Analytics - Choose a link below to select an article

Web Analytics - Getting the most out of your website

In order to maximize the potential of your website, you need to know the numbers. Web analytics can tell you how people find your site, how they navigate through it, where they get stuck, where they lose interest, what pages are most popular and more. All of this information can help you optimize your site and land more business. To be most effective, you have to look beyond simple hits or visits to your page and there are easy ways to accomplish this goal. 

Basic statistics can and should be provided by your web hosting company. These will often include how many visits there has been to your site, where people came from (Google, a directory, typed in the domain name etc.), the most popular pages etc. To go beyond this information, you have to start tracking your visitors. 

There are several free tracking systems available. Two of the most popular are Google Analytics and StatCounter. The information these two systems track can be monumental, but they both present the data in easily understood formats so that key decisions about your website can be made. 

Both of these systems require you to put a cookie-based tracking code into the pages of your website. This is a small bit of HTML that places a harmless tracking code into a consumers browser when they first visit your site. From there, the code reports back a host of information about how that consumer has browsed through your site. If you're familiar with web design, the insertion of the code is quick and very easy. If you need assistance, your web hosting company will be able to assist you. 

From a security standpoint, both Google Analytics and StatCounter code will only track the user when they are on your site, are completely invisible to the user, and will expire after a preset length of time. Many websites use cookies for personalizing content and it is widely considered an acceptable practice. If you have a customized version of any web page that recognizes you when you visit it, the system is using cookies to identify you. For those members of the public who are more concerned about their privacy, cookies can be turned off completely in their Internet browsers. 

Once the code is inserted, the systems begin tracking users from the time they enter your site to the time they leave it. Information that can be tracked includes summaries, popular pages, entry pages (where a user was just before they reached your page), exit pages (where on your site a user was  when he closed the browser or went elsewhere), keyword analysis (what search terms did the user type into a search engine to find you), visitor paths through your site, where users came from, what kind of browser were they using, and more. Best of all, the information is all real time and instantly updated. 

Many potential problems can be identified and quickly corrected using this information. For example, if most users are leaving your site from a certain place, there could be a problem with the navigation on that particular page. Are people more interested in your specials page or your packages page? The popular pages information will tell you. The keyword analysis will show you whether the phrases you have chosen during your site design and search engine optimization are working. The location information is useful to determine where your customers live. There is no end to the valuable information that you can access with these systems. 

If you use Google's AdWords advertising program, the Google Analytics program will access that information as well to determine how effective your search engine marketing really is. Both systems present information in both numerical and graphical format. The statistics can also be downloaded so later access. If you're unsure how to interpret the information, both Google and StatCounter offer demonstrations and tutorials. 

Visit http://www.google.com/analytics/ or http://www.statcounter.com. If you need assistance to start taking advantage of the wealth of information these systems can provide, engage your web hosting company to assist you.

Google Analytics 

First things first. You need to sign up for Google Analytics. Visit http://www.google.com/analytics/ to do this. It's a straight forward and easy process. 

The system will ask for your website address and a few other basic bits of information. Once you've accepted the terms agreement, you'll be presented with a bit of tracking code. This code needs to be inserted on all the pages of your website that you wish to track. It goes just before the </body> tag at the bottom of your content. 

If you're not sure how to do that, the person that designed your website will. 

Back at the Analytics Settings Screen, you should now see your website. In the status column, you'll probably notice a small orange icon which says tracking unknown, and a link to “check status”.  Once the tracking code has been installed on your webpages, click on this link. Analytics will tell you whether the code has been installed correctly or not.  

Once thats all done, the status will change to “waiting for data”. This means the code is correct and working and Google Analytics is starting to gather data. Something important to know about Google Analytics is that it doesn't store a big pool of historical information that you can go back in and sort later however you wish. All your filtering and sorting needs to be done in advance. It's kind of like putting a fishing net in a river to catch the information you want. The rest goes on downstream and is gone. Other analytics programs are more like a lake which you can go fishing for the information you want and the lake keeps all the information regardless. Of course, the difference is, Google Analytics is free, those others are not. 

In a few hours, the status of your website profile will change to Receiving data. This means enough information has compiled for Google Analytics to compile reports. Click on, you guessed it, View Reports to see a wealth of information about visitors to your webpage. 

Before we get too much farther, the Setup section provides some important variables which you should define right away. Click on the Edit button in the Settings Column of your Analytics Settings Page. 

Here you can edit your main website information as need be.  Click edit in the top right of the Main Website Profile Information box. 

Here you can change the profile name, the website address, the default page if it's different, country and time zones. You can also choose to exclude URL Query Parameters, which is used for dynamically generated pages. The E-commerce choice is used if your site has the ability to sell online. If not, leave it turned off. You can then choose currency and the default reports you'd like to see. 

Once you've saved your changes, you'll return to the Profile Settings page. Here you can apply conversion goals and filters as well. 

A conversion goal is a certain page or link that you want people to arrive at. So for example, if your goal is to have people sign up for your newsletter, you would identify the Conversion Goal as the thank you page people get redirected to after they have signed up.  

A filter is essentially the net in the stream. Sometimes you don't need all the data and it can simply confuse the issues you need to look at. Filters allow you to eliminate or include specific bits of information. I'll cover fitlers and Goals in more detail in these two separate articles. 

At the bottom of the profile settings page, you can also add users. If you have an outside consultant or someone else in your company you would like to be able to access your analytics account, you can give them access here.  

The Dashboards: 

The first thing you'll see is the executive dashboard. This is a quick snapshot of the last week of your websites performance. Top left you'll see a summary of page views and visitors, the difference being a visitor is a unique person visiting your website usually identified by their computer's IP address. A page view is just that, a page got loaded into someone's browser. So one visitor may visit several pages on your site and therefore drive up your number of pageviews. 

Top right is visits broken down by new and returning visitors. This pie chart can give you a strong idea if people are visiting your site on an ongoing basis. Google's cookie technology tracks visitors for up to 30 days. Beyond that, a visitor will be considered new. 

The Geo Map Overlay in the bottom left of the dashboard identifies where in the world your visitors are coming from. Keep in mind that due to inconsistencies with IP address technology, this may not be 100% accurate 100% of the time. However, it does give you a strong idea of the regions and cities where people are visiting your webpage from. 

Bottom right is the visits by source, meaning where did your visitors come from. This chart will identify pay per click campaigns like Google AdWords, organic searches, referring pages from elsewhere and more. It's extremely valuable to know where your visitors are being referred to your site from, particularly for online advertising purposes.  

There are other dashboard views you can choose from which present different information. One of the more interesting features though is the Site Overlay. Here, Google will show your webpage in the window with rating bars of how popular links are. You can see in a graphical and easy to understand way where people are clicking once they actually get to your page. 

The Calendar

At the bottom left is a calendar showing, by default, the last 7 days not including today. If you click on the orange and white calendar icon, you can select different date ranges. If you just want a specific day, simply click on it in the calendar. Keep in mind Google Analytics only keeps information it's caught from it's “net”, so if you change your settings, the data in the past will not change with it and will only change going forward. 

All Reports 

Under the All Reports menu on the left of the screen are many different options for viewing your data in all sorts of interesting ways. I'll focus on the few I find most useful. 

There are two main sub menus, Marketing Optimization and Content Optimization. (E Commerce may also appear if you have that option turned on). Under these two are several more sub menus with various reporst under them. 

Marketing Optimization Menu

The Unique Visitor Tracking section allows for some sophisticated analysis of visitors to your site. The Daily Visitors report shows unique visitors overtime. The Visits and Pageview tracking summarize how many pages visitors viewed while they were at your site. Goal conversion tracking identifies the number of visitors who completed you assigned goal, once again over a set period of time. The absolute unique visitors report identifies new versus returning visitors for the assigned date range.

Visitor Loyalty tracks the number of visits by visitor frequency. This particular report I like because most of the sites I'm involved with want people to return as often as possible. This graph gives me a strong idea of how good my site is at getting people to come back frequently. That combined with Visitor Recency, which shows me how many days elapsed since a previous visit, are strong indicators of how interesting my content is to visitors. 

The Visitor Segment Performance sub menu presents data about your visitors that in some ways is similar to the Visitor Tracking menu. However, the reports in this section can be cross segmented. 

For example, under the new versus returning, you will see a pie chart identifying your visitors, but you will also now see a chart underneath. On the chart to the left of the New and Returning types, you'll see a small button with two upward pointing arrows, or small pine tree icon depending on who you ask and how they scored on their Rorschach inkblot tests. This is called the analysis options button.

Click on the button, then scroll down to cross segment performance and click again.  A drop down list will appear with every option of defining how that visitor got there. Click on Source{Medium}. 

This will now show where those visitors came from for the type you selected (new or returning). 

This nifty little cross segment can be done almost anywhere you see the analysis options button. It's extremely handy for identifying certain segments of your visitors and can identify where they came from, a particularly important thing if you do multiple forms of online advertising. 

Depending on what you want to know, you can cross segment by almost anything. If you want to know what keywords brought those people to your site, select the Keyword option. Country, region, city, language, browser type, the list goes on and on. Experiment with this powerful feature of Google Analytics to determine whatever it is you need to know. 

The Marketing Campaign Results menu allows tracking and cross segmenting of your online advertising campaigns. This can include Google AdWords, Yahoo advertising, banner buys, or almost online ad you'd care to use.  

The Search Engine Marketing menu has many options for comparing your online advertising to organic results. If you use Google AdWords, that data will move over into many of these sections automatically.

Content Optimization Menu

The Content Optimization Menu contains several reports that will help you optimize you online marketing as well as your website itself. 

Under Ad Version testing, the Overall Ad A/B Testing allows you to compare the effectiveness of the various ads you have running. Source Specific testing identifies where ad clicks came from. If you happen to be running the same ad in various places, this report will provide metrics to analyze the best place for future ad buys. Keyword Specific Testing identifies which are your best performing keywords. Once again, you can cross segment this data based on Source if you are running multiple ad systems. 

The Content Performance sub menu has the report I use the most. The Top Content report identifies which pages are most popular to users. If you have tagged links, they will also appear in this report. You can cross segment each page to identify the source of the visitors to that page. This report essentially identifies the best performing or at least most interesting pages.  

The remaining reports in the content performance menu allow you to drill down further based on page or titles. Dynamic content reports are here as well as Depth of Visit (how many pages did visitors view during their visit) and Length of Visit reports. 

The Navigational Analysis sub menu identifies some very useful information regarding user surfing behaviour. The Entrance Bounce Rates report identifies the percentage of users who visit your home page, then leave. If this number is unusually high, you may have to redesign your landing pages. Top Exit Points show you were people are leaving from. If you have one particular page with abnormally high leave rates, perhaps there is an error in the menu links on that page, or the content isn't easy to understand. You can also produce a site overlay, initial navigation and all navigation reports very clearly identify how users move through your website.  

The Goals & Funnel Process section has several reports that show how users progress towards your predetermined goal. Paths, where they paths were abandoned, how users got to the goal and more are available here.

Finally, the Web Design Parameters section provides a great deal of technical information regarding the computers and systems your visitors are using. If for example, your site doesn't display properly in a different browser, the Browser Versions report will identify which browser your visitors are using to allow you to test your pages in that browser. 

That is a quick overview of the reports available in Google Analytics. Search Engine Optimization strategies depend on the kind of information presented in these reports as well as getting maximum ROI on your Internet Marketing. The beauty of Analytics is measure-ability. Need to know exactly the ROI on an advertising spend? Google Analytics can tell you! In the history of advertising, never has such a direct line been drawn between ads and profit.  

Check out the articles on Goals and Filters for more information on these subjects. If you have any specific questions about analytics, send a comment or post in my blog and I'll do my best to answer them.  

Google Analytics Consulting services are offered by Get Clicked SEO. Click here for more information. 
 
 
 
 
Sign up for our email list for to be updated when new articles are added!