Google Analytics: Tracking Success
Okay, without a doubt, Google Analytics is the most ubiquitous analytics program (SaaS, server side, cloud based or other wise) on the market today. Why? Well it’s Google. And it’s Free (mostly…more on that). And it’s ROBUST (and its FREE!)
Since I said that last part more than once, I guess I should start with clarifying that statement. Google rolled out an “enterprise” edition for big businesses or big bandwidth about a year ago. And a week or two ago it rolled out an api service for that enterprise (and free) version so that you’ll start seeing more integration possibilities popping up all over the place.
This article is regarding the FREE version of Google Analytics. So its limitations will not be the same limitation for the enterprise version. Considering the cost of the enterprise version (more expensive than Adobe Analytics or WebTrends, which to most I would consider a HUGE drawback) and it’s relative newness to market, centering on the free edition would help more clients.
Explaining it Even Though Everyone Supposedly Uses It…
I’m always surprised how little businesses really know about Google Analytics. I’m not being judgmental, just pointing out an observation. If you scan the source code of most businesses, you will find the Google Analytics tracking code (a javascript snippet) present in the <head>. Here’s an example of the new Google Tracking link if you want to investiage:
<script> (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i[‘GoogleAnalyticsObject’]=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,’script’,’//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js’,’ga’); ga(‘create’, ‘UA-XXXXXXXX’, ‘CoolExample.com’); ga(‘send’, ‘pageview’); </script>
[Read this article if you are interested in Updating your Google Tracking Code.]
So most business “know” they should use Google Analytics, thus they have their web developer or digital marketing company add the tracking code. But they don’t really “know” why its there and what they can do with it.
An Analytics program is there to give you DATA on your web traffic. That’s basic. Here are some of the metrics that Google Analytics 
(specifically) tracks, in no particular order or importance:
Visitors – the number of real users (not bots, not machines, not government agencies) that land on one of your pages (pages in that tracked DOMAIN/URL). Subdomains are treated different.
Unique Visitors – this is tracked through cookies. “unique” and “absolutely unique” is the metric that tries to define those users who have never been to your website (DOMAIN/URL) before (ever or before they dropped or cleared their cookies…that’s the hitch).
Page Views – how many pages were viewed by all those visitors. Pages is anything that is “tracked” under that DOMAIN/URL. By default, subdomains are not tracked, at least accurately. You must customize your Google Analytics account and tracking code to do this properly.
Time on Site – how long a visitor stays on the site on average in a 24 hour period. Time on Site is an important metric for Google’s search engine algorithm (one of many…so don’t get stardust in your eyes). Google tracks time on site (and down to time on site down to individual pages) because they ascertain that if a user stays longer, they are absorbing your content. Thus your content is authoritative and deserves perhaps a quicker crawl rate, more frequent indexing, or higher ranks.
Bounce Rate – a “bounce” is defined as a visitor entering and leaving on the same PAGE. Like Time on Site, this is another important factor that the Google search engine algorithm looks at closely. High bounce rates quickly tell the crawlers that your content is not what that user was looking for. Meaning that content is not quality or authoritative and is not deserving of indexing or higher ranks.
Referrals – now defined as a “channel metric”, Referrals are the traffic you get from other websites.
Direct Entries/Direct Traffic – how many visitors came through a bookmark or a direct type in (they came straight to your website from a browser, not a website, not a director, not a banner ad, not a text ad.)
Organic Traffic – traffic that arrived from your website from a search engine query (Google, Bing, and Yahoo for example).
Keywords – Those keyword searches attributed back to the “organic traffic” mention above. They searched for “cool example business” and found your company (www.CoolExample.com).
Social – one of the more recent “additions” or upgrades to the free version of Google Analytics is tracking Likes and PLUSES (G+) and shares, etc. You have to manually tie in your specific social media channels. This means you get more granual information from “Social” than from simple Referral stats (as mentioned above).
IP / Geographic Location of Visit (Country, State, Town, Zip) – this metric gets pretty granular. Default bird’s eye view is by country, then drills down from there. (US, SC, North Myrtle Beach…for example).
Mobile Traffic versus “Desktop” Traffic – mobile (smart phones AND slates) broken out from ye olde way of desktop browsing.
Mobile Device (make and model much of the time) – Samsung Galaxy or iPhone 5…that specific.
Web Browser – Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari…
Operating System – Windows 7, iOS, Chrome…
What About Tracking Success Part?
All of the metrics listed above are pretty standard. That’s right STANDARD, and most users don’t get past visitors and page views. Now, metrics mean NOTHING if you don’t know what they track and what the data tells you.
If your visitor numbers are going down, you need to figure out why and reverse the flow. If it shoots up, you dive in and figure out how you can replicate the positives. You dive in, that’s the trick.
The coolest functionality of Google Analytics isn’t the simple metrics it tracks, but what you can do with it.
Did you know you can set up a wide array of System Alerts that will email or text you when something “happens” that you predefine. For example, if you Bounce Rate increases or your Time on Site decreases, or if suddenly traffic attributed to the iOS operating system suddenly plummets to zero. Think of these system alerts as warning lights on your dashboard in your car. You can’t keep you eyes under the hood all the time, so set up system alerts so you can get the warning right when it happens.
Did you know that you can set up a wide array of Goals (conversion goals) in Google Analytics? Form submissions, product purchases, white paper downloads, hotel bookings, you name it. Depending on your system you may need to tweak your Google Analytics tracking code (and include it further than your DOMAIN). You can attribute a dollar figure to a conversion if applicable. You can even integrate those conversion goals (CPAs) with your Google Adwords (am I giving to many trade secrets away now?) so you can pay on CONVERSIONS and not on anonymous clicks. You can also set up a System Alert (see above) every time a goal is achieved.
Did you know you can easily track back traffic to specific marketing campaigns that you are running (email, banner ad, content marketing, social media, for example). As long as there is a place to embed a unique tracking link (created through Google) then you can create a unique Campaign within Google Analytics.
Putting It All Together…
Phew. I could write a novel. Let’s just put it in a real word case scenario. A hotel (we will call it Cool Hotel) is running several digital marketing campaigns. There are sending out an promotional email to their guest history. They are running a display ad on TripAdvisor. And they are sending out a press release on the brand new renovations they just completed.
Cool Hotel creates three unique Google tracking links. One for EMAIL (summer_2014 promo), one for TripAdvisor (TripAdvisor_Display), and one for their PR (PR_new renovations release).
Now, as traffic trickles or floods in through those tracking links, every user is tagged and every visit is attributed back to that uniquely identified source.
Cool Hotel also sets up several Conversion Goals. Book Now link clicked. Booking Cycle Drop out. Booking Completed. To set these properly, Cool Hotel needs to include their Google analytics tracking code through the entire booking process. Often times booking engines are located either on a unique subdomain that a third party service provider uses to load in their booking software, or its hosted directly on that booking software providers secure domain. This requires customizing the standard tracking code (that will require another article I’m afraid). Setting up these three unique Goals will allow Cool Hotel to get a complete process view of what works and what doesn’t, and where a user is when they disconnect or drop out. And Cool Hotel will be able to parse their campaigns and see which one is really working.
To wrap it all up, Cool Hotel sets up a series of System Alerts, so their staff gets an email and/or text notification each and every time one of their goals is achieved.
Have We Got Your Attention?
If you really want to start using Google Analytics, give Southern Tide Media a ring. We’re tracking you now…so don’t be surprised if we call you first. Just kidding. Sort of….
