Google Analytics: Your Primary Data Quarterback - FIVE TERMS TO DEMYSTIFY GOOGLE ANALYTICS - Halmyre

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Google Analytics: Your Primary Data Quarterback - FIVE TERMS TO DEMYSTIFY GOOGLE ANALYTICS - Halmyre
Google Analytics: Your
Primary Data Quarterback
FIVE TERMS TO DEMYSTIFY GOOGLE ANALYTICS

                                           JULY 11, 2019
Google Analytics: Your Primary Data Quarterback - FIVE TERMS TO DEMYSTIFY GOOGLE ANALYTICS - Halmyre
“If you don’t have event tracking set up, you won’t know much about what your users are doing on
your website or mobile app. That means you’ll really struggle to make the kinds of decisions that
can grow your business. If you can’t trust your tracking setup, you can’t trust your data. If you can’t
trust your data, you can’t make decisions — or worse, you’ll make the wrong decisions.”
                                                                                           Michael Taylor

                                                                            CONFIDENTIAL            PAGE 2
Google Analytics: Your Primary Data Quarterback - FIVE TERMS TO DEMYSTIFY GOOGLE ANALYTICS - Halmyre
Thinking about your “Membership Intelligence”

Google Analytics may be free but the truth is most organizations don’t invest what’s
needed to make it the insights quarterback it should be.

• Do you see patterns and trends in digital engagement?
• How clear are you on what content is working and why?
• Can you track the financial value of your marketing efforts?

3 Reasons to Take Action Now
1. Better data brings better insights.
2. Using data that’s right there increases efficiency.
3. Better insights will reveal the integrated story of your membership engagement.

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Google Analytics: Your Primary Data Quarterback - FIVE TERMS TO DEMYSTIFY GOOGLE ANALYTICS - Halmyre
Google Analytics and more
5 Key Terms for Managers to Get More from What you Have

1.   Clean Your Audience Data
2.   Know Where Your Visits Are From
3.   Power-Pack Duo #1 – Events
4.   Power-Pack Duo #2 – Google Tag Manager
5.   Valuing Specific Website Activity

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Google Analytics: Your Primary Data Quarterback - FIVE TERMS TO DEMYSTIFY GOOGLE ANALYTICS - Halmyre
1 – Clean Your Audience Data
UNSKEW YOUR NUMBERS

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Google Analytics: Your Primary Data Quarterback - FIVE TERMS TO DEMYSTIFY GOOGLE ANALYTICS - Halmyre
Don’t Skew Your Numbers
Monitor for automated traffic – are your members a “robot”

• Bots are mechanical crawls on your site
  • They cause spikes in the audience (especially noticeable if you have lower website visitors)
  • They will keep sending unwanted and useless visits to your website
  • They do not contribute to your conversions or engagement; only inflate your website session
    visits metrics

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Google Analytics: Your Primary Data Quarterback - FIVE TERMS TO DEMYSTIFY GOOGLE ANALYTICS - Halmyre
Don’t Skew Your Numbers
Every Increasing Presence

                            CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 7
Google Analytics: Your Primary Data Quarterback - FIVE TERMS TO DEMYSTIFY GOOGLE ANALYTICS - Halmyre
Don’t Skew Your Numbers
Watch for Spikes

Bad bots are evolving and are more sophisticated than ever. While the goal
of each bot operator might be different depending on their industry, bots are
the tool of choice and are vital to their success. No organization – large or
small, public or private – is immune.

• 96% of login pages and 82% of signup pages were hit with bad bots
• 31% of sites with web forms (e.g. discussion forums, review and
  contact us sections) were hit with spammer bots

What do you do:
• Identify spikes – are they interested prospects or bots (like Microsoft or
  other machine-ware)

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Don’t Skew Your Numbers
Block the Bots

The Google black-box solution
The easiest way to keep bot traffic out of your Analytics reports is to use Google’s automatic filter.
To set up this filter, go to your view settings and check the box that says “Exclude all hits from known
bots and spiders.”

It isn’t a guarantee, but it will cut down on your unwanted bot traffic.

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Don’t Skew Your Numbers
How to find unwanted traffic

• Take it to the next level, defending your data against bot traffic is a bit like playing whack-a-mole.
  You have to identify the unwanted website hits and respond.

                                                                                 CONFIDENTIAL          PAGE 10
Don’t Skew Your Numbers
Use “Filters” to Block the Network

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Don’t Skew Your Numbers
How to Filter the Bot

• Once in your filters, then you can add a new filter.

• In this case, we’ll create a filter excluding traffic by ISP Organization
  for “kazooisyee”
• Once removed, then you will have to invest some time into the cycle
  of reviewing your data quality.
• Part of the job in maintaining good analytics is waiting for the data to
  come in and then you can review the results. It becomes cyclical!

                                                                              CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 12
Don’t Skew Your Numbers
Master the Cycle

                          CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 13
Deep dive webinar on bots
•   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8GIhgvRoyc

                         CONFIDENTIAL             PAGE 14
2 – Know Where Your
Visits Come From
MEET UTM CODES

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Know Where Your Visits Come From
Meet UTM Codes

• Do you have digital ad campaigns or are you sending mass emails (e.g., MailChimp campaigns)?
• Do you know how many conversions on website from the distinct campaigns?

You can!
• UTM Codes should accompany every ad or communication campaign that drives to your website.

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Meet “UTM” Codes
Separate and clarify marketing results

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Meet Your Marketing Best Friend
What is working best to drive engagement

A UTM code is a simple code that you can attach to a custom URL in order to track a source, medium,
and campaign name. This enables Google Analytics to tell you where searchers came from as well as
what campaign directed them to you.

                Add UTM Codes
                 to all of your
                marketing efforts

                                                                           CONFIDENTIAL         PAGE 18
UTM Code Builder

Campaign URL Builder

https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/

                                                         CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 19
Break-Out
       Session
Discussion       1. Do you use UTM codes? Do you see
                    added value for using them?
                 2. What campaigns will you track with
                    UTM codes moving forward?
                 3. Give it a try – build your own UTM
                    code now!

                                    CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 20
HubSpot "How To" - How To
Create and Use UTM Codes
•   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKYAHvNkYPU

                        CONFIDENTIAL         PAGE 21
3 AND 4 – The Power-Pack Duo
EVENTS AND GOOGLE TAG MANAGER

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Power-Pack #1: Go Beyond the Pageview
Learn about Events

• Any interaction on your website can be tracked, these are known as “events”
• Events are user interactions with content that can be measured independently from a web page or a
  screen load. Examples:
  • Downloads
  • link clicks
  • form submissions, and
  • video plays

                  You want to analyze events – they are your website engagement!

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Little bit more about Events
Anatomy of Events

An Event has the following components. An Event hit includes a value for each component, and these
values are displayed in your reports.
   • Category
   • Action
   • Label (optional, but recommended)
   • Value (optional)

For example, you might set up a video "play" button on your site so that it sends an Event hit with the
following values:
   • Category: "Videos"
   • Action: "Play"
   • Label: “CEO Speech 2019"

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What Events are You Tracking?
Typical Types of Event Tracking

• Links
• Images
• Button
• Forms
• Video
• Scroll
• External links (Exit tracking)

                                   CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 25
Break-Out
       Session
Discussion       1. What events are you tracking?
                 2. What events do you want to track
                    moving forward?
                 3. Give it a try – identify your own
                    events list in your GA account!

                                     CONFIDENTIAL       PAGE 26
Power-Pack #2: Google Tag Manager
How Non-Techies Take Control

• Google Tag Manager (GTM) is how to manage your website events without going back to the
  development team and having to make code changes.
• It is a free tool that allows you manage and deploy marketing tags (snippets of code or tracking
  pixels) on your website (or mobile app) without having to modify the code.

• The biggest benefit of Tag Manager is that you can manage the code without the support of your web
  technical team.
• However, you do have to have some technical knowledge to understand how to set up tags, triggers
  and variables.
• If you’re dropping in Facebook pixels, you’ll need some understanding of how Facebook tracking
  pixels work.

                                                                              CONFIDENTIAL           PAGE 27
GTM Terms to Know
Speak the GTM language

There are three main parts to Google Tag Manager:
• Tags: Snippets of Javascript or tracking pixels
• Triggers: This tells GTM when or how to fire a tag
• Variables: Additional information GTM may need for the tag and trigger to work

                                                                           CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 28
Inside Google Tag Manager
Understanding some of the basics

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GTM Triggers – The “When” of Your World
What are Triggers?

Triggers are a way to fire the tag that you set up.
They tell Tag Manager when to do what you
want it to do. Want to fire tags on a page view,
link click or is it custom?

For example is it a button click or listening?
• A button click is tracking the name of the
  button on all pages.
• Listening is tracking how far down each page
  the user scrolls, so if your Newsletter Signup
  button is at the bottom of the page, you can
  see if users are just not clicking or are not
  reaching that content.

                                                      CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 30
Get Specific with Your Tracking
Mastering the control in GTM

Variables are additional information that
GTM may need for your tag and trigger to work.
Here are some examples of different variables.

For example, Scroll Tracking (to identify how far
down the page a user reads) will have variables
at prescribed levels.
(25%, 50%, 75% and 100%)

                                                    CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 31
Variables, Specific Like Rooms in a Building

The most basic type of constant variable that you can create in GTM is the Google Analytics UA number
(the tracking ID number).

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GTM in Action

                CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 33
Break-Out
       Session
Discussion       1. Benefits of tracking with no code
                    changes or website tickets? Is there
                    a value to this?
                 2. What types of tracking would you like
                    on your website?
                 3. Give it a try – create your own GTM
                    tag!

                                     CONFIDENTIAL     PAGE 34
Deep dive webinar:
Event Tracking with Google
Tag Manager: Tips and Tricks
• https://youtu.be/vogxxuzGDfs

                      CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 35
Put a Value on Specific
Website Activities
ROI ON YOUR WEBSITE ACTIVITIES

                                 CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 36
Deepening Your Data Insights
Assigning value to your Website Efforts

• Is there a $$ value to your new member sign-up? Newsletter sign-up? Contact Us conversion?
  Reading specific pages? Downloading reports?

                                                                         CONFIDENTIAL          PAGE 37
Speaking the GA Goal Language
What is a Goal?

Goals in Google Analytics allow you to track specific user interactions on your site. These user
interactions can be anything including form submissions, button clicks, ebook downloads, and more.

A goal represents a completed activity, called a conversion and allows tracking specific user interactions
on your site. These user interactions can be anything including form submissions, button clicks,
downloads, and more. When a website visitor performs the specific action that was defined as a goal,
Google Analytics records that as a conversion.
Halmyre recommends the following goals per each site:
   • How many users arrived at a key page (membership form, member login, etc)
   • How long users remain on key pages (with a video, new submission, etc)
   • Membership form completion

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What Are You Tracking?
Setting your Goal Strategy

• Create goals and track against KPIs and KSFs

• Goals generally track:
  • destination
  • duration
  • pages/visit
  • events

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Where Are Goals Setup?
Creating Goals – Step 1

• In the left panel, click Admin. Then in the View column,
  click Goals.

• To create a new goal, click the +New Goal button.

• Now you’ll be prompted to enter a description and the
  details of your goal. You can enter a suitable name and
  choose the right goal type.

                                                             CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 40
Where Are Goals Setup?
Creating Goals – Step 2

You’ll see four different goal types to choose from.
They are:
   • Destination: You can choose this goal type if
     you want to treat a pageview or screen view as
     a conversion.
   • Duration: You can measure user engagement by
     treating time spent on a page as a conversion.
   • Pages/Screens per session: This is another
     way to measure user engagement. You can
     measure the number of pageviews per session
     as a conversion.
   • Event: You can treat user interaction like button click,
     video play, ebook download as a conversion.
                                                                CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 41
Break-Out
       Session
Discussion       1. What goals are you tracking?
                 2. What goals do you want to track
                    moving forward?
                 3. Give it a try – identify your own goals
                    list in your GA account!

                                      CONFIDENTIAL     PAGE 42
Deep dive:
4 Goals (And Goal Types)
In Google Analytics You
Should Track
• https://youtu.be/SZjESGQBiZI

                      CONFIDENTIAL   PAGE 43
Recap
5 Google Analytics Terms and Why You Use Them

1.   Bots/filter – get a more accurate picture of traffic volume
2.   UTM codes – get a clear picture of where people are coming from when they visit you
3.   Events – are actions people take on your website, at a more micro-level than page views/visits
4.   Google Tag Manager – a tool to manage events without involving the techies
5.   Goals – tied to your business objectives use goals to put an ROI on an activity that your
     organization values

Remember:
- Like home reno DIY, you can figure it out on your own, but there is a lot of technical know-how that
  can help you get there faster and a bit better (Google Tag Manager in particular is not “easy”)
- Analytics is just a tool – the business requirements to align with your strategy is what makes it
  powerful

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