google analytics for everyone!
TRANSCRIPT
#musedata
Google Analytics for Everyone!
2016 Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo
Brian Alpert & Sara Snyder
5/27/2016
#musedata
Agenda
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Brian – Google Analytics 101 Analytics Process GA Basics
Metrics and Dimensions How GA is organized
How can Google Analytics HELP? New(ish) Game-Changing Features Universal Analytics mandatory upgrade A Few Best Practices
Sara – Real Life Examples Don’t start with the all the data, start with real life questions
“Is anyone finding this new educational resource that we made?” “What parts of our website are local visitors viewing mostly on their phones?” “Do we really need to keep maintaining this old microsite?”
Q&A
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What web analytics is often about
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Web analytics is often about:
“So What?”
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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 Navigating Google Analytics 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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Navigating Google Analytics How GA is organized
HomeSearchable list of all GA accounts associated with your Google Account.
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Navigating Google Analytics How GA is organized
ReportingWhere GA’s reports are located.
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Navigating Google Analytics How GA is organized
CustomizationWhere Custom Reports are located.
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Navigating Google Analytics How GA is organized
AdminSettings for your:1. Account 2. Property (individual
websites)3. View (you can setup
different “views” – with custom filters, etc.)
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LunaMetrics
Navigating Google Analytics How GA is organized
These four sections under “Reporting” house most of the reports.
AudienceAcquisition
BehaviorConversions
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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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Improve your program!Segmentation: GA’s most powerful feature?
Analyze subsets of traffic. Search engine traffic Social media traffic Demographics
Import expert-made segments from the Solutions Gallery!
Google Blog
Kissmetrics Overview
Examples (Cutroni)
Examples (Kaushik)
Segments are accessed by clicking “Add Segment”. “Organic Traffic” is shown.
All Users
Organic (Search Engine) Traffic
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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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Under Audience >> Behavior Frequency Recency Page Depth (“Engagement”) “New vs. Returning” (e-nor post)
Use with segments: Traffic from search Traffic from mobile Etc.
‘Time on site’ is great, but do not rely solely on it. Due to technical issues
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Improve your program!Metrics as proxies for user engagement
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Create your own reports. Import custom reports
from the Solutions Gallery.
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
Custom Reports can be scheduled for delivery via email in a variety of formats.
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A conversion is any measureable behavior with an implicitly (or explicitly) higher value.
Conversion rates are more informative than merely counting the number of times something has happened.
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
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Improve your program!Deeper understanding with Conversion Goals
Studying conversion rates levels the playing field, versus merely counting!
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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 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 (Smithsonian’s 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”
Occam's Razor
“All data in aggregate is crap.”
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Display multiple reports at once.
“My Dashboard” (default) included.
Import from the Solutions Gallery.
Share as PDFs. Schedule for
distribution by email. About Dashboards (Google) 10 useful Google Analytics custo
m dashboards (Econsultancy)
How Google Analytics Dashboards Can Make Your Life Easier (Kissmetrics)
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Satisfy your boss!Dashboards are useful, and easy to make
Customize Dashboards by adding / deleting / manipulating widgets (up to 12 per dashboard)
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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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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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Universal Analytics means all new code We are (still…) in phase three of a four-
phased, multi-year rollout. All GA accounts have been migrated to
Universal, but many website pages still carry the old code.
Phase 4: legacy code will be deprecated (date TBD – “in the near future”).
“Data received from deprecated libraries will... be processed for a minimum of two years…”
You should upgrade your code SOON! You also need to upgrade custom code,
e.g., events, virtual pageviews, etc. Universal Analytics Upgrade Center Vampyre Fangs
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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)
You need an unfiltered backup view
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Filter-out internal-traffic Admin >> Account or View >> Filters >> +New Filter
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Use Annotations Super easy – a great way to know at-a-glance what
happened historically, launches, promos, etc.
Create new annotationPull-down all annotations
Reveal annotation
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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
A few real world questions, and how I might start trying to answer them.
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Question: “Is anybody using those resources that my department created?”
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Behavior > Site Content > All Pages > search for the web directories in question, e.g. /resources/guides/
Question: “How might we increase the use of these specific resources?”
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New custom segment! Let’s benchmark all of those visitor sessions which include viewing at least one of the “guide” pages
To work on: 1) making the guides more visible in navigation,
2) getting more inbound links 3) optimizing our page metadata for search engine findability (SEO)
Acquisition > Overview
Question: “What parts of our website are most frequently viewed on phones?”
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Apply system segment: Mobile Traffic
Behavior > Site Content > All Pages
Behavior > Site Content > All Pages (con’t)
1. Homepage2. WONDER exhibition page3. Hours & Directions4. Exhibitions Overview5. WONDER online gallery/slideshow6. Collections Search*7. Irving Penn exhibition page8. Highlights from the Collection9. FAQs10.Researching your art*
*Not likely to be in-person visitors. Are people really doing research on their phones?
Raises more questions that need further investigation!
Question: “How about those QR codes we put in the gallery last year? Did anybody scan them?”
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Generate unique custom “campaigns” for each of youradvertising or in-gallery URLs
Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns > Castle Gallery/QR Code
Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns > Castle Gallery/QR Code
2,100+ is more QR Code sessions than we would have thought! Likely due to 1) appealing content (hidden drawings on the versos), and 2) a very straightforward call to action (“Scan this code to see the other side of this drawing.”)
What are your real world questions?
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Resources Google Analytics Academy (Google) Google Analytics Blog (Google) Universal Analytics Upgrade Guide (Google) Absolute Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics (moz.com) Occam’s Razor (Avinash Kaushik) Analytics Talk (Google’s Justin Cutroni) Jeffalytics (Jeff Saur) Annielytics (Annie Cushing) Analytics Edge (Mike Sullivan) Kissmetrics blog Lunametrics blog / Lunametrics Training Cardinal Path Training Discover the Google Analytics Platform (advanced tools)
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Thanks! @balpert @sosarasays