These slides are from Noisy Little Monkey's Google Analytics training session. We run the courses from our offices in the Aardman Animations Studio in Bristol.
The slides cover:
- the basics of Analytics account set up
- what the measures mean and which of them are most useful for your business
- setting up goals
- using custom reports and segments
- if you are using AdWords, how Analytics can help to evaluate your ad spend.
2. • Understand what Google Analytics is . . . and isn’t
• Understand key elements of account set up
• Know what a measurement framework is and how it will make your life
easier
• Work through the key dimensions, metrics and reports so you know what’s
available
• Implement short cuts and custom reports on your account
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Aim of today is . . .
3. 3
Who am I?
• A degree in old skool marketing
• 25 years of communicating using data
• 9 years of lies, damn lies and
government statistics
• 6 years using Google Analytics
• I like data, just don’t ask me to do tricky
sums . . .
3
Nicola Payne
4. • “I am . . .
• “My experience with Analytics is . . .
• “I expect to use Analytics to . . .
• “Today, I’d like to go away with . . .
Who are you?
8. “digital analytics is the analysis of qualitative and
quantitative data from your business and the
competition to drive a continual improvement of
the online experience that your customers and
potential customer share which translates to your
desired outcomes (both online and offline).”
Avinash Kaushik
9. “digital analytics is the analysis of qualitative and
quantitative data from your business and the
competition to drive a continual improvement of
the online experience that your customers and
potential customer share which translates to your
desired outcomes (both online and offline).”
Avinash Kaushik
11. Google Analytics
Analytics is . . .
• Informed by the strategic context of what your website is designed to achieve
• Allows you to measure the impact of investment
• Should guide continuous improvement
Analytics is not . . .
• A tool to identify individual users of a website
• A complete picture of performance
• Representative of all your data
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14. Getting visitors to your website . . .
• How many?
• New or existing?
• Where did they come from?
• What were they looking for?
• What’s the strategy to get new ones?
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Visitor Acquisition
15. What visitors do on the website . . .
• Bounces
• Page views
• Top content
• Returning visitors
15
Visitor Behaviour
16. The real measure of success . . .
• Absolutely dependant on your business
• Micro and macro goals
• Nudges towards the bigger picture
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Visitor Outcomes
17. • What story does your website tell about your business?
• How do you want this to change?
• What tools and techniques can you use to change this?
• How will you measure if they are successful?
17
Stories are just data with soul
22. Collects data from
• Website
• Browser
• Referring source
Collects data by
• Time stamping each page entry
• But only on YOUR website
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Based on page to page interactions
26. 26
Why is this relevant to me?
Allows you to tailor and improve your data
• Filter out regular users that aren’t customers
• Add goals to improve measurement
• Create views that provide you with specific data
• Links AdWords to provide more details
• Maintain users
• Diagnose problems
29. • Users up-to-date with the right access
• Filtered all the relevant IP addresses out of Analytics
• Linked your AdWords account(s)
• Linked your Webmaster Tools account
• Created views that provide you with useful data
• Created goals to measure your business outcomes
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Admin Section Checklist
31. • What is the number one business objective of the company?
• How does the website fit into the overall business strategy?
• How do you attract new visitors to the website?
• What do you want visitors to do on the website?
• How do you know if the website is successful?
31
Defining the purpose of your website
32. • Business objective what we are trying to achieve
• Tactic an action to achieve the objective
• Website goal how the website fits with the tactic
• KPI how we will measure the goal
• Benchmark what’s usual in my industry
• Target what we are aiming for
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Some definitions
34. 34
For Noisy Little Monkey
business
objective
to be a top search & social media agency
tactic demonstrate expertise through advice & training
website goal Give away advice, show our expertise, highlight
training events
KPIs page views of the blog
time on site
repeat visitors
social shares through Professor Traffic
target page views of the blog – 2,000 per month by Jan
2015
35. FOCUS
• What are YOU using your website to do?
• How will you know if its successful?
• What measures might help you?
• What else could you add to your overall digital marketing activity that would help you to meet
your objectives?
• How could you measure if this was successful?
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Why is a measurement framework useful?
50. Might include:
• Sent out an email to our mailing list
• Changed the layout of the blog
• Increased the volume of social media activity
• Paid for an ad
• Sponsored an exhibition
• Recruited a new member of the team
• Changed the page titles or meta descriptions
Any marketing investment that might impact on the site
• TOP TIP: you will forget what you’ve done & don’t do everything at once!
Annotations are ace
54. Dimension an attribute or characteristic of a visitor
Metric A measure
Sessions # visits to your site
Users # unique visitors to your site
Pageviews # views of individual pages
Pages/session # pages a user looked at within each session on average
Average session duration amount of time a user on average spent looking at the site
Bounce rate % sessions with only one user interaction
% New visitors % visitors who have not visited previously
Key definitions
55. Key definitions | Sessions
• A single user can open multiple sessions. Those sessions can occur on the same day, or over
several days, weeks, or months
• Users could theoretically be tracked over multiple devices
• As soon as one session ends, there is then an opportunity to start a new session
• Sessions can end:
- After 30 minutes of inactivity
- At midnight
• Sessions are a collection of page level hits and
interactions
• Session metrics and page metrics are like
apples & pears
56. Source/medium Organic sources of website traffic
Referrals Websites linking to yours
Landing pages The page a visitor first landed on > entrance
Exit pages The page a visitor ended its session on > exit
You will also see
57. Context is everything
• An average site wide bounce rate is about 60%; blogs are higher
• The higher value or higher risk an item has, the more information a user will need before making
a decision to purchase
• What is ‘normal’ for one website, won’t necessarily be normal for another: industry norms,
seasonal trends
58. Got it?
• I Google ‘Debenhams kids’ and click the organic listing
• Arriving on the home page, I click on ‘kids shoes & boots’ in the menu
• I get distracted by girls pink glitter pumps, click into the product and press back
• Then select ‘8 or younger’ in the menu and then ‘boys’
• I like the look of the brown brogues in the long listing, so have a look at the product details, but think they are a bit
dull. Press back
• Look at some Converse, bit expensive. Press back
• Scroll down and see suede boots. Nice. Click them and decide that it’s the style I want.
• The door bells rings so I close my PC
• Later that evening I go back to my PC, as I start to type Debenhams the page drops down so I click it and go
straight to the page I was looking at earlier. I decide that these are the ones I want to buy
• I select the size and add to basket
60. Audience
Data collected from the users’ browser
• where they are in the world
• language used
• type of device & technology
• age and interest
Time/page data
• How long they stayed on site
• How many pages they looked at
61. Demographics & Interests
• Is this surprising?
• What does the data
say about your content & target audience?
62. Geo | language and location
• Is this what you’d expect for your site?
• Does this suggest you need a translated page or site?
• Is the bounce rate higher than you’d expect?
63. Behaviour
• Is this surprising?
• Is the behaviour of new and returning
visitors
different?
• What do the
engagement metrics say about the
content?
64. Mobile
• How important this is? Do you need a mobile
or responsive site?
• Are there anomalies in the behaviour of users
with different kinds of devices?
68. Organic Search Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Badu, Seznam
Paid AdWords (NOT other forms of paid)
Social Visitors from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, G+
Referral A link from another website
Direct The visitor has . . .
• typed your website address directly into the browser
• clicked a link to your website inside a PDF
• clicked the link to your website in your email
• clicked on a shortened URL
• has your site bookmarked
Can mean good offline marketing, or insufficient tagging
More definitions
71. Behaviour
Data collected from the website itself
• Which pages have been looked at
• Landing pages / exit page
• Additional event tracking
72. Events
• Allows you to track interactions with the website that don’t cause a change in the URL, eg
- Play a video
- Download a PDF
- Click to buy on Amazon
• Requires a change in your code
• Can be converted into a goal
75. Conversions
Data collected from the website about conversion
metrics you have specified
• Goals
• Ecommerce
• Role of different channels in attaining those
outcomes
76. Great, great reports if you have the right data
• Goal by source/medium
Shows which sources of traffic are most likely to convert, fantastic to shape your investment
decisions
• Assisted Conversions
Shows how different sources of traffic contribute to the conversions, fantastic to help
understand the true value of different sources across the buyer’s decision making process
• Top Conversion Pathways
Visual representation of the buyer journey to conversion, fantastic to help understand how
people make decisions on your website