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DISCOVERING OUR PATRONS USING
GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Lake Superior Libraries Symposium, WITC – Superior
June 1, 2012
Michael Sheehan
A LITTLE ABOUT ME AND MY EMPLOYER
Mike Sheehan is the Assistant Director at Northern Waters Library System (NWLS).
NWLS is one of 17 public library systems in the state of Wisconsin.
NWLS provides supplementary library services to 28 public libraries and their patrons in the top eight counties (Ashland, Bayfield, Burnett, Douglas, Iron, Sawyer, Vilas, and Washburn) in Wisconsin.
NWLS has helped member libraries create and maintain their own library websites using Joomla as the website program. NWLS uses Joomla for its website as well.
NWLS manages the regional shared catalog (called Merlin) for the member libraries. NWLS libraries contract with Innovative Interfaces, Inc. for software and maintenance support.
START WITH SOME QUESTIONS
You are curious to know:
The effects of promotional activity on the website…
How much time patrons are spending on the site…
What page patrons enter the site on first…
What OS and browsers are patrons using…
What the ratio is between new and returning
visitors…
Where patrons are coming from…
VARIOUS WEB ANALYZERS
Open Source (free software license) options:
Analog (platform C; logfile based)
W3Perl (platform Perl; logfile based)
Webalizer (platform C; logfile based)
Proprietary options:
Mint (platform PHP; tracks cookies via Javascript; $30/site)
Urchin (platform Windows/Linux/BSD; weblogs & cookies; $9995)
Hosted options:
Bango Mobile Web Analytics (tracks mobile ID & cookies; $49/month)
ClickTale (tracks cookies via Javascript; free - $990/month)
Google Analytics (tracks cookies via Javascript; free)
Quantcast (tracks cookies via Javascript; free)
Yahoo! Web Analytics (tracks cookies via Javascript; free)
ABOUT GOOGLE ANALYTICS (FROM WIKIPEDIA)
Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew. It is the most widely used website statistics service, currently in use on around 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites.
GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.
Users can officially add up to 50 site profiles. It is limited to sites which have a traffic of fewer than 5 million pageviews per month (roughly 2 pageviews per second), unless the site is linked to an AdWords campaign.
MORE ABOUT GA
GA is implemented by including what is known as the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) which is a snippet of JavaScript code that the user adds onto every page of his or her website.
Keep in mind, many ad filtering programs and extensions (such as Firefox's Adblock and NoScript) can block the GATC. This prevents some traffic and users from being tracked, and leads to holes in the collected data.
The largest potential impact on data accuracy comes from users deleting or blocking GA cookies. Without cookies being set, GA cannot collect data. Any individual web user can block or delete cookies resulting in the data loss of those visits for GA users. Website owners can encourage users not to disable cookies, for example by making visitors more comfortable using the site through posting a privacy policy.
FURTHERMORE ABOUT GA
Due to its ubiquity, Google Analytics raises many privacy concerns. Whenever someone visits a website that uses Google Analytics, Google tracks that visit via the user's IP address. If the website also embeds any content from a Google property with which the website visitor has an account, then Google receives sufficient information to identify the user and thus associate the details of the website visit with that user.
Google has announced a new privacy policy which will allow Google to specifically identify and track users of any website that uses Google Analytics, if that user is also a user of any other Google product (Gmail, YouTube, BlogSpot,etc) to which the same privacy policy applies.
Google has also released a browser plugin that turns off data about a page visit being sent to Google. Since this plug-in is produced and distributed by Google itself, it has met much discussion and criticism.
GETTING STARTED WITH GA
Using Google Analytics is very easy. To get started all you need to:
Have a Google email account.
Sign up for a Google Analytics Account (for free!)
Must have administrative access to the website you want to monitor.
Will need to install a tracking code into the pages of the website you wish to monitor.
Wait to gather some data.
EXAMPLE OF TRACKING CODE
For more information, see http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncTracking.html
Copy the following code, then paste it onto every page you want to track immediately before the closing </head> tag.
<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-28121541-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
GA TRACKS WEBSITE USAGE
GA TRACKS CATALOG USAGE
GA TRACKS MOBILE CATALOG USAGE
WHAT KINDS OF DATA CAN WE GET?
AUDIENCE
ADVERTISING
TRAFFIC SOURCES
CONTENT
CONVERSIONS
WHAT KINDS OF DATA CAN WE GET? AUDIENCE
Overview
Demographics Language
Location (map)
Behavior New vs Returning
Frequency & Recency
Engagement
Technology Browser & OS
Network
Mobile Overview
Devices
Custom Custom Variables
User Defined
Visitors Flow
WHAT KINDS OF DATA CAN WE GET?
ADVERTISING <we don’t use>
Adwords
Campaigns
Keywords
Matched Search Queries
Day Parts
Destination URLs
Placement
Keyword Positions
TV Ads
WHAT KINDS OF DATA CAN WE GET? TRAFFIC SOURCES
Overview
Sources All Traffic
Direct
Referrals
Search Overview
Organic
Paid
Campaigns
Search Engine Optimization Queries
Landing Pages
Geographical Summary
Social Overview
Sources
Pages
Conversions
Social Plugins
Social Visitors Flow
WHAT KINDS OF DATA CAN WE GET? CONTENT
Overview
Site Content Pages
Content Drilldown
Landing Pages
Exit Pages
Site Speed Overview
Page Timings
User Timings
Site Search Overview
Usage
Search Terms
Pages
Events Overview
Top Events
Pages
Events Flow
AdSense Overview
AdSense Pages
AdSense Referrers
In-Page Analytics
WHAT KINDS OF DATA CAN WE GET?
CONVERSIONS <we don’t have setups required for these>
Goals Overview
Goal URLs
Reverse Goal Path
Funnel Visualization
Goal Flow
Ecommerce Overview
Product Performance
Sales Performance
Transactions
Time to Purchase
Multi-Channel Funnels Overview
Assisted Conversions
Top Conversion Paths
Time Lag
Path Length
RESULTS OF CATALOG ANALYSIS
RESULTS OF CATALOG ANALYSIS
RESULTS OF CATALOG ANALYSIS
DATA WE WERE INTERSTED IN
Visits Per Day
Unique Visitors
Time on Site
Loyalty
Length of Visit
Browsers & OS
Screen Resolution
Mobile Devices
Mobile Carriers
Traffic Sources
Top Landing Pages
Top Exit Pages
APPLY TO OUR WEBSITE ANALYSIS
Things to Know - Dropdowns
Things to Know - Export Options
Finding Unique Visitors & Average Time on Site
Finding Duration
Finding Loyalty
Finding Browsers
Finding OS
Finding Screen Resolution
Finding Devices Used
Finding Carriers
Finding Direct Traffic
Finding Traffic Referrals
Finding Landing Pages
Finding Exit Pages
OTHER - Language
OTHER - Location
OTHER – Location (continued)
OTHER – Location (continued)
OTHER – Social Sources
OTHER – Data Comparisons
OTHER – Not Set Example
OTHER – Custom Reporting
OTHER RESOURCES
Marek, Kate. “Using Web Analytics Well.” American Libraries, Sept./Oct. 2011
(excerpt from the following journal article)
Marek, Kate. “Using Web Analytics in the Library.” Library Technology Reports 47, no.5 (2011): 54 pages ISBN: 9780838958339 ISSN: 0025-2586
(found at the ALA store for $43.00 or from GoogleBooks)
Hisle-Chaudri, Stacy. “Think You Know Your Patrons? Using Google Analytics to Discover Patron Behaviors on the James C. Kirkpatrick Library Website.” Library Technology Conference (2012) poster session PDF. Link: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/libtech_conf/2012/sessions/41/
Robert Sebek. “Google Analytics: Beyond the Code.” Innovative Users Group Annual Conference (2012) session PDF. Link is password protected; ask Mike Sheehan for copy if desired.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Thank you!
Mike Sheehan, Assistant Director
Northern Waters Library Service
715-682-2365 ext. 12
