Google Analytics:A crash course in mining

your economic development website data for actionable information

Alissa Sklar, Ph.D. Director of Marketing, GIS Planning GISplanning.com @gisplanning.com info@gisplanning.com

Congratulations! You built a beautiful new website for your organization. You've promoted it with a press release and targeted email blast, and launched it to great applause.

Using your website strategically means setting goals, establishing strategies to meet them, and tracking visitors and their behavior on your site.

You don't need to be a tech expert to make sense of your analytics.

This presentation offered a primer on Google Analytics and ZoomProspector Analytics with an eye to some of the

actionable intelligence you can gather from your Google Analytics and ZoomProspector Analytics.

To view the webinar recording with all explanations, please visit http://bit.ly/unpack_Google_Analytics

For information about ZoomProspector Analytics, contact us at info@gisplanning.com

What we covered:

• Visitor stats• Country• Device• Landing Page• Exit page• Bounce rate• Time on page• Using data for reports• Campaign basics• ZoomProspector Analytics

Quick review of some key terms:

• Visitors - person who goes to your website.• Unique visitor - The number of original) non-

duplicate) visitors to a site over a defined time period. This data is determined by cookies stored in visitor browsers.

• Page view - the amount of times visitors arrive on individual pages of your website. A reloaded page, or someone who navigates to a different page and then returns, count as additional page views.

• Bounce rate - The percentage of visits in which the user only views one page of your website before leaving. Lower bounce rates are preferred on multi-page sites, but make no difference on single-page sites.

• Direct traffic - Visits to your site where the user types your URL into the browser's address bar or uses a bookmark to get to your website.

• Organic traffic - Visitors who find your website from unpaid search engine results.

• Referred traffic - Other websites that send visitors your way are referral sites.

Use Google Analytics to keep tabs on the following metrics:• Where visitors (potential leads) are coming from (country &

city);• What language visitors speak;• Whether they are using desktop or mobile;• What days are busiest for website traffic;• How long visitors are spending on site;• Which pages they tend to use to enter the site;• On which pages they are most likely to exit;• What sources send traffic your way;• What search terms (organic) lead people to your site;• Which social media networks and campaigns are effective in

delivering website traffic;• Which email blasts are effective in boosting traffic.

Use ZoomProspector Analytics to follow these metrics:• A wide variety of economic development

related website metrics that inform strategic responses and public policy issues of economic developers.

• Offers the specific site selection data your website visitors seek – details that wouldn’t be available through Google Analytics alone.

Note: for full primer on Google Analytics with screenshots and explanations,

please view the webinar recording at http://bit.ly/unpack_Google_Analytics

Questions?info@gisplanning.com www.GISplanning.com

@gisplanningThank you for attending!