In the coming year, based on
current announcements,
Google Analytics is set to go through an almost unprecedented amount of
evolution. My postulation is that by this time next year the tool will
be almost unrecognizable. [My favorite is Visitor Analytics, and visitor
level segmentation that will be pervasive throughout the product. This
is insanely cool.]
But it turns out Google Analytics, just like SiteCatalyst, WebTrends,
and other web analytics tools, already has plenty of pretty valuable
deeply insightful stuff in it. Yet so few people have mastered what's
already there. Sometimes I wonder if we should actually be all that
excited about the
insanely cool stuff if the sanely cool stuff remains unmastered.
As we hopefully look forward to an exciting year, let's take a moment
to address the latter challenge. Allow me to help you with your
resolution of mastering the sanely cool stuff!
One way to do it is for me to just tell you what my top ten Google
Analytics reports are that you could familiarize yourself with. The
problem is that you'll know where to go, but not what to look for when
you get there.
Each selection by me of a top ten (standard!) report in Google
Analytics below includes a small brain dump of quick insights, Google
Analytics tips if you will, I seek when I'm looking at that report. The
stories and examples will hopefully help you intelligently approach your
own data in these reports and quickly find insights you can action /
share with your management team.
[Sidebar for people who want to be BIG winners]
Before you log into Google Analytics it is really
really helpful to get context about the company/client's business.
I realize that you are pressed for time and you might not want to do
it. But in case you want to win big rather than just win, I encourage to
read the six tips outlined in this post:
The Biggest Mistake Web Analysts Make… And How To Avoid It!
I guarantee that if you invest this time, you'll find 5x better
insights when you log into Google Analytics or Adobe SiteCatalyst. If
you don't invest this upfront, fun, time you'll hurt my feelings but
I'll understand, you don't want to win big. :)
[/Sidebar for people who want to be BIG winners]
Below are the top ten standard reports in Google Analytics that you
should know well, especially if you are only a part-time user of Google
Analytics.
If you are an Analyst, of any tool, check out the Bonus tips included to kick your efforts up a notch or two.
Everything here's simple. You don't have to be a particularly deep expert to find value in this training.
1. Sources Overview report.
Start with the pie. It helps you understand how reliant the
company/client is on Search (too much is actually not good). What other
sources are big for them? If you don't see other sources (campaigns –
email, social, display) are not tagged. A very bad thing.
Like everything in life, you want a balanced portfolio (left).
Then go to Traffic Source > Sources > Campaigns to get a feel
for how many display, social, email, other campaigns the company might
be running. What's their performance? Very good context.
Search is always big for everyone. So you want to drill down into the
Traffic Source > Sources > Search > Overview to understand the
macro balance between Organic and Paid (this, by default, will only
show AdWords though it can show Bing, Yandex etc).
It is hard to get overall search keyword performance in GA, so grab this quick custom report
All Search Performance
and apply the standard advanced segments to it (Non-paid Search
Traffic, Paid Search Traffic). Tons and tons of insights here. Better
organic keywords, performance for same words between organic and paid,
goal value comparisons, so much more. Go crazy.
While you look at three reports, you quickly end up with a robust
understanding of *all* the things the company is doing and a detailed
understanding of paid and organic search performance.
Bonus: Download the
All Traffic Source End to End report for best, in depth, analysis. [Make sure you are logged into GA, then click on the link, save the report to your account.]
2. Landing Pages report.
Zero companies will win without great landing pages. You stink there,
bye, bye large amounts of money. Great landing pages equals more
customers enticed to engage plus higher conversions plus higher
(AdWords) quality score.
Start by looking at the top 20 landing pages. Content > Site Content > Landing Pages.
Identify ones with high bounce rates. What is wrong with them? Visit
them. Missing calls to action broken links, not enough content, content
unrelated to the ads, something else? Low hanging fruit. Fix it.
Learn to apply the top traffic segments (see #1 above) to this
report. Find high bounce rates for one segment (Paid Search) and look at
other segments (Display) where pages have low bounce rates. Learn from
the winners, apply to the losers.
Bonus: Smart people look at the Page Value delivered by
each landing page and not just bounce rates. Sadly it not easy to find.
No worries, I've got your back. Download this custom report:
Landing Pages Analysis .
For each page now you know how often it is a landing page
(Entrances/Pageviews), how much it stinks (Bounce Rate), how much money
it is making you (Page Value). Ignore your home page or any cart or
checkout pages that might show up. Look at all others.
Why do some pages only make 97 cents and others make you almost four
dollars? Prioritize using a mix of bounce and page value, analyze
details using referring keywords and referring urls (drilldowns are
already built into above custom report!).
3. Goals Report.
Macro + Micro Conversions. Macro + Micro Conversions. Macro + Micro
Conversions. Macro + Micro Conversions. Macro + Micro Conversions. Macro
+ Micro Conversions.
Got it? Macro + Micro Conversions!
The difference between companies that win and the companies that will lose is simply this: Economic Value.
So look at the standard goals report. Conversions > Goals >
Overview. This report shows all the goals converting, in addition to the
ecommerce
order now conversions.
Are there at least six micro conversions identified? Yes? Good. Does
each goal have values identified? Yes? Magnificent. The company you are
analyzing is ready to rock the web!
If the answer to either question is no, at best the company will
scratch out a living on the web. More likely their competitors are going
to slap them around.
What are the high micro conversions you need to start focusing on
(G6, G7, G2, G1 above)? Do you understand how elements of your paid,
owned, earned inbound marketing efforts drive each of these? How do
these goals tile to your macro conversion, G3? Does the CEO understand
the complete value of digital ($233,810 above)?
Bonus: Ecommerce is sexy, so don't forget to look at
that. Specifically focus on what products are being sold. Go to
Conversions > Ecommerce > Product Performance. (For this to work
the ecommerce tag has to be implemented right. If it is not you have
bigger problems.)
What are the top selling products, what's the average quantity? How
about when you apply segments for your top traffic sources? What is
Search really good at selling? What about Social? What about Display?
What about in Florida vs. New York? Understand, have a smarter CEO
conversation.
4. Conversion Funnels Report.
Fastest. Way. To. Make. Money.
The conversion path is three or four pages. What's your abandonment
rate? Why is it a criminal 65%? Is there a better way to make money than
to take it from people who have started the checkout process and want
to give you money?
This post is about standard GA reports, but the standard
cart/checkout funnel visualization in GA is value deficient. So as your
standard report use
Paditrack. For the same number of button presses you'll get 25x more value than Google Analytics.
Where do most people drop off? How can you have a minimum number of
text fields? Is it possible to not have garish banner ads in the
checkout process? When do people enter coupons? Is the error checking
when the person submits the page or is it (awesomer) in-line when the
person moves from one field to the next?
Bonus: Apply top traffic sources segments to the above
report. Or just apply the top paid search referring keyword to the
funnel report…
Do you see differences in abandonment rates? Why? What is causing a
particular keyword, email campaign, display ad, offer, to convert higher
or lower? What lessons can be applied to all other visitors? Go fix!
5. MCF Assisted Conversions Report.
Multi-channel attribution
was the flavor of the month for every month in 2012. It will be the
same in 2013. And just as in 2012 magic pills will be scarce, FUD will
be plentiful, and vendors will promise the moon. You, I guarantee it,
will be just as confused. :)
But get to know the assisted conversions report. It is fairly straightforward.
If *all* your campaigns *always* include campaign tracking
parameters, this report is really good at answering this critical
question:
Is channel x more likely to be at the end of the
conversion process or drive traffic that might convert later via a
different channel? It is extremely valuable to know the answer.
Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions.
In the above case I was astonished that while our email was primarily
a direct response "here's a coupon to convert" marketing, it actually
drove more conversions via other channels (!).
Impact? 1. We were not giving email enough credit. 2. Were we sending
emails to people we had seen recently on our site? 3. If email assists,
can we understand its order in the conversion process and which channel
it most assists? (Yes. Go to
Top Conversion Paths reportand search for Email.)
Even if you never get into the mess of attribution modeling and all
that other craziness, you are much smarter by just analyzing the data,
and implications, from at this report.
Bonus: You will want to know what to do about attribution modeling craziness. :) Read answers to questions one, two and three here:
Attribution Modeling, Org Culture, Deeper Analysis.
After that if you can't resist the itch, go play with the, now free to
everyone, Attribution Modeling Tool in GA. Read the three answers first,
please.
6. Mobile Devices Report.
Mobile is all the rage. You can't walk into any about digital or not
about digital at all meeting without a solid grasp of where the company
is when it comes to mobile.
This is a standard report in GA, but I've pressed a few buttons to
make it smarter. You'll find the report in Audience > Mobile >
Devices. On top of the graph click on Select A Metric and choose Goal
Conversion Rate. Now you know the Visits and the Conversions. Smart.
Then on top of the table click on the Pivot icon (see mouse below). Then from Pivot By choose Source.
First, you quickly learn what the main big mobile consumption
platforms are. Second, equally quickly, you know the main sources of
traffic via mobile are. [If you remember from our first report above,
direct was #3 in overall and social was #4, but on mobile direct is #1
and social is #3. Did you realize your acquisition was distinct on
mobile? Does your mobile marketing reflect that?]
As you look at the "scorecard" (just under the graph) you can look at
the little numbers in gray and understand overall mobile performance
compared to site performance. Very handy.
Bonus: Download a super awesome all-encompassing mobile custom report:
Complete Mobile Performance Report.
It has unique built in drill-downs, customized metrics that give you
the ability to deeply analyze mobile data by devices, search behavior
and content content consumption (click on each tab). You will never need
another standard mobile report!
7. In-Page Analytics Report.
Traffic Sources > Content > In-Page Analytics.
There is no simpler way to understand how consumers are behaving on a
company's website then to just look at their clicks. In-Page does that
really well. Just look at the link, look at the corresponding number.
On the home page it is so easy now to see which product categories
people really care about (Calico Critters! Put them on sale! Buy all the
keywords! Run email campaigns! :). You can also easily see that zero
people have clicked on the ScooterX Skateboard (time to remove it), at
least some care about Mini-Motos but what people really care about is
the Marble Run (pimp away!).
I hear you. Clicks are ok but you only care about money. No worries.
Change the metric on top of the page to Goal Values and bam! What you
now see is the distribution of which link is making you how much money.
Sweetness.
This report is your easiest way into Web Analytics.
Bonus: Open your top landing pages in this report and
then apply the Advanced Segment (button on top of the report) for your
big traffic sources to see how differently your visitors click. Then at
least for your top most landing pages, consider creating a custom one
for each of the main traffic source.
Bonus 2: GA now allows for
enhanced link attribution
in this report. That is very cool because if you have a link in the
header, a link in the side bar and a link in the main body all pointing
to the same product page, Analytics will show you exactly how many
people click on each of those links. You can then eliminate the big
promo in the side bar because you now have data which shows that zero
people click on it (because it looks like a banner ad!).
8. Location Report.
People have weird conceptions of where their traffic comes from. Sure
they can sprout the number of tweets or top search keywords, but rarely
do they have a robust understanding of the geographical distribution of
their audience.
Illuminate yourself by going to Audience > Demographics >
Location. Then on top of the graph change the metric from Visits to Goal
Conversion Rate.
The default view (Visits) will always underline your bias. For me it
is always USA #1 (hurray!). But USA is only 40% of my traffic. And when I
look at Conversion Rates there are a whole bunch of countries that are
way better than USA (#47!). There are 14 countries with Conversion Rates
2x of USA (OMG!).
That changes things, right? Changes campaign targeting, changes
content development, changes social strategies, changes product mix,
changes keywords for search engine optimization.
You can run this type of analysis at a State and a City level as
well, the results are always eye opening / preconceived notions busting.
Bonus: Every GA report shows clicks you actually get,
there is only one that shows you clicks you could possibly have gotten.
Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimization > Geographical
Summary.
It shows, by country, where you currently show up on Google
properties (Impressions) and the number of clicks you get. It took me
110k impressions to get 10k clicks in the UK and 60k impressions to get
10k clicks in Germany. Time to dial up SEO awesomeness in the UK!
9. Site Search Terms Report.
Another hugely underutilized resource is the intent your visitors are
actually expressing on your site by typing into your site search engine
(best way to stink is not to have one).
Content > Site Search > Search Terms. Admire the default view
for a second, but quickly switch to Goal Set 1 (or Ecommerce if you are
one of the
aiming to hit a low bar with no Goals defined). You'll get this view…
Do you know what are the top things people are looking for that they
can't find on first glance? Above. Do you know how many of those top
expressed wishes then lead to a zero (!) percent conversion rate? Above.
Do you know how much money you make off each search term/expressed
intent? Above.
Now would you not want all the top things people look for to have a
$2.39 per search goal value rather than 0.12 or 0.63? Of course. You
have work to do.
Bonus: This might be stretching it a bit but 100% of
your internal site search terms should probably be on your SEO keyword
list and likely a part of your Paid Search campaigns. If people are
coming to your site and looking for stuff (and you have it) then there
is no better signal to grow your keyword list.
In my case that is 20,217 keywords I can quickly add to my
Bing/Baidu/Yandex search campaigns and start measuring performance. My
additions will be geo targeted by which keywords on my site were
searched for from each country!
10. E2E Paid Search Report.
I tried really hard to keep this to just standard reports, but I had
to squeeze in one "standard" custom report. It comes from my recent post
Google Analytics Custom Reports: Paid Search Campaigns Analysis .
The report shows the end to end view of your search campaign performance.
Any Analyst worth their salt will spent a lot of time trying to understand what is happening on the site
in conjunction
with trying to understand what happening inside AdWords! This report
does that very effectively. Above it merges data from AdWords with your
site performance data (how cute is it that you can see
cost per click and
revenue per click right next to each other!).
Additionally it has pre-built drilldowns (below) that allow you to
navigate this performance in context of your AdWords account structure.
Identify which campaigns are actually delivering value. Identify if
you can optimize your AdGroups to deliver higher performance
(impressions, clicks). Identify what your Match Type decisions are doing
to your performance (Broad, Phrase, Exact, what's up?).
There is a lot more you can do in terms of AdWords Analytics, most of
your starting points sit in the above report. Hence it is my standard
AdWords report, even if it is a custom report. Download:
E2E Paid Search Report.
That's it. Ten standard reports that high insights in plain sight.
And a bonus five custom reports to allow you to truly bring out your
inner Analysis Ninja!
If you are able to master the standard set, you'll be above average
when it comes to understanding site performance. Better still, you'll be
able to identify a robust set of actions that will please the toughest
CEO and over a period of time earn you a glory and a higher salary.
Now that's something worthwhile to shoot for in 2013!
As always, it is your turn now.
Are these standard reports a part of your current Analysis Ninja
arsenal? Do you have a favorite standard report that is not listed
above? If yes, what is amazing about it? If you use these reports
already, are these the types of insights you seek? Are there other
hidden insights gems that I might have overlooked above? Got a
omg this is my secret weapon custom report you want to share with us?
Please share your insights, questions, favorite reports, and feedback via comments below.
Thanks, and good luck!
