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Christine Cahoon Fri 18 Jul 2014
On Thursday 16 July, they released an iPhone app for you to view all the reports from your Google Analytics properties... compared to other apps I've used, it's impressive. Download from the Apple app store or:
George Munroe Wed 05 Mar 2014 updated: Thu 02 Oct 2014
Some follow up remarks from the Google Analytics workshop held at the Netskills offices
Firstly, in answering questions raised during the workshop, it's useful to distinguish between the following.
Questions posed during workshop with promise of an answer
It seems that there may only be two options for this and both require some tweaking of the tracking on relevant pages—either construct a series of events that lead to the goal and use the "events flow report" (4 above) to monitor, or track the event as a virtual page (i.e. track a page view when event occurs instead of, or as well as, an event) then that virtual page will be viewable in the "funnel visualization" (5 above) and "goal flow report" (6 above).
In many ways this would be a nonsensical thing to do—visitors cannot be identified and the challenge is to observe what is happening with all visitors and make deductions and decisions accordingly. This is done using the "visitors flow report" (1 above) and variations of it (2 and 3 above).
This is exactly what multichannel funnel conversion paths do (7 above). The conversions attribution comparison tool allows exploration of the relative importances of each source using a variety of comparative reports (8 above).
Comments welcome!
Christine Cahoon Wed 26 Feb 2014 updated: Wed 07 May 2014
This is the one question that faces any Google Analytics user, new or more advanced. With the several dozen reports and variations that you can have where do you start? In answer, I would ask what are you looking for, what are the main objectives of the web site and what do you want to monitor. However, there are several web references that attempt to answer the first question, one is below which it outlines what and why you should be looking at these, such as: Audience location; Audience engagement; Mobile traffic; Traffic sources... does those fit your needs... read on:
http://www.natlawreview.com/article/10-google-analytics-categories-you-should-be-scrutinizing
Christine Cahoon Wed 06 Nov 2013 updated: Thu 02 Oct 2014
Received by email from Sharon Jack, Senior Communications and Impact Officer, UK Data Service, UK Data Archive, University of Essex:
"I attended the Netskills Getting the most from your Google Analytics course on 24 October and you were kind enough to spend a lot of time investigating a problem I was having with Google Analytics not picking up information on our sub-domain websites.
I would just like to say thank you because your suggested solution worked.
Many thanks for a very interesting and informative course."
Christine Cahoon Mon 20 May 2013 updated: Wed 22 May 2013
The best report that shows you how visitors navigate through your web site is the Content -> Visitors Flow report. This report is a graphical representation of the paths visitors took through your site, from the source, through the various pages, and where along their paths they exited your site.
By default, you can see where they came from by Country/Territory. However, there are different dimensions that you can select to compare volumes of traffic from different sources, such as:
The flow diagram shows the dimension they have come from, then the starting pages, first interaction (next page) and second interaction (next after the first page they have visited). Selecting, for example, within the Country/Territory dimension, United Kingdom, a box appears with three options, the first one: Highlight traffic through here - lets you see the visitors flow from this country to the different pages.
Hovering over a green box that contains the path of the starting page where they arrived from the United Kingdom displays the number of Through traffic (those who have continued onto another page) and the number of Drop-offs (those who have left the site).
For more information, see Google's help pages on Visitors Flow report and How to analyze your data with the Visitors Flow.
Christine Cahoon Mon 20 May 2013 updated: Thu 02 Oct 2014
As requested from our last GA workshop, here's the custom segment that you can use on your data to filter out all the not provided searches so you can concentrate on analysing the useful keyword referral data that's displayed in your GA account:
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=cjAJTzH_QiOnY2s1K00ljg
Make sure you are logged into your Google Analytics account, select the link and it will automatically display an alert box requesting that you select the profile you wish to add this segment to. Once added, you can select the segment within Advanced segments and display only the organic searches that show actual keywords within the Traffic Sources -> Search -> Organic reports.
As background... in 2011 Google decided to 'protect' personalized search results by removing the keyword data for those who have found your site through a Google search query while being logged into their gmail or another Google account. Instead the keyword not provided is displayed in these reports.
Also... it's worth looking at Google's Webmaster Tools dashboard. It's not that comprehensive compared to Google Analytics, but in this particular instance, the metrics it gathers does add some value. Specifically, you can see a very basic overview of keywords that lead visitors to your site in the Traffic menu, under Search Queries. Note: remember you (or your webmaster) will need to have set up your site with Webmaster Tools before you see any report.
Christine Cahoon Fri 05 Apr 2013 updated: Wed 29 Oct 2014
You've got your unique Google Analytics tracking code in every page of your web site, success! However, now you've got access to the multitude of reports it's hard to know where to start. Here's a quick look at a few to get you started but there are plenty I could have chosen from. Each screenshot to the right illustrates the report that I've referred to in each heading.
This report lets you monitor visitor activity as it happens on your site. Updated continuously, each pageview is reported seconds after it occurs on your web site. You can see:
You'd want to use Real-Time to:
This report gives you an at-a-glance view of of visitor metrics. You can see visits over the last month (in the line graph), new vs returning visitors (pie chart), and a list of values for each of the following metrics:
In the Audience overview screen shot, it shows metrics for the last month. Although there are only 269 unique visitors on average they stay to read 3.25 pages over 3 minutes 39 seconds. It also attracts 61% new visitors and those returning 39%, so in all, it's got content that people want to read and want to return to.
The Audience reports are designed to provide insight into:
These reports helps you evaluate the effectiveness of your referrals, direct traffic, organic (unpaid) search keywords, and custom campaigns. In the Traffic sources overview screen shot you can see that 39.44% Search Traffic, 23.16% Referral Traffic and 37.40% Direct Traffic.
There are other reports within 'Traffic sources' that you can find more information relating to each type of traffic source. For example, when you select the 'Sources' -> 'Referrals' you can measure how actively the visitors are engaging with your site (and its content) from other sites. The metrics: Pages/Visit, Avg. Visit Duration, % New Visits and Bounce Rate are displayed. You can quickly note which referral site is successful in bringing the right audience that engages with your site.
Within the 'Sources' -> 'Search' reports, keywords that visitors searched are captured in the case of search engine referrals. This is available for both organic and paid (Adwords) search. Although, do note that when SSL search is used e.g. if the user is signed into a Google account, the keyword will have the value (not provided). Something that Google brought in 2011 and which has brought much agitation!
These Search Engine Optimization (SEO) reports provide information about Google web search queries that have returned URL results from your site. These reports are available only when you've added your site and verified it with Webmaster Tools (http://webmaster.google.com/). If you haven't used Webmaster Tools, you will need to login using your Google account and add your site to it to begin collecting search query data for the SEO reports in Analytics.
Once you've verified your web site within Webmaster Tools, all SEO reports are available. In the Search Engine Optimization screen shot you will see the impressions, clicks, average position and click through rate (CTR) of the keywords that have been used to access your web site.
It's worth checking these reports to identify the search queries that drive traffic to your site, you can also learn which keywords make the most sense for your objectives (that you want visitors to achieve on your site). In addition, you can identify how to optimize your website for both content and search quality.
This report lets you make a visual assessment of how users interact with your web pages, and helps you assess:
So that's a start.
If you aren't careful, it's very easy to waste time and get lost in Google Analytics, so it's important that you take the time to go beyond the surface level of the data. Thinking through what you want your visitors to achieve on your web site will help you make the most of Google Analytics. You can then delve in further and study the dimensions and metrics you are looking for within the reports.
Keep in mind that the data is only as valuable as the person interpreting it, be sure you don't take the numbers at face value without figuring out the whole story.
Christine Cahoon Fri 08 Mar 2013 updated: Wed 01 May 2013
Google Analytics documentation is always a bit behind of the latest developments Google have made. So in preparation for our next workshop, I decided to revamp their interface map.
I took a screen shot of an All Traffic report (thanks to Netskills!) to number and added a legend. Used Keynote since we'll be using it next week with a few transitions to present the interface easily. Converted it to PDF for easier distribution. If you notice any mistakes or omissions, let me know. Thanks.
Christine Cahoon Wed 16 Jan 2013 updated: Tue 21 May 2013
It always confused me how Google Analytics presented its reports. There was a Home button but when you first logged in you would automatically be in the 'Standard Reporting' section.
Today there's been a couple of changes which makes a little more sense when viewing your statistics. Below are the changes I've noticed:
Any more anyone has noticed? Hopefully there will be more intuitive improvements throughout 2013.
A good summary is available at: Dan Baker's blog, Nine Google Analytics Changes
Christine Cahoon Mon 14 Jan 2013
This infographic from Simply Business is geared for small businesses but it still serves as a checklist to ensure that you can learn how to get to that meaningful data. This easy to follow guide will take you through the set-up process and help you understand how your website's performing.
Christine Cahoon Wed 28 Nov 2012 updated: Sat 23 Feb 2013
A common question we get asked during the workshops is what can we do with the 'not provided' values within Google Analytics. About a year ago, Google introduced SSL encryption for search queries completed by logged in Google users. This encryption means that a lot of valuable data has gone missing from Google Analytics and replaced with '(not provided)'. Frustrating!
Econsultancy found a Google Analytics hack that will enable you to gain some insight where these users are have come from. Basically by applying a filter (see screenshot) to a profile (worth creating a new profile to keep all data intact), you can tell Google Analytics, to do three things:
- whenever a search term that matches '
- display the address of the page reached where '(not provided)' was the referring search term
- discard the original '(not provided)' search term, and replace it with 'np -' followed by the landing page address.
Once applied, test the filter by going to: https://www.google.com (if it redirects you to google.co.uk or another international site, you'll need to click the 'Go to Google.com' link at the bottom right of the page). Make sure your browser address bar contains 'https://'. Search for something you know you rank for. Select the link through from Google to your site. Then have a look at the 'Real-time' Overview reports and you will see the results displayed with more information than otherwise possible.
Full explanation available from Econsultancy blog.
And another article on 'Not provided' that may be of interest.
Christine Cahoon Thu 20 Sep 2012
One of the Netskills Google Analytics workshop attendees, Hendrik van der Sluis from Kingston, has compiled a series of blog posts that outlines the configuration of a Google Analytics account with ELGG for the purpose of obtaining information on Learning and Academic Analytics. In his blog he covers:
- Configuration of the ELGG Google Analytics plugin
- Tracking site search on ELGG
- Different relevant profiles to track specific user behaviour
- Setting Goals to track specific user behaviour
- Relevant reports and dashboards
- Useful custom reports for ELGG about
If you want to know more, go to his blog post at: Technicalities related to learning and academic analytics in an educational context.
ELGG is a social media hub that comes with a range of tools that enable you to connect, share and collaborate both within an organization and externally. Its features include profiles, activity streams, blogging, bookmarking. Kingston University is one of the UK universities who use it.
Christine Cahoon Thu 12 Jul 2012 updated: Wed 29 Oct 2014
A common question during the workshops is how do we track outbound links, those links that go outside your web site.
What you need to do is add some custom JavaScript that uses the _trackEvent method to record these links and then modify the links you want to track.
First, within the tracking code, you need to delay the outbound click by a fraction of a second. This provides the browser more time load the tracking code. Without this method, it's possible that a user can click on the outbound link before the tracking code loads, in which case the event will not be recorded. This additional code in the
part should look like:function recordOutboundLink (link, category, action) {
try {
var myTracker=_gat._getTrackerByName ();
_gaq.push (['myTracker._trackEvent', category , action ]);
setTimeout ('document.location = "' + link.href + '"', 100)
} catch (err) {}
}
Next, you need to revise outbound links to call the new function without first following the link. For an example, log every click on a particular link to www.example.com, you would use the _trackEvent() method in the link's tag, such as:
The example above uses the category label 'Outbound Links'. This is a useful way to categorize all outbound links in the Event Tracking reports. It sets the specific name of the website as the second parameter in the call. With this structure in place, you could then see Outbound Links as one of the event categories and drill down to see which particular outbound links are the most popular. Be sure to use return false for the onClick handler, because without that statement the browser will follow the link before the recordOutboundLink method has a chance to execute.
For a fuller explanation, see in Google's help centre: Setting Up Tracking for Outbound Links.
Christine Cahoon Fri 06 Jul 2012 updated: Thu 12 Jul 2012
GA doesn't track file downloads automatically. Google recommends adding an 'onClick' event to each anchor tag you use for file downloads. This can be a bit tedious. But there is a download tracking script called 'entourage.js' that automatically tracks the links for you. By loading the entourage.js JavaScript code at the start of the page, all document links will have such tracking added automatically so that the downloads appear in the usual 'Content' reports of Google Analytics.
More information and download of Entourage is available on Tech Octave web site.
Christine Cahoon Wed 13 Jun 2012
You can't actually delete a goal. All you can do is make it 'inactive'. However, this isn't very satisfactory since you can only set 20 goals within a profile (4 sets of 5). Justin Crutoni, Google's Analytics Advocate give this advice in his book 'Performance Marketing':
Set up two additional profiles, 'Raw' and 'Test':
-- Raw, this is a backup so you never add filters or goals to this profile;
-- Test, use this profile to experiment and test new things including goals.
Adding these two profiles reduces the need to delete a goal because you've tested it and seen the results. Once you're happy with them, you can create the goal in your main profile.
Christine Cahoon Tue 05 Jun 2012
Data for a report is sampled if it is based on more than 500K visits. When you view a sampled report, for example, when you have used Advanced Segments to analyse different types of traffic, you have the option to adjust the sampling size in order to increase accuracy and affect how quickly the report loads.
The sampling icon appears at the right end of the menu bar below the dates that the data is captured.
When you select the icon a box appears with a slider. Faster Processing part of the slider offers the highest sampling level where the lowest number of visits is used in calculation. The Higher Precision part of the slider offers the highest number visits available for this report after sampling.
Adjust the slider depending on what you want. Once you release the slider, the report data is automatically refreshed with the new sample. This setting is remembered across all reports until you close GA.
Christine Cahoon Mon 04 Jun 2012 updated: Tue 05 Jun 2012
If you've set up a dashboard, you can export that same setup so that others can use it with their data. Justin Cutroni, an Analytics Advocate, has written in his blog about creating a Social Media dashboard for GA. Within the blog, he explains each report he has displayed in the dashboard. He has also made this dashboard available to download so you can import it into your GA account and customise it for yourself.
The dashboard is divided into three sections: off-site activity, on-site activity and conversions/outcomes to make it easy for you to evaluate user activity throughout the conversion process. Worth having a look!
Christine Cahoon Wed 30 May 2012 updated: Thu 31 May 2012
During a Q&A session on Monday's GA workshop we discussed how visits can be monitored in real time especially during the day of a conference to see the extent of interest in a particular workshop or talk. However, setting today's date (or the time period we are most interested in) using Standard reporting will also let us see the latest traffic from any social network site. See: Traffic Sources -> Social.
One of the most useful reports is found in the subcategory Pages. Under the report tab Social Referral (selected by default) we find pages that people are sharing. Under the report tab Activity Stream there are two options: Conversations and Events. These show the social networks that visitors to your site are using.
Conversations displays activity, such as people marking a page as a favourite in delicious or discussing the page in Google+. Events shows activity such as pages that people bookmark in delicious, or indicates the page that links to a particular source (called a trackback). Hovering over the right arrow of any item listed shows options for getting further information about that page. The options include: Page Analytics, View Page, View Activity and an additional option for a Google+ event View Ripple to see the effect of that event.
For more information, see the Google Analytics blog posts on social reports or tracking links to your site content.