Google Analytics Notes
To use analytics to track user behaviour on the website, the Google
Analytics tracking code should be added to each page of the site (jus tafter
<head> tab
Google Analytics will end a default session when a user is inactive for 30
minutes
Organisation -> Accounts -> Properties -> Views } Organise the data
Property
Collect data independently of each other using a unique tracking code
I.e. Separate property for different region
Views
I.e. create different views for different region
Can set Google analytics goals: valuable way to track conversions/business
objectives (I.e. how many users purchased a product)
Will not include past day
Only admins can recover a deleted view (within 35 days)
Type of views: Master data, test view, filtered view
Filters
Types of filter:
Predefined
Custom (include, exclude, modify data)
*Remember to exclude your own IP address (a.k.a internal traffic)
Filters will be applied in the order the filter is arranged
Important to keep an unfiltered view (aka Master data) to ensure access
to original data
Bot filtering- filters out bot traffic
2.3 Understanding the full reports
Date range
Bounce rate: % of visitors who landed on the website and exited without any
actions
Dimension: An attribute of a data set
Secondary dimension: Additional dimension that can be added to a report for
more specific analysis
Site usage: Shows behaviour metrics i.e. users, pages per session & average
session duration
Goals: Shows metrics based on the number of goals configured
E-commerce: Shows transactions metric
Display options:
Pie chart icon
Performance view (compare individual segments side by side
Comparison (show whether each entry in the table is performing
below/above site average)
Pivot (creates pivot table- show different dimension values for
comparison)
** Drop down menu to select which metric you want to view
2.5 Setting up dashboards and shortcuts
3.1 Audience reports
Shows characteristics of the audience (i.e. country, language, age, gender,
engagement
Active users: How many users have at least one session in your site
Demographics: Age and gender of users
Interests
% New sessions: Can help identify potential new market based on new traffic
3.2 Acquisition report
Compare performance of different marketing channels and which source
provides highest quality traffic and conversion
Land on site-> GA tracking code captures attributes and dimensions (medium,
source, campaign name)
Medium: Organic, CPC, referrals, email
Source: Provides information of the medium (i.e. URL, search engine)
Bounce rate
3.3 Behavioural report
Total page views: Sum of each time a user loaded a page on your website
Content Drilldown: Groups THE PAGES ACCORDING TO THE WEBSITE’S
DIRECTORY STRUCTURE
Exit pages: Pages where users left the site
Events: How users react with specific elements on the website (i.e. click
on download link or video player)
4.1 Measuring custom campaigns
Types of marketing campaign:
Text ads on search engines
Email
Social media
Marketing campaigns are tracked through campaign tagging which includes a
parameter (parameter is in URL link denoted by = and hyphen)
Campaign tags:
Medium: How the message is sent to the user(Email, CPC, Social)
Source: Where the users come from (Google/ Bing/ Yahoo, newsletter)
Campaign name
Content (Version of a promotion)
Term (Keyword for paid search campaign)
Add these parameters via ‘URL builder’-> Fill the URL builder form – Generate
URL
4.2 Tracking campaigns with URL builder
Reviewing campaign reports: Acquisition -> Campaigns
Adding secondary dimension (Ad content) to verify other campaign tags
4.3 Using goals to measure business objectives
Business goals: Actions you want users to take on your website
Goal funnel: Steps needed to complete the goal (Shows where users are dropping
out of conversion process, tracks how far user get at each stage of the goal)
Only can set up to 20 goals per view
Admin -> Views-> Goals -> New goal
Goal slot ID: Organise the goals
Type: Triggered by user action (Destination- ensure that the URL is
distinctive, duration, events)
Switching the funnel switch ON to add funnel steps:
- Each step represents an action on the website that has to be taken to
accomplish the goal (Include unique part of the URL- i.e. /Checkout.
/Billing address)
**See the data under Conversion-> Funnel visualisation
4.4 Measuring AdWords campaigns
Text advertisements: Text, images, animations or video
Shows up in google search
Adwords can automatically add special campaign tag to campaign URLS
(Autotagging): get specific adwords dimension into google analytics
- Acquisition-> Adwords-> Campaigns
Keywords report: How well keywords and individual ads are performing
Bid adjustment: Adjust the bid
Top performing pages for new users;
Behaviour-> site content -> all pages-> Secondary dimension: user type
(Inform marketers how to acquire new users)
Identify ineffective landing pages:
Behaviour -> site content -> landing pages-> sort by bounce rate
** Secondary dimension: Campaign (to see which campaign is turning away
users)
View user campaign data across devices:
Acquisition -> All campaigns-> secondary dimension (device)
By geographic data:
Audience -> geo-> toggle the ‘conversion’ tab
Advanced Analytics
1.1 Google Analytics data collection
- Goal of tracking code is to track each user interaction on the website
- Google Analytics will drop a cookie on the user’s browser for that
website/ any related subject
- Installing default tracking code on different domains -> GA will count
the users separately
- For cross doman tracking->
- “Hit” is a URL string with parameters of useful information about the
users
o Pageview hit: When user loads a new page
o Event hit: When user interacts with a particular element on the
website (Consists of parameters: Action, category, label, value)
o Transaction hit: About ecommerce purchases: SKU,
Transaction, product iD
o Social hits
o Pagetiming hits
1.2 Categorizing into users and sessions
Steps in processing data:
1. Determine new vs. returning users
- Unique id for the user’s browser cookies
* Will be lost if the user clears the browser cookies
2. Categorise hits into sessions or periods in which the user engaged with
the site
- Groups user hits based on the time in which they are generated
(measured with a metric called ‘session’)
3. Joins data in the tracking code with other data sources
- Can link data from other Google marketing tools like AdWords,
AdSense
1.3 Applying configuration settings
How data will be process:
- Data filters
- Goals: destination, page views, events, duration
- Data grouping
Channel: organise data into customized channels
Content: aggregate metrics within reports based on org. of
website
- Custom dimensions: define group of metric
- Custom metrics
1.4 Storing data and generating reports
Can only pair metric and dimension if they are in the same scope
1.5 Creating a measurement plan
Macro objectives: Broader goals
Macro conversions measure tactics that support various strategies
Micro objectives: Brings users closer to macro conversions.
Micro conversions help you understand the user behaviour that leads to
macro conversion
Measurement plan: Align business settings with Google analytics configuration
settings
Includes: Business objective, strategies that support that objective and
tactics that will help you achieve the strategy
Each tactic includes KPI that measure micro and macro conversion
Example of measurement plan:
Business objectives
Strategy
Tactic -> KPI
Segments (Dimensions): Customer demographics, traffic sources, device type,
user category
