Smart Travel Analytics Europe Berlin, 2013 · Rule no2: Set up your tracking •A few tips when...

transcript

Smart Travel Analytics Europe

Berlin, 2013 Barbara Pezzi, Director Analytics & Search

This Session

The Google Analytics Travel Masterclass

A few stats

http://www.fournaisegroup.com/CEOs-Do-Not-Trust-Marketers.asp

A few stats

http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/2013-the-year-90-of-ceos-

will-lose-faith-in-marketers/

A few stats

• With no goals or segmentation, you can only expect clickstream reports: data with no insight

Common Web Analytics mistake:

• Numbers are just numbers:

• Top exit pages: bad content or the right content?

• % of new visitors: effective campaigns or no repeat customers?

• Page views / time on site: great content or complex navigation?

Common Web Analytics mistake:

First things first

KEEP THEM

Rule no1: Set your goals

• If you do not know what it is that you are trying to achieve, it becomes very hard to measure how successful you have been.

• Establish what the main goals of your online activities are and ensure these are tied to the company actual business goals and solve business questions. If the investment is in $, then the return also has to be in $. It can’t be impressions, likes or clicks.

• Goals do not have to be limited to ecommerce activities as long as they are tied to business values. Cost savings count too, ex: call centre savings, recruitment fees, market research..

• “ROI isn’t an afterthought: acquiring Twitter followers and Facebook likes won’t drive a whole lot of anything unless you have a plan. In other words, if your social media activity doesn’t deliberately drive ROI, it probably won’t accidentally result in any.” (Olivier Blanchard)

• Once goals have been established, select 2-3 actionable key performance indicators related to the goals in question and pick your channels/target audience.

• Example:

• Goal: increase online marketing profitability by x%

• KPIs: CPA, ROI, check out abandonment

• Channels: PPC, Email, Display

• Goal: increase membership of loyalty programme by x%

• KPI: online membership sign ups, membership email enquiries, loyalty brochure downloads

• Channels: Email, Social media, PPC

• If you have not done so already, make sure your goals are set up in your web analytics tool

Rule no2: Set up your tracking

• Tag all your campaigns including your social media posts with tracking codes using GA URL builder

http://bit.ly/ga-campaign-tool

Rule no2: Set up your tracking

• A few tips when setting up tracking URLs:

• GA is case sensitive, like most analytics tools. Ensure you always type fixed values like traffic source/medium in the same way. It may be easier to create an excel doc if more parties are involved, with pre-set values

• Use the same “medium” across your campaigns, ex: ppc, social-media, email, etc..

• If you are running the same campaign across multiple channels (ex summer campaign), use the same “campaign” value in your tracking codes across all channels and just change the source, if you need aggregate campaign results

• Do not use special characters like “&, @,^” – separate words with underscores or dashes

• Develop a tracking naming convention and keep a record, for easier reference or in case of staff turnover

• Aggregate data works on the assumption that all site visitors are identical. Aggregate data cannot be actioned. Data without action is a pointless exercise.

• Every site visitor is unique, each with their own behaviour, intent and requirements. Ex job seeker vs potential customer.

• Segments are a subset of your data generally referring to groups of visitors whose behaviour you would like to see and analyse. Ex: new visitors vs returning ones, social media vs email, convert vs did not convert, organic vs paid traffic, etc.

• A good starting point: http://cutroni.com/blog/2013/07/16/google-analytics-segmentation/

Rule no3: Segment everything

• Regex: ^\s*[^\s]+(\s+[^\s]+){2,}\s*$

• or click on

• https://www.google.com/analytics/web/permalink?type=advanced_segment&uid=1FgpQ85QRvO9sN_n-Q_MuA

Rule no3: Segment everything

echnorati|digg\.com|

Rule no3: Segment everything (custom filters)

code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/gaTrackingCustomVariables.html

Rule no3: Segment everything (custom variables)

Visit vs Visitor: $34,792 vs $125,131

Rule no4: it has to be useful

•http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/lean-analytics-cycle-metrics-hypothesis-experiment-act/

• Start by analysing the performance and ROI of your current marketing investments, be it Social Media, Pay Per Click, EDMs… and establish what is working and what is not. Follow the money!

• Are there any traffic sources (ex. a search engine or a new referring site) showing promising results? Should you be investing more?

• Are all countries performing equally well? Do you need to add new languages to the website?

• Pick an hypothesis and follow through.

• It is not about reporting or measurement. It has to be useful and actionable. If you are not gaining valuable insights, revisit your metrics.

• Goal: optimise and expand hotel PPC campaign

Measurement Process/Tools: PPC

• Start by segmenting the data and comparing each campaign and/or ad group. Look at:

• Landing pages

• Regions (for large countries, ex US)

• Content viewed

• Keywords used

• Time partying (when did they buy the most?)

• Ad position and ad text

• Use your segments

• Don’t forget to check your match type share/keywords (NOTE: ensure your Adwords

account is linked to your GA account)

• Ad positions: you don’t always need to be no1

• Are there new countries worth including in the campaign?

• A few months later..

• Sometimes, it’s the other way round

Multi-Channel Funnels & Attribution

Measurement Process/Tools: Multi-Channel Funnels

Multi-Channel Funnels & Attribution

A few additional tips: Event Tracking

http://www.koozai.com/blog/analytics/the-complete-google-analytics-event-tracking-guide-

plus-10-amazing-examples/

A few additional tips: Event Tracking

• A few ideas for possible events to tracked:

• Clicks on on-site banners

• “Add to basket” events

• Email registrations, downloads, log-ins

• Comments/reviews

• Exit links

• Rich media consumption, ex videos, virtual tours

• Error reports

A few additional tips: annotations

•Make the most of Google Analytics Annotations

A few additional tips: webmaster tools integration

• http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/webmaster-tools-in-google-analytics-for.html

A few additional tips: Social Reports

•View your most shared content

A few additional tips: Social Reports

•Activity stream

A few additional tips: 404 pages

• http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/blog/track-404-errors-in-google-analytics/

A few additional tips: don’t forget “obstacles”

A few additional tips: pivot tables in GA

A few additional tips: demographics

A few additional tools

www.google.co.uk/tagmanager/

Google Tag Assistant: chrome

browser extension

A few additional tools

http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/8-alternative-ways-to-use-screaming-frog-for-seo/

In conclusion:

• Tie your online marketing goals to your business goals and then measure accordingly. Don’t measure activities but results.

• It is not about reporting or measurement. It has to be useful and actionable. If you are not gaining valuable insights, revisit your metrics. Where can you actually make a difference?

• Start with a free web analytics tool before you invest in a paid solution. If you do not have a solid analytics strategy in place, and the human resources to manage it, even the most expensive and sophisticated tool will be next to useless.

• Segment, segment, segment. No all visitors are equal.

• No size fits all solution. Make it relevant to your business.

“"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.“

(Albert Einstein)

Smart Travel Analytics Europe Berlin, 2013 · Rule no2: Set up your tracking •A few tips when...

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