A University Web Team's Approach to Google Analytics

AnalyticsA University Web Team’s Approach

Chris Traganos | ABCD-WWW

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Google Analytics• Google Analytics is an enterprise grade

web service that provides detailed and accurate reporting on website metrics.

• Unique marketing based approach to analyzing web traffic.

• Free for use with a Google Account

• Multiple sites can be analyzed, along with multiple users per site (administrators & view only reports are options).

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• University Operations Services (UOS) is a service organization within Harvard.

• Provides many essential services used by the Harvard community on a daily basis.

• Website has monthly traffic of 20k unique visitors averaging 100k pageviews.

• Previous metrics software was WebTrends

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Pilot

• The vast majority of our users visit www.uos.harvard.edu because they need specific services and information.

• By reviewing the metric using Analytics, we can better serve the user while they travel throughout our website.

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Capture Process• The Google Analytics Tracking Code

(GATC) is a Javascript snippet that is on every page within the site. It collects anonymous visitor data and sends it back to Google for processing. Results are within 3-4 hours of real time.

• The load time is extremely short since the ga.js (18kb) is cached from any site using Analytics. The individual site data is stored in your Google account only.

ga.js

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Insert Tracking Code

Insert the followingcode into repeating HTML template (i.e. Footer)

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Features

Custom Reporting

Advanced Segments

Motion Charts

Scheduled Reports

Map Overlay

Traffic Sources

Visitors

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The Interface

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Visitors

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Map Overlay

City, Country, Region, and Continent level detail. Exporting Options: PDF, XML, CSV, TSV

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Traffic Sources

Direct traffic, referring sites, search engines, all sources, keywords

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The User’s Path to ContentQuick Links & 404 Query strings

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Query Strings/fmo/recycling/newsletter/08/november.shtml?s=fmo&d=1108

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BenchmarkingCompare site with industry wide metrics.

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Custom Reporting

• Create your own reports based on the dimension -metric combinations inside your website.

BETA

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BETAAdvanced Segments

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Motion Charts BETA

• X-Axis

• Y-Axis

• Color of bubble

• Size of bubble

• Motion over time

5 Dimensions to control:

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Scheduled Reports

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Limitations• Ad Filters such as NoScript and AdBlock

can block the GATC from collecting data.

• Browsers that cannot render JavaScript will have similar blocking issues.

• Such gaps in data collection are considered acceptable since the aggregate metric data is accurate. (3.05% in the US)

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Questions?

• Use Google Analytics or other web metrics software at the University?

Discussion for group:

christopher_traganos@harvard.edu

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