Using the Data to Improve Your Business

Presented By:

Samantha Russell, Director of Sales & Marketing

Why Use Google Analytics? Google Analytics provides you with a wealth of information about your website’s performance metrics. For Example:

– How much traffic is coming to your website– Where your traffic is coming from– What visitors are doing once they are on the site

• Google Analytics works by tracking ‘tags’, which are a small piece of JavaScript code that need to be installed on your website in order for the software to work properly.

• This data is then collated and shown in a ‘report’ page in the Google Analytics’ admin interface, where you can set up multiple reports for multiple websites within your account.

Using Analytics as part of your Marketing StrategyAnalytics provides us with the data needed to accurately measure the performance of our

websites, and thus focus on the endeavors that actually produce the most results.

For instance: You spend 5 hours each week writing up new blog posts, but after 6 months the number of views on those posts remains at less than 10% of all site visitors. You can now make one of the following changes:

• Try disseminating your posts in different ways: posting to other finance blogs, post to your LinkedIn page, directly emailing)

• Measure the number of hits you get on various blog topics (college savings plans vs. biggest mistakes when choosing auto coverage)

• Stop posting as frequently

Your web strategy should be constantly evolving to optimize traffic returns for the site. This also means you can spend your time wisely.

Measure, Learn, Refine and Repeat!

Getting Started

Create or Use an existing Google Account

• If you have a gmail email account, you already have a Google account

• If not, you can use any email address to create your google account: http://www.google.com/analytics/

Embed Web Tracking code – To complete the process, you

must have access to your website source code, be relatively comfortable with HTML (or have a developer that can help you), and already have a Google Analytics account and property set up.

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008080

The steps you need to take to setup your analytics will vary depending on your web host and how your site is coded. At Twenty Over Ten, we make it easy – you simply pop the tracking number into the provided box.

Homepage View:

Reporting Dashboard & Analytics Academy

Reporting Dashboard - Overview

Finding Your Way around Analytics

Dashboards• Allow you to create custom views of

your data using widgets. Great way to view specific subsets of information that is most important to you

Left Hand Tool Bar - Organized into Sections and sub-sections. Tons of information available, but there are several key sections to pay the most attention to.

• Real-Time

• Audience - WHO

• Acquisition - HOW

• Behavior - WHAT

Real - TimeWant to know who’s on your website right now?

Real-Time data gives you access to that data instantly. You can see current visitor’s pageviews, active pages, locations and more.

Audience

Audience: This tab gives insight into WHO is visiting your website. Subsections to pay attention to:

• Geo: Where are the visitors located

• Behavior:– New vs. Returning

– Frequency & Recency

– Engagement

• Mobile

• Benchmarking – can compare your traffic with others in your industry

To activate: Under the “Admin” tab at the top of the page, choose “account settings, then make sure to check the Data Sharing Box to allow sharing “Anonymously with Google an other sources”

Acquisition

Acquisition: This tab gives insight into HOW users find your website

Overview Section:– Direct – the user types your domain name directly into their

browser. For instance www.twentyoverten.com

– Organic Search – The user conducts a search and your website appears in the search results, which they then click (this does not include google adwords results).

– Referral – The user clicks on a link to your website from another source (blog, other website, email)

– Social – the user clicks through to your site from a social media platform such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

Acquisition

Within Each Section Compare these Metrics:Bounce Rate # of Pages per session

Average Session Duration % New Sessions

User Flow % New Users

Acquisition - Keywords

• Keywords

– Organic Keywords: The words and phrases that have been searched that led to a hit on your website

– Paid Keywords: If you engage in a Pay-Per-Click Ad campaign (such as Google Adwords), these are the keywords that are triggering hits on your site

BehaviorBehavior: This tab gives insight into WHAT users do once they land on your site

Behavior What’s included in Behavior Overview:

• Pageviews—The total number of pages viewed. This number includes repeated views of a single page. In other words, a single person may view the same page several times and each view is counted as a pageview.

• Unique Pageviews—The number of individual people who have viewed a specific page at least once during a visit. For example, if a single user views a page more than once during the same visit, only the original view is counted (whereas general Pageviewscount each visit). The Unique Pageviews metric counts each page URL + Page Title combination.

• Avg. Time on Page—The average amount of time users spend viewing a specific page or screen, or set of pages or screens.

• Bounce Rate—The percentage of single-page visits or the number of visits in which people left your website from the same page they entered on. For example, if you visit a single article or page on a website and then leave, that’s counted as a bounce and is factored into the Bounce Rate.

• % Exit—The percentage of users who exit from a page or set of pages.

Behavior FlowThe behavior flow report lets you see the path visitors commonly take on your website – from the first page they view to the last page they visit before leaving your site. The red represents exits from the website entirely, so you can see which pages most people exit from.

Tracking Metrics

What metrics are important for my website?

It depends. Since I don’t know everything about your business and the goals you have for your website, I can’t list each and every metric you should be tracking (there are over 10,000!). But what we will discuss here are what metrics you can track on your website that can do two things:

1. Give you indications of the effectiveness of you website

2. Give you information you can take action on

Number 1 is useless without number 2. If you can’t (or won’t) take action on your analytics, you may as well not track them at all.

Metrics that Matter

• New vs. Returning Users

• Bounce Rate

• Referrals/Traffic Sources

• Organic Search Traffic

• Avg Session Duration/Avg Page Time

• Mobile

• Location/City

Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/?wide=1

Bounce Rate

What is a good Bounce Rate?.... 40-60% is Good.

But depends on which page, the industry, etc.

For Example: Say your 8th most trafficked page is the “About” page of your website. It receives 459 pageviews, has an average time on page of 1.46 minutes and a bounce rate of 89%.

This bounce rate is acceptable after people make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter, or contact you for more information. But if you are seeing this bounce rate on other types of pages, such as an “About” page, then it’s time to make some changes on that page.

Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/?wide=1

Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/?wide=1

Site Content

Site Content: contains reports about how visitors engage with the pages on your website.

• All Pages - You can use the All Pages report to quickly see your top content. This report helps you determine what content performs best on your website. The All Pages report displays the top pages on your website based on traffic, as well as each page’s pageviews, unique pageviews, average time on page, entrances, bounce rate, % exit and page value.

• Landing Pages – This report lets you see the top pages on your website where visitors enter. Metrics for landing pages include Acquisition (sessions, % new sessions and new users), Behavior (bounce rate, pages per session and average session duration) and Conversions based on your website goals.

• Exit Pages - The Exit Pages report shows the last pages people visit before exiting your website. These are the pages you want to look at to see what you can do to keep visitors on your website longer.

Google Analytics Quick Glossary• Dimensions—A dimension is a descriptive attribute or characteristic of an object that can be given different values. Browser, Exit Page,

Screens and Session Duration are all examples of dimensions that appear by default in Google Analytics.

• Metrics—Metrics are individual elements of a dimension that can be measured as a sum or a ratio. Screenviews, Pages/Session and Average Session Duration are examples of metrics in Google Analytics.

• Sessions—A session is the period of time a user is actively engaged with your website, app, etc., within a date range. All usage data (Screenviews, Events, Ecommerce, etc.) is associated with a session.

• Users—Users who have had at least one session within the selected date range. Includes both new and returning users.

• Pageviews— The total number of pages viewed. This number includes repeated views of a single page. In other words, a single person may view the same page several times and each view is counted as a pageview.

• Unique Pageviews: The number of individual people who have viewed a specific page at least once during a visit. For example, if a single user views a page more than once during the same visit, only the original view is counted (whereas general Pageviews count each visit). The Unique Pageviews metric counts each page URL + Page Title combination

• Pages/Session—Pages/session (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

• Avg. Session Duration—The average length of a session.

• Bounce Rate—The percentage of single-page visits or the number of visits in which people left your website from the same page they entered on. For example, if you visit a single article or page on a website and then leave, that’s counted as a bounce and is factored into the Bounce Rate.

•

• New Sessions—An estimate of the percentage of first-time visits.

• Goals—Goals let you measure how often users take or complete specific actions on your website.

• Conversions—Conversions are the number of times goals have been completed on your website.

• Campaigns—Campaigns (also known as custom campaigns) allow you to add parameters to any URL from your website to collect more information about your referral traffic.

• Acquisition—Acquisition is how you acquire users.

• Behavior—Behavior data helps you improve your content.

Samantha Russell is the Director of Sales and Marketing at Twenty Over Ten, a web development company that creates tailored, mobile-responsive websites for financial advisors and insurance professionals.

With a background in Public Relations, Marketing, and Client Relations, Sam focuses on helping advisors understand the value of their online presence and connecting them with the marketing tools and digital solutions they need to effectively manage their brand.

Samantha RussellDirector of Sales & Marketing, Twenty Over TenE: samantha@twentyoverten.comP: 216.509.9089

www.twentyoverten.com