Google Analytics (GA) provides data of website visitors that can be extremely useful. Designed with businesses in mind, GA can still be beneficial for non-business organizations like Extension. The presenter shares ways to include GA statistics in Extension reports, and to utilize GA information for program planning. #netc2014
Using Google Analytics for Extension Annual Report and Planning
1. Using Google Analytics (GA)
for Annual Report and
Planning
Fahzy Abdul-Rahman
Family Resource Management Specialist
Extension Family & Consumer Sciences
National Extension Technology
Conference (NETC)
May 21, 2014
2. Outline
I. Introduction
II. Reporting: Using Google Analytics Data for
Extension Work Reporting
III. Planning: Using Google Analytics for
Extension Programming and Planning
IV. Conclusion
3. I. Introduction
• Originally, GA was designed for business
– E.g. Pages that has the highest hits, leads to the most
revenue
• For Extension, any talks about evaluation need to
revolve around the Logic Model.
– Evaluation is an everyday activity
– Can be done for various stages of you program
• As laid out in the Logic Model
– Can be done for various purposes
– These data can in turn be used for grants and
proposals
4. Logic Model: Evaluation …
…. an everyday activity that can
be done for various stages of
you program
5. Motivation
• Many of Extension activities
nowadays are online based
– As funding has been cut
– As a more efficient way to do
programming
• The issue: How to show the values of
these online-based publications and
activities
– How-To publications, webinars
6. First Steps
• Introduction to Google Analytics
• Installing the Google Analytics
Tracking Code
• Working with Report Data
Interpreting Reports
• Pageviews, Visits, and Visitors
• Time Metrics
• Traffic Sources
• Content Reports
Fundamentals
• Account Administration
• Campaign Tracking and AdWords
Integration
• Analysis Focus - AdWords
• Goals in Google Analytics
• Filters in Google Analytics
• Regex and Google Analytics
• Cookies and Google Analytics
• E-commerce Tracking
• Domains and Subdomains
In-Depth Analysis
• Advanced Segmentation
• Analytics Intelligence
• Internal Site Search
• Event Tracking and Virtual Pageviews
• Additional Customizations
Google Analytics Overview
What we will not discuss today …
7. II. Reporting
• Reporting in Annual Report and Promotion and
Tenure Packet
– Pageviews (or unique)
• Journals brag about their reach and subscription
• Top 5, 10 articles, How-To publications
• How your website (and other Social Media outlet)
has helped your program goals.
– Show that people who visited your site tend to …
– … E.g. visit other .gov resources [from your site],
– … E.g. healthy _______ habit adoption
• Difficult to establish. E.g. high bounce rate ~ obtained
resources or website not useful
Using Google Analytics Data for Extension Work Reporting
10. III. Planning
• Depends on Extension
Online Goals
1. Monetary: Donations,
savings -> very similar to
business model
2. Non-Profit (typical
Extension): Volunteer
sign-up, downloads,
visiting your YouTube
channel, webinar
registration
Two main ways:
1. Just use the metrics
– Usually along with
dimensions &
segmentations
2. These goals need to be
converted into Google
Analytics Goals.
– May involve some tricks.
Using Google Analytics for Extension Programming and Planning
11. 1. Utilize the Metrics Directly
• Use results available directly from GA
• Make sense out of them
– If the youth group has very low site access, …
– If the bounce rate from mobile users is almost
100%, …
– If main search keywords that lead to your side are
“hair extension”, …
• Working in Extension, you have an article on hair
trimming recall.
Planning
12. 2. Using Google
Analytics Goals
Start with
typical
business plan
or Logic
Model. Here
is a business
example.
Easier to
measure due
to $$$.
Planning
13. 2. Using Google
Analytics Goals
Planning
Start with
typical
business plan
or Logic
Model. Non-
businesses
tend to
involve less
$$$ goals –
more difficult.
14. 2. Using Google
Analytics Goals
• A trick is involved
here.
• See “Goal URL”
• In Google Analytics,
you have four ways
to track goals:
1. URLs
2. Time
3. Pages/visit
4. Events
Planning
15. GA Goal Example
• After you have set up
goals (and intermediate
goals) in GA:
• the Funnel Visualization
report will display
perhaps the single most
definitive funnel
performance metric in
Google Analytics: the
Funnel Conversion Rate.
• Goals & funnels are not
retroactive. So, don’t
delay!!!
Planning
18. IV. Conclusion
• GA is not perfect but certainly better than
nothing. It contains valuable information that can
be utilized for site, planning, and program
improvements.
• Start simple. When reporting trends over time,
be consistent. Segment, segment, segment …. for
enriched results.
– You may look back for some of the metrics
– Things will be a lot easier if you’ve planned ahead
with regards to the metrics, dimensions, and
segmentations used.
• Retroactive data: Some data you obtain
retroactively; others no.
19. Fahzy Abdul-Rahman
Using Google Analytics
for Annual Report and
Planning
National Extension Technology
Conference (NETC)
May 21, 2014
Notas do Editor
* Using Google Analytics for Annual Report and Planning
Fahzy Abdul-Rahman, New Mexico State University
Google Analytics (GA) provides data of website visitors that can be extremely useful. Designed with businesses in mind, GA can still be beneficial for non-business organizations like Extension. The presenter shares ways to include GA statistics in Extension reports, and to utilize GA information for program planning.
Google Analytics provides data of website visitors that can be very useful if utilized in a correct manner. Designed with businesses in mind, Google Analytics can still be beneficial for non-business organizations like Extension. The goals of this article are to explain the importance of including Google Analytics in Extension programming, and to share ways of utilizing Google Analytics for Extension programs.
For people who are not familiar with Google Analytics, it is an online tracking service that provides data and statistics on your websites and their visitors. Data obtained from Google Analytics are very rich, which includes number of visitors, their demographics, time in the day (and night) when people visit your website, keywords search used to enter your website, geographical location from where your visitors accessed your site, and how long people stayed on your website. A full listing of metrics available may be obtained from Google Analytics website.
Before going further into Google Analytics, there are a few clarifications. There are actually various other website tracking or analytics services to obtain visitor data. Other analytic programs include Clicky, GoSquared, Woopra, ShinyStat, Piwik, Mint, and Awstats. Since Google Analytics is by far the mostly used, we will stick to Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is relevant to Extension for:
Evaluation: At all these different stage of programming, i.e. boxes
Reporting
Planning
Google Analytics Setup
In order to obtain data from Google Analytics, we need to first include Google Analytics web tracking code program to permit or enable Google Analytics to collect data on your website visitors. This can be done by anyone with basic website knowledge. If you work in organizations with IT personnel like universities, you can ask IT personnel to set up your websites and online materials so that Google Analytics can track their important metrics.
Start simple
If you are unsure about Google Analytics, you should give it a try. A quick way to do so is by testing Google Analytics set up for college websites. If you have a choice, choose sites that have high number of hits such as the college’s website. By playing around with the menu, you should be able to see the metrics and dimensions available for reporting and extension programs.
Journals usually brag about their number of subscriptions to imply the number of people their journals would reach out to. As more publications are getting placed online, Google Analytics provides the ideal platform to see visitors who have landed on your online resources such as your newsletters. In this way, you will be able to obtain visitor information specific to your article, as opposed to printed journal subscription.
Starting simple with Google Analytics also covers starting simple in reporting metrics such as number of visitors to your website and top website visited last year.
5 Web Reports Every Nonprofit Should Know [Get them diagrams]
http://www.npengage.com/search-engine-optimization-seo/5-web-reports-every-nonprofit-should-know/
1. Google Analytics Dashboard
2. Top Content
3. Source Report
4. Keyword Report
5. Intelligence Alerts
With goals, you can easily know where you fall short via visitor flow [chart example]
Referrers and where people mostly go the next step or drop out (e.g. visitors via LinkedIn and Twitter).
Show if your Google AdWords marketing efforts were working.
Can determine what visitors are looking in your website
Gain insight on which specific topic or contents are leading to goals achieved or highest conversion rate.
Set up e-commerce to assign value to your different pages. [Article 5 fundraising metrics worth monitoring ….] :: landing pages, traffic sources, and referrals that lead to most donations. Average donations segmented by these landing pages, traffic sources, and referrals.
Challenge: Real behavior change [GOLD standard in Extension]
Other info [Recall Evaluation at different stages of a Logic Model], …. i.e. related to goals (conversion rate): which campaign, which method, retweet, referring websites, methods best for your campaign, how much information needed, what info needed by clients, best way to get your message out.
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-101-definitions-goals-metrics-kpis-dimensions-targets/
http://www.webseoanalytics.com/blog/20-kpis-you-should-monitor-in-google-analytics/
Reference: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/conversion-funnel-survival-guide/
Setting Your Goals
One of the main ways businesses are using Google Analytics is by looking into top sites that lead to sales and positive behaviors towards brand loyalty. The positive behaviors could be playing videos related to the company and following the company’s social media accounts (E.g. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook). Since the focus of Extension is not to seek profit, other goals in Extension program may include enrollment in programs and personal savings actually accumulated. The important thing here, like many of your Extension programs, is to set goals for your website. From there, hopefully, you can design ways to evaluate the effectiveness of your website in reaching your goals. With these goals, you can actually measure knowledge and behavior change rate, known in Google Analytics as Conversion Rate.
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-101-definitions-goals-metrics-kpis-dimensions-targets/
http://www.webseoanalytics.com/blog/20-kpis-you-should-monitor-in-google-analytics/
Reference: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/conversion-funnel-survival-guide/
Setting Your Goals
One of the main ways businesses are using Google Analytics is by looking into top sites that lead to sales and positive behaviors towards brand loyalty. The positive behaviors could be playing videos related to the company and following the company’s social media accounts (E.g. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook). Since the focus of Extension is not to seek profit, other goals in Extension program may include enrollment in programs and personal savings actually accumulated. The important thing here, like many of your Extension programs, is to set goals for your website. From there, hopefully, you can design ways to evaluate the effectiveness of your website in reaching your goals. With these goals, you can actually measure knowledge and behavior change rate, known in Google Analytics as Conversion Rate.
Reference: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/conversion-funnel-survival-guide/
Setting Your Goals
One of the main ways businesses are using Google Analytics is by looking into top sites that lead to sales and positive behaviors towards brand loyalty. The positive behaviors could be playing videos related to the company and following the company’s social media accounts (E.g. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook). Since the focus of Extension is not to seek profit, other goals in Extension program may include enrollment in programs and personal savings actually accumulated. The important thing here, like many of your Extension programs, is to set goals for your website. From there, hopefully, you can design ways to evaluate the effectiveness of your website in reaching your goals. With these goals, you can actually measure knowledge and behavior change rate, known in Google Analytics as Conversion Rate.
Reference: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/conversion-funnel-survival-guide/
With goals, you can easily know where you fall short via visitor flow [chart example]
Referrers and where people mostly go the next step or drop out (e.g. visitors via LinkedIn and Twitter).
Show if your Google AdWords marketing efforts were working.
Can determine what visitors are looking in your website
Gain insight on which specific topic or contents are leading to goals achieved or highest conversion rate.
Set up e-commerce to assign value to your different pages. [Article 5 fundraising metrics worth monitoring ….] :: landing pages, traffic sources, and referrals that lead to most donations. Average donations segmented by these landing pages, traffic sources, and referrals.
Challenge: Real behavior change [GOLD standard in Extension]
Other info [Recall Evaluation at different stages of a Logic Model], …. i.e. related to goals (conversion rate): which campaign, which method, retweet, referring websites, methods best for your campaign, how much information needed, what info needed by clients, best way to get your message out.
* Using Google Analytics for Annual Report and Planning
Fahzy Abdul-Rahman, New Mexico State University
Google Analytics (GA) provides data of website visitors that can be extremely useful. Designed with businesses in mind, GA can still be beneficial for non-business organizations like Extension. The presenter shares ways to include GA statistics in Extension reports, and to utilize GA information for program planning.