It’s been over three years since I last took the GAIQ test. I don’t tend to religiously maintain it like the Google AdWords equivalent because they don’t provide any real incentive, there’s no pretty badge for your website or directory listing like the GACP Status that I’d lose. You’re not even allowed to make your own badge to promote it on your website.

Anyway, the reason I decided to redo it this year was because there have been so many changes in Analytics recently it encouraged me to explore and learn about some of the new features and functionality. Plus I think I’ve secretly got some kind of masochistic addiction to taking tests.

This is Part 3 of Extended Google Analytics (GA). Part 1 covered basic setup, profiles and the benefits of using filters. Part 2 covered reporting conversions through Goal and eCommerce tracking. Part 3 covers building trackable links for specific campaigns and tracking events (such as .pdf downloads).

Building Trackable Links

You can dramatically increase the quality of your data in Analytics through the use of tracking links – they are amazing. They allow aggregation of data and attribution to sources specified by you. Great uses of this are tracking email newsletter traffic and any promotional campaigns sending visitors from other websites. I personally find these most useful for emailers and Google Shopping traffic as proving definitive results helps demonstrate their importance!

By default any clicks which originate from emails are tracked as referrals from the email provider if they’re using an online service (such as Gmail) and I believe as direct traffic if they’re using software (such as MS Outlook). This not only skews your data from those sources but isn’t very useful if you want to judge the success of an email campaign. By adding some code to the links you can not only know which email was the most successful but even which individual link on that email provided the most conversions. Cool eh?

You can manually build tracking links but it does take a little getting used to; thankfully most emailer systems (such as Campaign Monitor or MailChimp) provide an option in the settings to automatically tag your email newsletter links for GA which makes life simple. If you’re building your own newsletters or require a special link for a specific campaign Google provide a great tool to help build tracking links complete with in-line help which makes life simpler. The key thing to do is to keep consistency… so if you call your medium ‘email’ or ‘emailer’ you should categorise any future ones to the same type.

Another great use of tracking links for eCommerce is in automated feeds such as Google Shopping. Google Shopping traffic by default is attributed to search traffic which is not particularly useful and may skew your other SEO results. If you have the feed automatically append data which attributes any clicks to Google Shopping and the product code or name then you can start to track conversions in GA. This is something you may need a developer to help you with.

Event Tracking

This provides a means to track user interactions which don’t result in a page view (when the standard GA code is activated). Good uses of event tracking would be monitoring .pdf downloads such as brochures, video views or clicks on links which send visitors off to other websites. Events can even be setup as Goals (covered in Part 2) and tracked alongside your other conversion points to keep things neat.

In order to track Events you need to add flags to each item for them to be tracked which categorise the type of action, give it a name and also a value if applicable. So if you’re tracking external links you might categorise links away from the site as an ‘exit’ action and then use the label to state the web link that they went through to. It is possible to get your developer to automatically tag both external links and downloads which will save you time and ensure consistency. More information on Event Tracking including a description of all of the flags is available in Google’s Developer Centre.

Anything Else?

I’ve only covered a small subset of features in this series of posts, the system is constantly developing with new features being trialled all the time. The challenge is to work out which to make use of on a site by site basis, to interpret the results and make informed decisions to guide improvement in the future.

Over the years I’ve had several clients come to me and say that Google Analytics is free and not understand why I allocate a reasonable amount of time to set it up and monitor it on an ongoing basis. While basic GA set-up takes about 10 minutes, all the extra functionality can take many hours to put in place and often requires tweaks along the way. Typically any extra time pays for itself because it allows more granular monitoring of campaign success meaning less budget gets wasted in areas that don’t deliver.

This is Part 2 of Extended Google Analytics (GA). Part 1 covered basic setup, profiles and the benefits of using filters. Part 2 covers reporting conversions through Goal and eCommerce tracking.

Goals

Every website has a purpose; this might be enquiries, bookings, sales or simply brand awareness. Goals are one of the mechanisms which GA provides to track conversions in the form of specific page views (e.g filling in and submitting a enquiry form), events (e.g. a download of a brochure), visit duration or number of pages viewed right back to the originating source and even keyword.

Goals cannot be backdated – the sooner you get them up and running the better so it’s a good idea to concentrate on the most important ones first. Once you’ve identified and started to track Goals you can find out which marketing activities on your website are proving successful and troubleshoot the ones which aren’t.

For example: I could identify an individual keyphrase from Google which was producing a high percentage of enquiries, pay to advertise on that phrase in Google AdWords and potentially gain many more enquiries through increased coverage.

Setting up Goals

Goals are tracked at a Profile level (covered in Part 1) and so are found in the ‘Admin’ > ‘Profiles’ section of GA. Ensure you select the correct Profile by clicking on it’s name before browsing to the ‘Goals’ tab; here you can view any goals which are already set up and add new ones. You can have up to 20 Goals per Profile, grouped into 4 sets of 5 – it’s a good idea to group similar Goals together as the reporting will make more sense.

Start by pressing ‘+Goal’ and then follow the (comprehensive) inline instructions to build your Goal. Visit duration and pages/visit are the simplest goals to set up. Event tracking typically requires some additional code on your website which can complicate matters. URL destination is the Goal I use the most and find most useful, particularly in conjunction with multi-step funnels.

Goal data takes up to 24 hours to report into Analytics so don’t expect to see anything in there straight away – also take note that any tests you run yourself may be excluded if you’ve set up filters for your own traffic as covered in Part 1.

Goal Funnels & Visualisation

Multi step funnels are great for tracking processes which span across multiple pages such as application forms or online shop checkouts. Through Funnel Visualisation you can track pages with the highest drop out points and attempt to optimise the process to improve conversion rates. Though eCommerce tracking is recommended for online shops this a benefit of setting up Checkout pages as multi-step Goal Funnels.

For example: If a high percentage of visitors dropped out of the basket page to a delivery page this might indicate you don’t have sufficient delivery detail in your basket. By improving the level of information in the basket page you could streamline their experience and increase the chances of conversion.

eCommerce

This functionality superseded goal tracking for eCommerce over the past couple of years by providing the ability to report back transaction value and order items from your shopping cart. Its not 100% accurate but extremely powerful because it allows you to get an idea of ROI on your campaigns down to a keyword level.

Unfortunately eCommerce tracking can be a bit awkward to set up, particularly if you use 3rd party card providers and have 3D Secure / Verified by Visa or no ‘Thanks for your Order’ page on your website. There are a couple of workarounds but they aren’t foolproof.

You may need help from your developer (Point them to Google’s Set up guide) or a plug in for your eCommerce system to set up the necessary code. This usually lives in the ‘Thanks’ page on your site and does require some technical knowledge to implement as you need to send order information formatted correctly for GA to collect. Once the code is set up you need to tell GA to expect it from now on.

eCommerce tracking is recorded on a Profile level, in order to start using it you need to tell GA to pick up the data by switching it on in the ‘Admin’ > ‘Profiles’ section of GA. Ensure you select the correct Profile by clicking on it’s name before browsing to the ‘Profile Settings’ tab; here you should set ‘E-Commerce tracking’ to ‘Yes an E-Commerce site’ and also ensure your currency is set to the appropriate one for your site (default is $).

Like Goals, eCommerce tracking takes up to 24 hours to report into GA so don’t expect to see anything in there straight after receiving an order. Also take note that any tests you run yourself may be excluded if you’ve set up filters for your own traffic as covered in Part 1.

Coming Up in Part 3

Hopefully this has given you an idea of what options are available when it comes to reporting conversions on your website. Part 3 will cover building trackable links for specific campaigns and tracking events (such as .pdf downloads).

I’m a self confessed Google Analytics (GA) addict, I drive everyone a little crazy when I get going on how much you can do with it. In a perfect world I would have historic GA data on any website before touching it in any way.

If you’re considering redevelopment you can analyse which pages are most and least popular, which are turning people away, how many people are viewing your site via a mobile device and so much more. If you’re trying to optimise for search you can gauge what phrases are working, where people land on the site and what actions they complete – even down to how much money they spend on what items right back to the keyword they put in. So… very… cool.

Out of the box Google Analytics is good; with a few tweaks it’s fantastic. Here are some fairly simple modifications you can make to the basic set-up in order to get more accurate reports from the system.

The Basics

The most basic installation of GA requires you to sign up for an Account and insert a small block of code (your Tracking ID) into your website template. This code is used to track visitor activity on your site through the use of browser cookies¹ and send it back to Google who compile it and provide it back to you through the form of a dashboard.

It’s really important to ensure you set your reporting time zone accurately during the sign-up process because it can’t be changed later. I would also recommend setting up a separate Account per website if you have multiple websites because it keeps things so much neater.

Once you have GA installed on your site you can already start to get a good picture of visitor activity on the site and have taken a step in the right direction. However at this point there are a few more things you can do to improve data quality. The sooner you do this the better because it is not possible to back-date or rerun your statistics once they’ve been compiled.

Profiles

Profiles are the foundation to all of my suggestions below – they allow you to have multiple reports from the raw data provided by your tracking code and apply specific rules to each. Individual profiles can be shared with other users – you don’t have to share log in details and can ensure that people only see data relevant to them.

You’ll find Profiles on a tab within the Admin area of GA. When you set up a new Tracking ID the system creates your first profile and names it ‘All Web Site Data’. You can add your own by clicking on ‘+ New Profile’, then choosing a name and a time zone.

I recommend adding a new Profile called ‘Web Site Data’ and setting this as the Default Profile (under Property Settings). Any appropriate filters and rules should be applied to this profile leaving ‘All Web Site Data’ without any rules applied. This ensures that you can see exactly how the data comes in naturally and provides a vital back up if anything is set up incorrectly.

If you want to play with some Filters or Goals it might be worth setting up a test profile especially for this purpose and moving them across to the main profile when you’re satisfied they work as desired.

Filters

Filters allow you to manipulate the data coming into GA before it’s compiled into your reports. There are many potential uses of this but I’ve covered the ones I find most useful below – traffic exclusions and avoiding duplication.

Filters are found in the ‘Admin’ > ‘Profiles’ section of GA. Ensure you select the correct Profile by clicking on it’s name before browsing to the ‘Filters’ tab, here you can view any filters which are already set up and add new ones.

Set up Traffic Exclusions

My first port of call is to set up filters which exclude both clients and my visits from the reports. On low traffic sites a large percentage of visits will come from the site owner and their developers; this data can really skew statistics such as new vs. returning visitors, average time on site and average number of pages viewed.

To set up traffic exclusions you should first find out the IP addresses of any locations you wish to exclude². The most client friendly way to get an IP address is by asking them to use a site such as www.whatismyip.com from each location and note down the resulting addresses.

You then need to be within the Profile section as mentioned above, click on ‘Add Filter’, give it a name which will make sense later (e.g Home IP Exclusion) and choose ‘Pre-defined filter’ > ‘Exclude traffic from the IP addresses’ > ‘Equal to’ and then plumb in the IP address of the relevant location and press save. Repeat for each location that you wish to exclude and then from that point forward GA will ignore any access from devices using those internet connections.

Avoid Duplication caused by Case Sensitivity

My second use of filters is to set up modifications to ensure that key data reports into GA as non-case sensitive. By default GA would count ‘Blue Widgets’ and ‘blue widgets’ as two separate entities and effectively create duplicate entries in your reports. Most would count these as the same thing so you can reduce confusion through the use of filters.

There are a host of variables where you might choose to do this – the main ones being pretty much anything relating to how the visitor landed on the site – Source (e.g. google), Medium (e.g. search) , Keyword (e.g. ‘blue widgets’), Request URI (the address your visitor came from) and Target URL (the page on your site they landed on).

My preference is to create a series of filters which set all these values to lower case before being compiled. To do this you need to be within the correct Profile section as mentioned above, click on ‘Add Filter’, give it a name which will make sense later (e.g. ‘LCase Source’) and choose ‘Custom filter’ > ‘Lowercase’ > ‘Filter Field’ > Campaign Source and press save. Repeat for each relevant field and then from that point forward GA will automatically convert all instances of that field to lowercase before including them in your dashboard.

Coming Up in Part 2

Hopefully this has given you an idea of what Google Analytics tracks by default and helped to make your reports a little more accurate. Part 2 will cover reporting conversions through Goal and eCommerce tracking.

¹ This should ideally be stated in a clear Privacy Policy to comply with EU Law. Recommendations from the ICO.

² This assumes any locations you wish to exclude have a static IP address which many businesses will. If you’re not sure ask your ISP.

This was the third session at Google Engage Box of Tricks 2012 (hosted by Roisin Maguire) these are my notes and thoughts around them.

In 2013 Google predict over 50% of searches will be made via a mobile or tablet device, this means if your site isn’t mobile friendly then you could be presenting up to half of your visitors with a poor user experience. The following suggestions cover improving the mobile experience for sites of various types and why you might choose to do so.

How Mobile is Different

1. Users are mobile and on the move
2. Limited bandwidth
3. Small screens, orientation
4. Highly Task Orientated
5. Tap, Touch and Swipe (don’t click)

Interesting Statistics

• 51% Have a smartphone in the UK (64% of these people use it while in stores)
• 57% of users wouldn’t recommend a business with a bad mobile site
• Only 10% of Googles Advertisers have a mobile site
• 61% leave a mobile site if they don’t see what they want right away
• 67% are more likely to buy if they see a mobile site
• 40% of users abandon a mobile site when it takes more than 3 seconds to load

Tips for Mobile Development

Make use of site speed tools to optimise your site structure and content:

• Google Analytics: User Timings (additional tracking code required)
• Google Developers: Make the Web Faster
• Web Page Test

Simplify the Navigation:

• Make use of vertical menus and maintain a clear hierarchy
• Have clear search box and good search functionality with optimised results
• Reduce non-essential functions to streamline user experience
• A good example of this would be Kiddicare

Be Thumb Friendly:

• Design site and forms for largest of thumbs with big buttons and form fields
• Good separation between elements
• Longer, more descriptive text links

Design for Visibility:

• Clean homepage and product pages, make them easy to read from an arms length.
• Provide an easy to view search box and search results
• Utilise large images so people can see them on a small screen
• Use bullet points for text rather than paragraphs (people scan read) and minimise text
• Avoid flash due to compatibility issues
• Good comparison here would be Viking Direct vs. 3M

Make it Local:

• Offer click to call in adverts
• Provide a mobile friendly store finder tool
• Example: Dominos Pizza

Make it Easy to Convert:

• The mobile experience shouldn’t be the same as desktop, e.g separate checkout
• Keep to essential information requests, expect users to enter less data
• Provide large, clear buttons with different colours for easy differentiation
• Avoid drop down boxes – scroll menus or radio buttons are more thumb friendly
• Use HTML5 to streamline input e.g. prompt for numbers where relevant
• On forms put title above the input box rather than alongside
• Offer user a opportunity to call as an alternative to complete their goal
• Example: Aviva

Utilise Whitespace:

• Light backgrounds and contrasting backgrounds
• Prioritise important content above fold
• Feature clear calls to action
• Avoid heavy images and video

How this Relates to AdWords

Mobile optimised sites perform better in AdWords quality score because non-optimised sites get demoted.

So Google say they don’t show a preference to mobile friendly sites in paid mediums, instead they discount ones which don’t. To me this is a round about way of saying the same thing but the result what matters. This means that the 10% of advertisers who have a mobile optimised site right now are paying less for the same positions as those who don’t. Very interesting…

Mobile Site vs Responsive Design

One of the questions which came out of the Q&A was does Google recommend separate mobile site or responsive design (where a single site adapts to the viewer’s device) . The answer was that there is a trend towards responsive design – mostly because it’s more flexible and can be cheaper in terms of time as you’re not maintaining multiple sites.

They stated responsive could be better than mobile specific particularly if you think beyond screen size. What they meant by this is to look at size and device type and customise to both. They also stressed the importance of providing an option for visitors to force the desktop version of a website.

The concept of Adaptive design was mentioned as an even better option which includes customised action types to screens e.g. Swipe vs. click.

My Thoughts

I was fascinated by this session as it supported and expanded on some concepts which we already promote to clients. It always holds more weight when you can say that Google are openly suggesting that sites meet certain criteria, particularly for those who are spending a reasonable amount of money through Google AdWords and it could pay itself back in results.

I also found it interesting that it’s acceptable to have different copy displayed for mobile and desktop views of a website – with a preference to high level information as bullet points on smaller displays. Previously I would have been concerned this could be construed as hidden content but apparently not.

Thumbs up to Google Engage for this one – the information from this session alone made the trip worth it.