An Introduction to Google Analytics

Ric Alston Cambridge Computer Support July 2010

1. Summary

This document is a summary of Google Analytics reporting. It provides an overview of the technology for technical strategists and managers. It aims to deliver a clear explanation of a plethora of terms and constructs both new and old in the Google Analytics context.

2. Contents

1. Summary
2. Contents
3. Introduction
4. Types of report
4.1 Dashboard
4.2 Visitors
4.3 Traffic Sources
4.4 Content
4.5 Goals and Funnels
4.6 E-commerce

3. Introduction

Measuring the number of hits made on a web site was long ago superseded in value by measuring the number of visitors. Since then types of visitors have been categorised at first easily by geographic region and “bounce rates” but more recently using correlations to keywords and metrics created by the measurement of a visitor’s progress through a site.

Google Analytics is a collection of mechanisms that measure and can improve the market penetration of websites. Its requires code written by Google to be “embedded” in websites to facilitate exploiting a websites visitor behaviour statistics combined with Google’s data warehouse of consumer behaviour.

These new metrics are both complex and difficult to collate. It is only by virtue of Google “sharing” it’s mass of information about web user’s habits and providing the measurement software free of charge to deploy on web sites that this nature of facility is available at all to web developments costing 5 figures or less.

Although there is a great variety of value in the Google Analytics method for tuning the delivery of message to market the first stop is the artificial intelligence which brings better and market tested search term keywords to the table.

4. Types of report

4.1 Dashboard

This is your Google Analytics "home page". It is configurable for a choice of reports but displays some basic visitor and bounce rate statistics by default. Apart from the Dashboard default overview it gives access to the [currently] 6 categories of report detailed below and allows choices from those to be displayed on the dashboard homepage.

Google Analytics has over 80 reports to help gauge a site's performance, by usage metrics, return visit numbers, or time on page. Following is a list of report categories available at the time of writing.

4.1.1. Intelligence

Detailed statistics for a specific day are made accessible on the Intelligence page by clicking on default or customisable alerts on an overall visitor timeline graph.

4.1.2. Visitors

The Visitors page supplies information about visitor interaction on a site, the type of visitors, and information about how they are viewing that site.

4.1.3. Traffic Sources

The Traffic Sources page displays how different offline or online sources sent traffic to a site. It identifies which sources are driving the most traffic and provides graphs from which trends can be observed.

4.1.4. Content

Content reports are about the pages in a site and how visitors interacted with each one. Time on page, landing and exit page information, and a navigation summary are provided.

4.1.5. Goals

For certain types of visitor interaction goals can be practically set. One way a goal can be represented is as a percentage of visitors who completed for example, questionnaires, feedback buttons or shopping basket to checkout navigation. One of these individual navigation routes, when it’s being measured for its goal effectiveness, is called a “Funnel” by Google Analytics.

4.1.6. Ecommerce

Ecommerce reports are more detailed versions of Goal reports supplying information on the revenue, transaction, and ecommerce activity on a site. A section on product performance details top-selling products including stock control numbers.

Note: From Google Analytics Content help
A free Google product, Website Optimizer, has been useful for advertisers looking to increase conversions by testing different versions of their content.

4.2 Visitors

4.2.1 The difference between clicks, visits, visitors, page views and unique page views.

The visitor data in an Analytics account can be easy to misinterpret due to the many similar terms used in different reports. Following are more detailed explanations of the terms that most often lead to question the distinction between:

Clicks and Visits
Visits, Visitors and Absolute Unique Visitors
Page Views and Unique Page Views

4.2.2 Clicks and Visits

There is an important distinction between clicks on for example, click-through ads and visits (in a Visitors report). In Analytics reports the clicks column indicates how many times advertisements were clicked by visitors, while visits indicates the number of unique sessions initiated by the visitors. There are several reasons why these two numbers may not match:

A visitor may click an ad multiple times. When one person clicks on one advertisement multiple times in the same session, AdWords will record multiple clicks while Analytics recognises the separate page views as one visit. This is a common behaviour among visitors engaging in comparison shopping.

A user may click on an ad and then later, during a different session, return directly to the site through a bookmark. The referral information from the original visit will be retained in this case, so the one click will result in multiple visits.

A visitor may click on an advertisement, but prevent the page from fully loading by navigating to another page or by pressing the browser's Stop button. In this case, the Analytics tracking code is unable to execute and send tracking data to the Google servers. However, AdWords will still register a click.

To ensure more accurate billing, Google AdWords automatically filters invalid clicks from reports. However, Analytics reports these clicks as visits to a website in order to show the complete set of traffic data.

4.2.3 Visits, Visitors and Absolute Unique Visitors

Analytics measures both Visits and Visitors. Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the Visitors to a site. If a user is inactive on a site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session. Users that leave a site and return within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session.

The Visitor metric is designed to come as close as possible to defining the number of actual, distinct people who visited a website. There is of course no way to know if two people are sharing a computer from the website's perspective, but a good visitor-tracking system can come close to the actual number. The most accurate visitor-tracking systems generally employ cookies to maintain tallies of distinct visitors.

‘Visitors’ represents the number of unique users that visit a site on a daily basis. Any sessions from the same user on the same day will be aggregated into a single visitor, but may represent two or more separate visits.

In the Absolute Unique Visitor report, all visits from the same user for the entire active date range selected will be aggregated so that they will be counted as a single absolute unique visitor; regardless of how many different days they visited your site and how many times they visited your site on each day.

4.2.4 Page Views and Unique Page Views

A Page View is a page on a site that is being browsed and tracked by the Analytics code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional Page View. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second Page View will be recorded as well.

A Unique Page View, as seen in the Top Content report, aggregates Page Views that are generated by the same user during the same session. A Unique Page View represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.

4.3 Traffic Sources

4.3.1 The traffic sources reports provide information about the different kinds of sources that send traffic to a site. The graph shows traffic trends; the pie-chart and tables show what is driving the trends. "Direct Traffic" represents visits from people who clicked a bookmark to come to a site or who typed a site’s URL directly into their browser. "Referring Sites" shows visits from people who clicked to the site from another site. "Search Engines" shows visits from people who clicked to a site from a search engine result page. There are a variety of Keyword, Campaign and AdWords related reports that provide information crucial to fine tuning search terms. These are a particularly efficacious as a site of only a few hundred pages can contain several thousand key search words and phrases.

4.3.2 All Traffic Sources compares to the "average" visitor to those referred from search engines, sites, and tagged links to a site.

4.3.3 Direct Traffic compares to the "average" visitor to those who clicked a bookmark to come to your site or typed your site URL into their browser. Direct traffic can include visitors gained offline eg from print or television advertising.

4.3.4 Referring Sites compares to the "average" visitor to those referred from other sites

4.3.5 Search Engines compares search engine traffic to traffic as a whole to a site.

4.3.6 Keywords compares traffic from search keywords to traffic as a whole to a site.

4.3.7 AdWords Campaign (AdWords): compares to the "average" visitor to those referred from AdWords Campaigns .The "Clicks" tab displays the AdWords cost, impression, and ROI data useful for monitoring the profitability of AdWords Campaigns and keywords.

4.3.8 Keyword Position (AdWords) reports where AdWords ads appear on Google search results pages and how much influence search position has on volume (Visits) and visit quality (Avg. pageviews, conversion rates, per visit value) This report can be used to determine an optimal search position for each keyword and plan bidding for keyword prices accordingly. A “drill down” is available for any keyword to see its display position: T1 through T3 indicate that the ad was promoted to the top of the search results page. Positions 1 through 8 indicate a position in the right-hand column on the first page.

4.3.9Campaigns: Compares to the "average" visitor to those referred from configured campaigns.. Since all traffic in this report results from campaigns that are explicitly controlled, this information can be used to decide whether to add or delete campaigns, or to determine the effectiveness of tests that you have set up using custom tags.

4.3.10 Ad Versions shows how AdWords ads (and other configured campaigns compare against each other. This report demonstrates which ad copy is most effective. Ads with high clickthrough rates show that the copy is effective at getting the user to click, while high bounce rates, for example, indicate a need for landing pages that are consistent with what the ad promises.

4.4 Content

4.4.1 The Content section provides Overview, Top Content, Content by Title, Content Drilldown, Top Landing Pages and Top Exit Pages reports and a Site Overlay feature that displays some metrics for links on a site.

4.4.2 Overview: This report provides an overview of Page View volume and lists the pages (Top Content) that were most responsible for driving Page Views. There are also some reports that reveal how users interact with a site and statistics relating to how they found the site in the first place.

4.4.3 Top Content: The most commonly viewed pages on a site, and how are they used. A table lists all of the pages which were viewed. A high bounce rate indicates a landing page that should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it. A high 'Time on Page' may indicate content that is particularly interesting to visitors. The significance of exits varies according to each page. For example, it may be common for visitors to exit a site from a receipt or "thank you" page because they have completed a conversion activity. In contrast, a high number of exits from a non-goal page (from a funnel page, for example) may indicate that the page is confusing or that it generates user errors.

4.4.4 Content by Title: The most commonly viewed groups of pages on a site (grouped by title), and how are they used. This report provides the same information that is in the "Top Content" report, but aggregated by title tag value.

4.4.5 Content Drilldown: The popularity of each page on a site and how important the page is to the business. This report can view content by drilling down into the site’s folder structure. A landing page with a high bounce rate indicates it should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it. A high 'time on page' rate may indicate content that is particularly interesting to visitors. The significance of exits varies according to each page. For example, it may be common for visitors to exit a site from a receipt or "thank you" page because they have completed a conversion activity. In contrast, a high number of exits from a non-goal page (from a funnel page, for example) may indicate that the page is confusing or that it generates user errors.

4.4.6 Top Landing Pages: These reports demonstrate how effectively landing pages entice visitors to click further into a site. Bounce rates can be reduced by tailoring landing pages to their associated ads and referral links and placing a clear call-to-action on each landing page.

4.4.7 Top Exit Pages: The pages that people exit your site from. The significance of an exit rate varies according to each page. For example, it may be common for visitors to exit your site from a receipt or "thank you" page because they have completed a conversion activity. In contrast, a large number of exits from a non-goal page (from a funnel page, for example) may indicate that the page is confusing or that it generates user errors.

4.4.8 Site Overlay: Site overlay allows you to navigate your site just as a visitor does, while viewing clicks, conversions, and revenue metrics for each link. As you identify your most valuable links, consider how they might be repositioned or changed to be more visible and effective. The blue bars are graphic indicators of click volume; you can also customize which statistic these bars represent using the control at the top of the page. Mouse over any bar to view metrics for that link, such as transactions, revenue earned, goal values and goal page visits.

4.5 Goals and Funnels

4.5.1 Goals

A goal is a website page that serves as “conversions” for a site (with some extra code, they can even be file downloads or on-page actions). Some examples of good conversion goals are:

A 'thank you' page after a user has submitted information through a form. This can track newsletter signups, email list subscriptions, job application forms, or contact forms.

A purchase confirmation page or receipt page

An 'About us' page

A particular news article

4.5.2 Funnels

A funnel represents the path visitors are expected to navigate on their way to converting to the goal. Defining these pages demonstrates how frequently visitors abandon goals, and where they go. For example, funnels in an e-commerce goal may include the first page of a checkout process, then the shipping address info page, and finally the credit card information page. The only report that shows the funnel path is the Funnel Visualization report.

The defined funnel: a defined funnel can specify up to 10 pages. Although funnels are optional, defining one can help determine where visitors drop off during the path to completing a goal.

4.5.3 The value of the goal

Google Analytics uses an assigned goal value to calculate ROI, Average Score, and other metrics. A good way to value a goal is to evaluate how often the visitors who reach the goal become customers. If, for example, the sales team can close 10% of people who request to be contacted, and the average transaction is $500, then assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to a "Contact Me" goal. In contrast, if only 1% of mailing list signups result in a sale, then only assign $5 to your "email sign-up" goal.

4.6 E-commerce

4.6.1 The E-commerce section provides Overview, Total Revenue, Average Order Value, Transactions, Visits to Purchase, Time to Purchase and a range of product performance reports.

4.6.2 Overview: The report provides an overview of ecommerce activity on your site. Revenue is the value of purchases. Conversion Rate is the percentage of visits that results in a purchase. Transactions is the number of purchase orders and Average Order Value is the average revenue from each of those purchases. Purchased Products shows how many different products were sold.

4.6.3 Total Revenue: Revenue is determined by the number of purchases and the average purchase value. Some important steps you can take to maximize revenue are:

a. Purchase targeted advertising and write effective ads (see the Traffic Sources reports)

b. Make sure landing pages show the information, services, or products that you promise in your ads (review the Content reports to help minimize bounce rates)

c. Simplify your conversion funnels so that fewer would-be customers abandon the checkout process (review the Goals reports)

4.6.4 Conversion Rate: This report shows the rate at which visits to a site result in purchases. Tracking conversion rates over time is an effective way of determining whether your marketing and website are becoming more or less efficient at turning visitors into customers. Note that conversion rates are most useful as company-specific benchmarks against which to assess marketing and site effectiveness because conversion rates vary considerably across businesses (even within the same industry).

4.6.5 Average Order Value: Tracking changes to the average order value over time is important to catalog sites that may change and shift which products and services they are actively marketing. Many ecommerce sites monitor this metric to see if cross promotions are working. This is an important metric that works its way into many higher level executive and shareholder reports.

4.6.6 Product Overview (Product Performance): The quantity of each product sold. This report shows the number of items sold, the total revenue, the average price, and the average order quantity for each product sold online. SKU (stock or product code) are clickable to drill down and view detail.

4.6.7 Product SKUs (Product Performance): This report shows the number of items for each SKU sold, the total revenue, the average price, and the average order quantity for each product you sell online.

4.6.8 Categories (Product Performance): A categorised version of the Product SKU and Product overview reports.

4.6.9 Transactions: A list of all transactions on your site, useful for auditing transactions.

4.6.10 Visits to Purchase and Time to Purchase: How many visits and how long it takes for visitors to purchase. These reports illuminate an online sales cycle. They are important to developing the overall success of a site. They demonstrate how many visits and the time it takes to convert visitors into customers and, by extension, the kind of content required in order to reach prospects.