Welcome to our free Google Analytics tutorial. This tutorial is based on Webucator's Introduction to Google Analytics Training course.
This lesson gives you an overview of web analytics, while beginning to show some of the benefits Google Analytics can offer to your company's website.
Here are the basic definitions of analytics to get us started with the course.
Web metrics are measurable parameters which reflect different activities occurring on your website. Some examples:
Clickstream refers to the data that occurs inside the web environment, which may include a record of the user's browsing patterns.
Web Analytics is the objective tracking, collection, measurement, reporting and analysis of quantitative web metrics data to optimize websites and web marketing initiatives.
We weren't able to find the original quote on the WAA's site, but we agree with the definition.
Just after the birth of the Internet, IT technicians started maintaining server logs. The server log files store information about parameters such as:
People began developing scripts to extract relevant data from the server log files in order to compile useful information. In this way, web analytics came to life.
The success of your website is largely dependent on the overall user experience of your visitors. Here are some of the important drivers for using web analytics:
Note: Unlike web reporting, web analytics is actionable. Web analytics helps in making informed decisions about changing your online strategy.
Web analytics is an art and a science. Here is a structured approach for incorporating web analytics into your business:
Successful implementation of web analytics can drive your bottom line; however, it requires organization-wide buy-in.
We will discuss each step listed above during our classroom session. (See if you can find a case study of a successful implementation involving collaboration from business, marketing, and IT departments.)
|Session||A period of interaction between a visitor's browser and a particular web server.|
|Visits||A count of all the sessions during a given period of time.|
|Visitor||A logical construct designed to measure actual people who visited a website. Generally achieved with the help of cookies.|
|Cookies||Text files which are stored on your hard drive by some websites to capture information about you or your computer. Types of cookies include first party cookies, third party cookies, persistent cookies, and temporary cookies. All cookies are browser-specific.|
|Unique Visitor||A count of all the unique visitor IDs during a given time period.|
|Page||Any web document delivered by the webserver. (Files such as .jpg or .gif are generally not considered to be pages.)|
|Pageviews||Number of pages requested during a visitor's session which are tagged by Google Analytics code.|
|Unique Pageviews||The number of visits during which a page was viewed--whether one or more times.|
|Conversion||A conversion is recorded when a visitor reaches a desired page within the website.|
|Bounce Rate||Percentage of single-page visits during which a visitor left your website from the landing page.|
|Recency||Number of days that have passed between each visit.|
|Loyalty||How often visitors return to your site.|
|Stickiness||Amount of time spent on a single web page.|
KPIs tie business objectives with web metrics.
KPI is always a ratio, a percentage, or an average bounded by time.
|Site Type||Business Objective||Suggested KPIs to Monitor|
|E-Commerce website||To increase online sales||Average order value, percentage of visits that add to the shopping cart (begin shopping), percentage of visits that abandon the shopping cart, revenue generated per product.|
|Content website||Increase visitors' engagement on the website||Percentage of visitors who left a comment, average time on the site per visit, average page depth per visit, average page views per visit.|
|Lead generation website||To obtain a potential sales lead||Percentage of visits which complete a 'Contact Us' form, percentage of visits which abandoned the registration process, bounce rate.|
|Branding website||To increase brand awareness||Direct traffic vs. referred traffic, percentage of repeat visitors, keyword analysis.|
Search engines rely on complex ranking algorithms to decide the search result rank of any website. This process is dynamic and rankings are continuously updated.
Search engines also use "spiders" or "web crawlers" to gather information about your site and bring it back to be analyzed by a powerful central engine.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to a diverse set of activities that you can perform to increase the number of desirable visitors who come to your website via search engines.
Google Analytics Case Study Review: In this exercise we will review a case study to understand how other businesses have benefited by incorporating Google Analytics. Please review the case study at the following link: http://www.google.com/analytics/case_study_wnyc.html.
Note: Reference case studies on Google Analytics can be found at: http://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/customers.html. In the following presentation, we will also discuss a case study on Best Buy.
If you were responsible for the following websites, what KPIs would you develop and which metrics would you use to measure them? List at least three KPIs for each of the websites listed below.
|Site Name||Site Type||Possible KPIs|
|BestBuy||E-Commerce website||Average conversion rate, average order size, items per order, percentage revenue from new visitors.|
|The Wall Street Journal||Content website||Visitor's engagement with each page (depth and length of the visit), page views per visit, new vs. repeat visitors, recency.|
|Webucator||Lead generation website + E-Commerce||Percentage of people who submitted the contact form, percentage of people who registered for course, percentage of visitors who watched the presentation.|
|Panera Bread||Branding website||Percentage of visits by medium type, percentage of repeat visitors.|