google analytics: tracking the money

Scott Thomas, AboutTheInn.com Presented at Hospitality Marketing Summit November 2014 © 2014 Scott Thomas, Confidential

Google AnalyticsMaster: Tracking the Money


Overview

• What do we want to know?

• and how do we track it?

• What reports show this information?

• How can we simplify it?


What do we want to know?

• Who sends visitors to our site?

• Who sends visitors who book?

• How different sources compare in visitors and bookings?

Follow the Money!


How do we track that?

• Who sends visitors?

• Tracked by default in Acquisition

• Comparison of results by referral source?

• Can be configured as custom Segment

• How many bookings /how much revenue?

• Configure Ecommerce

• Configure GoalsOne or the other (not necessarily both)


Who sends Visitors?

• Acquisition

• Either All Traffic or All Referrals

• Default is sorted by number of Sessions


Compare results by source

• Same screen (Acquisition -‐> All Traffic / All Referrers)

• Ecommerce or Goal Set view (if available)

• To compare similar sources (directories?)

• Create custom Segment


Create a custom Segment

• Add Segment -‐> New Segment



• Name segment

• Filter Sessions

• List paid Traffic Sources

• Save



• Clicking “Test” will show if data will be created

• After saving, click Add Segment, select your new segment, Apply

• Compare results of only the sources in your new segment

• Get the Paid Listings segment at

http://goo.gl/F7FWs1


Why This Is Not Enough

• How do you decide if a source is sending enough bookings to justify the expense?

• “Seems like they're not sending enough traffic”


Why This Is Not Enough

• What if Google sends you AdWords bucks to try?

– How will you know if it sent bookings? • What if Directory “X” calls to ask you to upgrade, promising more traffic?

• How will you know it is worth it?

• How do you know if a new paid listing is bringing new bookings?


The only way to KNOW

• Flying by the seat of your pants isn't good enough!

• You need to

• Compare bookings before/after (not just visitors)

• Compare organic before/after to PPC+Organic


The only way to KNOW

Is to

Follow the

Money!


Tracking the Money

• Using Ecommerce tracking

• Using Goals

• Caution: If you have both set up to track the same event (booking), be careful that reports don’t “double-‐dip”

• Your Booking Engine must support GA for both and must support Ecommerce to track it.


Whichever method you use

• You need to make a small, cut-‐and-‐paste, change to your GA code on your website (to allow tracking to include your booking engine)

• If you use Universal Analytics:

• http://goo.gl/LutTMe

• If you use traditional GA:

• http://goo.gl/dTvQIN


Ecommerce Tracking

• Setup

• Admin -‐> View -‐> Ecommerce Settings (ON)

• Set up check-‐out screens for ecommerce

• Must use booking engine that supports ecommerce, or there will be no data

• If they support ecommerce, this part will be set up for you


No Ecommerce? Set up Goals

• What we will need:

• URL of the page after a booking is completed

• Preferably, URLs of pages leading to a completed booking

• Value of your average booking


Goals

• In GA, Admin -‐> View -‐> Goals

• Click New Goal


Goals

• Provide Goal name

• Set type to Destination

• Click “Next step”


Goals

• Change “Equals to” to “Begins with” if your URL has a question mark followed by other data at the end of the URL, then remove the question mark and everything after it.

• Put the URL for the goal in the box


Goals

• Turn on Value, and enter the value of your average booking in the box.


Goals

• The Goal will work now

• Data will show up after about a day

• If you would like to be able to see where prospective bookers abandon the booking process, add a Funnel


Goals -‐ Adding a Funnel

• Turn on Funnel, then add the pages users follow to complete the goal.

• Save


Viewing Ecommerce Data

• Acquisition -‐> All Traffic, select Ecommerce at top of page

• Conversions -‐> Ecommerce -‐> Overview, select Source/Medium (full report is same as #1)


Viewing Ecommerce Data


Comparing SourcesUsing our Segment of Paid Sources

Sources bringing revenue


Compare Time RangesBefore/After (usually year-‐over-‐year)


Giving Partial Credit

• Multi-‐Channel Funnels (MCF)

• Gives partial credit to sites sending visitors who return multiple times before booking

• Assisted Conversions are conversions a source participates in without being the final conversion interaction (Last Click)


Multi-‐Channel Funnels

• Conversions -‐> MCF -‐> Assisted Conversions

• Then click the Channel you want to view (Referrals, Organic, Direct, Paid Search, etc.)


Multi-‐Channel Funnels


Automate Reports

• Build a Dashboard

• Widgets provide graphs and charts for “At-‐a-‐Glance” info

• Shortcuts create Bookmarks for favorite reports

• Email Reports

• Once, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly


DashboardsColumns for Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions


Dashboards

• Get the sample Ecommerce Dashboard at

http://goo.gl/e2dZxT


Email Reports

• Open a report you want to receive

• Click “Email”

• Enter Recipient email address

• Select format (CSV, PDF, etc.)

• Select frequency

• Add some text

• Send


Email Reports


Summary

• See who sends visitors in Acquisition

• Compare sources using custom Segments

• Evaluate results by Bookings (not visits)

Follow the Money!

• Automate reports with Dashboards, Shortcuts, Email


Google AnalyticsThank You!

google analytics: tracking the money

Data & Analytics

glf7fws1scott thomas

moneyscott thomas

bothscott thomas

trafficscott thomas

hospitality marketing

custom segmentscott

number of sessionsscott

new bookings