google analytics - web managers academy 2011 by jeff wisniewski and darlene fichter

What are people doing on your site?

Computers in Libraries 2011

Jeff WisniewskiUniversity of Pittsburgh

Darlene FichterUniversity of Saskatchewan

We can learn…

Who is coming to our site

What they’re doing

How long they stay

The systems they’re using to access our site

If they’re able to complete tasks

Friction points

Add tracking

* TIP

The tracking code can be “included” as part of your page template

Photo by BigTallGuy cc some rights reserved

Menu translation

Menu item English translation

Dashboard General overview of site activity

Intelligence Email and/or text alerts

Visitors How man people, where they come from, what systems they’re using

Traffic Sources How people are getting to and/or finding your site

Content What do people look at on your site

Key metrics

METRIC DEFINITION NOTE

Bounce rate % of visits that immediately left

High bounce rate can be good or bad

Goal Page someone reaches once they’ve completed some task

Hit Request for a file from a webserver

Artifically inflated

Pageview Display of a complete webpage

Visits Series of pageviews from same visitor

Within 30 minutes

Rule of thumb

TRENDS in the data are more important than the numbers themselves

Visitors

Photo reserved by Scott Clark Some rights

*TIP

New vs. returning, unique visitors, visitor loyalty all rely on cookie data.

Cookie caveats - browser specific:

They expire

They can be blocked or deleted

Public computers

Visitors

Visitor technical information

OS

Browser

Screen color & resolution

Flash

Java

Network properties - Connection speed, location

Mobile

Visitors: Browser

Visitors: Mobile

Visitors – Friction Points

Bounce rates – leave immediately

Site design – a good match for visitors?

– Screen size vs fixed width?

Site load time – yslow from developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

Expected location of access vs actual location

Content: Top Content

Content – Friction Points

Are low use and high use pages likely?

Search engine keywords; mistaking site search for catalogue search, vice versa?

Search terms using different words than your labels and links?

Repeat the searches, are the results excellent?

Content – Friction Points

Lack of content

Demand for new content

Path data – optimal route?

Path data – red flag use of back buttons

Goals

A “goal” is the page which a visitor reaches once they have completed a desired action, such as a registration or download.

A “funnel” is the pages they need to visit on the way to a goal.

EXAMPLE: Library legislative history course sign up

Goals: Setting up goals and funnels

1. Name the goal something intuitive. In this example it might be “Class Registration”

2. Choose whether or you want the goal to be active (on) now

3. Choose a type of goal. Most library scenario goals will probably fall under the “URL Destination” type, meaning the goal is to get the user to a specific place, in this case the “thank you for registering” page.

4. Enter the URL for this goal page

5. Under “Goal Funnel” click yes

6. On the following page add the URL(s) of the page(s) along the path a user would take to get from the homepage all the way through to the thank you page.

Goals

Goals

Goals

*TIP

When you first begin collecting data, or change/add, set an alert for verification that it’s working as expected

Discussion

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