Google Analytics Training Seminar

Wednesday 3rd Sept, 2014 10:00am – 12:00pm

Matt Lynch• General Manager of Vorian Agency – Delivering integrated online and offline marketing solutions

to business wrestling with how to market in today’s changing environment.

• With over 22 years Online Marketing & Information Technology experience, Matt’s primary speciality is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Matt is a highly experienced senior digital marketing specialist working both within agency and in-house roles. Matt is also a certified Google Adwords and Bing Ads Professional.

• Enjoys keeping up with the 'bleeding edge' of technology advancements and social media evolvement to ensure current knowledge in an ever changing landscape, leading to early adoption and determination of opportunity for marketing enhancement.

• Local, national and international project experience particularly in the field of Travel for over 10 years with companies such as Trafalgar Tours, The Travel Corporation brand and travel properties, Stella Travel and Best Flights. Matt has earned a reputation as an online marketing expert and search evangelist for thoroughness, quality, technical knowledge and success driven results. Matt's previous role was as the Global Online Marketing Manager for Trafalgar, coordinating the online marketing efforts with international teams for this global brand.

Your Presenter: Vorian Agency General Manager

Connect with Matt…Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattrlynch

LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/mattlynchseo

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+MattLynchAU

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattrlynch

About Me: http://about.me/au.mattlynch

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Yelp: http://mattlynch.yelp.com.au FourSquare: https://foursquare.com/mattrlynch

Klout: http://klout.com/#/mattrlynch

Email: matt.lynch@vorian.com.au

Connect to Vorian Agencytwitter.com/VorianAgency

facebook.com/VorianAgency

google.com/+VorianAgencyWestPerth

linkedin.com/company/vorian-agency

pinterest.com/vorianagency

foursquare.com/v/vorian-media-group

yelp.com.au/biz/vorian-agency-west-perth

klout.com/vorianagency

about.me/VorianAgency

slideshare.net/vorianagency

instagram.com/vorianagency

flickr.com/photos/vorianagency

youtube.com/user/VorianAgency

vimeo.com/vorianagency

vine.co/u/VorianAgency

Interactive Questions?During today’s session, you are welcome to tweet

questions to our Vorian Agency Twitter Account @vorianagency using the hashtag #voriantraining

https://twitter.com/vorianagency

HousekeepingBefore we start, please note the following:

• Exits

• Toilets

• Mobile Phones on Silent

• Question & Answer session at end of the Presentation

• A link to the Presentation Slide Notes and Video will be emailed to you

• Vorian Agency info packs are provided to showcase our service offering

• Vorian staff are available to arrange an appointment or answer specific questions

• Please provide your feedback on today’s seminar on the supplied questionnaire

• Please invite others you may know to register for our free seminar series

In today’s session…We’re going to learn to view insights and data about your website and online marketing.

• Which marketing initiatives are most effective

• Accurate website traffic patterns/trends

• Which customer and customer segments are most valuable

• Where visitors come from and what do they do on the site

• How can the website convert more visitors into customers

• Which keywords resonate with prospects and lead to conversions

• Which online ad or creative is the most effective

• Where people leave the site

• Which pages retain visitors the longest

• What search terms people use to find the site

• Show you how visitors find and use your site!

Gain insights that matterGoogle Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions, but also gives you

fresh insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site, and how you can keep them coming back.

Google Analytics is perhaps the most commonly used, free, famous, and recognised as the standard of web statistics. Google Analytics gives very accurate statistics on not only traffic but also keeps track of almost everything a cookie can store (browsers, type of OS, plugins installed, etc.) on each unique visitors. It is also used to keep track of Google Adwords (Pay Per Click - PPC), integrates with Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), and can be used with Apps (IOS and Android Applications).

Video: 1. Google Analytics In Real Life - Online Checkout

Why do we need Analytics?The goal of analytics is to drive organisational efficiencies and overall improvement. A

true data driven analytic solution will help an organisation to tackle their most complex problems and create unique, predictive capabilities, driving intelligent decisions.

Video: 2. Google Analytics In Real Life - Landing Page Optimization

Video: 3. Google Analytics In Real Life - Site Search

Google Keyword ‘Not Provided’• Google's recent changes make performance reporting less accurate.

• SEO professionals and marketers no longer have the raw data that we once used to measure SEO results.

• We will need to use different KPIs and trending metrics to approximate the data that is now lost.

• Google isn't the only company making "secure search" a priority. Browsers such as IE10, Firefox 14+, and Mobile Safari have put measures in place to mask keyword referral data.

• Yahoo has announced that it will be rolling this out shortly as well.

Finding Keyword Opportunities• Historically, the data from Google Analytics has been an excellent source of

uncovering additional keyword opportunities and long-tail permutations that would drive traffic. Now we have to consider other supporting opportunities:

• Google Keyword Planner (https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home)

• PPC / Paid Search Data (http://www.bing.com/toolbox/keywords)

• Google Related Searches appear at the bottom of the Google SERP as a list of similar and related common search queries

• Google Predictive Search, predicting for the user in their search query terms that are most likely to relate to their keyword, and so many influence the search term selected.

• Google Trends (ww.google.com/trends/)

• You can still get keyword referral data in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools

• Competitive Analysis

• Intuitive Understanding of the Market / User Personas

• Third Party Tools (SEMRush, Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, keywordspy.com, ubersuggest.org, spyfu.com)

There are other tools…Google Analytics is the one of the best online analytics tool and software to track your

website traffic and stats.

There's a myriad of hosted web analytics solutions. Some are free, most are not. A few are priced as a flat, monthly rate while others offer a tiered pricing structure based on number of page views.

Many companies offer analytics software hosted as a service. Some common names in this space include:

• Webtrends

• Adobe (Omniture)

• Mint

• Clicky

• Chartbeat

• StatCounter

• Piwik

• Open Web Analytics

• GoSquared

• Woopra

• Reinvigorate

• Clearwebstats• Mouseflow• Webalizer• LeadLander• Performancing Metrics• OneStats• MyBlogLog• GoStats• Clicktale• Crazyegg• Kissmetrics• SiteMeter• AWStats

Server Side Log File AnalysersBeware of web log file analysers. While they give decent data, the collection methods

are much different. Log analysers give you great information on what happens as visitors connect to your servers. However, actions they take once they receive a page from your site can’t be tracked. This includes interactive content consumption and the URL to where they exit.

From the server we have access to:

• Error logs

• Access logs

A statistical analysis of the server log may be used to examine traffic patterns by time of day, day of week, referrer, or user agent. Efficient web site administration, adequate hosting resources and the fine tuning of sales efforts can be aided by analysis of the web server logs. Marketing departments of any large organisation that owns a website should be trained to understand these powerful tools.

… then there are programs such as Experian Hitwise, Alexa; that provide a look at competitors in specific verticals, based on aggregated data from ISPs.

Getting Started…

Go to: http://www.google.com.au/analytics

How to SignupFirst you would need to create a Google Analytics account. To do this, visit Google

Analytics Signup Page. You will see a screen like the one below. If you already have a gmail account, then use that to sign-in with.

Creating a Google Account

If you do not have a gmail account, then you would have to create an account for yourself, completing the following details:

After signing into Google

In step one; you enter your site information. The fields are pretty self explanatory. You enter your Website’s URL, Account name (it can be anything that you like), country, and the time zone.

Implementing Google AnalyticsGoogle Analytics Requires JavaScript included into the code of your website by your

website designer:

How to install GA codeWhen you add the Google Analytics javascript to your website, you should be aware

that there are two places where you can add the tracking script and each of them has advantages and disadvantages.

In the Header

• Pros - The tracking code is able to track all the visits even if the visitor leaves before all the page gets loaded

• Cons - The script placed before the content may increase the load time of your pages because it is loaded before the content

In the Footer

• Pros - The pages load faster because the content is served before the script and the visitor will not notice any possible delays

• Cons - The script might not track all the visits, if for example someone lands on the website and exits immediately

Google recommends placing the code as the last component in the <head> section before the start of the <body> tag.

How to Install GA in WordPressThere are several ways to install Google analytics in WordPress.

1. Direct paste it in your theme’s header.php right before the closing </head> tag.

2. Add to the functions.php

3. And by far the easiest, install a plugin. (Google Analyticator, Google Analytics for WordPress,… and more!)

The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin allows you to track your websites or blog easily and with lots of metadata.

Using Google Tag ManagerGoogle Tag Manager lets you add or update your website tags and mobile applications,

easily and for free, whenever you want, without having to ask your website developer to add code changes in on each page each time.

Google Tag Manager

Glossary of GA Terms

Glossary of GA TermsThe following is a summary of the more common reporting terminology used through

Google Analytics, that we should understand:

• Visits (total number of visits to your site)– This metric is a count of sessions that have been active on your site for the selected date range.

– If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity is attributed to a new session.

– Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes are counted as part of the original session.

– The initial session by a user during any given date range is considered to be an additional visit and an additional visitor.

• Any future sessions from the same user during the selected time period are counted as additional visits, but not as additional visitors.

• Unique Visitors (total number of unique visitors to your site)– Unique visitors are those that haven’t been previously recorded coming to your site (cookies/device)

– Note carefully the period being compared, daily, weekly, monthly unique’s will be different.

• Pageviews (total number of pages viewed on your site)– A pageview is an instance of a page being loaded by a browser.

– The Pageviews metric is the total number of pages viewed;

• Repeated views of a single page are also counted.

– Google Analytics logs a pageview each time the tracking code is executed on a web page.

GA Glossary continued…• A unique pageview, as seen in the Content Overview report, aggregates

pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. – A unique pageview represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or

more times.

• Pages per Visit (average number of pages viewed per visit)– The Pages/Visit (Average Page Depth) metric displays the average number of pages viewed per visit to

your site.

– Repeated views of a single page are counted in this calculation.

– This metric is useful both as an aggregate total as well as when it is viewed with other dimensions, such as country, visitor type or mobile operating system.

• Average Time on Site (average time on site for each visitor)– The average duration of visits (sessions) to your site for the selected time frame.

– Session time is calculated by adding up time on page for each page in the session except for the last page in the session.

– The average time on site is determined by dividing the total time on site by the number of sessions for the selected time frame.

– Time on site calculations do not include the amount of time that visitors spend on the last page in the session, because there is no way to determine how long the visitor spent on the last page.

GA Glossary continued…• Bounce Rate (Percent of single-page visits)

– The Bounce Rate is the percentage of bounced visits to your site.

– A bounce is calculated as a single-page view or single-event trigger in a session or visit.

– The following situations qualify as bounces:

• A user clicks A link deep into your site sent by A friend, reads the information on the page and closes the browser.

• A user comes to your homepage, looks around for A minute or two and immediately leaves.

• A user comes directly to A reference page on your site from A web search, leaves the page available in the browser while completing other tasks in other browser windows and the session times out.

• New Visitors (Percent of total visitors who visited your site for the first time)– New Visitors — The first time A browser accesses your site, Google Analytics records the visitor as new.

– This is done by checking to see if the _utma cookie for your domain exists on the browser. If it does not, the visit is considered a first-time visit.

– Returning Visitors — Google Analytics records A visitor as Returning when the _utma cookie for your domain exists on the browser accessing your site.

GA Glossary continued…• Demographics: It’s key to understand whether the right consumers are making

it to the site. If only a handful of total website visits come from local consumers, the business needs to evaluate its SEO/SEM approach.

• Engagement: The length of time a visitor stays on a website is an important indication of whether the site is attracting the right type visitor and if it’s set up in an engaging way that keeps the visitor there to learn more.

• Technology (Browser & OS): Comparing metrics across browsers and operating systems informs whether the website is properly optimised on all platforms.

• Mobile: Evaluating performance indicators for those accessing the site through desktop, mobile or tablet is valuable in determining whether the site is properly optimised for each platform.

The components of GA

Advertising & Campaign Performance

Video: 4a. Audience Reports

Video: 4b. Traffic Sources Reports

Video: 4c. Remarketing with Google Analytics Overview

The components of GA

Analysis & Testing

Dashboards• Configure up to 10 ‘widgets’ to build your own Dashboard.

• Create custom Dashboards for different team members in the business

• Complete range of options, table and graph types, and parameters to choose from in customising.

Real-Time Reporting• See what is happening in real-time on your website, where your active users are

located, what sites have driven them to your website, what content they are looking at, and how they are engaging; events and conversions

The components of GA

Audience Characteristics & Behaviour

Universal Analytics

Cross-device & Cross-Platform Measurement

• More than just measuring website stats

• Join data from the website to other data, such as a CRM (consistent user ID key required)

• If the user converts offline, we can join that data to online usage

• Collect transactional data using measurement protocol, and integrate with POS (Point of Sales) systems.

• Tie into Smart Card data, and ticket checking systems

• Measure Mobile App data tied into the user profile

• Import cost data associated with advertising to better calculate ROI

The components of GA

Data Collection & Management

The components of GA

Just for Mobile APPs

The components of GA

Product Integrations

The components of GA

Sales & Conversions

Setting GoalsYou can easily add a goal in order to:

• Measure sales

• Measure lead generation from your website

• Measure product or file downloads

• Measure the number of signups to a newsletter

• Measure visitor loyalty and recency

• Measure who pauses or fast forward on a video

• See who clicks your ads

• How many errors a visitor encounters during the checkout

• How many users visit a specific page on your website

• Measure engagement such as achieving a specific Time on Site

• Now, for each of the above goal types you can assign goal values and this is the most interesting part, because you are able to actually measure in $$$ how well your metrics perform.

The components of GA

Site & APP Performance

In-Page Analytics

Site-Speed Analysis

Google Alerts• Monitor the Web for interesting new content

• Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries.

• Enter a search query you wish to monitor. You will see a preview of the type of results you'll receive. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

– monitoring a developing news story

– keeping current on a competitor or industry

– managing your own company or personal brand reputation

– getting the latest on a celebrity or event

– keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

http://www.google.com.au/alerts

– Another free alert solution is http://www.talkwalker.com/

Accessing Anywhere Anytime

Check out the available apps (free and paid) on your favourite tablet or smartphone.

Google Analytics Premium

Google Analytics Premium offers all the power and ease you expect from the standard version of Google Analytics plus extras that make it perfect for large businesses. With more processing strength for granular insights, a dedicated services and support team, service guarantees and up to 1 billion hits per month, all for one flat USD $150,000 p/a fee.

At a glance:

• Increased hit limit of 1 billion per month provided, tiered pricing available for those with higher needs.

• 50 Custom Variables to measure what matters to you.

• Unsampled Data, analyze custom reports with pinpoint accuracy.

• SLAs: rest assured all your data is being collected at least 99.9% of the time.

• A team of Google experts to guide you, with 24/7 support available for critical issues.

Big Datanothing more than a big buzzword

Big data is the term for a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, transfer, analysis, and visualization. The trend to larger data sets is due to the additional information derivable from analysis of a single large set of related data, as compared to separate smaller sets with the same total amount of data, allowing correlations to be found to "spot business trends, determine quality of research, prevent diseases, link legal citations, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions."

Big data has breathed new life for marketers because more data can mean more and better predictive models.

The real issue I've experienced is that many businesses don't currently use, or know how to use, the data that they are already collecting... or able to collect.

Sir Francis Bacon, an 18th-century founder of the modern scientific method, famously argued that “Knowledge is Power.” In today's world, “Knowledge is Profit”.

Google URL Shortener & Campaign Tracking

• To assist your marketing campaign reporting and tracking of the efforts of links you post and measure the effectiveness of your activities, consider using a consistent URL shortener such as Google’s goo.gl

• Google Analytics Campaign Link Tagging Tool is also very useful to create tagged URLs with campaign and source information that you can then shorten. The results are then measured within Google Analytics to show the effectiveness of different mediums.

Follow-up Questions?After today’s session, you are welcome to tweet questions

to our Vorian Agency Twitter Account @vorianagencyusing the hashtag #voriantraining

https://twitter.com/vorianagency

Keep Connected

After today’s session, I encourage you to explore Google Analytics further for your business. Please feel free to connect with me if you have additional questions:

LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/mattlynchseo

Don’t forget to follow Vorian Agency on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/company/vorian-agency

All of my other Social Media links are available on About.Me:

About.Me: http://about.me/au.mattlynch

Email: matt.lynch@vorian.com.au

Please… invite othersWe would like to thank you for your attendance

to today’s seminar on Google Analytics.

• A link to the Presentation Slide Notes and Video will be emailed to you

• Vorian Agency info packs are provided to showcase our eight key areas

• Vorian staff are available to arrange an appointment to assist your specific needs

• Please provide your feedback and hand-in the supplied questionnaire

• Please invite others you may know to register for our free seminar series and forward them a copy of today’s seminar email.