Date post: | 22-Nov-2014 |
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Technology |
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Extreme Analytics #12NTCanalytics
Jo Miles Food & Water Watch @josmiles
Evaluate This Session! Each entry is a chance to win an NTEN engraved iPad!
or Online using #12NTCanalytics at www.nten.org/ntc/eval
Analytics: It’s a jungle in there
…though we do not know the way
We’re going on an adventure
We’ll cover a lot of ground
1. Where are we going?
2. Planning the trip
3. Navigating the jungle
4. Don’t forget to explore
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
Before starting any journey, pick your destination!
What do these tell you?
What are your online goals?
Raise Money
Drive Advocacy
Build Email List
You should have goals defined for your website
Turn goals… into actions
Raise Money Complete a
Donation Form
Drive Advocacy Complete an
Advocacy Form
Build Email List
Complete a Sign Up Form
Turn actions… into analytics
Complete a Donation Form
donate-thank-you.html
Complete an Advocacy Form
action-completed.html
Complete a Sign Up Form
sign-up-thanks.html
Analytics is about goals
• Your data should help you reach your goals
• If it doesn’t, get better data
Your Data
Your Goal
Good data is
• Specific
• Comparable
• Relevant
• Actionable
Which kind of data are you using?
Bad data: “42% of our visitors are new!”
Good data: “Only 5% of our visitors come from Facebook, but 70% of Facebook visitors are new, and 45% of them take action! That’s much better than our average visitor. Let’s invest more energy in Facebook.”
What does this even mean?
PLANNING THE TRIP
This is your website
Viewed any article on fracking
Interacted with a widget
Watched a video
Clicked an important
button
Took any action
Signed up for email
Made a donation
Viewed our annual report
What you want to track
You mean I need MORE data?
Wait a minute.
Ok, then. How do I track all of this?
Goals
Everyone (including you!) should use goals.
Use goals to:
– Identify your most important pages
– Measure conversion rates
– Track bailout
Goals can have funnels
Use funnels to look at for bailout in processes that are:
– well-defined
– multi-step
– E.g. shopping cart
View cart
Enter shipping info
Enter billing info
Complete checkout
A simple goal and funnel
Donation Form – Step 1
• Funnel Step 1 (not your goal)
Donation Form – Step 2
• Funnel Step 2 (not your goal)
Thank You Page
• Goal URL (This IS your goal!)
For even more powerful goals, learn regular expressions
Why are goals so great?
• They show up in almost every report
• You can measure, compare, and improve conversion rates!
Your homework
When you go back to your hotel tonight:
– Find the thank you page for your donation form
– Set up a donation goal
– Extra credit: Create a funnel for your goal
Events
Good for tracking most “stuff” that’s not a page:
• Clicks
• Interactions
• Dynamic content
• Widgets
• Videos of baby polar bears
How to create an event
• One line of easy JavaScript: _trackEvent(category, action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)
• Attach it to any trigger:
– Click
– Form submission
– Function call
– Any place you can call JS
Naming your events
• You get 4 fields – use them consistently!
• An event for playing a video:
– Category = “Videos”
– Action = “Play”
– Label = “Video Name”
– Value = Seconds watched
• In action: <a href="#" onClick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Videos', 'Play', 'Polar Bear']);">Play</a>
New! Event-based goals
• Create a goal to match any event!
– Or a set of events
• Treat interactions like conversions
eCommerce
• All goals are equal
• But all donations are not
• Treat your donations as transactions
– Record the amount!
– Find your most valuable donation sources
$1500 $50
$100
Custom variables
Like events… but not exactly
– 3 “scopes” – they can persist
– Only 5 “slots”
When in doubt,
use events instead
Tracking: The Balancing Act
NAVIGATING THE JUNGLE
The Landscape of the New Version
• New interface looks like the old one…
– Except everything has moved
• Handy tools and shortcuts…
– If you know where to look
Reports are reorganized
Navigate from the top and side
New navigation
New visitors, technology, geography, and visitor flow
Just what it sounds like
Just what it sounds like, plus SEO
Pages, site search, events
Goals, eCommerce, and multi-channel
Reports in sneaky places
Watch out for “tabs” within reports in the new version
Filters Hide useless data. Focus on what matters.
Viewing & Sorting
View your data as a pie chart, performance comparison, and more
Sort by any column
The Timeline
Graph two metrics at once
Graph by day, week, or month
Add annotations for reference – when you make changes, or when big events happen
The 2nd Dimension
Add depth to your data by picking a second field (instead of drilling down)
Goals, right in your reports
• asd
Advanced segments
Apply common segments to your reports:
– New/Returning visitors
– Search/Direct/Referrals
– Visits with conversions
– Mobile
– Non-bounce visits
Custom segments
Make and save your very own segments… based on any criteria you can think of
A Segmented Report
Set your advanced segments from any report!
…and now, see them in context
Put it all together
To find high-performing referring sites, you could:
– View traffic source report
– Add landing page as second dimension
– Sort by goal conversion rate
– Filter out traffic from sites you own
– Filter out sources with less than 100 visits
– Segment to show only new visitors
A side-trip: Cross-domain tracking
Where did these people really come from?
Why it happens
• Google Analytics uses cookies
• Cookies are single-domain
– Only the domain that created a cookie can read that cookie
• But your website has multiple domains!
Why it happens
• You think you’re one visitor on one site
• But GA thinks you’re two visitors on two domains!
• Solution: cross-domain tracking!
A story about cross-domain
You’re going on a cross-Atlantic flight. Before leaving SFO, you take out $1000 in cash.
But your plane crashes on a mysterious island!
You’re greeted by strange people called the Dharma Initiative.
You need to buy supplies…
But they won’t take your US money!
What do you do?
A story about cross-domain
You exchange $1,000 for $687 Dharma-Bucks, of course!
Now, you can go about your business.
A story about cross-domain
The need for cross domain tracking
In this story:
– The USA and the Island are two different web domains
– Money is your GA data
– Cross-domain tracking is the exchange rate
Setting up for Multiple Domains
1. Update your GA code to allow cross-domain:
_gaq.push(['_setDomainName','foodandwaterwatch.org']); Allows tracking across sub-domains
_gaq.push(['setAllowLinker','true']); Gives permission for cross-domain tracking to be used…
2. Write code to handle cross-domain linking. Call GA’s “link” function:
Every time you link to another domain you own
Every time a form submits across domains
While you’re at it…
As long as you’re setting up cross-domain tracking, you can detect and track other kinds of links:
– External links
– PDF downloads
– Other file downloads
EXPLORING THE JUNGLE
The Analytics Mindset
Be on a mission…
…and be an explorer
at the same time.
Look for the weird
• What is “unusual” for you?
– A huge spike in traffic?
– A very high conversion rate?
– A sudden increase in bounce rate?
• Look for a reason – don’t assume the best (or worst)
• Look below the surface…
What’s this?
Surprise!
What does this mean?
When you see an anomaly, dig deeper!
– Filter
– Segment
– Find related occurrences
A cautionary note
• As you look at smaller segments, data may lose significance.
• A 50% conversion rate is:
– Amazing, for 50,000 visitors
– Just a coincidence, for 10 visitors
USEFUL TOOLS AND WILD NEW FEATURES
Know where you are: Make useful dashboards
Your personalized dashboard
• Keep it simple
• Two questions to ask yourself:
– Is this report related to my goals?
– Is this a report I should look at often?
Some useful dashboard reports
• Topline goal conversion rates
• Top keywords this month (excluding branded keywords)
• Top traffic sources to action pages (excluding email)
• Top articles, blog posts, and action pages
• Top donation sources
Know your content
Use these 3 kinds of content reports:
1. Pages report
– What are they looking at?
2. Landing page report
– How did they get here? Is “here” the right place for them to be?
3. Exit page report
– Why did they leave? Is this a natural exit point, or did they lose interest?
Site search: Read your visitors’ minds!
How to set up site search (in 30 seconds or less)
1. Do a search on your site
2. Look at the results URL: – http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/?s=fracking&x=0&y=0
– Your search parameter is “s”
3. Plug all search parameters into Site Search settings, and enable!
Visitor flow
Now that’s a jungle!
Real-time reporting
• asdf
Multi-channel funnels
• Normally, you look at activity just before a conversion
• But what if other channels helped them convert?
Multi-channel conversions
Questions we couldn’t answer before:
– How long did it take them to convert?
– How many ways did they reach our site?
– What is the true value of each channel?
• SEO
• Advertising
LET’S GET OUR FEET BACK ON THE GROUND…
Three steps to plan your analytics journey
1. What’s my destination? (What am I trying to accomplish with my website?)
2. What route do I take? (What specific parts of my site should be making this happen?)
3. What tools do I need? (How do I track those parts?)
Make your plan, then follow through
• Get all your tracking in place first
• Then, start your journey!
– Explore your data
– Keep an eye on your goals
The End?
Not really.
This journey has no end.
Thank You!
Jo Miles
Food & Water Watch
@josmiles
Please review this session! #12NTCanalytics at www.nten.org/ntc/eval