1. Extreme Analytics
#12NTCanalytics
Jo Miles
Food & Water Watch
@josmiles

2. Evaluate This Session!
Each entry is a chance to win an NTEN engraved iPad!
or Online using #12NTCanalytics
at www.nten.org/ntc/eval

3. Analytics: It’s a jungle in there

4. We’re going on an adventure
…though we do not know the way

5. We’ll cover a lot of ground
1. Where are we going?
2. Planning the trip
3. Navigating the jungle
4. Don’t forget to explore

6. WHERE ARE WE GOING?

7. Before starting any journey,
pick your destination!

8. What do these tell you?

9. What are your online goals?
Raise Money
You should have
Drive goals defined for
Advocacy your website
Build Email
List

10. Turn goals… into actions
Complete a
Raise Money
Donation Form
Complete an
Drive Advocacy
Advocacy Form
Build Email Complete a
List Sign Up Form

11. Turn actions… into analytics
Complete a donate-thank-
Donation Form you.html
Complete an action-
Advocacy Form completed.html
Complete a sign-up-
Sign Up Form thanks.html

12. Analytics is about goals
• Your data should help you
reach your goals
• If it doesn’t, get better
data
Your Goal
Your Data

13. Good data is
• Specific
• Comparable
• Relevant
• Actionable

14. Which kind of data are you using?
What does this even
Bad data: mean?
“42% of our visitors are new!”
Good data:
“Only 5% of our visitors come from Facebook,
but 70% of Facebook visitors are new,
and 45% of them take action!
That’s much better than our average visitor.
Let’s invest more energy in Facebook.”

15. PLANNING THE TRIP

16. This is your website
Viewed any Signed up for
article on email
fracking
Interacted
Took any Made a with a widget
action donation Clicked an
important
Watched a button
Viewed our
video
annual report
What you want to track

17. Wait a minute.
You mean I need MORE data?

18. Ok, then.
How do I track all of this?

19. Goals
Everyone (including you!)
should use goals.
Use goals to:
– Identify your most
important pages
– Measure conversion
rates
– Track bailout

20. Goals can have funnels
View cart
Enter shipping info
Use funnels to look at
for bailout in processes Enter billing
that are: info
– well-defined
Complete
– multi-step checkout
– E.g. shopping cart

21. A simple goal and funnel
Donation • Funnel Step 1
Form – Step 1 (not your goal)
Donation • Funnel Step 2
Form – Step 2 (not your goal)
Thank You • Goal URL (This
Page IS your goal!)

22. For even more powerful goals,
learn regular expressions

23. Why are goals so great?
• They show up in almost every report
• You can measure, compare, and improve
conversion rates!

24. Your homework
When you go back to your hotel tonight:
– Find the thank you page for your donation form
– Set up a donation goal
– Extra credit: Create a
funnel for your goal

25. Events
Good for tracking most “stuff” that’s not a page:
• Clicks
• Interactions
• Dynamic content
• Widgets
• Videos of baby
polar bears

26. How to create an event
• One line of easy JavaScript:
_trackEvent(category, action, opt_label,
opt_value, opt_noninteraction)
• Attach it to any trigger:
– Click
– Form submission
– Function call
– Any place you can call JS

27. Naming your events
• You get 4 fields – use them consistently!
• An event for playing a video:
– Category = “Videos”
– Action = “Play”
– Label = “Video Name”
– Value = Seconds watched
• In action:
<a href="#" onClick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent',
'Videos', 'Play', 'Polar Bear']);">Play</a>

28. New! Event-based goals
• Create a goal to match any event!
– Or a set of events
• Treat interactions like conversions

29. eCommerce
• All goals are equal
• But all donations are not
• Treat your donations as transactions
– Record the amount!
– Find your most valuable $100
donation sources
$50
$1500

30. Custom variables
Like events… but not exactly
– 3 “scopes” – they can persist
– Only 5 “slots”
When in doubt,
use events instead

31. Tracking:
The Balancing Act

32. NAVIGATING THE JUNGLE

33. The Landscape of the New Version
• New interface looks
like the old one…
– Except everything
has moved
• Handy tools and
shortcuts…
– If you know where to
look

34. Reports are reorganized
Navigate from
the top and side

35. New navigation
New visitors, technology, geography,
and visitor flow
Just what it sounds like
Just what it sounds like, plus SEO
Pages, site search, events
Goals, eCommerce, and multi-
channel

36. Reports in sneaky places
Watch out for
“tabs” within
reports in the
new version

37. Filters
Hide useless
data. Focus
on what
matters.

38. Viewing & Sorting
View your data as a pie
chart, performance
Sort by any
comparison, and more
column

39. The Timeline
Graph by day, week,
or month
Graph two metrics at once
Add annotations for reference –
when you make changes, or when
big events happen

40. The 2nd Dimension
Add depth to your data by
picking a second field
(instead of drilling down)

41. Goals, right in your reports
• asd

42. Advanced segments
Apply common segments to your reports:
– New/Returning visitors
– Search/Direct/Referrals
– Visits with conversions
– Mobile
– Non-bounce visits

43. Custom segments
Make and save your very own segments…
based on any criteria you can think of

44. A Segmented Report
Set your
advanced
segments from
any report!
…and now, see
them in context

45. Put it all together
To find high-performing referring sites, you could:
– View traffic source report
– Add landing page as second dimension
– Sort by goal conversion rate
– Filter out traffic from sites you own
– Filter out sources with less than 100 visits
– Segment to show only new visitors

46. A side-trip:
Cross-domain tracking
Where did these people really come from?

47. Why it happens
• Google Analytics uses cookies
• Cookies are single-domain
– Only the domain that created a cookie can read
that cookie
• But your website has multiple domains!

48. Why it happens
• You think you’re one visitor on one site
• But GA thinks you’re two visitors on two
domains!
• Solution: cross-domain tracking!

49. A story about cross-domain
You’re going on a cross-Atlantic flight. Before
leaving SFO, you take out $1000 in cash.
But your plane crashes on a mysterious island!

50. A story about cross-domain
You’re greeted by strange
people called the Dharma
Initiative.
You need to buy supplies…
But they won’t take your
US money!
What do you do?

51. A story about cross-domain
You exchange $1,000 for $687
Dharma-Bucks, of course!
Now, you can go about your
business.

52. The need for cross domain tracking
In this story:
– The USA and the Island are
two different web domains
– Money is your GA data
– Cross-domain tracking is the
exchange rate

53. Setting up for Multiple Domains
1. Update your GA code to allow cross-domain:
_gaq.push(['_setDomainName','foodandwaterwatch.org']);
 Allows tracking across sub-domains
_gaq.push(['setAllowLinker','true']);
 Gives permission for cross-domain tracking to be used…
2. Write code to handle cross-domain linking.
Call GA’s “link” function:
 Every time you link to another domain you own
 Every time a form submits across domains

54. While you’re at it…
As long as you’re setting up cross-domain
tracking, you can detect and track other kinds of
links:
– External links
– PDF downloads
– Other file downloads

55. EXPLORING THE JUNGLE

56. The Analytics Mindset
Be on a mission…
…and be an explorer
at the same time.

57. Look for the weird
• What is “unusual” for you?
– A huge spike in traffic?
– A very high conversion rate?
– A sudden increase in
bounce rate?
• Look for a reason –
don’t assume the best (or worst)
• Look below the surface…

58. What’s this?

59. Surprise!

60. What does this mean?
When you see an anomaly, dig deeper!
– Filter
– Segment
– Find related occurrences

61. A cautionary note
• As you look at smaller segments,
data may lose significance.
• A 50% conversion rate is:
– Amazing, for 50,000 visitors
– Just a coincidence, for 10 visitors

62. USEFUL TOOLS AND
WILD NEW FEATURES

63. Know where you are:
Make useful dashboards

64. Your personalized dashboard
• Keep it simple
• Two questions to ask yourself:
– Is this report related to my goals?
– Is this a report I should look at often?

65. Some useful dashboard reports
• Topline goal conversion rates
• Top keywords this month (excluding branded
keywords)
• Top traffic sources to action pages (excluding
email)
• Top articles, blog posts, and action pages
• Top donation sources

66. Know your content
Use these 3 kinds of content reports:
1. Pages report
– What are they looking at?
2. Landing page report
– How did they get here? Is “here” the right place
for them to be?
3. Exit page report
– Why did they leave? Is this a natural exit point, or
did they lose interest?

67. Site search:
Read your visitors’ minds!

68. How to set up site search
(in 30 seconds or less)
1. Do a search on your site
2. Look at the results URL:
– http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/?s=fracking&x=0&y=0
– Your search parameter is “s”
3. Plug all search parameters into Site Search
settings, and enable!

69. Visitor flow
Now that’s a jungle!

70. Real-time reporting
• asdf

71. Multi-channel funnels
• Normally, you look
at activity just
before a conversion
• But what if other
channels helped
them convert?

72. Multi-channel conversions
Questions we couldn’t answer before:
– How long did it take them to convert?
– How many ways did they reach our site?
– What is the true value of each channel?
• SEO
• Advertising

73. LET’S GET OUR FEET
BACK ON THE GROUND…

74. Three steps to plan your
analytics journey
1. What’s my destination?
(What am I trying to accomplish with my
website?)
2. What route do I take?
(What specific parts of my site should
be making this happen?)
3. What tools do I need?
(How do I track those parts?)

75. Make your plan,
then follow through
• Get all your tracking in
place first
• Then, start your journey!
– Explore your data
– Keep an eye on your goals

76. The End?
Not really.
This journey has
no end.

77. Thank You!
Jo Miles
Food & Water Watch
jmiles@fwwatch.org
@josmiles
Please review this session!
#12NTCanalytics at
www.nten.org/ntc/eval