Set Goals with Google Analytics

Notas do Editor

1. LOGISTICS - BEFORE YOU BEGIN Run through these slides just prior to session so they are fresh in your mind. Review the event schedule for the day to prepare for questions. Know the the WiFi username and password. Find out where the restrooms are. Check with event coordinators to see if there are any additional announcements (schedule, parking, etc.). Check to see if there are any handouts for attendees, and instructions for getting them. Turn your own cell phone off BEFORE your session! Can you see your timing clock? Remember to end your session on time! Did you test your wireless presentation remote? Does it have fresh batteries? Did you test your microphone? Does it have fresh batteries? Are there any “hot spots” in the room (don’t want to make screeching noises). Make friends with the AV person – your best friend during the session. Bring a glass of water to the podium, plus any emergency supplies (tissues, contact lens drops, etc.).
2. In today’s presentation we cover: An introduction to Google Analytics and Analytics Goals A discussion of what you can track as a goal A step-by-step demonstration for setting up goals in your Google Analytics account. Resources to help you learn more Let’s get started!
3. Google Analytics is by far the most-used analytics tool on the planet. Businesses and organizations across the world have adopted GA. You can you use website analytics data to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of your website.
4. GA may be free, but it’s powerful. Some of the largest brands and websites in the world use it. GA’s features include: Dashboards: surface the most important information at a glance. Real-time data: watch how today’s campaigns are working. Advanced segmentation: slice and dice data to uncover powerful insights. Custom reports Path analysis: Uncover bottlenecks and missed opportunities on your websites. If you haven’t signed up for a free account, you can get started at www.google.com/analytics. Today’s class assumes you have already set up Google Analytics and installed the tracking code on your website.
5. Analytics is no longer about hit counting, it’s about is measuring and analyzing visitor behavior on your website against business objectives. In order to do that, you need to determine what your business objectives are and how to measure that on your website. After all, in most cases it doesn’t really matter how many visitors came to your website. Instead, focus on measuring business goals – hard outcomes that drive the bottom line for your business. Until you use analytics to measure business goals, you’re not truly analyzing. Do do this within Google Analytics, you will set up Goals. Goals measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives. A Goal represents a completed activity, called a conversion, that contributes to the success of your business. Examples of Goals include making a purchase (for an ecommerce site), completing a game level (for a mobile gaming app), or submitting a contact information form (for a marketing or lead generation site).
6. Goals are configured at the view level. Goals can be applied to specific pages or screens your users visit, how many pages/screens they view in a session, how long they stay on your site or app, and the events they trigger while they are there. Every Goal can have a monetary value, so you can see how much that conversion is worth to your business. Using values for Goals lets you focus on the highest value conversions, such as transactions with a minimum purchase amount. When a visitor to your site or user of your app performs an action defined as a Goal, Google Analytics records that as a conversion. That conversion data is then made available in a number reports.
7. Defining Goals is a fundamental component of any digital analytics measurement plan. Having properly configured Goals allows Google Analytics to provide you with critical information, such as the number of conversions and the conversion rate for your site or app. Without this information, it's almost impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of your online business and marketing campaigns.
8. It’s a good idea to split conversions into Macro and Micro categories. Macro conversions make the cash register ring. For ecommerce websites, obviously that’s an easy one to define. But leads and phone calls can also be tied to end sales. You should also track micro conversions. It’s difficult to put a precise value on these activities—like a newsletter subscription—but you know it has value.
9. Have you ever thought “I don’t have ecommerce so I can’t have any goals for my website” ? Even if you don’t do e-commerce, but there are LOTS of goals that have value. Leads, social followers, newsletter signups, FAQ page views, time spent on site, downloads.
10. Ask yourself: “why is that content there?” Often the answer starts with “because I wanted visitors to…” That means it’s a goal and should be tracked.
11. The Goal categories (Revenue, Acquisition,Inquiry, Engagement) are the larger business objectives that motivate the Goal templates. Use them as an organization tool to help you think about the purpose of your Goals. Try to create at least one Goal for each category to get a better understanding of how users interact with your content. These categories don’t affect any data or your reports.
12. When you set up a Goal, you have the option of assigning a monetary amount to the conversion. Each time the Goal is completed by a user, this amount is recorded and then added together and seen in your reports as the Goal Value. Every action a user takes can be translated into a dollar amount. One way to help determine what a Goal value should be is to evaluate how often the users who complete the Goal become customers. For example, if your sales team can close 10% of people who sign up for a newsletter, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to your newsletter sign-up Goal—a Goal that users complete when they reach the final newsletter sign-up page. In contrast, if only 1% of signups result in a sale, you might only assign $5 to your newsletter sign-up Goal.
13. POSSIBLE GROUP ACTIVITY Ask attendees to look at this website example (or another site, if you prefer) Ask them to write down potential goals.
14. POSSIBLE GROUP ACTIVITY Now, poll audience and ask them to list out the goals they identified.
15. You have 2 basic options for creating Goals: Using a Goal template Creating custom Goals
16. If you haven’t yet, sign in to your Analytics Account at www.google.com/analytics.
17. Remember: Goals cannot be tracked if the goal page is not tagged with tracking code. If the Goal page is not tagged with tracking code, Google Analytics does not track this page, and as a result does not track Goals. You should also make sure that you've installed the correct tracking code on your pages since the code is specific to each account property. To find the tracking code, click Admin at the top of any Analytics page, then select the account and property. Under property, click Tracking Code. The status appears at the top of the page.
18. You will see “Goals” under the view level.
19. To create a new Goal/ Navigate to your Goals: Sign in to Google Analytics. Select the Admin tab and navigate to the desired account, property and view. In the VIEW column, click Goals. Click + NEW GOAL to create a new Goal (or click an existing Goal to edit its configuration).
20. Select a Template from the list. Click Next step to continue setting up your Goal. Goal templates are designed to help you set actionable Goals that meet standard business objectives. You can edit any template field before saving a Goal.
21. Start by clicking “Custom.”
22. It's a good practice to name your Goals in a way that helps you distinguish one Goal from another. This can help make your Goal Conversion and Flow reports more easily understood. Goal description is it’s name in the reports. Select “Duration.”
23. Duration Goal details Measure user engagement by treating time on page as a conversion. The Hours, Minutes and Seconds fields specify the minimum time on page to qualify as a Goal conversion. Users who spend more than this amount of time on the page will generate a conversion. Click “Create Goal” to finish. As soon as you create a Goal, it starts recording data. You can pause a Goal by changing the recording status to OFF. No data is recorded for a Goal when turned off. Because Goal conversions are calculated and applied as your data is processed, it is not possible to delete a Goal. If one of your Goals becomes obsolete or irrelevant, turn off recording instead.
24. Start by clicking “Custom.”
25. Select “Pages/Screens per session.”
26. Measure user engagement by treating the number of pages or screens per session as a Goal. Users who view more than the specified number of pages or screens will generate a conversion. Click “Create Goal” to finish.
27. Let’s look at a destination type goal - meaning the user reaches a specific page. In this example, if a user signs up to receive email newsletters and reaches the “thanks for signing up” page, a goal will be recorded in Google Analytics.
28. Under the Engagement templates, select “Newsletter sign up.”
29. Again, give the goal a name you can recognize in the reports. Under Type, select “Destination.”
30. NOTES FOR PRESENTER The destination field will depend on how the website is built. If it uses a fixed URL, it’s pretty easy to explain. You might want to start here, and then refer attendees to the help center if they need info about implementing tracking for ecommerce or dynamic URLS. https://goo.gl/kKrWSN Fixed URLs Many websites use fixed URLs for a given webpage. The structure of these pages depends on the web technology used for the site. For example: http://www.myownpersonaldomain.com/2008/category/name-of-blog-post/ http://www.examplepetstore.com/dogs/food.php http://www.examplepetstore.com/cats/food.html To configure Goals for these types of URLs: First verify that the URL for the Goal is both unique to that page/Goal, and consistent from view to view. If the URL is the same across multiple steps in the Goal process OR the URL changes from view to view, or if it has name/value parameters, see the Help Center for instructions. NEXT: Destination: Enter the request URI part of the Goal.The request URI is that part of the URL that comes after the domain address. Using the URL examples listed above, you would enter: /2008/category/name-of-blog-post/ /dogs/food.php /cats/food.html Case sensitive: Check this box only in the situation where you want to match only one of two identical URLs which differ only by case (e.g. /contactus.html and /CONTACTUS.html). Match Type: Use the match type that works best for your purpose. In most situations, the default (Equals to) match works well. See Match types below for more details. Value: If you have an imputed value for your page, turn this option on and enter that value in the field. See About Goals, Goal Value for more information. Click “Create Goal” to finish.
31. OK, last one: Events. Events are user interactions with content that can be tracked independently from a web page or a screen load. Downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX embedded elements, and video plays are all examples of actions you might want to track as Events.
32. NOTES FOR PRESENTER Events is a complicated topic. These speaker notes have some hightlights. If you want more information, familiarize yourself with this article: https://goo.gl/gM7Wd0 An Event has the following components: Category Action Label (optional, but recommended) Value (optional) An Event hit includes a value for each component, and these values are displayed in your reports. For example, you might set up a video "play" button on your site so that it sends an Event hit with the following values: Category: "Videos" Action: "Play" Label: "Baby's First Birthday" Category: A category is a name that you supply as a way to group objects that you want to track. Typically, you will use the same category name multiple times over related UI elements that you want to group under a given category. Action: Typically, you will use the action parameter to name the type of event or interaction you want to track for a particular web object. For example, with a single "Videos" category, you can track a number of specific events with this parameter, such as: Time when the video completes load "Play" button clicks "Stop" button clicks "Pause" button clicks Label: With labels, you can provide additional information for events that you want to track, such as the movie title in the video examples above, or the name of a file when tracking downloads. Category: "Downloads" Action: "PDF" Label: "/salesForms/orderForm1.pdf" As with categories and actions, there is a report that shows all the labels you create. Think of a label as a way to create an additional reporting dimension for user interaction with page objects.
33. To see data in your Events reports, you need to add code to your site or app to collect Event data. There are several ways to do this. You can: Use Google Tag Manager Track a website: To collect Event data from a website, you'll need to add JavaScript to your site that sends Google Analytics the details of each Event that is triggered. Refer to the Google Analytics Event Tracking documentation on Google Developers. Track an app Track an Internet connected device: a point-of-sale device, for example, but not a website or mobile app The code example above shows an example of what this tracking code might look like. To get instructions on how to set this up for your Google Analytics Account, reference the Event Tracking Guide on the Google Developers’ site: https://goo.gl/WrvBXO.
34. Once your site, app, or device is properly coded for Event Tracking, head back to the Goals section in Google Analytics. Select “Custom.”
35. Again, give it a descriptive name for your reports. Under “Type” select “Event.”
36. Now enter the parameters for you event: Category Action Label (optional) Value (optional) Click “Create Goal” to finish.
37. To see Ecommerce data in Google Analytics, you need to: Enable Ecommerce in your reports, and; Add code to your website or app to collect ecommerce data. To enable Ecommerce: Navigate to the desired account, property and view. In the VIEW column, select Ecommerce Settings. Click the Enable Ecommerce toggle ON. To collect ecommerce data from a website, you'll need to add JavaScript to your site that sends Google Analytics the transaction and item data. Refer to the Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking documentation on Google Developers. If you are using Enhanced Ecommerce, refer to theEnhanced Ecommerce documentation.
38. Google Analytics can offer an incredible amount of information, but there’s a lot to know, too! This section offers suggestions to resources that can help you learn more about Google Analytics so you can get the most out of the software.
39. The first place to start when you have a question about Google Analytics. The Help Center will usually answer any question you have about using GA.
40. Stay up-to-date by following Google Analytics on Google+.
41. Do you prefer to learn by watching? If so, check the Google Analytics YouTube Channel.
42. Improve your Analytics skills with free online courses from Google. You might start with Digital Analytics Fundamentals: Learn the core principles of digital analytics, including how to build a useful measurement plan for your business and how to get started with Google Analytics.
43. Another great place to stay up-to-date: The Google Analytics blog. It has news, tips and resources related to Google Analytics.
44. For technical information, like instructions for setting up Event Tracking, the Google Developers’ site has comprehensive documentation on Google Analytics.