2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.

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AppSumo + Mixergy: Getting the Most Out Of Google Analytics [1 Video] PDF Notes

Section 0 Introduction
-Google Analytics gives you the ability to see the impact on the bottom line of your business based on marketing activities. Which ones are paying off in terms of impact on bottom line and not so much on traffic -Example (see below): Google Store English has more visits but only generates $60 in revenues, whereas T Shirts has fewer visits but has $900 in revenue. You need to understand where your traffic is but also figure out where your most valuable traffic is and how you can grow it, and fix the less valuable ones. We need to move beyond hits

2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

Section 1 Metrics That Matter

-Google Analytics by default shows you metrics like Visits, Pageviews, etc but theres no metric that tells you if people have submitted a contact form, or signed up for something -To figure out how to align metrics and data in Google Analytics with your business, the first thing you need to answer is what is the goal I have with my website? Then you can use Goals in Google Analytics to configure and track those metrics

Section 2 Creating Your Goals

-After logging into Google Analytics Click edit on the account you want to create goals for

And then click add goal

2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

-Measuring a conversion can be anything: e-mail sign-up, contact form, lead-gen form, etc. -Google Analytics gives you four goal sets with five goals each, total of twenty goals you can use to track for your website. Goal sets are an organization tool for reports -Example: For purchasing a Google Apps t-shirt on Google Store, you only want to track the core checkout process (shopping cart billing credit card info). You create a goal called Buy Product, (skip Activate Goal and Goal Position, they are more advanced topics) This type of goal is called a URL Destination goal, meaning you reached a certain URL on a website; the most important thing here is the goal URL, which is the thank you page or receipt page to indicate the person has completed the core checkout process Hit save goal

-Goals section in navigation bar of Google Analytics shows high level aggregate data, setting these up gives you the first step in the process of counting conversions -Goals also let you create goals based on time (Time on Site) and content consumption (Pages/Visit)

-To see how your marketing activities are driving traffic, go into Traffic Sources report of Google Analytics look at Campaigns Report

2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com -You can see your goals that you configured in Google Analytics at the top, and then you can see your marketing campaigns and their conversion rates

-Geographic data is in Map Overlay under the Visitors tab in navigation and shows you where your traffic is coming from. The important thing here is not only the conversion rates from the goals youve created, but whether or not that aligns with your business strategy is this what you expected? -Every report in Google Analytics has Goal Set tabs, allowing you to switch around and focus on conversion rates

-The columns under this goal set (Completing Order, Contact Us, etc.) are specific metrics youve assigned to this goal

2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

Section 3 Creating a Funnel

-Funnel Visualization report measures how people move through a conversion process. It is located under the Goals tab in the navigation bar -Example: using Contact Forms, you want to see how many people use this form but do not actually convert Create a Contact Us (URL Destination) goal in Google Analytics and enter in the end URL Goal Funnel is the steps people have to go through in order to convert, it is located under Goal Details o Focus on the defined processes on your website that force people towards the core processes

-The path down the middle of the screen represents all the steps you configured in your funnel

2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com -Everything on left is people moving into the process, the right is people moving out; red is bad, green is good. You can figure out where in the process youre losing customers, but Google wont tell you what the reason is -You can figure out your most valuable sources of incoming traffic; alternatively, you can determine where and estimate why people dont follow through -A lot of the funnel really depends on your website and how it works, sometimes Step A takes you directly to Step B, whereby youll achieve 100% conversion -All steps displayed in the funnel virtualization page are from you having created them when you first set the goal, with the ultimate goal is the Goal URL -Justin likes to look starting at the bottom of the funnel to figure out which steps are leaking and how to optimize his core checkout process. Experimentation is important, for example, you can email customers, offer an incentive, a guarantee, etc. Tools for experimentation include Google Website Optimizer, Optimizely

Section 4 Create Your Campaigns

-Google Analytics has three default buckets for Traffic Sources: 1. Direct Traffic: from business perspective, this means you have brand recognition 2. Referring Sites: sites on the internet that are linked to your site; clicking on the domain will let you see the actual pages that are linking in. Remember to ask yourself if you know this website and if youre expecting it. If you dont, perhaps you should form a better relationship with them 3. Search Engines: define into organic search and paid search (you can view each separately). With paid traffic youre bidding on keywords and spending on clicks; organic search is great content. Questions to consider are does this align with my strategy? -To track campaigns in Google Analytics, use a process called Link-tagging to track marketing activities; the entire configuration happens within campaigns themselves -Google URL Builder helps you modify links that you use in marketing activities (I.e. your call-to-action link in your email)

2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com -Google Analytics lets you define 5 pieces of information about the campaign; note: avoid spacebar when youre typing in the fields

-After you click Generate URL, take that URL and put it into your email (all the data after the link is for Googles purposes to tell you where the traffic is coming from and which campaign its a part of) This is Link-Tagging -Viewing the campaigns from Google Adwords Campaigns, you can click on the first drop down box and see the source or medium that its working through; you can click on the second drop down box to see associated sources -You want to care about orders and where they are coming from focus on contact -From the Usage tab, look at the Site Usage Metric to see site visits and engagement. The Bounce Rate is incredibly important because it tells you the percentage of people that immediately leave the site, which indicates some kind of disconnect between the medium youre showing them, and whats on your site

Section 5 Power of Site Search

-Site search in analytics is figuring out how to use what people search to figure out what theyre interested in -Access site search in Google Analytics by going to the navigation bar Content Site Search -The first thing you want to look at is usage and look at the amount of 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com conversions; you want to know if the behavior of people who search vs those who dont search different and how it impacts your business

-What you normally see is that people who use site search convert at a higher rate so you want people to search more on your website. How can you change the website to do that? Example: Burton.com

-Under Usage in the navbar for Google Analytics is Search Term Report:

youre looking through this list to see what people are searching and if it matches with objectives of your site. You can then use these keywords to build your marketing campaign -To track this data, go back to Goal Form in Google Analytics:

go to Edit Site Search check Do Track Site Search enter Query Parameter q; now everytime Google processes the data and sees q in the URL, it will pull out the data. Also check Yes, strip the query parameter to clean up data

2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

-Query parameter in the URL is denoted as q, so for example searching hats would display q=hats in the URL

Section 6 Benchmarking
-Go to Visitors section in navigation bar and click Benchmarking; what Google does is it anonymizes your data when youre opted-in and compares it to others who have done the same -Six benchmarking metrics (blue is you, grey is benchmark), and you can compare them to different categories; examples: Pageviews: if youre not getting enough, may need to amp up marketing Avg. Time on Site: if bounce rate is higher, might need to make sure marketing activities are aligned with site content Pages/Visit: if people are not spending enough time, your site may not be as engaging New visits: are my competitors getting more new traffic than me?

-Compete.com is a great starter site to compare your site with competitors

Section 7 Build Custom Reports

-Google lets you create up to 100 custom reports; go to Custom Reporting under

the navigation bar. data you want with no fluff

They can be used to show you the exact

2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

-When creating a custom report, youll see a drag and drop interface (construction zone) on the bottom and metrics and dimensions on the left. Materials that you use are metrics (I.e. revenue, conversion rate, bounce rate), and rows are dimensions (I.e. country, campaign) -Literally drag the metric (I.e. revenue) and put it as a column in your report, and the dimension (I.e. campaign) and it will show you a list of your campaigns and the revenue coming from those campaigns. When you create the report it gets added to custom reports navigation -Theres an e-mail button at the top to allow you to automate distribution. Frequency is limited but it does show day-to-day comparison -For goals that are not transactions based, you can tell Google what its worth, but this is all from your end (if you know your close rate, avg value, etc.)

Section 8 Conclusion and Next Steps

-First step is to configure goals and conversion in Google Analytics so you can measure your marketing activities. Ask yourself, what am I trying to do with my website? that will drive how you configure those goals

2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

 2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com

Additional Links and Resources

Campaign Tracking Overview: http://cutroni.com/blog/2006/11/10/google -analytics-campaign-tracking-pt-0-anoverview/ Google Analytics URL Builder: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578 Goals & Funnels: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55515&hl=en Site Search: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75817 Google Analytics: Power User Guide : http://blog.vkistudios.com/index.cfm/2009/6/5/The -Google-Analytics-Power-UserGuide 50 Resources for Getting the Most Out of Google Analytics http://blog.kissmetrics.com/50 -resources-for-getting-the-most-out-of-googleanalytics/ The Huge Collection of Google Analytics Tips http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the -huge-collection-of-google-analyticstips/7426/ Google Analytics YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com /googleanalytics

Blogs about Google Analytics

The Official Google Analytics Blog http://analytics.blogspot.com/index.html Advanced Web Metrics http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog/ Google Analytics Results http://www.googleanalyticsresults.com/ Luna Metrics Blog http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/ Analytics Talk http://www.cutroni.com

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2011 Chief Sumo and AppSumo.com