer retention
• Change behavior
• Generate qualified leads
Client-focused
• Answer my question quickly and
definitively
• Get me past a pain point
• Simplify my decision-making, my life
• Increase my status
• Affirm my beliefs, ideas, decisions
• Be entertained
• Collaborate, share, socialize

4. Data sources in addition to Google Analytics
• Email analytics
• Customer relationship management (CRM) data
• Customer surveys
• Informal conversations
• Call Center data (front desk, receptionist, or adviser)
• Industry data (Lipman Hearne, Stamats, Councils of Graduate Schools)
• Data from across business/university silos
• Tracking codes

5. Identify Topics Create Content Optimize
Publish
(everywhere) Promote
MEASURE Refine MEASURE

6. Set up for useable signals

7. Don’t measure your own use
Admin > View > Filters

8. Exclude many bots
Admin > View > Reporting View Settings

9. Add goals
Admin > View > Goals

10. Import from Gallery

12. Create new goal

13. Connect to Google Webmaster

14. General health measures (trend lines)
• Number of unique visitors (Is the site still performing?)
• Time on site (Are people hanging around?)
• Avg. number of pages views (Do they look around?)
• Frequency and recency (Do they maintain interest?)
• Bounce rate (Do they run away?)
• Page load times (Do they have to wait?)

15. Intelligence Events and Alerts

18. How to read this stuff

19. Check the little question mark

20. Click on the graduation cap (top right)

21. What do communicators care about?
• Are people reading my stuff?
• How do they find it?
• Do they take the time to read it?
• Do they engage with my site?
• What pages are getting shared?
• Did my new headline make a difference?
• Did my new meta description make a difference?
• What else should I write about?

22. What can we learn from analytics?
New or legacy web page(s)
• Is it seen? Views, page ranking in search
• Is it accepted? Time on site/page
• Is it relevant? Times shared, inbound links, trackbacks
• What’s the best way to amplify this type of message? Review of
where it’s shared, or clicked on. Which sources return best
conversion?
• You’re not just reporting. You’re also LISTENING.
You’re looking for signals about what interests your
intended audience.

23. Benchmarks
• SHARE what you learn
• Use your own community
• Other metrics:
Is level of interest in a site reflected in applications,
subscriptions, attendance, inquiries?
Does interest in your site rise and fall with other
measures?

24. Are people reading my gems? Behaviors

25. Behaviors > Site Content > All pages

26. What does “/” mean?
• / is usually your home page.
• If it doubt, you can usually change your view to show page
title.

27. A few terms
• Pageviews – Includes repeated views of a single page during a session.
• Unique pageviews – Number of visits during which the page was viewed
at least once.
• Entrances - # of times visitors entered your site through this page
• Bounce rate – Percentage of single-page visits.
• Avg. time on page – Time spent on this page by visitors who decided to
visit another page on your
• NOTE: Someone could come, read one page thoroughly and count as
both a bounce and a zero second visit. (The last page a visitor views on
your site doesn’t produce a time because there’s no end count event.)

28. Comparing trend lines over time
What happened?

29. Spikes and dips
• Interest is related to seasons, events, holidays
• New inbound link | lost inbound link
• Your changes paid off | you broke the page
• News story
• Social media campaign worked
• Google search algorithm change
• You got called out in social media

30. Use annotations
Polar vortex, Panda, home page changes, new inbound links, new navigation or design

31. Landing pages:
where the visit (and judgement) begins

32. Landing pages
• Not always the home page
• Pages that are shared and linked to
• Usually pages with the useful, fun, or
transactional stuff
 What we want to proofread again, review
regularly, write more of

33. Behaviors > Site Content > Landing Pages
Home page is 2nd.

34. Acquisition > Social > Landing Pages

35. Tips
View by
page title
Search

36. Unique pageviews, time on page, bounce
rate, exits

37. Short stays are not always bad
• Navigation pages – Great. They found their next link
quickly.
• Shopping carts/registration confirmations – Yay! They’re
eager to complete.
• Pages with a major call to action (as long as they take the
action).

38. Compare pages

39. Compare pages

40. Dimensions are
fun to explore.

41. What are we looking for?
• Trends over time
• Unexpected spikes and dips in trend lines
• Comparisons to other pages
• KPIs
• 5% increase in traffic from Google over the prior quarter
• 8% increase in time on page over prior version of page
• 10% decrease in exits on a page compared to last year
• 6% increase in visits from social media over last quarter
• 3% increase in goal conversions (you set these)

42. Referrals
•These are the sites and people willing to give
you an endorsement
•Or they might be using you as a negative
example

43. Acquisition > Referrals

44. What did they say about me?
• Do they like me?
• Do they understand me?
• Can I add something? Suggest another link?
• Do I need to tell them I
changed the link URL?

45. Referral spam
No traffic sent.
They just want
you to click.
Don’t.
Yoursite.com
Yoursite.com
Yoursite.com
Yoursite.com
Yoursite.com
Yoursite.com
Yoursite.com
Yoursite.com
Yoursite.com

46. Admin > Property >
Tracking Info >
Referral Exclusion
List
Might just mask the
problem and move
traffic into Direct
reports

47. Set a filter or exclude through
.htaccess file or block IP addresses
http://www.optimizesmart.com/geek-guide-removing-referrer-spam-google-analytics/

48. Promoting content
• Which social site works the best for us?
• Who is promoting for us?
• Is email working?
• How about our SEO?
• PR?

49. Social

50. Campaigns = email, AdWords, etc.
Also, now with spam.

51. Consider how you name your email
campaigns

52. Segments

53. Customize it

54. Built-in options

55. Import
from
gallery

56. Minnesota visitors only

58. Minneapolis – sort of

59. This is approximately the
Minneapolis metro.

61. Compare audiences

63. All keywords from Google are
shown as (not provided)

64. This report shows only if
connected with Google Webmaster

66. One query can
have multiple
pages and
multiple
positions.

67. Other reports

68. Don’t freak out about these.
Just ask your developer(s) to take a look.

69. You can ask for your search logs
• Scan the search queries
• Look for the
• Unexpected (need new content, different words?)
• Repeated (problem with navigation?)
• Outdated (need a page just for these queries?)
• Consider KeyMatches

70. Ask for a screen shot instead of this
Lots of searches for
“director school of
music”

71. Search for Women’s Studies

72. Search for “meat lab hours”

73. Dashboards
Use ones created by others.
• www.dashboardjunkie.com
• www.google.com/analytics/gall
ery/#landing/start/
• econsultancy.com/blog/62828-
10-useful-google-analytics-
custom-dashboards/

74. Dashboard:
Long tail
Keywords,
real words
used by
visitors
Identify Topics

75. Blog titles, headings, search
keymatches, social teasers

77. New content ideas

79. What analytics doesn’t measure well
• Upcoming trends, interests, needs
• True satisfaction (Are people just taking the best
they can find?)
• Why a page fails (jargon, not of interest, too
wordy, poor choice of image, etc.)
• Visitor intent
• Visitor intent to return

80. Social analytics
• Follower count
• Likes, +1s
• Shares
• Unsolicited shares (created their own posts linking to
you)
• Engagement (comments)
• Clicks on landing pages or target pages from social
• Which social channel performs best

81. Email
• Open rate
• Clicks (on which content?)
• Forwards
• Subscription rate
• Unsubscribe rate
• Leads generated / goals achieved

82. Production
• Time to publish
• Content throughput (volume)
• Content backlog
• Production cost
• Distribution cost
• Who writes your best performing content?

83. Learn much more
• https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/
• Identifying and Filtering Internal Traffic
from Google Analytics
• 7 Essential Intelligence Events for Your
Google Analytics Account
• 18 useful Google Analytics custom reports,
segments and dashboards for SEO
• YouTube Tracking In Google Analytics &
Google Tag Manager
• Understanding Bot and Spider Filtering
from Google Analytics
• Where Should The Google Analytics
Tracking Code Be Placed?

84. Hey, thanks!
Kristeen@KristeenBullwinkle.com