International Web AnalyticsA How-To Session

Daniel SmulevichSEO Executive, Verve Search

@dSmulevich

Who am I?

• Working with International clients

• GAIQ Certified

• Love MS Excel

@dSmulevich

Today’s session

1) Find out if you need a geo-targeted site

2) Calculate the ROI3) Chose your configuration4) Avoid data corruption5) Troubleshooting

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Where to start from?

Data Collection

Processing into Information

Developing KPIs

Formulating Online Strategy

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Which tool?

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And the winner is…

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Great to start with

• Flexible and with free support

• Easy to interpret

• If you pass limits (10M hits a month) you can sample a subset of data from your site calling _setSampleRate()

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#1Find out if you need a geo-targeted website

Audience>Demographics>Location

Check your visitors’ provenience

Look at:• Total Visits• Bounce rate• Conversions

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UK website’s traffic

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Use advanced segments

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What about revenues?

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• What type of traffic is it?

• Which keywords are they using?

Always look for these three

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Is it really Mr Rush?

This is how average time on site is calculated

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Use engagement hits

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More realistic!

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More info:bit.ly/zW2iuF

@justincutroni

#2Calculate the ROI

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Gain from investment

• Find the Average Visit Value for your current market

• Compare with the Average Visit Value for your target market

• Find it under Ecommerce tab

(Avg VVC – AvgVVT) x VisitsT

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Cost of investment

For SaaS:• Bandwidth + CDN• IT Team (do you have enough

resources?)• Local content writers

For Online Retailers:• Do your market research• High entry costs@dSmulevich

#3Choose your configuration

The anatomy of the Tracking Code

1. Web Property ID2. Asynchronous vs Synchronous3. Working on secure and non-secure pages4. ga.js vs analytics.js@dSmulevich

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Three geo-targeting options

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1. Subdomainsuk.example.com, ie.example.com, …

2. Subfoldersexample.com/uk, example.com/ie, …

3. Separate TLDsexample.co.uk, example.ie, …

Google Analytics and cookies

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Uses First Party cookies

Only the website who issued them can read them

1. Subdomains

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To track when users visit more than one subdomain in one session

Google Analytics>Admin>Settings

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Set up profiles for each subdomain

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One Google Analytics account:

+ a profile for each subdomain

+ a profile tracking all subdomains collectively

Accounts, properties, profiles

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Apply filters

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Only Traffic to that subdomain.

Remember: even www. is a subdomain!

Display subdomains in the main profile

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These pages are from DIFFERENT subdomains!

Another filter

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Something easier?

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2. Subfolders

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Tracking code should be applied to EVERY page of your site to be tracking effectively.

Set up an Include filter to the sub-directory to ensure that only content for that sub-directory shows up in your report

And…FILTER!

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TIP: you can also use advanced segments

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3. Separate TLDs

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Create a separate property for each TLD.OR:Use these methods in your GATC:_setDomainName_setAllowLinker_link

Reference Guide: bit.ly/IHmheC

Cross-domain tracking

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Set up a master profile for your primary domain without filters.

Create a profile especially for cross-domain tracking and re-use your tracking code.

Modify your cross-domain profile with a filter to show the full domain in your content reports.

Best Practice

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• Create a Google Analytics account for each domain

• Customize GATC to link the multiple sub-domains with their main domains

• Link the third party shopping cart with the main domain

• Create a rollup Google Analytics account

Analytics Guide: bit.ly/15pHC8Z

What is a rollup account?

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• Using multiple trackers (bit.ly/ZBuB3p)

• Caveats: Pageview aggregation AdWords ROI Timezone alignment

#4Avoid data corruption

Data limits

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• 10,000,000 hits per month per property

• 500 hits per session not including ecommerce (item and transaction hit types)

Six different types of hits

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• Pageview hits• Event hits• Ecommerce transaction hits• Ecommerce transaction item hits• User defined hits • Social plugin hitsSo… you will “HIT” the limit earlier!

Multi-currency Ecommerce

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Add a single line of code to the transaction page_gaq.push(['_set', 'currencyCode', ‘XXX']);

Why?

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Possible scenario

You end up over-reporting by £156

Transaction ID

GA Revenue Real £ Revenue

Difference

100 £199 £199 0

101 £299 £195 -£104

102 £99 £99 0

103 £149 £97 -£52

TOTAL £746 £590 -£156

When? What? How?

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• If you offer them to pay in different currencies on same page

• Daily exchange rate from the prior day

• The conversion rate is pulled from Google’s currency server

Internationalised Domain Names

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• In 2010, Russia opened its own IDN: рф

http ://правительство.рф

• 1 million registrations in 3 years

• Google Analytics has issues with non-ASCII characters

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One last filter!

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The eternal struggle

IT vs Marketing@dSmulevich

User permissions

• Apply singly or in combination

• Parent permissions are inherited by default (account > property > profile)

• Administrator Edit + Manage Users

• User View

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Segment it

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Google Tag Manager

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• Container Tag System – doesn’t vary• GTM interface to populate the

container• Good if you have several tags

Internal traffic skews data

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GA Opt Out bit.ly/KhWGIP

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#5Troubleshooting

Three useful tools:

1. GA Debugger

2. Tag Assistant

3. Analytics Checkup

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Right click>Inspect element

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Cross-domain tracking

A basic test for cross-domain (and cross-subdomain) tracking is that the first domain that a visitor accesses generates Google Analytics cookies

BUT that the domain or subdomain that is linked to does not.

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Right click>Page info

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Session not passing to (sub)domain

All your sales appear to come from referrals from your own website.

LOSS of data like source, medium, campaign…

Google Analytics Tracking Guide(http://bit.ly/IHmheC)

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And… STOP!

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@dSmulevich

The demographics report is the first stop

Use Time on Site metric very carefully

Inv Gain: (Avg VVC – AvgVVT) x VisitsT

Every geo-configuration has its GATC

Use precaution to avoid data corruption

@dSmulevich

THANK YOU!

Email: daniel@vervesearch.comWeb: www.vervesearch.com