Using Analytics to

Inform Business

Decisions

Adeel Ahmed

Extension Educator

ahme0004@umn.edu

Agenda

1. How does analytics work? – cookies,

caches, privacy

2. Examples of interpreting analytics to make

decisions

a. Type of content you should focus on

3. Setting up analytics on your site

page visits

everything else – tracking EVENTs

Basic questions

• Why people come to your website?

– Purpose

• How do they get to your website?

– Advertising

• What do they do on your website?

– Content

• What are types of visitors you have?

– Customer segmentation

• What are your goals? How do you define

success?

What is a “Visit”?

• A visit is a group of interactions that take place on your

website within a given time frame. For example a single

visit can contain multiple pageviews, events, social

interactions, custom variables, and ecommerce

transactions.

What can be measured

• Every click is recorded

• “time on site” is the sum value of the time

between clicks within the website

– Time between last click and exiting the website

is not measured.

• New visits / Unique visits.

Analytics doesn’t

know how long

visitor spent on

Page 3

How analytics work

What is Web Analytics?

1. The analysis of qualitative and quantitative data

from your website and the competition

2. To drive a continual improvement of the online

experience of your customers and prospects

3. Your desired outcomes (online and offline) • Avinash Kaushik - Web Analytics 2.0

• Online activities on your website you might

consider measuring

Q1 – complete reservation

1. Determine % of people that complete the registration

process vs exit the site.

A. Goal – try to improve the percentage of successful

completions from year to year

(i.e. Spr ‘13 to Spr ‘14

Web reservation

page

Reservation

complete $$

Exit

How to measure

1. How many people visit the

reservation page during a given

period of time?

2. Set up an EVENT to measure

clicks on “Online reservations”

link. Compare that number to

your reservations during a

given time period

However Online reservations

are located on another site.

www.reseze.net

Setting up EVENTS

• EVENTS are clicks that : – Take users to another site

– Play a video

– Referral programs

– Advertising

– Downloads – i.e. PDF

Rates to Reservation

• Or you can measure percentage of people

that go from RATES pages to

RESERVATIONS page.

Q2 – page before resv. page

1. Which page do visitors most often visit before your

reservations page?

B. Goal – improve that page, remove road blocks,

Measure change from year to year.

Reservation page?

You can even

compare to -

Phone Call?

Email?

Behavior flow

Q3 – most visited page

1. What is your most often visited page?

Goal – What page do you want to be the most visited? This is

probably the page most people are making their decision about

your resort.

Q4 – sources of traffic

Where is traffic to your site coming from? Organic

search, direct?

Goal – steps to improve ORGANIC SEARCH

Business goal 5

• On your own – write down another metric to

measure and goal to achieve.

Year to year visits

• How do visits to my site compare from last

year? – Behavior > Overview > click on the date range > clcik check box for

"Compare to" > select "previous year"

Geographic location of customers

• From where are people accessing my site.

As in what is their location? – Audience > Geo > Location

– Then click around in the map to find countries, states, and cities

• Should I be marketing differently to people

from the metro? Is their behavior any

different than visitors from other parts of

MN? • Behavior > Overview > Add Segment > + New Segment >

Demographics > Location > select appropriate location

• One thing to check here is %Pageviews of the top pages. See where

they are markedly different

1. Setup Analytics

• Google Analytics A. Set up / sign in to your Google Analytics account,

1. http://www.google.com/analytics/

2. Click Admin in the top menu bar.

3. From the Account and Property columns, select the property

you’re working with. Click Tracking Info / Tracking Code.

Your Tracking Code

3. Find your tracking code. Copy and paste it into every web

page you want to track.

Paste it immediately before the closing </head> tag.

If you use templates to dynamically generate pages for your site (like if

you use PHP, ASP, or a similar technology), you can paste the tracking

code snippet into its own file, then include it in your page header.

Head tag

Paste script anywhere

before this

Verify your setup

• Check your set up.

Make sure that the tracking snippet

installed on your website matches the code

shown in the view, and see more ways you

can verify your set up.

For more info see: – http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/setupchecklist.html

To learn more

• What are some other web analytic tools and what is the difference

between them?

– http://www.inc.com/guides/12/2010/11-best-web-analytics-tools.html

• An excellent blog for information on analytics is

– http://www.kaushik.net/

• University of Minnesota – eMarketing: Practical and Useful Research

– http://blog.lib.umn.edu/vitality/emarketing-guides/2013/07/how-can-i-learn-more-

anout-visitors-to-my-website/

• Official Blog for Google Analytics

– http://analytics.blogspot.com/

• Case study academic paper on using web analytics for strategic

communication

– http://www.academia.edu/download/30271266/Kent_Carr_Pop_Analytics.pdf

• Source for various customized dashboards

– http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/google-analytics-tutorial-8-valuable-tips-to-hustle-

with-data/#customdashboards

• Video on how to setup Event tracking and Goals

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEhZfefxn0E

• How to track Twitter and Facebook clicks using Google Analytics

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI9d-9dPNzo

– Tracking Ad campaigns with Google URL Builder and Bit.ly

Analytics

Adeel Ahmed

Extension Educator

ahme0004@umn.edu