introduction to google analytics by katherine mancuso
DESCRIPTION
Katherine Mancuso from Tech Liminal provides an introduction to Google Analytics for the East Bay WordPress Meetup in April 2014: why you need Analytics, how to install the tracking code, what sessions are, how to set up goals and events.TRANSCRIPT
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TECHLIMINAL
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Technology Coaching Coworking
Workshops & Classes
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Overview
• What are the things that Google Analytics can do for me?
• How do I hook up Google Analytics to my WordPress site?
• Basic metrics that are helpful for everyone. • Introduction to SEO. • Introduction to identifying key metrics & goals for
your business.3
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Pageviews Clicks Hits !
Remember this?
Web analytics used to be . . .
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(1) the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your website and the competition, (2) to drive a continual improvement of the online experience that your customers, and potential customers have, (3) which translates into your desired outcomes (online and offline). !
-Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics in 1 Hour a Day
What is web analytics today?
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Strategic & Tactical - Not just Quantitative Incorporating Business Goals Focusing on Customer Experience
Today’s Web Analytics is . . .
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What do I use analytics for?
• Getting data to understand customer experience on your website
• Testing different versions of your site & figuring out what works.
• Understanding where your traffic comes from. • Improving your rank in search engines (SEO) • Understanding how well your online marketing
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Hooking Up Google Analytics
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Hooking up Google Analytics
• Sign up for an account at analytics.google.com • Add tracking code to every page. • Hook up your Google Webmaster Tools account
to get access to SEO data. • If you haven’t configured Webmaster Tools,
this requires uploading an HTML file to your domain or adding a code snippet to your header.
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Using Google Analytics with WordPress
• This will vary by theme - lots of themes have a place to put the tracking code.
• If your theme doesn’t, or you can’t find it, you can use Yoast’s Google Analytics Plugin. https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/google-analytics/
• If you feel uncomfortable, we can hook up your Google Analytics in a quick hour of coaching - see us after class to book an appointment.
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Universal Analytics vs Classic Analytics
• In plain terms, this is Google’s new analytics; it uses a slightly different tracking code than Google Analytics used to use.
• More features: demographic data, real-time analytics, intelligence alerts.
• You will be required to use it eventually, so you might as well start.
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Basic Metrics in the Dashboard
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Audience - Who are your visitors?
• Demographics (Age/Gender) • Interests (Only with Universal Analytics) • Language/Location • Technology (browser, device, etc)
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Where do visitors come from? Traffic.
• Keywords • Direct Traffic • Referring Sites • Search Engine Optimization
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Where do your visitors go? Traffic Paths
• Exit and Entrance Pages • Navigation Paths • Top Content • Behavior • Bounce rate (and why a high bounce rate
is only sometimes a problem)
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How do we make this data useful?
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Business Objectives
• These are high level things that your business needs to accomplish.
• “sell more stuff” • “get more donations” • “build awareness of my business” • “get people to visit my business”
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Goals
• Goals are specific strategies that support your business objectives.
• In the case of web analytics, they focus on specific actions a user can accomplish on your site.
• “sell more stuff” -------> “get a user to buy an item” or “get a user to put an item in their shopping cart.”
• “build awareness of my business” ------> “user reads about page” or “user signs up for newsletter”
• “get people to visit my business” ------> “people view a coupon I put on my site” and “people come in and use that coupon”
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Marketing Campaign Example
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Tech Liminal’s Business Objective & Goal
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• Objectives: “sell more services” “raise awareness of our services”
• Goals:
• “get people to click through to our website”
• “get people to come into the store”
• “get people to purchase coworking”
• “get people to purchase coworking in person”
• How we are doing it: Placing a Facebook ad targeting folks in Oakland who have “liked” various pages related to small business services.
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How to reach the goals
Today, we’ll talk about ad design, set up a Facebook ad, and set up the goal of viewing the page.
In advanced analytics class next month, we’ll configure event tracking, which requires a little more access to the code of your site, and walk through the goal to actually measure which people BOUGHT coworking from our ad.
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Conclusions
• What did you learn today? • What are you going to do as a result of
what you learned? • What’s one topic we covered that you’d
like to know more about?
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Upcoming Workshops• Social Media Support Group - Katherine - Friday March
14th, 2:30-4 - http://www.meetup.com/Social-Media-Happy-Hour/
• WordPress & SEO with Yoast - Anca - Thursday March 13th 6-7:30 & Friday April 11th 10:30-12 - https://wp-seo-with-yoast.eventbrite.com
• Advanced Google Analytics: Goals & Event Tracking - Katherine - Thursday, March 27th & Friday March 28th - http://analyticsgoalsetting.eventbrite.com
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