Sebastian Perrier

Users and Administrators

• Users can only view while Administrators can Edit Settings, create profiles, add users, etc…
• Best practice is to have different account for different organizations (not one account with different profiles).

Profiles

• For: different domains / different sub-domains / filtered reports (e.g. only data from UK) / views for different users. In summary, they allow you to -> provide user access, apply filters or set goals.
• Deleting a profile deletes the historical information associated with it.

Tracking Campaigns

• Autotagging: when linking your Adwords and Analytics accounts (will differentiate paid traffic from organic and add cost data to them). You can link only 1 AdWords account to 1 Analytics account, and they will take the time zone of the Adwords account if they are different.
• To enable autotagging go to AdWords->My Account->Account Preferences->Tracking – Edit -> Autotagging = YES.
• When linking AdWords and Analytics you’ll have can tick “Apply Cost Data” to see in your analytics reports the ROI. Note that you need to have both accounts in the same currency and that this cost data will apply to all your Analytics Profiles for that account (you can edit this later to avoid some users see $$ information).
• Differences between data in AdW and Analytics: AdWords tracks clicks, while Analytics tracks visits.
• Manually tagging: (for example: /?id=test&test=test&etc)
• Link to Google URL BUILDER
• There are 5 types of variables to tag URLs (You can use them in any order you want):

Mandatory:

utm_source -> to identify the advertiser (e.g. LinkedIn). * is viewed in Traffic Sources Report.

utm_medium -> to identify if it is cost per click, or email, etc (e.g Refferal or Organic). *viewed in Traffic Sources Report.

utm_campaign -> to identify the name of the campaign (e.g My Profile). *viewed in Campaign Report.

Non Mandatory:

utm_term -> to specify the keyword. *viewed in Keywords Report.

utm_content -> to differentiate different links in the same campaign, so that you can tell which version is most effective. *viewed in AdVersion Report.

General Information

• GA tracks data from 3rd party cookies
• GA tracks data through a JavaScript code
• You can benchmark your data only if you choose to share yours
• Levels: 1 Acc (profile a / profile b) 2 Acc (profile a / profile b)
• Two metrics graph can show you correlation between variables
• To check that you have placed the tracking code either go to GA and search if all content appears on the reports or go to your site and view its source code using the internet browser.

1. VISITORS

• VISITOR: uniquely identified person.
• ABSOLUTE UNIQUE Visitor Report: if a visitor came 5 times, you will count him as only one visitor.
• NEW vs RETURNING Visitor Report (to compare acquisition vs retention).
• VISITS: every session in which the person is in your site, i.e. 30min.
• PAGEVIEW: every time a page is viewed during a visit by the visitor.
• UNIQUE PAGEVIEW: pageview during one visit (i.e. if during a vistit your visitor views the home two times, it is 2 pagesviews but only 1 unique pageview); only appears in the CONTENT Report.
• Important to see how many unique visitors you have and compare to last period.
• Important to see how well you’re how you’re acquiring and retaining visitors.
• Interesting to see the Loyalty reports and length of visits.

2. TRAFFIC SOURCES

• DIRECT TRAFFIC: they typed your url or have it in favorites.
• REFERRING SITES: came through another URL (i.e. LinkedIn).
• SEARCH ENGINES: through keywords in organic searches or paid search ads.
• Important to understand the quality of the traffic sent by each source; this is seen through the BOUNCE RATE; click on link “All Traffic Sources” (in this report note that direct traffic always comes with /none).
• Note that Bounce Rate for blogs may not be relevant because people search, read the specific post with the information they needed and then leave, that has 100% bounce rate but accomplished the goal though.
• The same analysis can be done to the “Keywords” Report, to see if those keywords met readers interests. For Keyword, it is very interesting to see what was the landing page for that keyword. To do so, click on the keyword and then select the ‘dimension’ Landing Page from the drop down menu.
• These analyzes can be done in more details if you also have GOALS and eCommerce set-up in your system. For these cases it is important to know more about “Campaign Attribution”.

3. CONTENT REPORT

• Top Content (list each page) / Content by Title (by title tag) / Content Drilldown (by directory) -> all show the same information organized in a different way.
• A high bounce rate indicates a landing page that should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it. A high Time on Page may indicate content that is particularly interesting to visitors. The significance of Exits varies according to each page. For example, it may be common for visitors to exit your site from a receipt or “thank you” page because they have completed a conversion activity.
• Remember to put in Profile Setting your default page as your home page to avoid showing only “/”.
• The next report on the list is “Landing Pages”, meaning the pages where people land after a keyword.
• NAVIGATION SUMMARY (see link on Content Overview Report). Note that if previews, current and next page seen are all the same, it is because the visitor clicked on the refresh button or there were images in that page that he was viewing.
• ENTRANCE PATH: is also a powerful tool because can show you if the page you want to analyze has driven you to the result it was design to (i.e. if from Home people actually went to see My Profile).
• See also ENTRANCE SOURCES and ENTRANCE KEYWORDS reports.