ADVANCED GOOGLE ANALYTICS FOR SOCIAL SITES

Bruce ChapmaniFinity Software

Aim : everyone here to go back and utilise analytics better on their sites

Background on Web Analytics and Social Sites

What to measure in Social Sites

How to measure in Social Sites

3 Techniques for implementing tracking

Understanding and using your data

Agenda

Social Sites

Social Sites : social features enabled on your own website

Social Features:– Membership (friends, follow, groups)– Activity (Q&A, Forums, Blog comments)– Any other site-specific user interactions

Implementation of Social Sites with DotNetNuke DotNetNuke social (6.2 or later)

ActiveSocial

Other custom methods and components

Integration with other social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)

History of Web Analytics(how did we get here)

Early days (early 1990s): hit counting – ‘hit’ being a request for a file on a server, including images + pages

Hit Counters (mid 1990s) :

Log File Analysis (early-mid 90s): after the fact collation of data.

Script + cookie based tracking (late 90s) Pageview emphasis, rather than hits

Launch of Google Analytics (2005)

Analytics Now

Real time statistics

Heatmaps, ClickTale reporting

Mobile + desktop application analytics

Integration with e-commerce + advertising platforms

Extremely widespread since Google Analytics was made free

Concept of Pageview losing relevance

Recent new Features of Google Analytics Switch to Asynchronous tracking

Real-time data : see traffic as it arrives

Webmaster tools integration

Social Engagement reports

Visitor Flow

Event Tracking

New interface (dashboards, etc)

How Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking works Asynchronous prevents page load from waiting

on Analytics code

When page loads, commands are placed into a ‘_gaq’ array.

When analytics script (ga.js) loads and runs, loops through loaded _gaq array and executes commands.

Any further additions to _gaq are executed immediately

Analytics and Social Sites

Modern DotNetNuke sites have lots of client-side operations

Client side operations don’t trigger pageviews

Pageviews don’t give contextual information

External interactions (g+ links, Twitter Buttons) don’t show up in site Analytics

Analytics and Social Sites cont.

Effectiveness of a Social Site is about return visitors and engagement with the site

Improving the site effectiveness means measuring success of particular actions

Measuring Success requires measurement of actions.

Pageviews alone will not provide enough information

Tracking on-page interactions with Events Events are a relatively new Analytics feature

Events

VisitPageview

Google Analytics Events

Events can have three variables supplied:– Category – Label– Value.. in addition to the event name or ‘Action’

Each user session is limited to 500 requests (events + page views)

Events are integrated into Analytics Reporting

Viewing Events in Analytics

Viewing Events in Analytics (2)

Using Events to Measure Effectiveness

Measuring effectiveness is measuring goals against targets

Traditional Pageview based (Url) goals are clunky

Event goals can measure how much a visitor is engaged

Using Goals and Conversions

Ideas for Goals:– Friends made / Follows clicked– Comments – blogs / walls / forum posts– Groups Joined– Downloads– External Links followed

How to Track Events in DotNetNuke sites 3 Methods

1. Add specific event tracking code to pages2. Associate clicks to event tracking function3. Use event-enabled Analytics Plugin

Skill level : copy/paste – if you can add Analytics code, you can add event tracking

1. Add specific event tracking code

Assuming Analytics already configured for Asynchronous tracking

Use code snippet directly in Html using javascript

Tracks an event called ‘Something’ for the ‘Social’ category, using ‘A1’ as a label

2. Associate Clicks with event tracking

If you can’t directly control html, then use jQuery to assign click handler to elements on the page

Recommend using the ‘on’ handler as content might be AJAX loaded, and click needs to be bound

3. Using event-enabled Analytics Plugin iFinity Google Analytics 3.0 – free Analytics

plugin

Now updated with event tracking

Use ‘identifying’ mode, click on things to track

Associate Category, Event name and optional Label or jQuery selector

Test event tracking by using click testing

Code works by associating handler with clickable elements, and recording matching events

Analytics Module Demo

Analytics Module Advantages

Integrated external links reporting

Setup tracking across entire portal, or for specific page

Consistency of Category/Event naming

No need to write Javascript code, but option of including site / page level custom Javascript for extra tracking (events, custom vars, etc)

Tracking External Social Interactions

Tracking clicks + interactions with External social sites (LinkedIn, g+, Facebook, etc)

Slightly modified version of Event tracking

_gaq.push(['_trackSocial', network, socialAction, opt_target, opt_pagePath]);

See Google Analytics Help for more examples

Understanding and using your Data

Move beyond ‘visits’ to ‘interactions’ in measuring data

Determine what is a conversion

Use analysis of existing conversions to determine

Think in terms of goal funnels – ‘gates’ that visitors must go through before conversion

Don’t forget to track from point of view of anonymous visitor to regular contributor

Visits triggering events can be used as a segment

Create Custom Segments from Event Data

Custom Segments created from Event data

Use to track/compare actions whereevent was completed

Viewing Data by Custom Segment

Showing activity of visits to /Licensing page Licence Requests vs All Visits

Key things to Analyse

Acquisition (paid/organic/other)

Activity (pageviews/events -> see vs do)

Outcome (bounce/conversion/browsing session)

Reduce down to a value/visit metric increase visitors, increase value (revenue / leads / other)

Example Goals for Social Sites

Signup (register) completion

Forum Post

Group Join

Profile Update

Friends Made

Conclusions

Social Site success depends on visitor interaction + repeat visits

Interaction + repeat visits depend on social activity

Therefore, measuring social activity, and using that data to improve is vital to site success

DotNetNuke has great social features but these can’t be measured by pageview, due to ‘single page’ interactive design

Integrate Event Tracking with your Social Features to understand your social activity

Use Events to segment visitor data

Questions?

Google Analytics 3.0 module install available at https://dnngoogleanalytics.codeplex.com/

Slides available at http://www.slideshare.net/brchapman