Google Analytics provides a core set of tools that supports some of the primary tasks
that web analysts perform.
First and foremost, Google Analytics tracks many standard website metrics, like visits,
unique visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, and abandonment rate. But, more importantly,
it can track business outcomes, called goals. Remember, we want to move beyond
tracking basic traffic to our websites and begin understanding if our websites are adding
to the bottom line of our business.
In addition to tracking goals, Google Analytics does a great job at tracking all different
kinds of marketing initiatives. Many people believe that Google Analytics can only track
AdWords, but it can track other types of paid searches, email marketing, display advertising,
social media, and any other type of ad you can think of.
One of the key activities of any analyst is performing segmentation. Segmentation involves
diving deeper into the data to understand how smaller buckets, or segments, of
traffic perform and ultimately influence the overall performance of the website.
A simple example of segmentation is viewing website traffic based on the physical
location of the visitors. Google Analytics does this using the Map Overlay report, shown
in Figure 1-2.
This is a very basic segmentation. Each row of data shows all the values for a dimension.
A dimension is an attribute of a website visitor or the visits that they create. Some
common dimensions are country, campaign name, and browser version.
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| Figure 1-2. The Map Overlay report shows traffic from individual countries |
In this case, the dimension is the country. The metrics for that dimension are shown
in the columns of the report. Now notice the tabs at the top of the report. The Goal
tab displays conversions for the same dimension of traffic. So, if you click the Goal Set
1 tab, Google Analytics will display conversions for each goal for each country.
This is the way all Google Analytics reports work. Every row of data is a different value
of the dimension of traffic. For example, in the Traffic Sources report, each row in the
table is a different source of traffic (organic search, marketing campaigns, etc.).
But the ability to segment data does not end there. Google Analytics also has a feature
called Advanced Segmentation that can segment data on the fly based on attributes that
you define. For example, you can build an advanced segment to view all traffic coming
from Google AdWords that resulted in transactions greater than $1,000.00. You can
do this using a simple drag-and-drop interface, shown in Figure 1-3.
This is a complicated segmentation that you can build and apply in real time! The result
is the ability to view the segment we created above, along with other segments of website
traffic. Figure 1-4 shows the High Value AdWords traffic along with the total traffic to
the website.
This ability to drill down and focus on various segments of traffic is key to all analysis.
We want to identify the segments of traffic that are performing well and determine how
to promote those segments. We also want to identify the segments of traffic that suck
and figure out how to fix them.
Advanced Segmentation is not the only tool that helps facilitate analysis. Google Analytics
also contains a custom reporting tool that can greatly simplify your daily
reporting and even help simplify common segmentations.
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| Figure 1-3. The interface to build Advanced Segments |
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| Figure 1-4. Viewing a segment of traffic along with all traffic in Google Analytics |
The Custom Reporting interface is very similar to the Advanced Segmentation interface.
You can drag and drop different pieces of information to create your own reports, as
shown in Figure 1-5.
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| Figure 1-5. The Custom Reporting interface |
The rows of data in a custom report represent different dimensions of data. The columns
in a custom report are the different metrics in Google Analytics: things like visits,
pageviews, conversions, revenue, etc.
For example, to create a report that shows the conversion rate for different marketing
campaigns, drag the Campaign dimension to the Dimension section of the screen and
drag the Conversion Rate metric to a metric column.
Custom reports also provide the ability to drill down into each dimension and view
subdimensions. Notice the subdimension sections of the interface in Figure 1-5. You
can add more dimensions under your primary dimension. Using subdimensions, it’s
easy, for example, to view the different types of visitors (new or returning) in your
marketing campaigns and determine what time of day each visitor type converts—just
keep dragging dimensions to the interface (Figure 1-6).
These are just a few of the features that are standard in Google Analytics. They don’t
take any extra configuration. Every user, from day one, can access these features and
use them to analyze their own data. I encourage you to experiment with these features:
you’ll be amazed at how much time they can save you.
