Impressive Analytics

Transcription

1 Impressive Analytics and Insight on a Shoestring Lisa Ikariyama & Tracy Anderson Cabbage Tree Creative

2 Getting Started Before you design a page on your website or get started with a campaign ask yourself these questions to help you begin: What are you trying to achieve? (increase sales, more sign ups, brand awareness) How can visitors complete these goals? (purchase on the site, sign up through a form, learn more information on your website) What are the key elements of the page? (video, text, images, calls-to-action) What needs to be tracked? (sales, leads, phone enquiries, downloads) What should I be monitoring to measure performance? (conversion rates, number of leads, visits to the site?) How can I interpret results to make changes? (move buttons around) Once you have answered all these questions, then you can start to craft a landing page/campaign to focus on the above questions. Analytics Toolbox (Slides 3 10) Some great free tools to check out include: Google Analytics: A suite of reporting tools for your website traffic and site data. Sign up for a free account at You will need to insert a small bit of code on your site to start tracking and this can easily be implemented by your webmaster. Google URL builder: Useful for tracking your campaigns online. You simply fill out the information for your campaign and your destination URL on the form and generate a URL that will track data within Analytics. The tool can be accessed at This tool is great for tracking online display banners, Facebook ads to your site, campaigns, links and more. 1

3 How to tag URLs for campaigns: 1. Enter the information for the campaign details. 2. Click generate URL! 3. Use this URL in the external source you are tracking from (i.e. your link, advert, etc.) 4. To view this data in Analytics go Traffic Sources > Campaigns. Google Website Optimiser: This tool is great for trying to optimise landing pages on your site to see what is working better. Test if a different colour button or position has more impact on conversions by setting up tests on your pages at Goo.gl: Useful for URL shortening and QR code generation. ( Just cut and paste your URL into the tool and click generate. You can then copy and paste the URL to wherever you plan to use it (Twitter, etc.). Facebook Insights: See all your stats for your Facebook page including demographics, impressions, likes and virality of posts. This data is useful for seeing information about your fans so that messages can be tailored to this audience. The data from Insights can also help you to create ads on Facebook by targeting people who are like your page and using their demographic data to apply to your ads. YouTube Insights: View data on your video performance with demographics, views and engagement with videos. This can be helpful to gauge user comments, where people left in your videos and your target viewing audience. Crazy Egg: This is a paid tool that allows you to visually identify the most clicked upon items on your site with heatmaps and scrollmaps. They offer a free 30 day trial at and pricing starts from $9 USD/month. 2

4 3 things to start tracking Now E-Commerce tracking (Slide 12) Tracking purchases and sales on your site is critical to determine your ROI and how people came to your site to make purchases. Since every site will differ on their booking system and platforms used, it is best to speak with your developer to get this code installed. More information for the tracking code and implementation process can be found at ommerce. Goal tracking (Slide 13) Goal tracking can be useful for tracking contact forms, newsletter sign ups, general form submissions, or finding out where people left in a process. Getting started Decide what the goal is that you would like to track Assign a value to the goal (optional but recommended). Figure out the final destination page for goal URL. Optional: Add a goal funnel for steps people must take to complete the goal. Example setup: Track the number of times someone subscribes to a newsletter on the site. 1) Click the admin button when you log into Analytics. 2) Click the goals tab and then + goal. 3) Fill out the form with the relevant information: a) Goal value = 1 3

5 b) Final destination URL after someone signs up for the newsletter they are taken to a thank you page that has a URL like The final destination URL is /newsletter-subscriptionconfirmed.html. c) Goal funnel: to complete the goal the user must: i) Use the newsletter subscription button listed on the homepage. ii) Sign up for the newsletter on the newsletter subscription page. iii) See the thank you page after submitting the subscription. 4) Monitor your data in the Goals section of Analytics. Resources for help you to setup goals: Event tracking (Slide 14) Event tracking is useful for tracking interactions people take on your site. Tracking events is useful for measuring downloads of PDFs, clicks on external links, views of videos. An example of setting up event tracking: 1) Set up event tracking for Tracking all videos that are viewed on the site and the actions that people take while watching them. The category becomes video. 2) What actions people are taking Press play, stop, or pause while watching the video. These become my actions. 3) Label each action There are three videos on my site all with different names. Label the videos (i.e. winter video, ski video, snowboarding video). 4) Install code on my site 5) Check my data in Analytics Category = video, Actions = play, pause, stop, download, label = winter video, ski video, snowboarding video Resources for event tracking: 4

6 Understanding Your Customers (slide 15) Google Analytics is an amazing tool for understanding your audience and customers. The 4 key audience reports are: Demographics Behaviour Technology Mobile Demographics (Slide 16) Google Analytics Demographics section is very useful for finding out where your customers are actually located. You can view visitor locations by: Country City Continent Subcontinent Region This is a useful indicator of your popularity in different countries, locations of potential growth, or even the types of languages your website visitors speak. This type of information might help you justify the creation of a foreign language site, or back up a marketing decision to place magazine advertising off-shore. 5

7 Behaviour (Slide 17) The Behaviour section of Google Analytics tells you how your website visitors interact with your business online. New vs. Returning Completely New Visitors vs. Returning (Repeat) Visitors. Note: this data is based on the cookies that are stored online, whenever someone visits your website. If a website user clears their cookies, then they will be counted as a New Visitor again. A high percentage of return visitors could indicate customer satisfaction. Conversely, a high percentage of new visitors could mean a successful new fan acquisition campaign. 6

8 You need to interpret this data in a way that makes sense to your own business goals or campaigns. Frequency vs. Recency How many times people visit your site (frequency) Days since a website user s last visit (recency) If you were a news or weather website, high frequency and recency would be a good indicator of success. If your Complaints page had high frequency and recency, it could indicate higher volumes of customer complaints and be a negative analytic. Engagement Engagement is represented by the duration of a user s stay on your site. Page Depth indicates the number of pages a user visits during one session on your website. Technology (Slide 18) The Technology section gives you an understanding of the Browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc.), Operating Systems (Windows, Apple etc.), and Screen Resolutions your website visitors use. You can also view the Networks your users are on (Telecom, Vodafone etc.) This type of data might help to make decisions about website design (are most of your customers using high-resolution screens?) or even act as market-research (are the majority of your audience Telecom customers?). 7

9 Mobile (Slide 19) The Mobile reports provide valuable information on the mobile devices your customers are using. You could use this data to assess whether or not you should develop an iphone or Android app depending on the usage numbers for each device. You could also check to see if large volumes of visitors are viewing your regular website on a mobile phone and if it may be time to develop a mobile-friendly website. The service provider report can also tell you which mobile networks (Vodafone, 2degrees, Telecom) your customers use. 8

10 Analysing your Content (Slide 20) As well as understanding your audience, Google Analytics also allows you to understand which content on your website is performing. Some key content analytics to look at are: Bounce Rate Top Pages Top Landing Pages Top Exit Pages Bounce Rate (Slide 21) The Bounce Rate shows the percentage of website users who left your site or page as soon as they arrived on it. It is an indicator that the page did not instantly show them the information they were looking for, and is a good way to gauge the effectiveness of your content. 9

11 Top Pages (Slide 22) The Pages report is an overview of the top pages on your site. This report shows you which content is the most popular. You can also drill down to navigation pathways. These show you how users navigate your site. Top Landing Pages (Slide 22) The Landing Pages report is a great way to see the pages that are being indexed successfully in Google, or that other websites are linking to. A Landing Page is the first taste of your website for many users so you need to make sure it is portraying your business in the right way. 10

12 You also need to check that it has clear navigation on to other areas of the site and that it is engaging enough to keep the user on your website. If a top landing page is one of your product pages, then you need to ensure it has clear links back to your homepage, the product category, and your shopping cart. Top Exit Pages (Slide 23) Exit Pages are the pages people are on before they leave your site. This report gives you a valuable insight into where your website users are before they leave. You should consider the actions the person could have taken before they left filling out a contact form, completing a purchase, signing up to a newsletter etc. If they did leave before completing this, ask yourself: Were these actions too hard? Did they drop out part way through? 11

13 Site search (Slide 24) If you have a search box on your site, make sure to track this data in analytics to find out what customers are searching. Resource for setup: You should consider the various searches and how you can make it easier for visitors to find content: Do I have content created for highly searched topics? Should some of the highly searched topics be moved around in the navigation? 12

14 How do people get to my Site? Traffic sources (Slide 26) Find out how visitors are accessing your site in analytics either via search engines, direct (by typing in your URL or clicking on a bookmark) or from referral sites. Your top sources give you an indication of what is working well from top visitor stats. This can also give you an idea of any paid channels that may not be returning as many visits/conversions as you expected. Search (Slide 27) Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo show you what queries people are using to find your website. All search engines use a complex algorithm to show your web results and you can optimise your site for search engines through on- and off-page factors with search engine optimisation techniques. Keywords are a central component of search engine optimisation, and how you incorporate them in your site may impact your search position. Keyword tool resources: Google Insights for search Google AdWords keyword tool using exact match 13

15 Social (Slide 28) Google Analytics has recently incorporated social reporting which provides a better breakdown of your social channel performance. Social tracking resources: Info on tracking Facebook actions and Twitter tweets ckingsocial Be sure to set up goals and e-commerce tracking on your site to measure what people are doing after they have arrived via these social sources to give them value. 14

16 Engagement Database (Slide 30) What information do you collect from customers on your site and how do you use the data? Users can often get frustrated with extensive forms, so make sure that you are using every field of information that you are requesting from customers. Don t make every field required and keep it simple. After you have collected the data, think about how you will use it to target customers. Am I sending out segmented campaigns? Have I tested what time of day my customers respond best? Have I tested the frequency that I contact my database in regards to response? Test key forms with the Google Website Optimiser Tool to determine if changes to your form increase uptake. Conversions (Slide 31) What are the actions you are trying to get people to complete on the site? Make sure that every page on your site has a clear path for visitors to follow. If this was the first page that visitors landed on your site, is there a clear action for them to engage? Setting up goals on a form with several different steps is a great way to find out where people are leaving in the process. This helps you to identify key pages people are leaving from and make changes to lift conversion rates. Always continually test and refine your pages. The Google Website Optimiser Tool is great for making small changes (colour, wording, positioning) and testing what combination works best on your page. 15

17 Case Study: Using Google Analytics for Campaign Planning (Slide 32) Client: Goal: Large Tourism Operator Use historic Google Analytics data to: - Decide which advertising channel(s) to use - Identify which geographic locations to target - Assess if mobile advertising is worthwhile & which mobile devices to target Advertising (Slide 33) Question: Based on past experience, which advertising channels will give us the most bang for our buck? Google Analytics: Using the All Traffic report: Traffic Sources > Sources > All Traffic > E-commerce Tab Source/Medium Visits Transactions E-commerce Conversion Rate (direct) / (none) 62,098 2, % Google Organic 32,994 1, % Google CPC 11,740 1, % TradeMe 2, % Facebook CPC 1, % 16

18 Geographic Location: Country (Slide 35) Question: Based on Google Analytics data, where are the majority of our customers located? Google Analytics: Using the Location report: Audience > Location > Map Overlay > Country/Territory Geographic Location: City (Slide 37) Question: Within New Zealand, which cities should we focus our advertising on? Google Analytics: Using the Location report: Audience > Location > Map Overlay > City 17

19 Mobile (Slide 39) Question: Do our customers use mobile devices? Google Analytics: Using the Mobile report: Audience > Mobile > Overview 18

20 Mobile Devices (Slide 41) Question: Which kinds of mobile devices should we optimise our campaign for? Google Analytics: Using the Mobile report: Audience > Mobile > Devices > Operating System Google Analytics Results (Slide 43) Using Google Analytics, we were able to answer the campaign questions with these answers: Advertising channel: o Google AdWords (CPC) was the best performing advertising channel, with a 12% conversion rate Geographic locations: o Most customers located in either Auckland or Wellington 19

21 Mobile usage: o 8% of all website users use their mobile to access the site o ipad, iphone & Android most popular platforms Campaign Decision (Slide 44) Advertising Plan: Use Google AdWords to target our customers geographically, in Auckland & Wellington. In addition to desktop adverts, set up a series of mobile ads that are optimised for ipad, iphone & Android mobile devices. 20