Cut Through the Fog: How to Act on Your Institution's Website Data

11/27/2012

Brian AlpertWeb Analytics and SEM Analyst

Smithsonian Institution

2

What web analytics is often about

3

Web analytics is often about:

“So What?”

Getty Images

4

What do you mean, “So what”?

• The typical proxy for website success is quantity of stuff.– Aggregated “big numbers”– Pageviews / visits / visitors

• Aggregated data doesn’t indicate success.– It doesn't reflect a website’s efficiency or quality.– It doesn't reflect a website user’s experience.– It doesn't help us understand how to improve the website.

• We can’t act on this data.• “All data in aggregate is crap.”

– Google “Analytics Evangelist” Avinash Kaushik

5

What web analytics is really about:

Furthering Program Goals

Reuters: Toru Hanai

6

Articulating your goals is the hard part

Sometimes your institutional goals: Aren’t precisely articulated. Aren’t articulated at all (!) Are too broad to meaningfully measure.

“An institution for the increase and diffusion of

knowledge." -- James Smithson Source: Smithsonian Institution Archives

7

Your goal: storyteller Use data to tell a story. Management loves stories. The “So what?” factor melts away

because it makes sense: What was happening. What it meant. What you did. What’s happening now.

Source: http://www.squidoo.com

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: Benchmark to get a sense of what’s normal. The process isn’t “one size fits all”!

Interpretation and consensus-building are important .

8

Start by articulating specific goals Not too many! Express what your institution is trying to accomplish. Distill high-level goals into more specific sub-goals:

“Increase influence” >> “Become the definitive source on Smithsonian history.”

Making the broad goal specific makes it easier to identify strategies and tactics.

By being specific, strategies can emerge. Articulate goals & next steps on your own.

What do you think they are?

Work with management to redefine and finalize.

9

10

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

Marketing, social media are strategic pursuits.

Tactics – the things you do to advance the strategy. Advertising, search engine optimization (SEO) are tactics.

Per the example: Goal: “Become the definitive source on Smithsonian history.” Strategy: search engine performance. Rationale: search engines have sophisticated algorithms that

determine which websites are highly relevant, or, "authoritative.“ Tactic: SEO. Search metrics become proxies for authority.

11

Decide how to measure your tactics Choose a few measurements. Trend them over time. Per the example:

Measure: segment history-specific content in GA Directories (site.edu/history) Dedicated content (site.edu/historyblog) Google Analytics custom variables.

Apply SEO metrics to that content: Number of keywords referred per month. Number of history pages drawing visits from search engines.

12

You can’t set targets w/o benchmarks Set targets and timeframes based on benchmarks. You need at least six months of data.

Data fluctuates; is often seasonal.

Six months is just an opinion.

It also depends on how much traffic your site gets.

Peer data is valuable, but hard to come by.

Balance your targets with factors beyond your control: Are the improvements you’re seeking known to be difficult to achieve?

What is the current status of your program (i.e., brand new, mature)?

How much resources will you have to devote to implementing tactics?

13

Keep it simple

Don’t do too much. Once you’ve selected your strategies

and tactics, minimize the number of measurements.

If they turn-out to be inconclusive, refine or change them!

It’s an ongoing process.

Source: Matt Groening

14

Connecting all that to Google Analytics You’ve made progress:

Your goals/strategies/tactics are set. Your measurements are chosen.

You want to use GA data to understand: What’s happening. How it impacts your program. What you can do.

Google Analytics Custom Dashboard Enables segmentation and trending. Datapoints mostly relate to ‘engagement.’

GA Data Grabber Flexible, Excel-based GA automation tool. Enables you to see trends better than in the GA U-I.

15

GADG Custom Dashboard ‘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.

Dashboard pages are designed:1) To help orient you toward action2) To communicate with management

16

Summary defines and puts the metric in context

Chart shows segmented data tracked and trended over time.

Suggestions for Possible Additional Segments.

Red/Yellow/Greenstatus marker shows at-a-glance each metric’s status.

‘Action’ section answers the question “So what?”• Key Trends and

Insights• Impact on Website /

Unit• Steps Being Taken

Profile data pulls automatically from GADG; shows metrics at-a-glance.

GADG Instructions; show how to create the reports from scratch.

17

GA Data Grabber (GADG) Extracts data from the

Google Analytics API. Easy-to-use and customize. Exceptional charting

capabilities. 14 days free. $300 per year. Limited documentation and

support. Excel for Windows

2003/2007/2010/2011. Excel 2011 for Mac (slow!)

http://gadatagrabbertool.com

18

Case Studies: Interpreting the Dashboard

All Visits data tells a nice story...

19

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

High loyalty group (blue) upward trend indicates same

This 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

20

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

Smithsonian Archives (SIA)High Depth visits of all content average is 1.21%

Smithsonian Archives (SIA) - High Depth visits of history content average is 2.35% - 94% higher!

Additional Information in the Downloadable Presentation:

Additional Case StudiesHow to Use GA Data Grabber

More About the DashboardUseful GA Practices

Useful Links

23

Thanks!

24

Brian AlpertSmithsonian Institutionalpertb@si.edu202-633-3955

25

Additional Case Studies

26

Wikipedia Case Study One Smithsonian unit worked closely with Wikipedia, incorporating a

range of their content within the online encyclopedia. The purpose was to make their content more accessible for younger

students, those less sophisticated than the academics and professional researchers who comprise one of the site’s core audience segments.

The hypothesis was that by doing so, this group would have their needs met more quickly and easily, without having to navigate the Smithsonian website’s more advanced, research-oriented structure.

The data (shown on the following slides) shows that the needs of the group referred from Wikipedia – a likely starting point for younger students – were largely being met by the content posted on Wikipedia.

They were increasingly less likely to need to visit the Smithsonian site many times.

This is in contrast to the relatively stable trend of the overall population of visitors shown on the next slide.

Visit Frequency, All Visits (2012)

Visit Frequency from Wikipedia (2012)

Is the trend statistically significant?

• Control Limits Definition• Avinash’s blog post• ‘Instant Cognition

’ (Clint Ivy) blog post

Four of thirteen datapoints are outside of the upper and lower control limit ranges, 30% of the data. Is that enough to say yes, that’s a statistically significant trend? The answer is subjective, but arguably so.

Conversion Rate (Ask Us) from Wikipedia

31

Hands-On Practice with Custom GADG

32

Customized GA Data Grabber Ten custom reports that

work with the Dashboard Do not rename

GADataGrabber.xlsm ! ‘Querystorage’ is unhidden

Change date ranges Change profile #'s Change advanced segments Make changes by hand Do not change cell

formatting.The ‘querystorage’ tab is the key to editing the dashboard’s GADG reports.

The two files that work together are: GaDataGrabber.xlsx (don’t

rename this one)

GADG_Custom_Dashboard_template.xlsx

Save the files Don’t open from an email

From Dropbox, use Save As

Store both spreadsheets in the same directory.

Find and select your profile.

Note the Profile ID number on the right.

33

Getting StartedClick here to synch with GA.

New GADG Reports are programmed here.

The ‘REFRESH ALL REPORTS’ button runs the custom dashboard reports.

Clicking ‘RUN THE REPORT’ does not refresh the dashboard – it adds new reports to GADG.

Profile ID Numbers.

Your GA Profiles.

34

Run your dashboards! Login to GA. Open and login to GaDataGrabber.xlsx Make sure macros are enabled. Customize ‘querystorage’ with your profile number – row 67. Refresh all reports. Open GADG_Custom_Dashboard_template.xlsx Data should be updated in the dashboard. Let’s look at some examples. Select the first profile ID cell

(C67), then click at the top of the spreadsheet. Edit-in your profile ID by hand.

Don’t risk altering the cell formatting by selecting the cell and doing copy/paste.

Filling to the right is OK.

2) Click at the top of the spreadsheet to hand edit your profile ID number.

35

Detail: customizing profile numbers

Altering the cell formatting in ‘querystorage’ breaks the macros.

1) Select cell C67.

3) Filling the rest of the row to the right is OK.

36

Working with GADG

Clicking the big, green RUN THE REPORT button adds new worksheet-reports to your copy of GADG.

They are named “report1”, “report2”, etc.

They are easily removed by clicking the red “Remove sheet” button on the worksheet.

37

Working with GADG On the customized

GADG, the all-important ‘querystorage’ tab is already showing.

If you’re working from a clean copy of GADG, unhide this tab by right-clicking on the tabs at the bottom

Select ‘Unhide’ and then ‘querystorage.’

38

Working with GADG Editing reports in querystorage:

Advanced segments (rows 19,20)

Custom segment #’s are obtained by creating a one-off report using that segment, and finding it in querystorage

Dates (rows 26,27,28)

Profile ID numbers (row 67)

############ is normal

You can run reports from the ‘Analytics’ page OR querystorage

Keep track of important querystorage elements Profile ID numbers

Segment names and numbers

39

Working with GADG To “save” a snapshot of

your work and continue experimenting, rename your GADG files and Dashboard files.

To ensure the renamed Dashboard doesn’t automatically update, follow these steps: Save as

Data

Edit Links

Select the dashboard you want to save

Execute “Break Links”

40

Troubleshooting Never double-click the files from an email, always ‘Save-as.’ Opening from an email

breaks the spreadsheet relationships.

Be sure you’re logged into GA as yourself.

In querystorage, always edit by clicking at the top of the spreadsheet, and either editing by hand, or selecting and copying, then selecting and pasting in another cell. Never select the cell itself and copy/paste. Filling to the right is OK.

Do not change the cell formatting in querystorage; that will break the macros.

Peculiarities can sometimes be attributed to Google’s API, and not GADG.

Data labeled “(other | other)” sometimes appears – occasionally data has to be hand-manipulated to get it properly into the Dashboard charts.

Occasionally a blank worksheet remains after refreshing (“report1”) – it can be deleted.

If you change profiles and re-run a report, GADG occasionally leaves the previous profile name in the worksheet chart. I removed profile names from the charts, but they sometimes reappear.

I’m happy to answer questions, but the real expert is GADG creator Mikael Thuneberg. Post questions to his Google Group – automateanalytics. He’s pretty responsive.

GA Best Practices / Tips and Tricks

41

42

No-filters (raw) profile Create a profile that has no filtering of any kind, a so-

called “raw” profile Leave this profile alone – it serves as a backup Protection against unintended consequence Possible names:

Unit/profile name (backup) Unit/profile name (unfiltered data)

43

Filter-out internal-traffic If you want to exclude visitors surfing from within the SI network Admin >> Profiles >> Filters >> +New Filter >> External Traffic Only

44

Measure only traffic taking place on your site Scraping and re-publishing website content is a common practice. Those sites exist to serve Google Adsense ads and make money.

Unfortunately they also scrape your GA “UA” account number.

Their traffic goes into GA as your traffic!

Include all domains, if you use others than si.edu.

Filter pattern: si\.edu si\.edu|example\.com

45

Use annotations Super easy – a great way to know at-a-glance what

happened on your site, launches, promos, etc. You think you’re gonna remember – you’re not!

46

Custom segment: social media visitors

Regular expression: bit.ly|bitly|blogfaves.com|blogger|bloglines|blogspot|delicious|digg|facebook|feedburner|flickr|foursquare|goo.gl|groups.google|groups.yahoo.com|hootsuite|instagram|linkedin|m.facebook.com|newsgator|ow.ly|pinterest|plus.google|plus.url.google.com|reddit|stumbleupon|t.co|technorati|tweetdeck|twitter|typepad|tumblr|wordpress|youtube

The Regex can also be edited to include smaller groups, or types of social sites, i.e., facebook and twitter. Keeping it up to date is up to you!

47

Custom segment: engaged visitsThese visits: Were

deeper than three pages.

Were longer than three minutes.

48

Custom segment: highly-engaged visitsThese visits: Were deeper than

four pages.

Were in frequency more than two times in the measured period.

Were longer than two minutes.

These values can be tweaked for your site, of course!

A nice blog post on this topic is here.

49

GA’s (relatively new) “Social” reports Make data-driven decisions for social media

programs: Identify the value of traffic coming from social

sites.

Measure how they lead to direct or “assisted” conversions.

Understand social activities happening on and off site.

Some of the reports require programming goals and assigning values

Understanding ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ involves tagging with the _trackSocial tag Google’s ‘social analytics’ guide

Google’s ‘social reports’ launch blog post

50

Social conversions “Social performance at a glance and its impact on conversions.” “Which goals are being impacted by social media.” Requires adding chunks of code to all your pages.

51

Social sources “Find out how visitors from different sources behave.” This is similar to the custom advanced segment.

Other reports:• Social Plugins data• "Activity Stream"

(lacks facebook & twitter)

Dashboard Details

52

Frequency of Visits (“Loyalty”) Useful engagement metric for

content sites. Provides insight into how

compelling and/or valuable content is perceived to be.

Frequent visitors are: More likely to be loyal visitors Exhibit higher levels of engagement

than infrequent, and especially one-time visitors

53

Length of Visits Useful engagement metric for

content sites. Measures quality based on the

amount of time spent consuming content.

Segmentation is critical. Segments of time Types of content consumed, or

activities pursued.

For example, spending lots of time searching may indicate a poor website search experience.

54

Depth of Visits

Useful engagement metric for content sites.

Number of pages per visit. Helps understand content

consumption patterns, which can help paint the picture of the longer term relationships visitors have with the website.

55

Segmented Bounce Rate Number of times a person

visits one site page and leaves without clicking, divided by the total number of visits.

Easily misinterpreted as always negative.

Sometimes a high bounce rate is desirable or expected. Visits to single-use

informational pages (location/hours)

Blog visits

56

Goal Conversions – Primary and Secondary

Any high-value behavior that supports the site's goals. PDF downloads Videos watched Donations Completed orders

Conversions indicate higher engagement, deeper commitment than viewing pages.

"Conversion Rate" is the number of conversions divided by visitors.

57

58

Resources GA Data Grabber

http://www.gadatagrabbertool.com/

Automate Analytics Google Group http://groups.google.com/group/automateanalytics/topics

Avinash Kaushik’s “Occam’s Razor” http://kaushik.net/avinash

Lunametrics blog http://www.lunametrics.com/blog

Google Analytics Blog http://analytics.blogspot.com/

Slides and future dashboards will be made available. Send me email (alpertb@si.edu) Questions welcome!