Using Google Analytics To Track Website Optimization Success – Iii

During the last few segments of this series we talked about the benefits you can get from tracking software, of which Google Analytics is one of the best and free examples. We have also looked a bit on how to set up an account for Google Analytics, as well as some instructions on how to install it into every page of your website.

This time, we will be taking a dive into Google Analytics and explore its functions. There is a lot of available information that Google Analytics gathers, analyzes and computes and it can be daunting at first. If you are reading this, be sure that you have at least read part II and have your account set up and ready to follow the examples given here.

Reports Google Analytics’ reports generation is one of its powerful features and it will do you well to understand how to navigate and generate these reports. These reports are available for each website profile you have created. If you have made your website profiles accurately, the reports generated for each profile will be accurate as well. You can access the report for a particular website profile by clicking on the “View report” link just beside it.

Dashboard Clicking on the “View report” link will take you to that particular website profile’s dashboard. The dashboard is a very general overview of your website’s performance as Google Analytics gathered. You are also able to change dashboards to your other website profiles by clicking on the drop-down box where it says “View reports.”

·Visits. On the upper part of the dashboard is a graph that displays the number of visits on your site over time. Note that there is a distinction between visits and visitors: a visit means a session that was initiated by a visitor of your site. There is a 30-minute window of inactivity where a visitor’s visit is recounted. For example, if a visitor visits your site that is counted as one visit, but if the visitor idles or otherwise performs no activity whatsoever on your site (maybe because he or she switched to a different program) for 30 minutes or more, the next time your visitor performs an activity (like clicking on a link) it will be considered a new visit.

·Page views. Aside from showing you an overview of visits, your dashboard will also show the number of page views your site has generated. A page view is the number of pages a visitor had viewed. Note that this number can be skewed, especially for ajax-heavy and dynamic webapps, since there are practically no new page requests with these types of sites.  A visitor can have as few as only one page view per visit, even though he or she had stayed on your site for hours.

·Bouce Rate. You are also able to know what percent of your visitors only visit the front page and leave, without visiting any other places in your website. Most of the time, these are people who came in via a search engine and are tentatively visiting to see if your website has the content they were looking for and then leave after quickly judging that it does not. Knowing the bounce rate is extremely helpful when doing front page refactoring since you might find that the search engine queries or keywords are actually relevant to your site and yet the visitors still leave after only visiting the front page. It is possible your front page content is too cluttered or does not immediately present the necessary information.

·Average Time on Site. Your dashboard will also show the average amount of time your visitors spend on your site as a whole. The rule of thumb is that the higher the time a visitor spends on your site, the better (because your visitor is exposed to more of your content, might be enjoying interacting with your site, or eagerly browsing through your catalogue and consuming your data). However, one caveat is that this statistic can sometimes be misleading as some visitors will leave their browsers open while still pointing at your site. Cross reference this statistic with your pageviews to get a better picture.

·Map Overlay. One of the coolest features on Google Analytics is geolocation – a process by which a website visitor’s ip is correlated with its estimated geographic origin. Geolocation is more or less accurate and this information is gathered as well from each visit. On the map overlay, you can see a small map overlayed with information on which part of the world your visitors are coming from. This is most useful when you want to optimize your site to better target your audience. The numbers from gelocation are a very effective convincing tool as well.

·Traffic Sources. The dashboard also gives information on where your visitors are coming from. You will see a pie-chart that easily describes which sites feed traffic into your own. This resource is very helpful when trying to optimize your website for search engines; you will know which search engines drive traffic into your sites (and perhaps optimize for that search engine or add optimization for other engines) and which sites link to yours (such as forums, blogs, discussion boards). You can also use this report to figure out if your search engine consultant is actually driving traffic to your site due to his own methods and not because of other, irrelevant means.

·Content. You can also get a quick, good summary of your page content from the dashboard. You can determine the top drivers for page views from this report. This overview is more of a compilation of all the other reports and it is good for gaining a quick insight into which sections of your site are your prime assets.  You can then either capitalize on these assets by including a sales pitch or cross reference your other pages from this asset to get otherwise unseen pages more exposure.

This is just a very brief overview of the dashboard. Going even deeper into the various report generation capabilities of Google Analytics will take a whole book. It is advised that you play around with the report generation especially when you already have existing data. Also, the help section at Google Analytics is a very good resource for additional information.

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by Ivan Walsh

Using Google Analytics To Track Website Optimization Success – Ii

Last time we mentioned tracking software in general and briefly stated possible scenarios you can experience, as well as your possible actions when they actually occur. We also saw that Google Analytics is able to provide all of these features and much more. In this second part of the series we’ll be looking at Google Analytics in much more detail.

Creating a Google Analytics account The first thing you have to do to install Google Analytics is to sign up for an account. Head on over to http://google.com/analytics/sign_up.html and get a Google account; alternatively if you already have your own Google account you may just sign in there and associate your account with Google Analytics. From here on you simply need to sign into your Google account and you’ll have access to the statistics gathered by Google Analytics.

After that, you’ll need to provide your website URL. In case you would like to track more than one website, you can add those after setting up your account, but for now just add one of your existing websites. You’ll also have to fill in an account name. Remember that you’re not just limited to the root URL; you can assign an account name to a specific section of your website.  For example, if you have a blog section, you can create an account just for that blog section that is separate from your products section or from your company information section.

The last thing you need to do to create an account is to accept the terms of service. Read through and understand the agreement and tick the checkbox signifying that you have read and accepted the terms. After that, you will have created an account. Setting up your Google Analytics account

It is very easy to install Google Analytics. Installing it is as easy as copying and pasting a snippet of javascript code into all of your web pages. However, you must first understand your site layout, as the Google Analytics code snippet is different depending on whether you have a single domain, one domain with multiple subdomains or multiple top-level domains.

·Single domain. The single domain option is the default option. This option should be used when you have a single top-level domain and all of your webpages are under this domain. For example, if you own http://www.seoconsult.co.uk/ and every webpage has that domain as its root, then this option is for you.

·One domain with multiple subdomains. If you own a domain but prefer to use subdomains to keep separate the sections of your website, then you should use this option. For example, if you have code.google.com and labs.google.com this option is for you.

·Multiple top-level domains. Sometimes you would like your domain to be available in as many top-level-domain extensions as possible, so that it looks more official. For example, if you have yahoo.com as well as yahoo.co.uk then this option is what you should choose.

Notice that whenever you choose an option, the snippet of text to the right of it will change. This is the reason that identifying the category your domain falls into is important: there are different code tracking snippets for each category, and choosing the wrong category (leading to the wrong code snippet) may cause your reported statistics to be inaccurate.

Installing Google Analytics Now that you have the snippet, all you have to do is copy that piece of code and paste it in every page of your site that you want to be tracked. It is recommended that you place it before the tag, so that it is read last and will not affect page loading times.

For static sites, where each page is pre-generated and is served as-is by the webserver, all you need is to copy and paste the code to each of those static pages. Sometimes static sites make use of server-side includes which make site-wide changes of similar content easier (like headers and footers, for example). In this case, the best way would be to add the snippet to a server-side include that is called on just before the tag.

In case you are using a dynamically generated site (like a blog using WordPress or a Content Management System like drupal), the easiest way to install Google Analytics to every page of your site is to install it in the template you are using. For example, in WordPress a theme usually contains a template for the page layout – once you paste the tracking code to this template, each page that uses the template will be tracked by Google Analytics.

Website profiles Your Google Analytics account is not limited to tracking a single domain. You don’t have to create a new Google Analytics account if you wish to track a different domain or segregate tracking within a single domain. So how do you separate the reports between domains? You create a new website profile for them.

In fact, during the setting up section, you have in fact created an initial website profile. The procedure for creating a new website profile is very similar to that first set up. All you need to do is to click on “Add Website Profile” and continue as you would when you initially set up your first website.

Adding users Most of the time, you will not be the only one who wants to see the statistics gathered. Maybe your boss would like a piece of the action or perhaps you would like to delegate monitoring and responsibility of specific sections of the reports to subordinates. You can of course just share your Google Analytics account username and password, but that will not be very secure. The secure way of adding collaborators is to add users.

To add a new user, just click on “User Manager” and then “Add User.” Note that the user you are adding must have a Google account. The easiest way to make sure the email address has a Google account associated with it is to sign up for a Gmail account. After that, simply choose the access privileges you want this user to have, as well as which website profiles he or she can access. Then just click on “Save Changes” and your new user would have been added.

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