Developing a strategy for use of Google Analytics

Google Analytics strategy

What it is and why you need one

Neil.Allison@ed.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh Website Programme
www.ed.ac.uk/website-programme
@usabilityed

“He uses statistics as a
drunken man uses lamp posts

- for support rather than
for illumination.”
Andrew Lang
Scottish poet
1844 - 1912

• Why I’m here today
• What is Google Analytics?
• What Google Analytics can tell us
• What shouldn’t I do?
• OK, what should I do?
• Identifying your audiences
• Why bother with all this?

Website analytics

• The measurement, collection, analysis and
reporting of internet data

• For purposes of understanding and optimising
web usage

How Google Analytics works
• A hidden snippet of code that is added to all
webpages

• This code collects visitor information and sends it back
to Google servers for processing
– Requires JavaScript and cookies

• Polopoly-generated pages include this automatically.
– Everyone else needs to make sure it’s included.

What Google Analytics collects
• Information about a visit to our website,
including:
– Whether the visitor has been to the site before
– When the visit occurred
– The referring site or campaign
– What the visitor did during their visit
– Where they are and the technology they used

• All data is aggregated and anonymised

What Google Analytics doesn’t record
• Document downloads

• Clicks on links to destinations not tracked by
our code

• Interactions with in-page content
– For example an embedded YouTube video

There are ways around this…

We collect tons of data
• In 2011 the University Website had:
– Unique Visitors: 4,061,338
– Pageviews: 73,827,700

• That’s a big pot of data
– You need to be able to break this pot down

• Doing this effectively needs a strategy

Segmentation

• Few – if anyone - should be
interested in taking all this
data at once.

• You will only be interested in
a slice based on your visitors

• This is where segmentation
comes in…

Google Analytics can tell us
• Things like… • My question today:
– Top content
– Top search terms
– Visits
– Unique visitors –“So what?”
– Time on site
– Pages per visit
– Bounce rate

Hopefully I’ll answer this too…

Google Analytics doesn’t tell us
how to build a better business
It’s just numbers…

“We want more visitors”

• Does this = success? Probably not…
– Do you really want fewer unnecessary enquiries?
– Or maybe more “valuable” enquiries?

• Beware of measuring something
just because it’s easy to do

“We want to see how effective our
advertising has been”
• But what are visitors doing on arrival?
– Think quality not quantity

• A referrer is a great way to identify a
particular type of user
– Compare their behaviour to others who didn’t
visit via the advertising campaign

“We want people to watch our video”
• Or maybe download our brochure…

• No – you want quality applications
– You want to gauge how watching the video is
affecting user behaviour, compared to those that
aren’t
– Are they reading more content? Staying longer on
site? Doing the things you want them to do?

“We want our users to…”
• But who are your users? (we really mean target audience)

– Certainly not everyone who arrives at your site
• Potentially only a small proportion

– How can we use Analytics to identify them?
• Good site and content structure is essential

Beware of redesign based on
Google Analytics alone
• Google Analytics can tell
you what, but not why
– Jumping to conclusions is
easy and dangerous

• Analytics + User Research
=
Greater than the sum of • How many blind
their parts men are there round
your elephant?

What constitutes a successful visit?
• Identify what you want visitors to do:
– Spent x minutes on site
– Visited pages A, B and C
– Downloaded brochure x
– Completed my enquiry form
– Spent x minutes reading how to apply info
– Rated or shared my content

• Or possibly a combination of some of these?

Put a value on your content
creation & management
• Is video content worth the investment?

• Is it worth our while generating x news articles
per month?

• If we cut y pages from our website, would it
affect our ‘performance’?

Identify things that
warrant further investigation

• Back to the elephant
– Usability testing
– Surveys
– Click analysis
– etc

Set up your website
to identify audiences
• If you bundle a range on content on a page,
you can’t identify what the visitor was there
for

• In the absence of video and download
numbers, structure your site accordingly
– If you want to compare prospective students who
watched our video to those who didn’t…

Some potential audiences
• Within or outside the University network
• From a particular geographic location
• With browsers set to not-English
• Using mobile devices
• Having visited a particular page
– Especially form ‘thank you’ pages
• Having spent x minutes on the site
• Having viewed at least y pages

Or more likely – a combination of these…

For example…

• What can we learn about people in China who
have demonstrated a strong interest in
programme x?

• How does their behaviour differ from similar
people based in Europe?

Why do all this?

• Justify the effort put into your website
– Make a case for more resource?

• Measure the value added by bringing extra
data into your calculations
– X visitors = Y bums on seats = £Z,000

Thank you

Questions?

Neil.Allison@ed.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh Website Programme
www.ed.ac.uk/website-programme
@usabilityed

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