GOOGLE

ANALYTICS
Leveraging the Analytics Tool
Web Analytics

Web analytics is the measurement,

collection, analysis, and reporting
of web data to understand &
optimize web usage. 
Web analytics is not just a process for
measuring web traffic but can be
used as a tool for business and
market research and assess and
improve the website effectiveness.
 • Adobe Analytics

Best Tools for • Google Analytics

Web • Kissmetrics
Analytics
• Mixpanel

• Chartbeat
INTRODUCTION
If you have not used google analytics before, please visit
www.google.com/analytics/
Click on “create an account” in the top-right, then:
• If you have a google account, sign in
• If you don’t, click on “sign up” in the top-right, enter
the information requested (I’d suggest using your
Warwick e-mail address). You’ll then have to wait for
an e-mail to arrive, click on the link within it to “verify”,
then go back to www.google.com/analytics/, click on
“create an account” and then sign in using your new
details!!

When you hit sign up on the following screen, you’ll see a long
page including the details on the right. Fill in the boxes and
submit, then leave your browser open on the next page.

Note when you are filling this in that an “Account” can contain
several “properties” (each property is a code, e.g. for a website
or set of pages thereon).
WHAT IS GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Service provided by Google for generating statistics about the visits to a web site

Available since August 2006 to anyone free of charge

Paid for premium version also available

New features and functionality being added constantly

Works by loading and executing tracking code on the visitor’s device then saving information gathered by this code
on Google servers in a Google Analytics account

Marketers can explore many facets of user behavior and interaction

Google Analytics

Measurement, Collection and

Google Analytics Improve Online Presence
Analysis
 In marketing, we have the concept of a purchase funnel. There are
different stages within the funnel that describe customer interactions.
A basic purchase funnel includes the following steps:

Acquisition involves building awareness and acquiring user interest.

This section tells you where your visitors originated from, such as search
engines, social networks or website referrals. This is a key section when
determining which online marketing tactics are bringing the most visitors
Basic to your website.
Behavior is when users engage with your business. The Behavior Flow
Understanding report visualizes the paths users traveled from one screen, page or event
to the next. This report can help you discover what content keeps users
engaged with your site. The Behavior Flow report can also help identify
potential content or usability issues.
Google Analytics' Conversion reports provides metrics to evaluate your
online business value, whether it is revenue or other valuable events i.e.
signups, leads, subscribers. You can drill down through
the conversion funnel with the preset tracking options or customize your
own.
 Different kinds of businesses can benefit from digital
analytics:
✔ Publishers can use it to create a loyal, highly-engaged
audience and to better align on-site advertising with
Basic user interests.
✔Ecommerce businesses can use digital analytics
Understanding to understand customers’ online purchasing behavior and
better market their products and services.
✔Lead generation sites can collect user information for
sales teams to connect with potential leads
 Tracking a Website
• To track a website, you first have to create a Google
How Google Analytics account. Then you need to add a small piece of
Javascript tracking code to each page on your site.
Analytics • Every time a user visits a web page, the tracking code will
collect anonymous information about how that user
work? interacted with the page.
• The tracking code could show how many users visited a
page or how many users bought an item by tracking
whether they made it to the purchase confirmation page.
 The tracking code will also collect information from the
browser like:

Javascript • Language: the browser is set to.

• Type of Browser: like chrome, explorer, etc.
Tracking • Device
Code • Operating System
• Traffic Source: what brought users to the site in the first
place This might be a search engine, an advertisement they
clicked on, or an email marketing campaign.
 • Establish a User ID and password at google.com/analytics
• To find the tracking ID and code snippet:
Sign in to your Analytics account
Click Admin

Javascript Select an account from the menu in the ACCOUNT

column
TrackingCod Select a property from the menu in the PROPERTY
column
e Under PROPERTY, click Tracking Info > Tracking Code
• Once you have successfully installed the Analytics tracking
code, it can take up to 24 hours for data such as traffic-
referral information, user characteristics, and browsing
information to appear in your reports.
 GETTING
STARTED WITH
TRACKING
CODE
GETTING STARTED
EITHER: Copy and paste tracking code into the
pages you want tracked (using raw editor on
sitebuilder, before </head>

GETTING
OR: Put the Tracking ID in the appropriate box
within sitebuilders “site properties” section- which
STARTED
installs it on all sub-pages.

Confirm tracking code has been verified

Data starts to gather (real time report displayed immediately, others may take <24 hours)
Processing and Reporting

• When the tracking code collects data, it packages that information up and sends it to Google
Analytics to be processed into reports.
• When Analytics processes data, it aggregates and organizes the data based on particular criteria
like whether a user’s device is mobile or desktop, or which browser they’re using.
• Once Analytics processes the data, it’s stored in a database where it can’t be changed.

• There are also configuration settings that allow you to customize how that data is processed.
• When you set up your configuration, don’t exclude any data you think you might want to
analyze later.
• Once the data has been processed and stored in the database, it will appear in Google Analytics
as reports
 HOW GOOGLE
ANALYTICS WORKS
PROCESS:
• when a page is displayed by the browser, the inserted JavaScript
executes
this code loads the ga.js script from a Google server
• this script stores data about the visit in cookies on the user’s
machine
• this cookie data is sent in a query string to a secure GA reporting
server
• the cookie data, relating to the page visit, is then extracted from the
access logs of the
• Google secure server and stored in the corresponding GA account
for use in compiling reports

NOTE:
• JavaScript is required on the user’s machine cookies must be
enabled
• data is recorded when cached and reloaded pages are viewed
Google Analytics Setup

• Google Analytics accounts are

set up hierarchically.
• Each account can have
multiple properties and each
property can have multiple
views.
Analytics Interface

Account/Property/View switcher
• If you have multiple accounts,
properties, or views setup, you
can easily switch between them
by clicking on the pulldown
menu with the title of your View
in the upper-left corner.
Account Settings

• Account: It is a way for you to organize how data is collected from all of your websites and manage who can
access the data
• Typically, you would create separate accounts for distinct businesses or business units
• Each Google Analytics account has at least one “property” that can independently collect data using a
unique tracking ID that appears in your JavaScript tracking code.
• Each account can have multiple properties, so you can collect data from the different websites, mobile
applications, or other digital assets associated with the business.
• This allows you to easily view the data for an individual part of your business, but this won’t allow you to see
the data from separate properties in aggregate.
• Just as each account can have multiple “properties,” each property can have multiple “views”. These views
are where you can see reports for the Google Analytics data collected.
View Settings

• You can use a feature called Filters in your configuration settings to

determine what data you want to include, exclude, or modify in each view.
• New views only include data from the date the view was created and
onwards. When you create a new view, it will not include past data.
• You can only set up 25 views per property and if you delete a view,
only administrators can recover that view within 30 days. Otherwise, the
view will be permanently deleted.
Goals

At the View level, you can also set Google Analytics “Goals”.
• Goals are a simple way to track conversions (or business objectives) from
your website.
• For example: A goal could be how many users signed up for an email
newsletter, or how many users purchased a product.
 Request for admissions information

How engaged visitors are around feature stories and other areas
that require significant investment to create and maintain

SET YOUR Visits to information pages about an event promotion

GOALS
Registrations to advertised events

Alumni engagement via an online giving form

Students signing up for a text alert service or paying a deposit

online

Set up a goal within Admin,
choose the Profile you want
to add the goal, select Goals,
select +Goals
URL destination - see how
frequently visitors abandon
their way and where they go
to
ADMIN - GOALS
Within each profile, can
create 4 sets of goals, each
containing up to 5 goals
and choose to make that goal
if more goals required, an
additional profile would need
to be created
Visit duration
specify hours, minutes,
seconds that occurs for a time
lapsed on a visit
Specify a name for the goal
Four different types of goals
active or inactive
Event
• used with Event tracking to track
Pages/Visit activity such as a file download
specify a number of pages • configure a combination of one or
more event conditions (category,
visited
action, label, value)
 CONVERSIONS > GOALS

01 02 03 04 05
Overview—default Goal URLs Reverse goal path Funnel Visualisation Goal flow
report, shows number of • view graph of all completed • shows URLs of three previous • funnel showing the route of all • flow visualises the path from
goals and value goals and table displays URL steps that visitors used before traffic to conversion-displays where visitors came from,
when goal completed conversion URLs visitors took when through different pages
abandoning route to goal and towards the conversion and
percentage of those who table displays percentage from
progressed to conversion source
 • VISITS
A period of interaction between a web browser and a web site, closing the browser or
staying inactive for >30 mins ends the visit.

• UNIQUE VISITORS
Counts each visitor only once during the selected date range
Uniquely identified by a GA visitor cookie, assigns a random visitor ID to the user,
combines it with a timestamp of the visitor’s first visit.

COMMON If visitor A views a site 4 times during the selected date range, visitor B views the same
site once, that’s 2 unique visitors.

METRICS • PAGE VIEWS

Counts every time a page on a site loads

• UNIQUE PAGEVIEWS
Represents the number of visits during which that page was viewed.
If a visitor view page A for 4 times during one visit, it is 4 PVs and 1 unique page view.
 • BOUNCE
Calculated as a single-page view or single-event trigger in a visit or session - these
qualify as bounces:
A visitor clicks on a URL sent by a friend, reads the content on the page and closes the
browser
A visitor comes to your home page reads for a minute or two and immediately leaves
A visitor comes directly to a page referred from a search, leaves the page available in the
browser while completing other tasks in other browser windows and the session times
out

COMMON
METRICS
• BOUNCE RATE
Percentage of visitors that view only one page during a visit to your site.

• PAGES/VISIT
Displays average number of pages viewed per visit to a site
Repeated views of a single page are counted in this calculation
This metric is useful as a total as well as when it is viewed with other dimensions, such
as country, visitor type, mobile operating system, etc. Bounces are excluded
REAL-TIME REPORTS

Measuring activity as it
happens
• How many people viewing
content right now? Verify Tracking Code is
• Pageviews per
second/minute
working
• The location of the visitors
• Which traffic sources driving
audience?
• What pages visitors are
viewing?

Check the traffic when

Monitor the effects of
a social media post has
an email campaign
been made
ANALYZE
AND REFINE Make use of advanced
segments
Visualise data differently

YOUR
REPORTS
Use profiles to filter data
Add annotations to remind
e.g. remove your internal
you of key reasons for
network traffic from the
traffic changes or changes
rest of the data
made to the site
check up on change history
ANALYZE TRAFFIC –
ADVANCED SEGMENTS
Analyse specific kinds of traffic as you go through reports
Analyse • view data only for a particular segment or compare data side-by-side with data from other
segments e.g. ‘New Visitors’ with ‘Returning Visitors’

Create a custom segment for you to analyse your traffic

Create • identify the dimensions and metrics you want to select e.g. only traffic for a certain region

Select up to four segments to compare

Select up • displays results within graph, examine historical data (even if segment just created)

Adjust sample size tool - controls the subset of data to be used when building a
Adjust report
• slider used to select less for faster processing or more for higher precision
 DASHBOARDS
Select title to go to report,
hover over title to see icons
to edit or delete

create and customise

a dashboard
 CUSTOMIZATION –
CREATING YOUR OWN
REPORTS

Ability to create your own custom Select appropriate metrics and

reports and categorize dimensions to display report

Report content - name report tab of

either type Explorer or Flat table
• Explorer - contains a hierarchy of data tables
General information - enter a name for linked by clickable rows (name and select Metric
the custom report group and Dimension drilldowns)
• Flat table - a single table showing all the data
(add up to 5 dimensions and 25 metrics)

Filters - optional, to limit report to Profiles - optional, add other profiles

subset of data that this report is also available

https://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=1151300&topic=1012046
SUMMARY

Plan Analyse Minimise Monitor

Plan - set your Analyse - filter Minimise effort - Monitor traffic -
goals to see what traffic, refine your dashboards, email real time,
visitors achieve (or reports reports, use intelligence events,
not) shortcuts social media
Google Analytics cookies act as local data collectors on
the visitor’s device as the visitor interacts with a web
page

They uniquely define the visitor and gather information

from page to page during a visitor's session

GOOGLE
GOOGLE
Data about the browser being used, computer type,
network location etc. are also stored in these cookies ANALYTIC
ANALYTIC
SSCOOKIES
COOKIES
Google Analytics cookies do not collect personal data
about a web page visitor

At critical points of a visit cookie information is dumped

to Google Analytics servers
HOW DATA COLLECTION WORKS?
JavaScript file ga.js loaded in any page being tracked

This contains definitions of Google Analytics objects with associated methods (specific scripts)

Some of these are called by the standard install code insert, or other JavaScript in a page, and these update Google

Analytics cookies with information about the page visit or initiate transfer of cookie information to Google

Information stored in Google Analytics cookies, including relevant information determined from the environment, is
transferred to Google servers using the _utm.gif method

This information is then processed at Google and stored in the Google Analytics account identified in the tracking
code
GOOGLE TAG MANAGER
 COMPONENTS OF GTM

• Tag: A tag is code that send data to a system such as Google Analytics. Tags execute, or fire, in response
to events. Events could be page loads, button clicks, page scrolls, etc. In Tag Manager, you define triggers
 to listen for those events and specify when tags should fire.

• Trigger: A trigger listens for certain events, such as clicks, form submissions, or page loads. When an
event is detected that matches the trigger definition, any tags that reference that trigger will fire.

• Variable: A variable is a named placeholder for a value that will change, such as a product name, a price
value, or a date.
GOOGLE TAG MANAGER
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY
• Developing a tag implementation
strategy

• Installing and managing tags

• Setting up cross-domain tracking

• Tracking events with variables

EXPERIMEN
TAL
FRAMEWOR
K
BUILDING
TESTING
HYPOTHE
SIS
 • Technical Setup Review
Conclusion & • Platform overview

Case Studies • Roleplay and Exercise

• Q&A
Thank You!