a university web team's approach to google analytics
TRANSCRIPT
AnalyticsA University Web Team’s Approach
Chris Traganos | ABCD-WWW
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Google Analytics• Google Analytics is an enterprise grade
web service that provides detailed and accurate reporting on website metrics.
• Unique marketing based approach to analyzing web traffic.
• Free for use with a Google Account
• Multiple sites can be analyzed, along with multiple users per site (administrators & view only reports are options).
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• University Operations Services (UOS) is a service organization within Harvard.
• Provides many essential services used by the Harvard community on a daily basis.
• Website has monthly traffic of 20k unique visitors averaging 100k pageviews.
• Previous metrics software was WebTrends
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Pilot
• The vast majority of our users visit www.uos.harvard.edu because they need specific services and information.
• By reviewing the metric using Analytics, we can better serve the user while they travel throughout our website.
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Capture Process• The Google Analytics Tracking Code
(GATC) is a Javascript snippet that is on every page within the site. It collects anonymous visitor data and sends it back to Google for processing. Results are within 3-4 hours of real time.
• The load time is extremely short since the ga.js (18kb) is cached from any site using Analytics. The individual site data is stored in your Google account only.
ga.js
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Insert Tracking Code
Insert the followingcode into repeating HTML template (i.e. Footer)
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Features
Custom Reporting
Advanced Segments
Motion Charts
Scheduled Reports
Map Overlay
Traffic Sources
Visitors
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The Interface
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Visitors
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Map Overlay
City, Country, Region, and Continent level detail. Exporting Options: PDF, XML, CSV, TSV
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Traffic Sources
Direct traffic, referring sites, search engines, all sources, keywords
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The User’s Path to ContentQuick Links & 404 Query strings
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Query Strings/fmo/recycling/newsletter/08/november.shtml?s=fmo&d=1108
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BenchmarkingCompare site with industry wide metrics.
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Custom Reporting
• Create your own reports based on the dimension -metric combinations inside your website.
BETA
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BETAAdvanced Segments
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Motion Charts BETA
• X-Axis
• Y-Axis
• Color of bubble
• Size of bubble
• Motion over time
5 Dimensions to control:
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Scheduled Reports
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Limitations• Ad Filters such as NoScript and AdBlock
can block the GATC from collecting data.
• Browsers that cannot render JavaScript will have similar blocking issues.
• Such gaps in data collection are considered acceptable since the aggregate metric data is accurate. (3.05% in the US)
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Questions?
• Use Google Analytics or other web metrics software at the University?
Discussion for group:
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