Web analytics provides detailed statistics about website visits that can be used to measure marketing efforts, optimize performance, and make informed decisions about content and design. Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics service that generates statistics about visits and visitors. It allows marketers to analyze metrics like traffic sources, search terms, visitor behavior, and location to gain insights about how visitors engage with a website.

1. Under the hood of

2. Overview
Introduction
• General visitor metrics
• Where your visitors come from
• How they find you
• How they use your site
Application
Using this information to
• Measure marketing efforts
• Optimize performance
• Make informed decisions about
content and design
• Define web analytics
• Why it’s important
• The lay of the land
Gathering information

3. Web Analytics Defined
• Google Analytics (GA) is a service offered by
Google that generates detailed statistics
about the visits to a website.
• It is the most widely used website statistics
service.
• The product is aimed at marketers as opposed
to webmasters and technologists from which
the industry of web analytics originally grew.

4. Web Analytics Defined
• Google Analytics (GA) is a service offered by
Google that generates detailed statistics
about the visits to a website.
• It is the most widely used website statistics
service.
• The product is aimed at marketers as opposed
to webmasters and technologists from which
the industry of web analytics originally grew.
The product is made for people like you so you
can make informed marketing decisions.
marketers = you

5. How GA Works

6. Why it’s important
• Websites are one of the most trackable
marketing tools available to small businesses.
• Analytics help you gauge effectiveness of
marketing efforts outside your website.
• Data provided assists with optimizing content.
• Results allow you to make informed decisions
about content and site design.

7. Lay of the land
• Login at www.google.com/analytics
• Choose your site profile or search for it
• Welcome to the dashboard!

8. Lay of the land: Dashboard

9. Links to all of the standard reports available about your
website. An overview of these reports is emailed to you
in your monthly website traffic report.

10. Default date range settings are for one calendar month.

11. The date range can be changed at any time to review more
specific timeframes.

12. Plotted timeline of metrics measured in reports.
Report output displays below the timeline it varies from report
to report.

13. • Visitors/Visits
The number of visits to your site during
a given time period.
• Unique Visitors
Count of unique visitors (based on
cookie data) in a given period of time.
Each browser gets a cookie once a
visitor has gone to your site. These
visitors may have been to your site
before the determined timeframe. Not
necessarily new visitors to the site, just
unique to the requested timeframe.
• Pageviews
The number of pages these visitors
viewed.
• Pages/Visit
The average visit in terms of page views.
Visitor metrics
Visit Metrics

14. • Bounce Rate
The percentage of people who only
visited one page on your site before
they “bounced” somewhere else.
• Avg. Visit Duration
The average amount of time a visitor
spends at your site.
• % New Visits
The percentage of new visitors to your
site as compared to all visitors.
Visitor metrics
Visit Metrics (Cont.)

15. Getting Started: Goals
Why just measure when you can measure with purpose?

16. Goal Guidelines
• Set ____________ goals
• Focus on building _____ for website visitors
• ________ your website into the _________ of
your business

17. Goal Guidelines
• Set ____________ goals
• Focus on building _____ for website visitors
• ________ your website into the _________ of
your business
viewer-centric
value
processesIntegrate

18. APPLICATION
Our site goals
• Build credibility and share our qualifications
by showing off our awesome work in our
portfolio
• Highlight our company culture and values in
an in-your-face way to detour businesses who
don’t share our values

19. APPLICATION
Our site goals
• Provide useful resources and news for clients,
prospects and anyone interested in web design
and digital marketing
• Generate and qualify leads submitted through
the site to ensure they’re a fit for our business

20. Measuring Goals
Why does Google love engagement?

21. APPLICATION
• _______ page views
• ______ visit duration
• _____ bounce rate
• _______ pages per visit
• _____ return visitors
= Good visitor engagement
Measuring for Engagement

22. APPLICATION
Increase
Longer
Lower
Increase
More
• _______ page views
• ______ visit duration
• _____ bounce rate
• _______ pages per visit
• _____ return visitors
= Good visitor engagement
Measuring for Engagement

23. APPLICATION
Our site goals
• Build credibility and share
our qualifications by
showing off our awesome
work in our portfolio
• Highlight our company
culture and values in an
in-your-face way to detour
businesses who don’t
share our values
Visits to the meet the
team, about us, smile
behind the sass and
contact page
Visits and visit
duration on portfolio
pages, clicks through
to contact page

24. APPLICATION
Our site goals
• Provide useful resources
and news for
clients, prospects and
anyone interested in web
design and digital
marketing
• Generate and qualify
leads submitted through
the site to ensure they’re
a fit for our business
Visits and visit duration
on blog posts, return
visitors, pages per visit
Form submissions
converted to closed
business, new visitors

25. APPLICATION
We can judge the progress towards our goals by doing a
date comparison of metrics.

26. Traffic Sources
How are visitors finding your website?

27. • ___________ found your site by typing in
your domain name or bookmarking pages to
visit your site directly
• ___________ found you by searching using a
search engine such as Google
• ____________ found you by clicking on a link
to your site from another site
Traffic Sources

28. • ___________ found your site by typing in
your domain name or bookmarking pages to
visit your site directly
• ___________ found you by searching using a
search engine such as Google
• ____________ found you by clicking on a link
to your site from another site
Traffic Sources
Direct Traffic
Search Traffic
Referral Traffic

29. APPLICATION
Direct Traffic

30. APPLICATION
Direct Traffic

31. APPLICATION
Organic Traffic

32. APPLICATION
Organic Traffic

33. APPLICATION
Referral Traffic

34. APPLICATION
Referral Traffic
-23
-72
+125
+40

35. APPLICATION
Traffic Observations
• Google traffic is way up, which is good, we want
our clients to be early adopters, Bing and Yahoo
are not typically early adopters. So even though
traffic is down from those sources we’re OK with
that.
• Facebook users are using mobile aps to interact
with us.
• We changed how we do Facebook and it’s more
effective now.
• We’ve been marketing more for Tranquility and
it’s pushing traffic our way as well.

36. Search Terms
Are visitors finding your site for what you do?

37. Search Terms
• When you are found by you _____________
it means the rest of your marketing is working
• If you are not found by ___________ it means
your ___________ needs improvement
• If you are frequently found for things
___________ your ___________ needs
improvement

38. Search Terms
• When you are found by you _____________
it means the rest of your marketing is working
• If you are not found by ___________ it means
your ___________ needs improvement
• If you are frequently found for things
___________ your ___________ needs
improvement
business name
what you do
pagecontent
page contentyou don’t do

39. APPLICATION
Search Terms
Are they engaging in your website when arriving via search?

40. APPLICATION

41. APPLICATION

42. APPLICATION
Search Term Observations
• Our blogging activities do bring in more traffic
• Most blog traffic is to articles answering
specific questions, need to make sure answers
are up-to-date
• People are finding us for what we do: web
design BUT it’s declining from 143 in 2012 to
86 in 2013
• Traffic increase to the site is due to referrals
and direct traffic

43. New vs Returning
Frequency
Engagement
Are your visitors engaged?

44. • New visitors are _____
• Return visitors are ______
• Strive for ______ visitors visiting __________
with _________ visit duration
New vs Returning
Frequency
Engagement

45. • New visitors are _____
• Return visitors are ______
• Strive for ______ visitors visiting __________
with _________ visit duration
New vs Returning
Frequency
Engagement
good
better
more more often
increased

46. APPLICATION
New vs Returning

47. APPLICATION
Frequency

48. APPLICATION
Engagement

49. APPLICATION
Engagement Observations
• Those that are engaged are very engaged
• Need to keep providing quality content to
increase return visitors, possibly through
automation
• We may need to make the next step clearer
for website visitors to ensure they can easily
continue browsing

50. Page Views
What information interests your visitors?

51. • Average time on page tells us if the content
was ________
• Pages with _____________ are optimizing
well or linked to often
• A high bounce rate usually means the content
______ what they thought it would be or
_______________ is unclear
• Exit rates should be highest on ____________
then generally the __________
Page Views

52. • Average time on page tells us if the content
was ________
• Pages with _____________ are optimizing
well or linked to often
• A high bounce rate usually means the content
______ what they thought it would be or
_______________ is unclear
• Exit rates should be highest on ____________
then generally the __________
Page Views
engaging
high entrances
wasn’t
conversion path
contact page
home page

53. APPLICATION
Page Views

54. APPLICATION

55. APPLICATION

56. APPLICATION

57. APPLICATION

58. APPLICATION
Page View Observations
• Our blog posts generate traffic
• Answers to commonly asked questions are the
most popular
• Adding drop down menus helped increase
traffic to sub level pages
• People like to read about other people
• Pages with clear conversion paths have lower
bounce and exit rates

59. Visitors Flow
How do visitors travel through your site?

60. Visitors Flow
• The most common third stop is your _____
page due to back clickers
• Illustrates how visitors ____ through your site
• The red indicator gives a good visual of
________
• Pay attention to how visitors arrive at your
_______ page

61. Visitors Flow
• The most common third stop is your _____
page due to back clickers
• Illustrates how visitors ____ through your site
• The red indicator gives a good visual of
________
• Pay attention to how visitors arrive at your
_______ page
home
flow
exit rate
contact

62. APPLICATION

63. APPLICATION
Visitors Flow Observations
• Need to write more blog posts about
newsletters
• Need a clearer conversion path to help visitors
stay on the website and gather their
information
• People use our website to get our contact
information if they’re a client or are ready to
buy

64. Location
Where are your visitors located?

65. Location
• Visitors from _________________ may visit
different information on your website
• This data can be used to _________________
of ________ marketing campaigns
• The data can also be used to locate
_________________ areas

66. Location
• Visitors from _________________ may visit
different information on your website
• This data can be used to _________________
of ________ marketing campaigns
• The data can also be used to locate
_________________ areas
different locations
gage effectiveness
regional
possible expansion

67. APPLICATION
Location

68. APPLICATION
Missouri Traffic

69. APPLICATION
Columbia Traffic

70. APPLICATION
Los Angeles Traffic

71. APPLICATION
Location Observations
• Columbia and Jefferson City visitors are
interested in the same information
• We need to do more to reach out to Jefferson
City viewers to make sure we don’t loose the
opportunity to grow within the community
• Visitors from other states are more interested
in blog posts, is there a way we can provide a
service to them?

72. Technology
How are visitors viewing your website?

73. Technology
• Early adopters tend to use ________ and
_______ browsers, many local college students
use ______
• If mobile viewers make up ________ of your
audience _____________________ and consider
creating a mobile site
• In comparison to your ________ data: ______
bounce rate, _____ page views and _____ time
on site from mobile users are good indicators you
need a mobile optimized site

74. Technology
• Early adopters tend to use ________ and
_______ browsers, many local college students
use ______
• If mobile viewers make up ________ of your
audience _____________________ and consider
creating a mobile site
• In comparison to your ________ data: ______
bounce rate, _____ page views and _____ time
on site from mobile users are good indicators you
need a mobile optimized site
Chrome
Firefox
Safari
over 25%
watch their data closely
average high
lowlow

75. APPLICATION
Browser
What program do viewers use to see your website?

76. APPLICATION

77. APPLICATION
Mobile
What device to viewers use to see your website?

78. APPLICATION

79. APPLICATION

80. APPLICATION
Technology Observations
• Our viewers are early adopters
• We don’t have enough mobile traffic to need
to have a mobile site yet
• Mobile visitors exhibit relatively similar data
as PC visitors a bit worse on a phone but the
same if not better on a tablet

81. Overview
Introduction
• General visitor metrics
• Where your visitors come from
• How they find you
• How they use your site
Application
Using this information to
• Measure marketing efforts
• Optimize performance
• Make informed decisions about
content and design
• Define web analytics
• Why it’s important
• The lay of the land
Gathering information