Presentation at SES London 2012 for Kick Start track about creating a framework for digital measurement and analysis centered around microconversions and funnel segmentation. Additional points include common mistakes people make with Google Analytics.

1. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
Google Analytics Basics
Implementation & Analysis Strategies
@analyticsninja

2. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
Analytics Ninja LLC
• Founded 2010, after managing PPC and Analytics in house for B2C and B2B
companies.
• Speaker at SphinnCon, SMX, and will be participating on the Web Analytics
round-table discussion later today.
• Company focus is an advanced implementations that are closely aligned
with client’s business goals, we lead to robust, actionable analysis.
• I love web analytics and would love to turn every internet marketer into an
analytics ninja.
@analyticsninja

3. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
Implementation & Analysis
Implementation: Analysis:
• Data Collection – What • Measurement of inbound
are you tracking? marketing– SEO, PPC, Social
• Data Quality – is it • Actionable items – doing
accurate? something with the data
@twitterhandle

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BEFORE Implementation
• What are your goals as • Write down your
company? questions
• How do those relate to • Brainstorm what data
the internet? would be useful
• How would you • If you can conceive a
measure that with GA? question, you can
probably track it and
answer it in GA.
http://www.analyticspros.com/blog/google- @analyticsninja
analytics/web-analytics-planning-model/

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BEFORE Implementation
C/O
http://www.analyticspros.com/blog/google- @analyticsninja
analytics/web-analytics-planning-model/

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Implementation
• Most powerful implementations are with
features that are not “out-the-box” in GA.
Event Tracking and Custom Variables. i.e.
These require more advanced coding.
• Since this presentation is geared as in
introduction, focus is goal implementation and
analysis techniques that can be done, for the
most part, “out of the box.”
@analyticsninja

7. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
BEFORE Analysis
Know your A B C’s
Justin Cutroni Avinash Kaushik
• Acquisition
• Behavior
• Outcomes
http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/02/09/ http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-
pimping-out-google-analytics-for- marketing-and-measurement-model/
ecommerce-websites/
Acquisition Behavior Conversions
@analyticsninja

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Know what you’re looking at…
• Hits • Hits = Data sent to the GA servers.
Usually pageviews or events.
• Visits • Visits = A session. Ends after 30
minutes of inactivity or returning
to site via new source.
• Unique Visitors
• Unique Visitors = Persistent
Cookies in a Web Browser
• People • People = Difficult to truly measure.
@analyticsninja

9. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
21% – 39% of “Unique Visitors” are not unique**
**not a scientific study.
http://www.analytics-ninja.com/blog/2011/12/how-
unique-are-unique-visitors-in-google-analytics.html @analyticsninja

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Hits, Visits, Visitors…??? Who cares?
Real Case:
A client engaged a (fairly expensive) 3rd party
conversion rate optimization company. Client
wanted to know their baseline conversion rate
before testing variations of their product page
template. This is the report they got…..
@analyticsninja

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Hits, Visits, Visitors…??? Who cares?
@analyticsninja

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Hits, Visits, Visitors…??? Who cares?
@analyticsninja

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Hits, Visits, Visitors…??? Who cares?
@analyticsninja

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The answer…
@analyticsninja

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Goals
• Goals are things you
want someone to do on
your website.
• Usually a sale, lead
generation form
submission, newsletter signup, or the like.
Helps answer question posed during planning stage,
“how do I measure impact on my business?”
@analyticsninja

16. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
Goals
The simplest type of goal is a pageview.
This means that a visitor viewed a particular
page, most commonly the “thank you” page of
some sort of lead generation form or online
checkout.
This is known as a macro-conversion
@analyticsninja

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Funnels
Always try to set up a funnel –
the steps that a person commonly
goes through to complete the goal
(again, think online checkout).
Funnels currently only work with
pageviews.
@analyticsninja

18. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
How to set up a funnel
• 1st, Learn some Basic
RegEx (really)
• Choose URL Destination
• Goal URL is the url that
each step in the funnel is
leading up to.
• Don’t include the Goal URL
in your funnel steps
• Include a goal value in
most cases.
@analyticsninja

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Required Reading!
http://www.lunametrics.com/regex-
book/Regular-Expressions-Google-Analytics.pdf @analyticsninja

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Funnel
Visualization
Report
Exit is from furthest place
reached in the funnel
@analyticsninja

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Better than Funnel Visualization
@analyticsninja

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Also Better Than GA Funnel Visualization
@analyticsninja

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Funnel Segmentation
Horizontal Funnels
Allow us to compare funnel completion
across inbound channels
http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2010/06/04/segment-
goal-funnel-google-analytics/ @analyticsninja

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Micro Conversions / Other Goals
• Steps along the conversion path such as view
of category page, product page, add to cart.
• Engagement Metrics such as Page Depth or
Time on Site
• Touch points such as newsletter signups, free
site registrations, live chats, whitepaper
downloads, contact us page.
@analyticsninja

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Why engagement goals matter
Lower than Avg.
Ecommerce Rate
Higher than Avg.
User Engagement
@analyticsninja

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How to set up Page Depth & Time on Site Goals
@analyticsninja

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How to choose Page Depth & Time on Site Goals

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How to choose Page Depth & Time on Site Goals
@analyticsninja

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Segmentation
@analyticsninja

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Goal & Funnel Segmentation
@analyticsninja

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Goal & Funnel Segmentation - BROWSER
@analyticsninja

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Goal & Funnel Segmentation – Screen Resolution
@analyticsninja

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Goal & Funnels – Review
• Category Pages
• Product Pages
• Page Depth greater than X
• Time on Site greater than X
• Each checkout step (for ecommerce)
• Other touch points (contact us forms,
newsletter signups, live chat, downloads).
@analyticsninja

34. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
Segmentation Basics – Review
• Segment by each of bullet points on previous slide
• Browser (identify browser compatibility issues)
• Screen Resolution (not all of your prospects have
that beautiful 27” screen you have).
@analyticsninja

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Additional “Must Have” Segments
• Bounced visits • Social Media
• Site Search • No Site Search & 4+ pages
• Branded Keywords • Non Branded Keywords
• Mobile devices • Non-Mobile
• New Visitors • Returning Visitors
Example:
Screen Resolution issues may matter a lot less to your
returning visitors than to your new visitors
@analyticsninja

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Challenge - Pan Session Analysis
@analyticsninja

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Pan Session Analysis
@analyticsninja

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Pan Session Analysis
@analyticsninja

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Use Multi Channel Funnels
@analyticsninja

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Use Multi Channel Funnels
@analyticsninja

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Put them together
@analyticsninja

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Multi-touch Attribution Examples
@analyticsninja

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One of my favorite Conversion Segments
@analyticsninja

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One of my favorite Conversion Segments
@analyticsninja

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Branded vs. Non-Branded Keywords
@analyticsninja

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Branded vs. Non-Branded Keywords
@analyticsninja

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Segment Branded Keywords
@analyticsninja

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Segment Branded Keywords
@analyticsninja

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Segment Branded Keywords
@analyticsninja

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Segment Branded Keywords
@analyticsninja

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Segment Branded Keywords
@analyticsninja

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Multi-touch Attribution
http://www.analytics-ninja.com/blog/2011/02/multi-
touch-attribution-with-google-analytics.html @analyticsninja

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Segment = Last Touch Branded
@analyticsninja

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A Note about Direct Traffic
• Direct Traffic in Multi Channel Funnels is
treated differently than in standard reports.
(thanks @adrianvender)
• In standard reports, the last campaign touch
will remain the source of traffic for 6 months
(by default)
• In Multi Channel Funnels, any “direct visit” will
be counted as direct.
@analyticsninja

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@analyticsninja

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A few common mistakes
@analyticsninja

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Self Referrals
Indicative of a problem
with subdomains or with
cross-domain tracking.
@analyticsninja

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@analyticsninja

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A bounce is a visit with a single hit
@analyticsninja

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A bounce is a visit with a single hit
@analyticsninja

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Bounce Rate – Implementation Problem
@twitterhandle

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Use Intelligence Events / Alerts
• Quickly identify problems • Programmers can make mistakes that impact analytics
http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/01/04/save-
your-ass-with-google-analytics-data-alerts/
@ analyticsninja

63. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
“Bounce Rate means I came, I puked, I left”
-Avinash Kaushik
• This is true most of the time.
• With the exception of content sites and blogs,
bounce rate should be the first place you go to
identify problems with your landing pages.
• Problems = relevancy issues (examine keywords
driving traffic)
• Problems = design issues (is your site scaring
people away?)
@ analyticsninja

64. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
“Bounce Rate means I came, I puked, I left”
-Avinash Kaushik
@ analyticsninja

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@twitterhandle

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Track Scrolling Behavior
• Thomas Baekdal (w/ Eivind Savio making it GA friendly).
http://www.savio.no/includes/script/page-scroll-reader.js
• Eduardo Cereto
https://github.com/eduardocereto/GA-Code-
Samples/tree/master/src
(also has great code for tracking embedded Youtube video plays)
@ analyticsninja

67. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
Why do I have a high bounce rate
but a low exit rate?
• All bounces are exits
• Not all exits are bounces
@ analyticsninja

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Bounce Rate is about LANDING PAGES.
@ analyticsninja

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Summary & Takeaways
• Read (and do) Caleb • Create micro-
Whitmore’s Web conversion goals as well
Analytics Planning as goals for each macro-
Process conversion funnel step
• ABC’s – Acquisition, (horizontal funnels).
Behavior, Conversions • SEGMENT by page
• If your data looks depth, time on site,
wrong, it probably is web browser type,
(don’t apply visit metrics to pages) screen resolution,
• Create at least one goal branded vs. non-
with a funnel (macro- branded keywords.
conversion)
@ analyticsninja

70. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
Summary & Takeaways
• Use Frequency and • A super low (or super
Recency Reports for Pan high) bounce rate
Session Analysis means something is
• Use Multi Channel probably broken.
Funnels to provide • Analyze bounce rate in
deeper insight into user context – make sure
behavior as it relates to you’re looking at # of
conversions. entrances.
• Self-Referrals are • Bounce rate is about
indicative of an landing pages.
implementation
problem.
@ analyticsninja

71. London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
Contact Info
Yehoshua Coren
ninja@analytics-ninja.com
Twitter: @analyticsninja
www.analytics-ninja.com
@ analyticsninja