Introduction to Google Analytics Computers in Libraries 2011 Jeff Wisniewski University of Pittsburgh Darlene Fichter University of Saskatchewan
Introduction to Google AnalyticsComputers in Libraries 2011
Jeff WisniewskiUniversity of Pittsburgh
Darlene FichterUniversity of Saskatchewan
By the end of this session
Have an analytics account
Have tracking code to add to your site
Understand basic web metrics
Understand the GA dashboard and other reports
Create goals and funnels
Create custom reports to track mobile and social media
Learn how to export, mail and schedule reports
Poll
Write down two specific things about your website you hope GA will help you to better understand/answer
Introductions
Housekeeping
Mandatory Wikipedia Definition
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage
Reasons to measure?
Usability
Resource
Institutional
Other?
We can learn…
Who is coming to our site
What they’re doing
How long they stay
The systems they’re using to access our site
If they’re able to complete tasks
How they find us
Two flavors
Log file analysis
Page tagging
Log files…
Are big
Take a long time to ingest
Take a lot of computing power to process
Take up space
Require that you be able to access them
Poll
Do you have experience with another analytics tool? Which? Pros and cons?
Photo by mcw026 cc some rights reserved
Why GA?
FREE
Industry standard
Lots of folks use it
Easy to use
Web based
Visual
FREE
Google account
If you do not have a Google account please register for one now
Google.com/accounts
Getting Started
1. Google account
2. Website
3. Access to website code
GA Account
Log into
Google.com/analytics
Let’s GO!
General Info
Site URL
Account name
Time zone info
Contact info
EULA
(Please take two hours and carefully review the end user license agreement before clicking through)
Add tracking
* TIP
The tracking code can be “included” as part of your page template
Photo by BigTallGuy cc some rights reserved
*TIP
Create TWO profiles for your site, one the “master” profile and the second the “working” profile
Photo by Stéfan, Some rights reserved
*TIP
You can create multiple profiles for the same site, for example different subsections, to speed reporting
Photo by merwing✿littledear, some rights reserved
The GA interface
Menu translation
Menu item English translation
Dashboard General overview of site activity
Intelligence Email and/or text alerts
Visitors How man people, where they come from, what systems they’re using
Traffic Sources How people are getting to and/or finding your site
Content What do people look at on your site
The Dashboard
Provides an overview of site activity
Many of the metrics here appear elsewhere in GA as well
Key metrics
METRIC DEFINITION NOTE
Bounce rate % of visits that immediately left
High bounce rate can be good or bad
Goal Page someone reaches once they’ve completed some task
Hit Request for a file from a webserver
Artifically inflated
Pageview Display of a complete webpage
Visits Series of pageviews from same visitor
Within 30 minutes
Dashboard
LIVE!
TIP!
You can customize the dashboard…just click
to add a panel or click the “X” in the right hand corner to remove from dashboard
Intelligence
Alerts
Can be applied to most any event/metric
Email and/or txt message
*TIP
When you first begin collecting data, or change/add, set an alert for verification that it’s working as expected
Visitors
Some Visitors section info repeated in Dashboard
Benchmarking?
*TIP
New vs. returning, unique visitors, visitor loyalty all rely on cookie data. Caveats:
Browser specific
They expire
They can be blocked or deleted
Public computers
Rule of thumb
TRENDS in the data are more important than the numbers themselves
Visitors
Photo reserved by Scott ClarkSome rights
Visitors
Visitor technical information
OS
Browser
Screen color & resolution
Flash
Java
Network properties
Connection speed
Mobile
Visitors: Browser
Visitors: Mobile
Benchmarking?
Visitors
LIVE!
*TIP
Google analytics can also track mobile APP (android and iOS) usage:
http://code.google.com/mobile/analytics/docs/
Traffic Sources
An overview of the different sources that send traffic to your site
Direct
Referring
Search engines
Photo by lambchopsSome rights reserved
Traffic Sources
Direct
Access via a bookmark or type in URL directly
Referring
Click to your site from another site
Search engines
Click to your site from search engine results
Traffic Sources
Keywords:
Terms used to “find” your site via search engines
Traffic Sources: Referrers
*TIP
Most tables in GA can be searched to find a
specific entry
Traffic Sources
Live
Content
Content: Top Content
Content: In page analytics
Content
LIVE
Goals
A “goal” is the page which a visitor reaches once they have completed a desired action, such as a registration or download.
A “funnel” is the pages they need to visit on the way to a goal.
EXAMPLE: Library legislative history course sign up
Goals: Setting up goals and funnels
1. Name the goal something intuitive. In this example it might be “Class Registration”
2. Choose whether or you want the goal to be active (on) now
3. Choose a type of goal. Most library scenario goals will probably fall under the “URL Destination” type, meaning the goal is to get the user to a specific place, in this case the “thank you for registering” page.
4. Enter the URL for this goal page
5. Under “Goal Funnel” click yes
6. On the following page add the URL(s) of the page(s) along the path a user would take to get from the homepage all the way through to the thank you page.
Goals
Goals
*TIP
Exact match has to be EXACTLY the same as the URL….even leading or trailing spaces will cause it to fail
Goals
Exercise
Visit your library website. Fully define two (or more!) goals.
GOAL NAME
GOAL URL
FUNNEL
Photo by photofarmerSome rights reserved
Advanced segments
Let you group certain types of visits together
User defined
Advanced Segments
Advanced Segments Examples
iPad users visiting your events calendar
How much traffic is coming from Facebook? Twitter? Both?
How many site visitors connect using dialup?
Advanced Segments Notes
In some cases GA will suggest variables (operating system for ex.)
Advanced segments take AND &OR statements
Advanced segment: Mobile
To see all mobile traffic aggregated:
1. Click on the Advanced Segments > Create a new custom segment
2. Under Dimensions click on Visitors
3. Drag the green Mobile rectangle into the dimension or metrics box.
4. Make sure the Condition equals “Matches Exactly” and the Value equals Yes
5. Name the segment and save
Advanced segment: Specific mobile
To see data for one or more specific mobile platforms:
1. Click on the Advanced Segments > Create a new custom segment
2. Under Dimensions go to Systems > Operating Systems
3. Drag the green Operating Systems rectangle into the dimension or metrics box.
4. Make sure the Condition equals Matches Exactly
5. Choose a mobile OS from the dropdown
6. Name the segment and save
Advanced segment: Social media
1. Go to Advanced Segments > Create New Custom Segment
2. Choose Dimensions>Traffic Source>Source and drag to the main panel
3. Under matches choose Matches regular expression and enter something like this (including the pipes):
facebook.com|twitter.com|delicious|linkedin|(Customizefor the specific sources you’d like to track)
4. Name the segment and save
*TIP
Each social media source can also have it’s own segment so that you can track individually
Advanced segments
LIVE
Useful: Date comparisons
Photo by TheBusyBrainSome rights reserved
Comparisons
1. Choose first date range
2. Click “compare to past”
3. Choose second date range
4. Apply
Useful: Tracking outbound links
Many links on library sites are to third-party destinations
Catalog
Ejournals and databases
Other sites
Cannot, by default, track click activity on outgoing links
Useful: Tracking outbound links
1. Insert some code into the <head> of the page(s) on which you want to track outbound links to delay the link by a fraction of a second to give the page tracking code time to load. Google has a script for this: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55527
2. Tag the specific link(s) you want to track so that the activity will be recorded in GA using a javascriptonClick statement.
3. Wait 24-48 hours to give GA a chance to collect some data then:
4. IN GA go to Content > Event Tracking > Categories. There should now be a category there called “outbound links”, and within the category, data for each link.
Useful: Tracking outbound links
1. Insert some code into the <head> of the page(s) on which you want to track outbound links:
<script type="text/javascript">
function recordOutboundLink(link, category, action) {
_gat._getTrackerByName()._trackEvent(category, action);
setTimeout('document.location = "' + link.href + '"', 100);
}
</script>
Useful: Tracking outbound links
Tag the specific link(s) you want to track so that the activity will be recorded in GA using a javascriptonClick statement:
your link
<a href="http://www.example.com"
onClick="recordOutboundLink(this, 'Outbound
Links', 'example.com');return false;">
the category the link label
Reporting
Analytics allows you to export any of your reports into:
PDF - portable document format. You'll need the free Adobe Reader software in order to view this file.
XML - extensible markup language.
Excel - Microsoft Excel-formatted spreadsheet.
TSV - tab separated values. This format can be read in most spreadsheet applications or text editors.
*TIP
Analytics will export the report with the settings currently showing on your screen, so make sure
that your date range and other settings are as you would like them
Reporting
To export a report:
1. Navigate to the report you'd like to export.
2. Click Export, below the report title.
3. Select one of the four export format options
4. Your file will be generated automatically.
Emailing
Reports can be emailed immediately or scheduled
Like exporting, you need to be viewing the exact report you want to email
Note that scheduled reports send data based on the previous day, week, month, or quarter
Questions?
After the session contact us at:
Jeff Wisniewski
www.facebook.com/wisniewski.jeff
Darlene Fichter
darlene.fichter AT usask.ca
Thank you
Resources
Google Analytics Help: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/
Google Code (Technical Documentation):http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/
Google Analytics Blog: http://analytics.blogspot.com/
Official Discussion Groups:http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/groups.html