Google Analytics can be used to deliver many useful statistics. In our flipped presentation, we will provide instructional materials to help you setup Google Analytics, create custom dimensions and discuss how to use and interpret metrics to gain insight into your applications. We will be demonstrating how we use Google Analytics through uPortal and CAS as case studies, giving you an inside perspective on how we monitor our user traffic and how it leads us to make decisions and changes.

1. Understanding Your
Audience Through
Numbers
Web Analytics and Case Studies using
uPortal and CAS

2. Overview
Web Analyticsby Peter Sentz (Brigham Young University)

3. What is Web Analytics?
• “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” (Lord Kelvin)
• Analytics is the discovery and communication of meaningful
patterns in data
• Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and
reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and
optimizing web usage.

4. What Does Web Analytics Measure?
• Visitor’s onsite journey
• Site Features & Layout
• Content Effectiveness
• Business Goals (Filters & Funnels)
• Campaigns & E-commerce
• Traffic & SEO
• Site technical design & performance

5. Visitor’s onsite journey
• Detailed statistics about visitors to a website
 Impacted by marketing activities, site design & performance, site promotion
• Have sessions (visits) increased? Decreased? Remained flat?
• Where are most of your visitors located?
 Age, Gender?
 Are they new or returning? How often?
 What technologies do they use?
• Browser/OS, Language, Network, Mobile,
Devices
Visitors: Cookie marks first visitor id + first initial
timestamp
Visit/Session: A series of page requests from the
same uniquely identified client with a time of no
more than 30 minutes between each page request.
(closing browser or inactive ends session)
Visitor Session: The time a visitor spends on a
Website. The longer a visitor stays on your Website,
the more relevant it appears to search engines.

6. Site Features & Layout
• Measures how visitors are using your site and indicates how site
interaction can be improved
• What landing pages of your site are visitors drawn to?
o Paths (Flows) & site navigation
o Time on Site (Engagement)
o What action(s) do you want people to take?
 Goals, Transactions, Events
Pageviews: Displays the number of times your website pages were viewed, A browser
page refresh = new page view
Ex. 1 Visitor can visit the site 2 times and have 5 pageviews

7. Content Effectiveness
• Measures which content is the most popular
• Am I creating effective content?
o Informative and up to date content, easy to use navigation
• What pages do people visit, then immediately leave?
o Landing Pages
 Bounce Rate (Exit Pages)
Bounce Rate: The percentage of
web site visitors who arrive at a web
site entry page, then leave without
going any deeper into the site.

8. Business Goals (Funnels)
• Build, track, and improve the business goals that you
set
• Have a Plan
o Analytics is worth more as part of process and provides business
justification & direction
• Define Goals and Conversion Funnels
o Goal is usually a “Thank you” or confirmation page
• Measure trends
o Correlate to Business Results
Funnels: Series of steps a visitor completes to reach an end goal. (Up to ten pages for GA)
Funnels can show you where visitors abandon the process during the path to conversion.
Conversion: Conversions occur when a visitor comes to your site and completes a desired
goal or action. (Completing a purchase, submitting a contact form, etc.)

9. Campaigns
• Measures how your site aligns to your marketing goals and
campaigns
o Are your marketing efforts generating the desired action(s)?
o How can I make my marketing campaigns more effective and accountable?
o Are customers signing up for services? (e.g.: Email blast)
o Adwords and Paid Search Advertising
o Display/Banner Ad Planning & Placement
• Use it to find trends, Not absolute figures
Campaigns: Information about the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. You can see
which types advertising efforts give you the most traffic and align that to the employees
responsible for driving those efforts.

10. E-commerce
• Measures sales, purchases and customer billing
effectiveness
o Where and why are shoppers abandoning my shopping cart?
• Segment and analyze your data, and discover
relationships between your marketing campaigns, user
engagement, and transactions
o Products can be sold at $0 and still be tracked
• Use it to find trends, Not absolute figures
Ecommerce: The purchasing or selling of products or services over the
Internet.

11. Traffic & SEO
• What sites are delivering visitors to
my website?
o Traffic Sources: Direct to Site, Organic
Search, Paid Search, Referral
• Keywords, Referral Traffic, Pages
• Social Media Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
o Local Search Optimization (Site Search,
Queries)
Direct Traffic: User enters a URL into their
browser's address bar or uses a bookmark.
Illustrates how many visitors know your brand.
Organic Traffic: Visitors who come to your
Website from unpaid organic or natural search
engine results.
Paid Traffic: Visitors who come to your Website
from Google AdWords ads, paid search engine
keywords and other online paid ad campaigns.
Referring Sites: Other Websites that refer or send
visitors to your Website are called referring sites.
Focus more resources on sites that are referring
more traffic, or re-evaluate your campaigns on
sites that are not driving much traffic.

12. Site technical design & performance
• Site Speed
• Page Timings
• Events

13. What Blocks Web Analytics?
o Disabled Javascript
o Blocked all cookies
o Deleted Cookies
• Comes up as new visitor though
o Error in Javascript prior to analytics code
o Mobile Devices with no Javascript enabled

14. Google Analytics Advantages
o Free
o Easy to implement
 Basic install is robust
 Google Site Search integration
o Personalized
o Easy to use
 Sufficiant possibilities for most
companies
 Highly Customizable
 Dashboards
 Many Easy to Understand
Reports
 Exports
•Several Formats
•Scheduled

15. Google Analytics with uPortal and CAS
Case Studies

16. uPortal & Google Analytics
by Laura McCord (uPortal Steering Committee Member & Documentation Coordinator)
• Integrating Google Analytics into uPortal
o What you will need?
 Google Analytics Account
 A uPortal version 4.x instance ready for data gathering
o Instructions are available at
 https://wiki.jasig.org/display/UPM40/Google+Analytics
• Instructions have been gathered collectively
through years of community contributions
o Direct Objectives
 Be able to gather uPortal login data into Google
Analytics
 Be able to create a custom report
• create dimensions
• create segments
o Indirect Objective
 What improvements can be made to the official uPortal
manual page?

17. CAS & Google Analytics
by Tom Freestone Brigham Young University
• Integrating Google Analytics into CAS
o What you will need?
1. Google Analytics Account
2. Find the tracking code snippet for
your property
3. (Admin -> Tracking Info /
Tracking Code)
4. Copy tracking code snippet. It
starts with <script> and ends with
</script>.
5. Paste your snippet (unaltered)
into your top.jsp
• cas-server-webapp/src/main/webapp/WEB-
INF/view/jsp/default/ui/includes/top.jsp
6. Verify it is working

18. Questions
Web Analytics: Peter Sentz peter_sentz@byu.edu
uPortal: Laura McCord laura@whitewhale.net
CAS: Tom Freestone freestone@byu.edu