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Getting More Out Of Google Analytics 4/14/2015

AMA West Michigan: Getting More Out Of Google Analytics w/ Adam Henige

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Getting More Out Of Google Analytics

4/14/2015

Who I am

• Adam Henige

– Grand Valley graduate

– Graduate school at Michigan State

– Founded Netvantage Marketing with business

partner Joe Ford in 2008

– Headquartered in East Lansing, opened

Grand Rapids office in 2012, Chicago office in

2014

– Our focus is search engine marketing – which

forces us to use Google Analytics daily

What we’re covering

• Establishing and measuring goals

– What is the purpose of your website?

• Using segmentation to better understand

users

– Not all users are alike, find out how they differ

• Identifying your most valuable traffic

– Sharpen your focus or better serve

underperforming segments

• Underperforming pages or categories

– Are parts of your website not pulling their

weight?

Before we start

• You may have spilled blood sweat and

tears over the website

• In many ways, the website and the

marketing for it may be your baby

What are your goals?

• Sales?

• Signing up for your mailing list?

• Filling out a contact form?

• Sending visitors to an affiliate site?

• Sending an email?

• Downloading a document?

• Dwelling?

Get set up to measure

• Putting Google Analytics to work

• A few methods for setting goals

– Purchase

– Destination page

– Trigger an event

– Surpass a metric

• Data found under Reporting >

Conversions

Purchase

• Turn on Ecommerce in GA at Admin > View > Ecommerce Settings

• The documentation on your shopping cart software will provide you simple instructions with how to add your code.– Your code is available under Admin > Property >

Tracking info

Destination page

• Completion page– Example: Completed contact form takes you

to yoursite.com/thank-you.html

– Admin > View > Goals

Trigger an event

• Requires some technical skill– Insert html code around download links, videos, etc. so

GA tracks them as events

– Ex. Standard link in html:

<a href=“mailto:[email protected]”>email

us</a>

– Example of inserted code for event tracking: <a href="

mailto:[email protected]"

onClick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Email',

‘Sales']);">email us</a>

Trigger an event

• Select event and the

category/action/label/value

– Results found under Behavior > Events in

standard reporting

Surpass a metric

• If you’re interested in having engaged

visits of a certain number of pages or

visits of a certain duration, you can set

that as a goal as well

Other vital tracking items

• Connect your AdWords account– For details and ecommerce/goals data from your

AdWords campaigns

– Admin > Property

> AdWords Linking

– Easiest if AdWords &

Analytics are under

the same Google

account

– See reports under

Acquisition > AdWords

URL builder

• https://support.google.com/analytics/answ

er/1033867?hl=en

URL builder

• Builds campaign URLs you can see in Acquisition > Campaigns section of reports

• Vanity URLs that redirect:• netvantagemarketing.com/ama set a 301 redirect to

a URL builder link such as:– http://netvantagemarketing.com/blog/google-analytics-

presentation-from-ama-west-michigan-lunch-414?utm_source=AMA&utm_medium=WoM&utm_campaign=AMAWM

• This will show up in Google Analytics as a campaign

– Most email programs like Mailchimp or Constant Contact allow you to toggle on this option automatically

– For other ad networks like Bing you should construct your destination URLs with URL builder as well

You have goals. Now what?

• With goals in place you can do some

really powerful things, like segmentation

Segmentation

• System segments are predefined, but can

get you started – Create segments for converters or

visitors who made a purchase

– Compare new users vs. returning visitors

– Compare direct traffic vs. organic search

traffic vs. paid search traffic vs. referral

traffic

• Looking at traffic in segments can

help you understand how your site can serve

visitors better

Segmentation

• With a segment in place you can compare

time frames and see what may be causing

change

Segmentation

• Example

– Leads are up through the website, but we

have no idea why

– Make a segment for

converters and

see what has

changed about this

group

Segmentation

• Checking Acquisition > All Traffic >

Channels

• Organic search

and Social

traffic have

driven more

leads, but why?

Segmentation

• Make a custom segment for visitors who

have converted and come from organic

traffic

Segmentation

• With this segment, you can look at:

– Behavior > Site Content > All Pages (is a new

page or a change making the difference?)

– Audience > Geo > Location (more local search

activity?)

– Behavior > Site Content > Landing pages

(more search action?)

– If more activity is coming from a new landing

page, what keywords are causing it?

Segmentation

• GA doesn’t give you keyword information

anymore (notprovidedcount.com)

• Fortunately, there’s still Google

Webmaster Tools

Segmentation

• Google.com/webmasters (verify with your

Google Analytics account or a strip of

code placed in your home page)

• Search Traffic > Search Queries > Top

Pages

Keep chasing the data

• Segmentation allows you to keep asking questions and finding answers until you find something actionable

• New keyword driving traffic? Try to further increase your rankings, make more content related to that keyword or even start a paid search campaign around that keyword

• If a certain page is influential, try to take elements of that page and use them elsewhere

Identify your best traffic

• Client asks me, “Where should we be

spending our money marketing our

website?”

Identify your best traffic

• Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels

– Select “Goal Set 1” above the graph and get

Pages that don’t cut it

• Simple things to look for

– High bounce rate (one and done)

– High entries, low conversions/revenue

– High page views, low conversions/revenue

– High exit rate

Pages that don’t cut it

• Behavior > Site Content > All Pages

• Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages– Sort by bounce rate and % exit and look for

pages with high page views

– Search function can help you look at categories quickly and easily

• Diagnose and fix the worst performers

Additional tips

• Excel is your friend, particularly if you’re

familiar with it – export, manipulate, and

save reports for later

• Email can regularly send you reports and

shortcuts can be added for easy viewing

of segmented reports or other regularly

used reports

Thank you

• For a copy of this presentation, visit

http://netvantagemarketing.com/ama

• Netvantage on Twitter: @netvantage

Resource Links

• Google URL builder

• Event tracking Google developer guide

• Google Webmaster Tools

Google Analytics blogs to follow

• Occam’s Razor

• KISSmetrics

• LunaMetrics