Google Analytics can help you understand what content is getting traction: what gets viewed, what sends traffic and what converts to action.. Dana Chinn, web analytics lecturer at Annanberg USC and Sally Falkow, President of PRESSfeed, the social online newsroom, cover the top10 Google Analytics reports.

1. TOP 10 GOOGLE
ANALYTICS REPORTS
http://www.press-feed.com
@pressfeed
#PFGA

2. Online Newsrooms and Content Strategy
• “Newsrooms – if done right – can be an excellent source
for new content. However, in this renewed age of content
marketing, it can’t just be the press releases.
• Whatever content gets put up has to be compelling
enough for people to want to share. It should not simply
report facts, but should have some sort of human element
explaining what this news means to the target audience.”
- Thom Craver https://twitter.com/thomcraver

4. THOUGHTS ABOUT
“GOOGLE ANALYTICS TIPS:
10 DATA ANALYSIS STRATEGIES THAT PAY OFF BIG!”
BY AVINASH KAUSHIK
Dana Chinn chinn@usc.edu
Lecturer @danachinn

5. 5
Two types of analytics data
Behavioral research
What people did
as captured by
an action taken on a keyboard or mouse
Attitudinal research
What people say they did
what they think
and
why
as captured by
surveys, focus groups, social media, usability studies

6. 6
Unique visitors
visit a site
and generate
page
views

7. 7
What actions indicate engagement?
Visit, regularly
View content, a lot
Interact, often
-- rate, print, vote, take a poll, click on an ad
-- share, e-mail, comment, contribute

8. 8
Start with an overall view
of visits by week

9. 9
Google “Analytics measures both visits and visitors in your account.
“Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to
your site.”
15
visits
or sessions
Google Analytics: The Difference Between Clicks, Visits, Visitors, Pageviews, and Unique Pageviews

10. Analytics Measurement Model – E-commerce
Start here
Visits that
come from…
Market Motive/Avinash Kaushik

11. 11
Segment…
…or die!
-- Justin Cutroni, Cardinal Path

12. Sources Overview

13. 13
Segment #1: Sources Overview report
Where did an external visitor come from?
Did they come based on actions we took?
Visits that come from…
Needs to be custom
coded

14. 14
Balanced Too reliant on search
Graphs from “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik

15. 15
Facebook, Twitter and other third-party social media
services are considered “referring sites”
Too reliant on social media?
Or a site architecture / Google Analytics set-up issue?

16. 16
Segment: Visits that came from branded vs. unbranded
search terms
Visits from people who
were signed in into
Google
Brand name
Visits from
Advertising slogan branded
search
Name of your CEO
Topic you want to be known for
Visits from
Topic you don’t want to be known for unbranded
search
Topic you didn’t know you were known for

17. Landing Pages

18. 18
Segment #2: Landing Pages report
Visits that came from
search
or
Facebook
or
from a bookmark
or
from an e-mail campaign…
Where did they land?
What happened when they got there?
Did they stay? Buy? Leave?

19. 19
Bounce rate
The percent of visits
with only one page view
“I came. I saw. I puked.”
-- Avinash Kaushik on bounce rate
A bounce: a visit with only one page view

20. 20
“Forty-six percent of the 11.1 million visits that came
Site bounce rate to our site in the last 12 months
bounced.
In other words, there were five million times
someone came to the site, looked at one page, and
left.”

21. 21
Site bounce rate: Interesting…
…but ultimately not actionable

22. 22
Landing page bounce rates by traffic source
give actionable insights
How many people came to the site directly….
…and landed on the home page…
…and bounced?

23. Goals

24. 24
Segment #3: Goals report
Visits that came from
search
or
Facebook
or
from a bookmark
or
from an e-mail campaign…
…and resulted in a micro-conversion
vs.
a macro-conversion
vs.
?

25. 25
Goals and goal values differ by
company and project
Goals need to be
set up in Google
Analytics
Images from Market Motive and “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik

26. Conversion Funnels

27. 27
Segment #4: Conversion funnels report
“Funnels provide a wealth
of actionable information
that can have an
immediate effect on
website success.
“Any defined
processes, no matter how
small, should be measured
using a funnel.”
-- Justin Cutroni
From “Applying Google Analytics Goal and Funnel Techniques,” by Justin Cutroni, Public Media
Metrics

28. Of all of the visits that came in directly, how many
converted, or resulted in a sale?
1 Landing page with internal search window
2 Internal search results
3 Product description and price
4 Product added to cart
5 Account sign-in
6
Review /
pymt.
Purchase
confirmation page

29. 29
100% conversion Most common Optimal
Ill-defined Poorly converting
From “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics” (third edition), by Brian Clifton

30. MCF Assisted Conversions

31. 31
Segment #5: Multi-Channel Funnel Assisted Conversions
Report
“If all your campaigns
always include campaign
tracking parameters, this
report is really good at
Visits from answering this critical
question:
Is channel x more likely to
be at the end of the
conversion process
or
…that resulted in a conversion drive traffic that might
convert later via a different
channel?
From “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik

32. Mobile Devices Report

33. 33
Segment #6: Mobile Devices Report (mobile web)
Should we use a mobile-optimized,
responsive design for our site?
20% of visits DID
use a mobile 20%
device
80%
80% of visits
did NOT use a
mobile device
20%
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4

34. 34
Visits to a mobile site result in different behavior and
outcomes…
Old mobile web site New mobile web site New full-sized web site
– same as full-sized
site
…and thus need to be analyzed differently – and
separately

35. In Page Analytics

36. 36
Segment #7: In-Page Analytics Report
How do these
click
percentages
differ by traffic
source and
landing page?
Image from “Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!” by Avinash Kaushik

37. Location Report

38. 38
Segment #8: Location Report
So what?
Only small percentages of visits to
our site come from cities and states
we’re targeting with our new
marketing campaign.

39. 39
Get the data out of Google Analytics and put it in a format
that’s meaningful for your company’s business goals
India
China 8%
11,439
5%
7,188
Canada, Other
U.S.
UK U.S. 29%
5% 43,715
7,393 All other 53%
29%
80,354 Calif.
45,008 24%
36,639
“All other” includes 183 countries, each with 1 percent or less.
“Other U.S.” includes other states, each with 5 percent or less.

40. Search Terms

41. 41
Segment #9: Site Search Terms Report
Visits that use your site’s internal search engine:
What were they looking for that they didn’t see on the landing page?
What search terms did they use?
Did the search results give them what they wanted?
Did they leave the site when they saw the results?
Did they search again?

42. 42
Are the external search terms – paid and organic – the same
as internal search terms?
Visits from people who
were signed in into
Google
Brand name
Visits from
Advertising slogan branded
search
Name of your CEO
Topic you want to be known for
Visits from
Topic you don’t want to be known for unbranded
search
Topic you didn’t know you were known for

43. Social Media

44. Network Referrals
As your content is
shared it's important to
understand how visitors
from different social
sources engage with
your newsroom

45. Conversions
Shared content URLs
become the entry points
into your site or
newsroom, driving traffic
from social sources.
Measuring the conversion
value of this traffic will
help you understand the
impact of Social on your
business.

46. Landing Pages
People increasingly
engage with, share, and
discuss content on social
networks.
It's important to know
which pages and content
are being shared, where
they're being shared, and
how

47. Social Plug-ins
Adding Social Plugin
buttons to your site (for
example, Google "+1"
buttons) allows your users
share content to social
networks directly from
your site.
Your social plugin data
shows you which content
is being shared, and on
which networks.

48. Social Visitor Flow
• Top social referrers
• Top landing pages
• Page drop-off rate.
• By comparing the drop-
off rate of social traffic to
other traffic sources, you
can determine which
traffic referrers are
sending the most
qualified visitors to
your website.

55. The Social Online Newsroom
www.press-feed.com
sally@press-feed.com