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Analytics Tune Up!

Insights and methods to achieve a manageable approach to Google Analytics

Museums and the Web 2016

Brian Alpert & Elena Villaespesa

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Our Workshop Today

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• Analytics process• GA Basics• Culture of Analytics• Dashboards• Exercise!• Break (30 mins - 10:30-11am)• New-ish features• Automation• Migrating to Universal Analytics• Google Tag Manager• Q&A

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Usage of Google Analytics

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Google Analytics features

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Web analytics is often about:

“So What?”

Getty Images

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What web analytics is really about:

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Your goal: use data to tell a story

What was happening. What it meant. What you did. What’s happening now.

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forbes.com

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There is a systematic, step-by-step process

Articulate your program’s goals. Decide strategies to achieve

those goals. Decide tactics to pursue the

strategies. Decide what and how to measure

to validate the tactics. Benchmark to get a sense of

what’s normal.

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homedit.com

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Articulate specific goals Express what you’re trying to

accomplish. Make high-level goals more

specific: “Increase influence” - too broad. “Become the definitive source on

Smithsonian history” - more specific.

Specificity makes it easier to identify strategies and tactics.

Not too many!

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It’s a Wonderful Life

Start the conversation! Articulate goals & next steps on your own; work with management to finalize.

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Determine strategies & tactics Strategies – the plans you make to achieve the goals.

Employing social media is a strategy. Tactics – the things you do to advance the strategy.

Producing a specific type of content is a tactic. Individual channels (facebook, twitter) are tactics.

Per the example: Goal: “Become the definitive source on Smithsonian history.” Strategy: Increase engagement with history of the Smithsonian

content. Tactic: Make SI-history content more findable and measureable.

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Decide how to measure your tactics Choose measurements to learn

if your tactics are succeeding. Choose a few measurements. Trend them over time.

Per the example: Strategy: increase engagement with

SI history website content. Tactic: make website history

content more findable / measureable.

Make a “history-content” segment and measure for engagement:

Visit frequency Visit depth Bounce rate

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History-related visits

All visits

“Deep history visits” were 94% higher!

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You can’t set targets w/o benchmarks

You need at least six months of data. Data is seasonal.

Depends on your traffic.

Balance targets with factors beyond your control: Are the improvements you’re

seeking difficult to achieve?

How much resources will you have to implement tactics?

Drinks Enthusiast

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Keep it simple!

Don’t do too much! Minimize the number of

measurements. If they turn-out to be

inconclusive, change up. It’s an ongoing process!

arvinddevalia.com

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Army Times

GOOGLE ANALYTICS Basics

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GA Basics

The most basic thing A couple traps to avoid GA in your world

Army Times

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Dimensions describe the data, or an attribute of the user (“what”):

Traffic source City Page

Metrics measure the data (“how many”, “how long”):

Sessions Bounce rate Time on page

Lunametrics Optimizesmart Dimensions & Metrics

Explorer (Google)

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Optimizesmart

Dimensions Metrics

GA’s familiar color-coding helps you keep track of Dimensions and Metrics.

The most basic thingDimensions and Metrics

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Trap-to-avoid #1“What is the Conversion Rate for that page?”

Dimensions and Metrics should be matched.

Mismatching of hit- and session-level metrics and dimensions is becoming more commonplace.

It’s possible (esp. in custom reports) to combine data in ways that look reasonable…

…but are not.

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Google Analytics Academy

Align Hits, Sessions, Metrics, Dimensions! (Avinash Kaushik) Hits, Sessions & Users: Understanding Digital Analytics

Data (Cutroni) Difference between Entrances and Sessions (Google) Online-behavior.com Webanalyticsworld.net Dimensions and Metrics Explorer (Google)

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Create a view that has no filtering of any kind.

Leave it alone – it is protection against unintended consequences.

GA filters are powerful, but irrevocable – if your data is hosed by a bad or misapplied filter you are out of luck.

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Marquette Educator

An add’l ‘playground’ view is a good idea too, to test those new filters (and anything else)

Trap-to-avoid #2You need an unfiltered backup view

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Improve your program? Yes! Good for you!

Satisfy your boss with monthly Big Numbers? Sure. It is what it is.

Validate (or not) something you’ve already done. Um, maybe.

Wikipedia

GA in your worldHow can Google Analytics HELP?

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Under Audience >> Behavior Frequency Recency Page Depth (“Engagement”) “New vs. Returning” (e-nor post)

Use with advanced segments. Traffic from search Traffic from mobile

Do not solely rely on ‘time on site’ (“Engagement”) or ‘time on page.’ Due to technical issues Kaushik: “unworthy” metrics

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Improve your program!Metrics as proxies for user engagement

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Improve your program!Segmentation: GA’s most powerful feature?

Analyze subsets of traffic. Search engine visits Social media visits Demographics

Import expert-made segments from the “Gallery”!

Google Blog Kissmetrics Overview Examples (Cutroni) Examples (Kaushik)

Segments are accessed from this pull-down arrow.

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Create your own reports. Import expert-made

custom reports from the “Gallery”!

Reports can be scheduled for delivery via email.

Create and manage Custom Reports (Google)

12 Awesome Custom Reports Created by the Experts (Kissmetrics)

3 Awesome, Downloadable, Custom Web Analytics Reports (Kaushik)

5 Google Analytics Custom Reports FTW! (Kaushik)

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Create and access Custom Reports from the ‘Customization’ tab.

Improve your program!Custom Reports can save you time & effort

Careful! Custom Reports make it easier to mismatch dimensions and metrics!

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A conversion is any measureable behavior with an implicitly (or explicitly) higher value.

You learn more by studying conversion rates. Typical conversion goals:

Destination (ex: thanks.html)

Duration (ex: 5 minutes or more)

Pages/Screens per session (ex: 3 pages)

Event (download PDF, play video)

REQUIRES CODE

Even if you’re not selling stuff, you should add a “value” to an Event and a completed goal.

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Kaushik: re goals and goal value: “If we don't have those two we are not really doing analytics, we are wasting Earth's oxygen supply.”

Improve your program!Deeper understanding with Conversion Goals

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More sophisticated Goals typically involve creating “Events”: External links Sign-ups, form submissions Downloads Many types of conversion goals

To use Events: Define and categorize your events. Configure and add the javascript code, usually right in the link (not always). Many social-share widgets automatically add Events. Google Analytics Event Organizer (Michelle Herman) The Complete Google Analytics Event Tracking Guide Plus 10 Amazing Exa

mples (old code, good examples)

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Improve your program!‘Event Tracking’ is super-important

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No actionable data Sessions (previously Visits) Users (previously Visitors) Pages (a.k.a. Pageviews)

Establish scope / context. Measure growth / acquisition. You can’t improve your site by

measuring these. Reporting them out of context can be

misleading.

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Satisfy your boss!The inevitability of “Quantity of Stuff”

Source: Occam's Razor

“All data in aggregate is crap.”

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AAA wanted to make their content more accessible to younger students.

They worked with Wikipedia to expand their offerings.

We compared segments of Wikipedia visitors to other visitors.

Wiki-referred visitors were increasingly less likely to (need to) visit the AAA site many times.

This contrasts with the stable trend of all visits.

All visits, high frequency

Wikipedia visits, high frequency

Validation!Archives of American Art Wikipedia Case Study

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Here is the bottom line! Your measurements validate your

tactics (or not). To work the process and improve

your site, you need meaningful data: Engagement metrics Segments Goal completion / Conversion rates A-B tests Qualitative data (surveys)

If your goal is purely audience acquisition, you can use “quantity-of-stuff” metrics to tell your story.

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NY Daily News

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Analytics culture

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Dashboard and data visualization tools• Data wrapper • Google charts• Raw• Picktochart• Canva• Infogram• Venngage• Easelly• Google Analytics apps • Tableau• Ducksboard• Geckoboard• Chartio• Dash This• Silk • Power BI

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Embedding evaluation in the digital production processes

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Digital Analytics Dashboard

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Building a dashboard

• Selection of metrics• Type of dashboard: strategic, tactical, operational• Automation and update process• Share options (internal / external dashboard) • Frequency of updates (real time, weekly, monthly, snapshot of the

year) • Data sources (Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics,

Surveys…)• API available?• Type of widgets (number, graphs, text, real time feed, embeds…)• User interface • Design and brand

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Dashboard examples in museums

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Smithsonian Dashboard

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Google Analytics dashboards

Examples: Overview, Ecommerce, Mobile, Social Media, SEO, PPC, Content, Online Collection, Real Time dashboard

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Views (profiles) - Filtering your traffic

- Main profile- Main profile showing full URLs (useful for microsites,

subdomains) - Specific website section (e.g. Online Collection, Blog,

Visit, microsite…)- Users using your website at the museum (filter via IP

address of the Wi-Fi)- Mobile, Tablet, Desktop traffic- SEO (filter organic traffic only)

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How to create a GA dashboard

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Adding widgets

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Adding widgets from the GA reports

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Google Analytics Solutions Gallery

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Exercise: Create your own dashboard

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Share your dashboard

Share the template or give access to the whole team > Shared dashboards

Schedule emails to send the dashboard in PDF format

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Coffee Break – 30 Minutes

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New(ish), Game-Changing Features

Source: Keith Srakocic, AP

Virginiasports.com

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Demographics and Interests Reports Demographics

Age (traffic by age ranges) Gender (traffic by gender)

Interests – behavior by Affinity Categories In-Market Categories Other Categories

No PII is tracked! You have to add a line of code to your pages You have to modify your privacy policy

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2799357

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Insights from Demographics and Interests Reports Cyclic Defrost is an online magazine that covers independent electronic music,

avant-rock, experimental sound art, leftfield hip hop and everything in between. The largest visitor segment is 25-34 year-olds. But… older visitors (45-54) engage the content at a higher rate.

Avg. Visit DurationVisits

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Benchmarking Reports!

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Compare your site to others in the same category (or across categories).

Compare by: Channels (traffic sources) Location Devices

How to find it: Search box, or: Audience Benchmarking Use top left pull-down; click ‘Reference’ Scroll down to ‘Libraries & Museums’

Benchmarking Reports (Google)

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User segments are a big step forward

“A user is the tool’s best-guess of an anonymous person.”

User segments represent all data associated with a user.

I.E., all session data the user generated during the timeframe.

Built-in segments: Single-visit users Multi-visit users

Create your own: "Users in Massachusetts who spent > $100." User segment: facebook

mobile users who stayed >30 seconds.

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There are various types of User Segments

Under Demographics Traffic Sources Ecommerce Conditions Sequences

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Google’s “Analytics Academy” Free video-based courses

Digital Analytics Fundamentals

Google Analytics Platform Principles

Ecommerce Analytics: From Data to Decisions

Mobile App Analytics Fundamentals

Google Tag Manager Fundamentals

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analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com

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Boston Dynamics

Automation

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Supermetrics Commercial Excel add-on. Easy-to-use and customize. Exceptional charting capabilities. Schedule reports to run

automatically. 14 days free. $348 per year. Limited documentation and

support. Free version for Google

Sheets now available.http://supermetrics.com

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Supermetrics Custom Dashboard The two spreadsheets work

together. ‘Engagement’ oriented metrics

Visit Frequency Visit Length Visit Depth New vs. Returning Visits Bounce Rate Conversion Rate Search Engines

A foundation to make data actionable “Key Trends and Insights” “Impact on Site/Museum” “Steps Being Taken”

The easily updated, trended data is what makes the dashboard powerful.

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All Visits data tells a nice story...

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Minimal frequency group (purple) downward trend indicates improving content engagement

High frequency group (blue) upward trend indicates same

Impact of this Data on the Site or Program• This good-looking chart may indicate high content engagement and/or perceived value • This data may correlate to increasing conversion behaviors

Acting on this Data• Identify moderate and high loyalty pages as a means of duplicating, or improving others • Examining conversion behaviors of these segments may yield add'l insights • Correlating high bounce rate pages to one-time visits may yield add'l insights• Test different content types in an attempt to move 'minimal' visitors into 'moderate' group

Key Trends and Insights

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This Impact of this Data on the Site or Program• Organic search listings are driving poorly-targeted traffic• Will result in decreased organic search performance over time

Acting on this Data• Refocus title tags, meta-description tags and page content for important pages• Perform link analysis to see where other SEO improvements can be made

Minimal frequency group upward trend indicates organic listings are not appropriately targeted

Moderate frequency group downward trend indicates same

High frequency group trending slightly downward, in contrast to previous chart’s upward slope

Key Trends and Insights

…But applying segmentation tells a different story

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Google Sheets Spreadsheet Add-on Create (simple) dashboards

and visualizations. Being well-versed in Google

Sheets’ data manipulation features helps a lot.

Schedule reports to run automatically.

Embed visualizations on websites with automatic refresh!

Introductory video ‘Building a Dashboard’ video Google Group

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Google Sheets spreadsheet add-on

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Analytics Edge Excel Add-on Wizard-driven interface is clean

and (relatively) intuitive. Auto-refresh and schedule reports. Import data from text files,

worksheets or other workbooks Support via online community. Free and paid versions:

Free Social Shares connector. More features - $6/month. Optional connectors - $4/month.

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http://www.analyticsedge.com

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Resources Google Analytics Academy Google Analytics Blog Absolute Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics (moz.com) Avinash Kaushik’s “Occam’s Razor” Analytics Talk (Justin Cutroni) Cardinal Path Training Kissmetrics Lunametrics blog Lunametrics Training Universal Analytics Upgrade Guide Supermetrics Data Grabber Automate Analytics (Supermetrics) Google Group Analytics Edge Discover the Google Analytics Platform (advanced tools)

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Universal Analytics

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Universal Analytics

• Universal Analytics is the latest version of Google Analytics. It replaces the asynchronous version (classic analytics)

• New features are only being developed for the new version (Enhanced ecommerce, integrations of offline transactions, users tracking across devices, new options for custom dimensions…)

• Google will disconnect the classic analytics but the date has not been announced yet.

• To upgrade:– Recommendation: use Google Tag Manager and run both codes in

parallel – Change the GA code– Update ecommerce, event tracking

Universal Analytics upgrade centerhttps://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/#upgrade-guides

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Google Tag Manager usage

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Google Tag Manager

• Tags: Google Analytics, third party tags, custom html tags

• Trigger: when and where to activate the tag (e.g. PDF download, purchase a product, share on social media)

• Variables: information obtained from the web page (e.g. URL, PDF clicked, element clicked, page shared…)

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Google Tag Manager - New Tag

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Google Tag Manager - Tracking downloads (tag)

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Google Tag Manager - Tracking downloads (trigger)

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Google Tag Manager - Debugging tool

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Google Tag Assistant

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Google Tag Assistant Recordings

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Omnibug: web metrics debugging tool

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LunaMetrics - GTM recipes

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Questions?

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Filter-out internal-traffic If you want to exclude visitors surfing from within your network Account >> Admin >> View >> Filters >> +New Filter >> External Traffic Only

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Use the ‘Campaign URL Builder’ For more granular data about

specific Campaigns: Email Campaigns Social Media Banners Anything that uses a URL-based click-to

format Like Events, the work is up front, in

the categorization: Campaign Source

(referrer: google, citysearch, newsletter4)

Campaign Medium (marketing medium: cpc, banner,

email) Campaign Term

(identify the paid keywords) Campaign Content

(use to differentiate ads) Campaign Name

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URL Builder (Google)How To Use UTM Parameters (Kissmetrics)

URL Builder for GA (Raventools)

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Thanks! @balpert @elenustika