Google Analytics for marketer

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GOOGLE ANALYTICSFOR MARKETER

Abilities and usage patterns

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Introduction

It's all about conversions

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MAIN QUESTION

• Remember• Make contact• Request info• Download• Subscribe• Register• React to sponsor advertisment• Buy (now or later)

INTRO

Do we need user to click?In fact we need him to:

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KINDS OF SITES AND ITS TASKSINTRO

CorporateTo let user find needed information quickly, to receive certain messages from the company

StoreTo sell more, to spend less on acquiring new customers

CampaignTo deliver message and track campaign effectiveness

MediaTo attract and keep readership, to monetize audience

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WISHES AND TROUBLES OF MARKETERS

• Site audience structure is not clear• Low business efficiency (high acquisition costs, in particular)

Wishes• See clear picture of audience behaviour• Access activity results and estimate next ones• Know overall action plan

INTRO

Issues

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What media plan usually looks like

But click price isn't really important. Goal completion is.

INTRO

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What media plan should include?

Dear boss, we got our 60k clicks from XXX.Price per registration is 30% higher than it was from YYY.I think we shouldn't continue with XXX.

Here's the data:We got 42k visits, 80% bounced, viewed 1,65 pages per visit, 2574 returning visits, 0.17%

conversion to registrations

This means:Non-bounced visit costs 12 RURPageview costs 1,5 RURReturning visitors costs 44 RURRegistration costs 1 583 RUR

INTRO

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Steps from theory to practice

INTRO

• Fully measurable users actions (not just page views)

• Integrated stats (not only site pages, but also incoming and outgoing traggic)

• Segmented stats (ability to view stats from different user groups separately)

• Actionable conclusions

Project site structure and marketing activity to conversion KPIs

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What GA allows to do

Define site goals

Measure goals numerically

Define site performance as improvement of goals conversion rate

INTRO

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INTRO

CONVERSIONS IS NOT ALL MARKETING

Not to forget: we are measuring only final sale funnel steps (see Atlas Research http://mediarevolution.ru/audience/behavior/1615.html)

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GA advantages

• Free to use, traffic limitation is not noticeable

• Can define goal and segment audience — both pre-filtered and post-filtered

• Open platform with API

• Access control

• Nicely designed reports

• Highly customizable

• Several data collection modes

• Campaign tracking

• Multilingual

• Mostly documented

• Support infrastructure (certified specialists and agencies)

• World leader's product

Why GA

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DATA COLLECTION MODES

• Pageviews

• Javascript actions

• Search queries

• Events

• E-commerse

• User defined and custom vars

GA FEATURES

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GA DRAWBACKS

• Not realtime

• Time on site doesn't include last page

• Visits of same user reported as separate

• Direct visit reported with previous source

• Drops previuos source history (can use &utm_nooverride=1 to keep, but current is dropped then)

• Doesn't show cyrillic from URLs

• Too complicated, not transparent

• Big traffic chunks sampled

• Traffic limited to 5 mln pageview/month (spend $1 /day to remove limitation)

• Doesn't now Russian federal meta-structure

• Russian translation is bad

• Google doesn't promise to keep data longer than 18 months (although keeps for now)

GA FEATURES

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Why GA

TRAPS

• Search traffic includes both paid and not-paid• Nearly any report can be split by traffic source via drop-down menu• Visit source doesn't really show where a user came from this time. GA has its priorities, they seem to be this: cpc > organic > referrer > direct

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Adjacent tools

• SEO: Webmaster Tools (Yandex, Google), Sitemap, Site-Auditor

• Additional counters for control purposes: LiveInternet, Rambler's Top100, Yandex.Metrica, Openstat

• Add-ons for Google Analytics: EpikOne SiteScan (installation check), Firebug и WASP (Firefox diagnostics plugin), Data Feed Query Explorer (manual API queries)

• Integration: Adwords (extended keywords stats), Adsense (for publishers — which pages earn

more)

GOOGLE TOOLS

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EPICONE SITESCAN

• Checks if GA code was broken by CMS

• Recommended by Google

• Only 1000 pages free — enough to catch a

problem if there is one

TOOLS

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GA FEATURES

What we have on screen

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GA FEATURES

SCREEN ZONES

1 — general account settings (including

language selection)

2 — choose account

3 — choose profile for this account

4 — choose date range and time scale

for chart

5 — setup segments (left) and choose

ones (upper right)

6 — main reports menu

7 — customizable reports

8 — view visits metrics, goal

conversions, e-commerce transactions

(content efficiency in content

reports,event — in event reports)

9 — choose report type (table, pie-

chart, bar-chart, compare to average,

summary)

10 — drop-down to choose split

parameter

11 — choose parameter (or two) to

graph

12 — extra services: subscriptions,

visualisations, animations, data export

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THREE DATA SETS

Basic metrics• View depth• Bounce rate• Time at site

Goals conversion Sales conversion

Sales page can be counted both in goals and transactions reports. Difference is when same user made several orders. There will be one goal and several orders.

GA FEATURES

Content and Events reports have different tabs

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URL BUILDER

Tools to generate URLs for campaigns. Use Excel to generate big lists.

TOOLS

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MAKING LINKS IN EXCEL

If you use big keywords list in pay-per-click systems, create links in excel:

• Including adwords if accounts are not linked

• Use SUBSTITUTE и CONCATENATE

For example, if link is in column Е, and keyword in column А: =CONCATENATE(E1;"utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=adwordsua&utm_term=";SUBSTITUTE(A1;" ";"_"))

TOOLS

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TOOLS

Which UTM goes where

Mandatory• campaign – Campaigns reports or Campaign in drop-down• source – Source in drop-down• medium – which pie share will be added to, Medium in drop-down. There's also «Source/Medium» report (All traffic sources)

Optional• term – Keywords report, Keyword in drop-down• content – Ad Versions report, Ad Content in drop-down

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HOW TO DEFINE GOALS

• Goals work only post-data, can't apply to previously collected.

• Add goal price to transfer value to pages on the

way to this goal

• Goal could include path — mandatory (not

counted if not thru these pages) or optional

(displayed as funnel).

• Different match modes: beggining of address,

part, regular expression.

TOOLS

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REGEXPS

Line start - ^ Line end - $Any character - . Dot - \.Square parenthesis — list of possible characters, intervals with minus, for example [0-9] — all digitsAny number of characters (even zero) - *1 or more of characters - +1 or zero characters - ?

Example:^/item/.*/order$Includes /item/2345/orderIncludes /item/we2d3/orderDoesn't include /item/2345/order/done

TOOLS

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E-COMMERCE — ORDER DETAILS

Includes:• Price (taxes and delivery separately)• City, region, country• SKU, title, type• Number and price of items in order

GA FEATURES

Reports include revenues, conversions, item types, daily sales

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• Not suitable for audit, just for marketing trends analysis

• Ecommerce tab appears in reports

E-COMMERCE

GA FEATURES

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AUDIENCE SEGMENTATION

• Most reports are viewable only for certain audience part (segment), which is defined in segment builder

• Segment is viewable separately or with whole

traffic. Can't see just two segments.

Example: we had one campaign with different utm_campaign parameter: • vtv_yandex in Yandex, • vtv_begun in Begun and several AdWords campaigns with names like • «Persons (eng) — search» • «Persons (rus) — net».

GA FEATURES

Segment builder allows to combine them to get combined stats for this campaign.

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VIEWING REPORTS BY SEGMENTS

• Segments are personal for you, other users of this account can't see them, until you share.

GA FEATURES

• Compare overall and «deep» traffic. Discover that teasers have only 4,73% deep visits, Begun - 12,87%, Yandex - 13,85%!

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REPORTS BUILDER

Custom reports are needed to:• Remove unneeded data• Create missing set

Two types: metrics (measurable like pages/visit) and dimensions (set of kinds, like cities).They intersect. There are some complex rules what can be intersected with what.

GA FEATURES

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WHAT CAN BE IN CUSTOM REPORTS

Standart reports show23 dimensions in drop-down,custom reports give access to 52!

For example, add source/medium filter to keywords to select paid and organic traffic of each keyword

GA FEATURES

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EXAMPLE USER REPORTS — LANDING PAGES VALUE

GA FEATURES

Default landing pages report is just a list. If we have goal prices defined and/or we have e-commerce tracking, then we can see landing pages monetary values.

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ONE SITE — SEVERAL PROFILES

• working• no-filters backup• experimental filters

GA FEATURES

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FILTERSGA FEATURES

Easiest one — not to report own office clicks: you office admins tell what addresses your office use

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EXAMPLE OF COMPLEX FILTERHow to save original keyword

Правда, есть проблема с русским языком

GA FEATURES

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EXAMPLE OF COMPLEX FILTER — HOW TO SAVE ORIGINAL REFERRER

GA FEATURES

GA cleans Referral path if visit has source defined via utm. But we can use filter to save Referrer to User Defined field. Then for advertisement placement Site.ru

We can create «User defined includes site.ru» and check, who really came from the site.ru, and who returned from different site (GA still shows that source is site.ru for these visits).

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WHAT TO MEASURE

CLICKS not equal VISITS

Example

• Visit costs more — not all clicks reach site

• Normal discount is 70-90%

• Discount can be negative, if there's a lot of returning

visits

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QUALITY PARAMETERS

• Viewing depth is important for content sites

• Time on last page isn't measured

• Regular visitors can read for long, or just check frontpage for updates and

leave..

• Promo-sites can have 2pages/visit, games - 7.

• More active campaign — less depth: check depth separately for new and

returning visitors.

WHAT TO MEASURE

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SCRIPT TO MEASURE TIME ON LAST PAGE

WHAT TO MEASURE

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Which countries looked at site for how long

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BOUNCE RATE

• Easiest way to assess traffic quality — user who open just one page, then

leave site.

• Normal bounce rates vary widely: 30-70%.

• Depends on site structure and landing page: if it shows list, it's bounce rate

will be less.

• More misleading advertising — more traffic, more bounces.

• Check bounce rate separately for new visits.

WHAT TO MEASURE

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EXAMPLE — BOUNCE DEPENDS ON LANDING PAGE

WHAT TO MEASURE

Link leads to article or article list. Bounce differs significantly, conversion — not that much.

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TRAFFIC PIE

PR, WOM,partnerships,direct ad buys

ACTIONABLE CONCLUSIONS

SEO, PPC

Improve site structure and content, contests,WOM

Media buys (utm_medium is unknown to GA)

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LANDING PAGE

Many factors affect efficiency


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CONTENT AND STRUCTURE

Do pages work well:

• Which pages lose visitors most (absolure and relative)?• What goal funnels look like?• Do you give users what they look for (keywords, site

searches)?


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MAIN ACTIONS

• Choose lowest goal price ad buys

• Use search traffic quality data to adjust SEO and PPC

• Rework pages which lose traffic most


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EXAMPLE OF PPC USAGE

1) Export keyword reports (organic) to XLS.

2) Sort by number of visits, drop low visits lines, sort by bounce rate.

3) Take 500 words with lowest bounce rate, import to AdWords with 1 cent bid.

4) Getting good targeted low-frequency traffic cheap in good numbers.


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EXAMPLE - SEO

• SEO companies work with keyword lists. Higher frequency generate more traffic, but they are more expensive as competition is higher.

• Juxtapose organic SEO keywords to goals to decide which keywords are more profitable

to “buy”


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SIMPLIEST CHECKLIST

• Add Russian search engines

• Register site search

• Register javascript actions and sales

• Check setup via SiteScan

• Register Goals

• Link AdWords, AdSense accounts

• Use utm-links (make sure no redirects which will drop them)

TO DO

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HOW TO ADD SEARCH ENGINES

<script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXXXXXX"); pageTracker._addOrganic("mail.ru", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("rambler.ru", "query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("qip.ru", "query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("nigma.ru", "s"); pageTracker._addOrganic("aport.ru", "r"); pageTracker._addOrganic("blogs.yandex.ru", "text"); pageTracker._addOrganic("webalta.ru", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("gogo.ru", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("poisk.ru", "text"); pageTracker._addOrganic("km.ru", "sq"); pageTracker._addOrganic("liveinternet.ru", "ask"); pageTracker._addOrganic("gde.ru", "keywords"); pageTracker._addOrganic("quintura.ru", "request"); pageTracker._addOrganic("akavita.by", "z"); pageTracker._addOrganic("meta.ua", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("bigmir.net", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("tut.by", "query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("all.by", "query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("i.ua", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("online.ua", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("a.ua", "s"); pageTracker._addOrganic("ukr.net", "search_query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("search.com.ua", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("search.ua", "query"); pageTracker._addOrganic("blogsearch.google.com", "q"); pageTracker._addOrganic("images.google.com", "q"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {} </script>

TO DO

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QUESTIONS?

Alex [email protected]

Documents

Google Analytics for marketer