International Web AnalyticsA How-To Session
Daniel SmulevichSEO Executive, Verve Search
@dSmulevich
Who am I?
• Working with International clients
• GAIQ Certified
• Love MS Excel
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Today’s session
1) Find out if you need a geo-targeted site
2) Calculate the ROI3) Chose your configuration4) Avoid data corruption5) Troubleshooting
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Where to start from?
Data Collection
Processing into Information
Developing KPIs
Formulating Online Strategy
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Which tool?
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And the winner is…
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Great to start with
• Flexible and with free support
• Easy to interpret
• If you pass limits (10M hits a month) you can sample a subset of data from your site calling _setSampleRate()
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#1Find out if you need a geo-targeted website
Audience>Demographics>Location
Check your visitors’ provenience
Look at:• Total Visits• Bounce rate• Conversions
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UK website’s traffic
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Use advanced segments
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What about revenues?
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• What type of traffic is it?
• Which keywords are they using?
Always look for these three
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Is it really Mr Rush?
This is how average time on site is calculated
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Use engagement hits
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More realistic!
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More info:bit.ly/zW2iuF
@justincutroni
#2Calculate the ROI
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Gain from investment
• Find the Average Visit Value for your current market
• Compare with the Average Visit Value for your target market
• Find it under Ecommerce tab
(Avg VVC – AvgVVT) x VisitsT
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Cost of investment
For SaaS:• Bandwidth + CDN• IT Team (do you have enough
resources?)• Local content writers
For Online Retailers:• Do your market research• High entry costs@dSmulevich
#3Choose your configuration
The anatomy of the Tracking Code
1. Web Property ID2. Asynchronous vs Synchronous3. Working on secure and non-secure pages4. ga.js vs analytics.js@dSmulevich
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Three geo-targeting options
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1. Subdomainsuk.example.com, ie.example.com, …
2. Subfoldersexample.com/uk, example.com/ie, …
3. Separate TLDsexample.co.uk, example.ie, …
Google Analytics and cookies
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Uses First Party cookies
Only the website who issued them can read them
1. Subdomains
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To track when users visit more than one subdomain in one session
Google Analytics>Admin>Settings
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Set up profiles for each subdomain
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One Google Analytics account:
+ a profile for each subdomain
+ a profile tracking all subdomains collectively
Accounts, properties, profiles
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Apply filters
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Only Traffic to that subdomain.
Remember: even www. is a subdomain!
Display subdomains in the main profile
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These pages are from DIFFERENT subdomains!
Another filter
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Something easier?
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2. Subfolders
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Tracking code should be applied to EVERY page of your site to be tracking effectively.
Set up an Include filter to the sub-directory to ensure that only content for that sub-directory shows up in your report
And…FILTER!
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TIP: you can also use advanced segments
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3. Separate TLDs
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Create a separate property for each TLD.OR:Use these methods in your GATC:_setDomainName_setAllowLinker_link
Reference Guide: bit.ly/IHmheC
Cross-domain tracking
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Set up a master profile for your primary domain without filters.
Create a profile especially for cross-domain tracking and re-use your tracking code.
Modify your cross-domain profile with a filter to show the full domain in your content reports.
Best Practice
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• Create a Google Analytics account for each domain
• Customize GATC to link the multiple sub-domains with their main domains
• Link the third party shopping cart with the main domain
• Create a rollup Google Analytics account
Analytics Guide: bit.ly/15pHC8Z
What is a rollup account?
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• Using multiple trackers (bit.ly/ZBuB3p)
• Caveats: Pageview aggregation AdWords ROI Timezone alignment
#4Avoid data corruption
Data limits
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• 10,000,000 hits per month per property
• 500 hits per session not including ecommerce (item and transaction hit types)
Six different types of hits
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• Pageview hits• Event hits• Ecommerce transaction hits• Ecommerce transaction item hits• User defined hits • Social plugin hitsSo… you will “HIT” the limit earlier!
Multi-currency Ecommerce
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Add a single line of code to the transaction page_gaq.push(['_set', 'currencyCode', ‘XXX']);
Why?
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Possible scenario
You end up over-reporting by £156
Transaction ID
GA Revenue Real £ Revenue
Difference
100 £199 £199 0
101 £299 £195 -£104
102 £99 £99 0
103 £149 £97 -£52
TOTAL £746 £590 -£156
When? What? How?
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• If you offer them to pay in different currencies on same page
• Daily exchange rate from the prior day
• The conversion rate is pulled from Google’s currency server
Internationalised Domain Names
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• In 2010, Russia opened its own IDN: рф
http ://правительство.рф
• 1 million registrations in 3 years
• Google Analytics has issues with non-ASCII characters
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One last filter!
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The eternal struggle
IT vs Marketing@dSmulevich
User permissions
• Apply singly or in combination
• Parent permissions are inherited by default (account > property > profile)
• Administrator Edit + Manage Users
• User View
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Segment it
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Google Tag Manager
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• Container Tag System – doesn’t vary• GTM interface to populate the
container• Good if you have several tags
Internal traffic skews data
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GA Opt Out bit.ly/KhWGIP
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#5Troubleshooting
Three useful tools:
1. GA Debugger
2. Tag Assistant
3. Analytics Checkup
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Right click>Inspect element
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Cross-domain tracking
A basic test for cross-domain (and cross-subdomain) tracking is that the first domain that a visitor accesses generates Google Analytics cookies
BUT that the domain or subdomain that is linked to does not.
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Right click>Page info
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Session not passing to (sub)domain
All your sales appear to come from referrals from your own website.
LOSS of data like source, medium, campaign…
Google Analytics Tracking Guide(http://bit.ly/IHmheC)
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And… STOP!
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The demographics report is the first stop
Use Time on Site metric very carefully
Inv Gain: (Avg VVC – AvgVVT) x VisitsT
Every geo-configuration has its GATC
Use precaution to avoid data corruption