Struggling to understand google analytics? It can be overwhelming, it's such a large platform. In this presentation, you will learn the basics of Google Analytics for your small business.
We will cover:
Set Up
Audiences
Aquisition
Behavior
Goals
& More.
9. Why are you
excited about this
class?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/
10. My Promise to You
1. Basic Features of Google Analytics
2. Loads of ideas to try out
3. Tips to make your life easier!
In about 3 hours you’re going to learn:
12. Meet Molly
Social Media & Marketing Consultant
for San Francisco Small Business
Development Center
With over a decade of starting new programs
from scratch, speaking, and most
importantly, real-life, in-the-trenches
business experience.
I started helping small business owners over
three years ago deal with the sometimes
overwhelming marketing, advertising & social
media aspects of starting a new business.
14. • If you want a sustainable
business, you need some
insight into the numbers,
beyond just the size of your
email list.
• Recognize opportunities
• Identify points of failure
• Reach more people
Google Analytics can help
15. Understanding:
• how people consume your
site,
• what brings them there,
• where they’re
geographically located
** Use to Strengthen
Marketing Strategy**
17. To Understand
What’s
Working
Fix the Things
that aren’t
working
To improve
our results/
sales
To calculate
our Value
To dominate
our Niche
To encourage
investment
19. The Set Up, Just like with
any good dish you need to
prep
32. What the
numbers
mean on
Dashboard:
Users are the number of unique visitors
that have been on your website.
Sessions are the number of times
somebody has browsed your website.
Bounce rate is how many people hit
your site and immediately leave.
Session duration is how long people are
staying on your website on average.
34. Acquisition
numbers
Organic search means people found your site by Googling
something and clicking your website on the Google results
page.
Social means that people found your website via shares on
social media.
Direct means that people either typed in your URL or clicked
on a page that they had in their bookmarks.
Referral traffic comes from links on other people’s websites.
This traffic isn’t coming from Google or social media.
Other simply means that Google can’t track it. This could mean
people were browsing in incognito mode or there were no
defined parameters on the website they came from.
39. Filter Out IP Address
•Filter name: enter a name
•Filter type: Predefined
•Select filter type: Exclude
•Select source or destination: traffic from
the IP addresses
•Select expression: that are equal to
•IP address: enter a singleIP address
• https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10
34840?hl=en
42. Link All Your Search Console & AdWords
Admin>Property>All Products
43. Home •Dashboard
Real Time •Happening Now
Audience
•Demographics * Interest * Behavior *
LTV
Acquisition •Traffic Source * Search Console
Behavior
•Content Visited (flow) * Site Speed *
Devices
Conversions •Goals * Ecommerce
Discover •Learning about Google Products
Admin •Setting * Connections * Goal Setting
44. Navigation
• Real time: The activity on your site in real time
• Audience: Inside scoop on your website visitors
• Acquisition: Details on how visitors found your
website
• Behavior: What people are doing on your site
• Conversions: How behavior leads to conversions
and sales
48. What is LTV & Why
does it matter?
The Lifetime Value report lets you
understand how valuable
different users are to your
business based on lifetime
performance.
-90 Days
-See the channel that brings in
best revenue
50. Average Time on Page
Avg Time on Page are a good indication of the time users spent
looking at a page on your site if the page has a low % Exit
54. What Is Search Console? (AKA Google Webmaster
Tools)
Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps
you monitor and maintain your site's presence in Google Search
results.
55. Why Use
Search Console
(AKA Google
Webmaster
Tools)
Monitor your site's performance
in Google Search results:
• Google can access your content
• Monitor and resolve malware or spam
issues
• Maintain your site with minimal
disruption to search performance
• Create and monitor content that
delivers visually engaging search
results
• Submit new content for crawling and
remove content you don't want shown
in search results
56. Why Use Search Console (AKA Google
Webmaster Tools)
Discover how
Google
Search—and
the world—
sees your site
•Which queries
caused your
site to appear
in search
results?
•Did some
queries result
in more traffic
to your site
than others?
•Are your product
prices, company
contact info, or
events
highlighted in rich
search results?
Which sites
are linking to
your
website?
Is your mobile
site performing
well for visitors
searching on
mobile?
59. Search Console Also Help with
AdWords/Keywords When Linked
See how your ads and organic
search listings perform (both alone
and together) by importing organic
search results from Search
Console.
60. Shows what people typed into the
search bar of your website & can
show what your audience is
interested in seeing more of.
Search Terms
62. Behavior
Another View of how
people are interacting
with your website.
Most interesting section
“Search Terms” Results
63. Page Speed
Simply compressing images and text
can be a game changer—30% of
pages could save more than 250KB
that way.
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/?_ga=2.255690383.6
68670722.1507846708-1762764836.1507846708
64. Bounce Rate
Here , Then Gone
A Bounce Can be…
-Clicking Link to a Different Site
-Clicking the back button
-Closing the window
-Typing a new URL
65. Individual Bounce Rate
more important than
overall site bounce rates
• Can show you pages that need to be
fixed & focus on
66. Determining the Cause
Audience
Right or Wrong
Primary Message
Message doesn’t match
campaign or source
Site Experience
Overall Design
Load Time
Distractions
Actions
Hidden Navigation
No Primary Action
Confusing Navigation
74. Goals
Here are some ideas that may apply to your business:
•Increase engagement
•Drive more leads
•Improve conversions
•Increase revenue from e-commerce store
77. Page Based Goals
• Conversion Page
• Allows for up to 20 Funnel
Steps
• Ideal for:
• Forms
• Signups
• Any stepped process
• Don’t use for online purchases
(use enhanced ecommerce
instead)
78. Event Based Goals
• Events need to be tracked
first
• No funnel steps
• Ideal for:
• Downloads
• Clicks on links/buttons
• Interactions (i.e. videos)
• Single step actions
79. Engagement Goals
• Time-based or pageview
based
• Inflates conversion numbers
• Ideal for:
• Sites without any page or event
goal options
• Branding and content sites
80. Creating a Destination Based Goal
• Identify the steps
• Ensure the thank you page is unique
(for the action)
• Configure the goal in Google
Analytics
• A page on your website that users
see when they complete an activity.
• For an account sign-up, this might be the
“thank you for signing up” page.
• For a purchase this might be the receipt
page.
82. You have 3 basic
options:
*template
*custom goals
* Smart Goals
85. Use Goals to Track your Marketing
Strategy
• Knowing important metrics like:
• Leads
• Trial signups
• Account creations
• Newsletter signups
• White paper downloads
• eBook downloads
86. Track Your Goal Progress With A
Google Analytics Custom Report
• select Customization and then choose Custom Reports.
• Create a + New Custom Report.
• Write a Title for your Custom Report. I usually name this the
same as your goal.
• In Metric Groups, search for your Goal name. Choose
the Goal Completion option of your Goal.
• In Dimension Drilldowns, search for Goal Previous Step – 1.
This will show you the URL of the piece they saw immediately
before converting.
• Hit Save.
88. Events
• Map Out Your Event Tracking Strategically
• Events in Google Analytics help you fill the gaps between traffic
analysis and goal analysis. Essentially, they let you see nuance
– what are users actually doing on the site?
89. More About Events
• You’ll notice that there are three components that make up
events in GA:
• Category
• Action
• Label (optional, but recommended)
•
For example, if you have a video on your homepage and want
to track interactions with it, the following values could be in play:
• Category: “Videos”
• Action: “Play”
• Label: “Home Page”
91. The entire customer journey – from arriving at a page, through research,
evaluation, purchase, and even returns – is tracked and collected.
Why Enhanced Shopping
99. Resources
Google Analytics Help Center
https://support.google.com/analytics#topic=3544906
Google Analytics Academy
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/
Loves Data on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/user/LovesData
105. Smart Goals
• Smart Goals are configured at the view level. Smart Goals use machine learning to
examine dozens of signals about your website sessions to determine which of those
are most likely to result in conversions. Each session is assigned a score, with the
"best" sessions being translated into Smart Goals. Some examples of the signals
included in the Smart Goals model are Session duration, Pages per session,
Location, Device and Browser. (Remarketing Smart Lists use a similar machine
learning model to identify your best users.)
• To determine the best sessions, Smart Goals establishes a threshold by selecting
approximately the top 5% of the traffic to your site coming from AdWords. Once that
threshold is set, Smart Goals applies it to all your website sessions, including traffic
from channels other than AdWords. After enabling Smart Goals in Analytics, they
can be imported into AdWords.
• instructions below:
106. Smart Goals
• Prerequisites for using Smart Goals
• To use Smart Goals, you'll need to meet certain prerequisites and complete the
following actions:
• Link your Analytics and AdWords account(s).
• The linked AdWords account must have sent at least 500 clicks to the selected
Analytics view over the past 30 days before you can set up Smart Goals. If the
linked account falls below 250 clicks over the past 30 days for the selected
view, Smart Goals will be deactivated until the clicks rise again to 500 or more.
• The reporting view must not receive more than 10 million sessions in 30 days.
• The Data Sharing setting Google products and services must be turned on for
your Analytics account. See the instructions below: