Analytics Overview - Adam Kutner

Adam M Kutner

Google Analytics

Advanced Tactics

Twitter: @adamkworksEmail: [email protected]

Who is this guy?!

Twitter: @adamkworksEmail:

[email protected]

Adam KutnerBigWing Interactive

Senior SEM, Display & Analytics Specialist at BigWing Interactive Ecommerce business owner-operator Experienced in web advertising, Analytics, web development &

Online Retail for over 7 years. Spends more time A/B testing than sleeping Hobbies include 18 years in Martial Arts, motorcycles, sci-fi,

Excel development, & handyman work Father of 2 kids that are definitely mine


What we are talking about today

Google Analytics Basics Quick Setup Segments Campaign Tagging Dashboards Remarketing & Demographics Filtering Bad Traffic Analytics in Action – Real

Examples Additional Resources Twitter: @adamkworks

Email: [email protected]

Business Analysis FirstAnalytics Second

Before Running Any Campaign it is CRITICAL to understand:

The nature of the Business – “Why it exists” The industry in which the Business resides The Business’s Objectives Competition Target Market


Analytics Ownership

Know This: Whoever sets up your Analytics account must link it to a login email (Typically a Gmail account)

• Whoever owns that email, owns your web data.• Make sure you own your data, and are not a property

in someone else’s Analytics account• Setup Analytics Gmail’s and add managing

users with caution.


Analytics is about Measuring

Here is my measurement for today

My Business Objective: Educate my audience in a meaningful way about Google Analytics

My Goals: 1) Transmit at least 1 idea about Analytics that each

person in my audience can grow in their endeavors.2) Finish 100% of my presentation in the allotted 30

minutes


Analytics is about Measuring

Strategy Create an abundance of material and cover at least 5 aspects of

Analytics. Use Appeal to emotion and other psychographic material to engage

interest Limit my Time-on-slide to 32 seconds (30 minutes, 56 slides). Feedback from audience sampling. (in-room analytics)

KPI’s: Time-on-slide (s) % of people staring at their cell phones during presentation or leave

(bounce rate + eye tracking) % of visitors who remember my name after 7 days (return visitors)


The Basics

Dimensions Metrics Segments Session Users Goals Events Conversions JavaScript Research this item

thoroughly before implementing

These are some of the key terms I will be using today. You can familiarize yourself with them by visiting Google’s Analytics Academy @

analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com


Analytics Quick Setup Tips

Website Audit – Define your sites purpose

Identify Goals + values Funnel pages Site technology – is event

tracking needed? Create & setup GA account Enable data sharing &

management levels

Link Webmaster Tools Link AdWords / enable auto-

tagging Verify the tracking code is

installed AdSense account linking Create Remarketing Lists Setup Site-Health Dashboard UPDATE YOUR PRIVACY

POLICYTwitter: @adamkworks


AdWords account not linking?


Ensure that you are properly sharing data.

Admin – Account - Account Settings

Analytics Quick Setup TipsMore Recommended Features

Enable display features Enhanced Link Attribution User-ID(use with caution)

Used to overcome cross device attribution.

Must code to generate your own unique user ID’s

Cross Domain Tracking Event Tracking

Enable display features Enables remarketing

audiences Create an Unfiltered view Enable Site Search

Tracking Custom Marketing Views

Good for working with 3rd parties who need access to your Analytics


Advanced Segments

Compare behaviors of different groups of people and different technology like:

See how converters perform vs non-converters. Mobile VS Desktop USA vs Canadians Visitors who browse at night between 4-5am on mobile devices but only

searched with 1 keyword vs visitors who browsed during the day using multiple keywords on desktop devices.

Can be customized with custom variables & data layers Avoid Data Overload - Set up your Advanced Segments with a

purpose. When you identify new behavior that affects your goals, segment it.


Combine dimensions & metrics

Target premade segments or create your own


Gain Invaluable Insights


Compare User Behaviorthis is a cohort comparison by page views over time


Segments

Converters

VS

Non-Converters

Bounce Rate Problems(and how to solve them)

Bounce Rates don’t always give you an accurate view of engagement. Bounce: “sessions in which the person left your site from the

entrance page without interacting with the page.” Default timeout: 30 minutes

Bypass them by using the Timer Trigger in the Google Tag Manager and event tracking in Google Analytics.

Know its limitation and alternative options using data layer variables



The Google tag manager has a built in timer function that can help alleviate bounce measurement issues.

If you want more advanced control over timings and usage data, you need to investigate installing a data layer to track page timing.

Campaign Tagging


Tagging Makes a Difference

With Tagging Without…


How to tag a URL properly

https://bigwing.com/?utm_source=bigwing-marketing&utm_medium=banner&utm_term=social%20media&utm_content=320x50_bigwing_adv2&utm_campaign=2015_Retargeting_Mobile_OKC









Break that down please…

https://bigwing.com/?utm_source = bigwing-marketing&utm_medium = banner&utm_term = social%20media&utm_content = 320x50_bigwing_adv2&utm_campaign = 2015_Retargeting_Mobile_OKC

Your Landing Page

The source of the traffic

The medium of that traffic

The terms or keywords targeted

The name of your ad/content

The name of your campaignTwitter: @adamkworks




















Problems with tagging...

Each UTM code will overwrite the default data that Analytics receives.

?utm_source=Adam will overwrite bigwing.com as the traffic source.


Tagging tools to help you

Google URL Builder: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=enAdWords Auto TaggingBing Ads Auto TaggingDisplay Platforms will also sometimes provide you with Dynamic URL parameters ?utm_source=[campaign]Microsoft Excel


https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en



LeveragingDashboards

Twitter: @adamkworks Email: [email protected]


Dashboards are Tools……and the best tools

are Simple

Dashboard Principles

Have a purpose in mind for your dashboard• Goal Reporting• Landing Page Optimization• Site Health Diagnostics• ROI & Revenue Analysis

“Traffic Analysis” is not a purpose, it’s a distraction. Traffic is always a means to an end.

Goals & Revenue are derived from analyzing your conversion values.


Google Analytics has some pre-made dashboards that are great for getting you

on your feet initially.


Resources

Dashboard Resources

Google Analytics Solutions https

://www.google.com/analytics/gallery/#landing/start/

www.dashboardjunkie.com

www.customreportsharing.com/forum/4-custom-dashboards/

Widgets I like Revenue per Click / Keyword

Visits / Revenue

Geographic Revenue(especially useful if you have active campaigns in multiple regions)

Visit Duration & Bounce by Browser

Visit Duration & Bounce by Device

Branded Keyword Traffic over Time


https://www.google.com/analytics/gallery/#landing/start/





http://www.dashboardjunkie.com/

http://www.customreportsharing.com/forum/4-custom-dashboards/



AND…

Analytics Remarketing…Can make use of your demographic reporting

Create dynamic groups for Advertising.


Use Demographics Data

To adjust targeting for advertising campaigns To create segments of users to re-target based on interests To build new ads that speak directly to your visitor’s interests To target specific e-commerce purchase behavior Re-Use Ad Dollars that you have already spent in other

channels. Like mapping a Facebook audience to AdWords…


Demographics OverviewYou must enable this and update your privacy policy


Leverage Social Media Targetinglike Facebook


Filtering and controlling BAD traffic

Spam, Crawlers & Scrapers… Oh My!


Spotting Bad Traffic


We can do better than speculation…

Bots

Spam

Referrals

Direct Traffic


Understanding what SPAM is…

Bots and crawlers that actually visit your site Remote calls to your Analytics code(Hijacked

Analytics codes) Digital Advertisers with nothing to do


So how bad is it Really?

Twitter: @adamkworksEmail:

[email protected]

It’sBad


Dimensions can expose BAD traffic• Hostname will

expose the domain that the page view code originated from.

• This should almost always be your client’s domain or subdomain.


Location Location Location• Blocking Specific

Countries can be an effective strategy for some clients.

• If your services are mostly local or US based, this traffic is certainly unwelcome.


Diamonds & Filters are forever

Use Segments to filter your views without disrupting your data.

Applying a filter permanently alters traffic, but not past data. Always test the filter in a segment and separate view first

(25 available) Hostname inclusion filters can be extremely effective at

blocking hijacked Analytics codes, but use with caution: This will block content you might be tracking that is hosted on

another domain if it is not added to the inclusion list. Like (not set)…


Oops…


SPAM Exclusions & Inclusions

One regex Inclusion list might look like this (mysite\.com|myadvertiser\.com|(not set)|bing\.com|google\.com)

Your regex Exclusion list can add a series of spam sites by copying the work others have already done, or adding new ones as they crop up.

Variations:

.*((event\-tracking|semalt(media)?|(100dollars|success)\-seo|chinese\-amezon|e\-buyeasy|theguardlan|webmaster\-traffic)\.com|traffic(monetize(r)?|2money)\.(org|com)|pops\.foundation|erot\.co).*

Expect this to be an on-going process…


SPAM fact.Spammers target paid channels.PPC, Display, Facebook, YouTube, App Stores

If you spend money on marketing, someone will know within 24 hours and begin targeting you with poorly optimized spam campaigns.


Analytics in ActionReal Account Example

Ghost Call Conversions



See anything weird..?

We did too!



Initial Discovery

Strange geographic distribution Call conversions were being reported from Illinois

No presence or advertising in IL Campaign targeting was not to blame Next Stop….traffic reports…



More Investigation

Lots of conversions Very few sessions Not being attributed properly Unbelievable numerical reporting



Next we checked where the goals were completed at…(not set)

No pages were recorded……so we checked Events:

What happened next

We were prompted to listen to the calls manually. Once we did - and verified they were good leads :We compared the session logs with our phone tracking logs.

We discovered: the phone tracking code was overloaded with spam traffic It lost its unique session tracking ability Which caused Analytics to lose attribution, and the data center to fail in

attributing the conversions to the proper channels. We corrected the issue by implementing a new feature into the call tracking,

and are preparing a new innovation to combat the problem on a larger scale.

(the initial suggestion of using orbital nukes on the spammers was rejected by upper management due to cost and potential collateral damage)


Best Practices(some)

Setup your audiences early to collect as much data as possible Ensure all your data is linked properly & test tagging before

launching any digital campaign. Create Segments you can use across multiple dashboards Setup Filters to block internal traffic

MOST IMPORTANT

Have a reason for taking any action to avoid being drowned in useless data.


Additional Resources

Analytics Academy https://

analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/

GTM Macro Magic – Simo Ahava's blog http://www.simoahava.com/analytic

s/macro-magic-google-tag-manager/

Avinash Kaushik’s Blog – Occam’s Razor www.kaushik.net

Regexr http://www.regexr.com/

Google Analytics Developers https://

plus.google.com/communities/110103497213687093818

Google Analytics YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/googl

eanalytics Google Analytics Solutions


Kissmetrics blog blog.kissmetrics.com

Google Pagespeed Insights https://developers.google.com/speed

/pagespeed/insights/

Browser tools: Ghostery Google Page Analytics Google Tag Assistant


https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/



http://www.simoahava.com/analytics/macro-magic-google-tag-manager/



http://www.kaushik.net/

http://www.regexr.com/

http://www.regexr.com/

https://plus.google.com/communities/110103497213687093818



https://www.youtube.com/user/googleanalytics

https://www.youtube.com/user/googleanalytics




https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/



Thank you for your time


Education

Analytics Overview - Adam Kutner