Any user with access to your Google Analytics profile can leave notes right on the
over-time graph. Instead of looking at a raw set of data and numbers an Annotation will give you a better sense of why your traffic increased or decreased.

 These notes can be as simple or as detailed as you make them. Annotations can become your sticky notes for all information pertaining to your marketing endeavors or website issues.  To create an Annotation, you can either click on the day you want to annotate or click on the down arrow on the bottom of the over-time graph and click on  on the right side of the tool bar.

 For instance, your web server might have gone down for six hours; it would be to your benefit to make an Annotation to that fact. Otherwise you would see a downward traffic spike and not know the root cause.

Beyond marking traffic spikes, Annotations can be used to mark changes to your website design or layout, mark the start and end of any campaign or notes or change of keywords.

Preferably, you should set up at least one profile in your account that does not contain any filters. Once you create a filter on any profile, Google Analytics does not have a method to go back and track the data that was filtered out.

Yet, on the other hand, if you wanted to filter out certain data points from being tracked e.g. all employee traffic or traffic from a sub-domain, then having at least one unfiltered profile is not necessary in this instance. You have 50 profiles at your disposal to set up filtering in as many different ways as you consider necessary.

To begin filtering site data, click on the Gear icon on the right side of the Google Analytics menu. Then you will see the screen above. Then click on +New Filter.

There are two types of filters available: Predefined or Custom. Predefined filters are limited to Excluding or Including traffic from IP addresses, domains, and traffic to subdirectories.

Why would you use these filters? Use these filters to eliminate unwanted hits such as internal site traffic or traffic from a particular IP range, collect data from certain directories of your site or track subdomain traffic separately.

The custom filters are more robust and give you a multitude of choices. You are able to Include and Exclude data patterns or set URLs to Lowercase or Uppercase. Setting the case type is essential due to Google Analytics being case sensitive and capturing data exactly as it appears in the location bar of the browser. This way all of your reports will be unified.

Within custom filters there is a Search and Replace filter, which is used to replace a matched expression with another string. This comes in handy when using page ids e.g. id=100 or id=200, as you can set a readable name for the numbers, 100=Tires, 200=Fuel Filters.

Past the Search & Replace filter is the Advanced filter which is used to reorder URLs. Running the Advanced filter will take the use of Regular Expressions. These expressions can use complete or partial text matches and include wildcards, which are a special symbols that stand for one or more characters.

Using the Advanced filter will change a longer URL
From:http://www.mysite.com/shopping?qsrc=43&o=0&x=ref&stf=FL:BR&q=red+chair
To: /shopping/o=0/qsrc=43/q=red+chair

For more information on filtering:
Clean up your Google Analytics data with these 5 filters

Watch our video tutorial on Filters: YouTube Link

Goals are a way to measure actions performed on a website. These actions can be, but are not limited to how many pages per visit visitors are going to, whether they are downloading PDF documents or filling out forms.

Setting up Goals can be found in two places in Google Analytics.

*Please Note, all screen images are from newest version of Google Analytics

The first is in the Google Analytics menu under CONVERSIONS>GOALS

The second place is clicking on the gear icon in the menu.

If your goals are not set up, you will see this screen:

Each Goal set (there are 4) allows 5 Goals to be set for a total of 20 Goals. The first step is to set the name for your Goal, its best to give the Goal a straight forward name i.e. Newsletter Sign-Ups. After you set the Goal Name, the next step is to choose the goal type.

There are four goal types to choose from.

1. URL Destination, which can be a Thank You page for a form, a newsletter sign-up or a white paper request.

• When setting up a URL Destination, you are able to gather more data by adding a Goal Funnel. A funnel is the path of pages leading up to the goal you set up. i.e. Contact Form>Thank You Page

2. Time on Site can be set for a greater than or less than value. There is availability for hours, minutes and even seconds to be set for this action.

3. Page/Visit can also be set for a greater than or less than value with the number of pages as the variable.

4. The Event Goal allows the most sets of variables to track. The event Goal would be used to track interaction with AJAX or dynamic sites, PDF downloads or interaction with Flash on your site.

While setting up new Goals, one of the optional fields is Goal Value.

Setting a Goal Value is not the same as making a sale from a product. It is the value you feel that particular measureable action on your site is worth.

Not setting the value correctly can give you an inflated or decreased Goal Value.

If you look at the image above and view the Goal Completions and the Goal Value, you will see that all the Goals were set at a $100 price point. Is every Goal you set worth $100?

A proficient technique to ascertain the value of a Goal would be to set the value by a percentage of what you feel the ROI of your goal should be. If a user downloads a White Paper and the average transaction for users downloading White Papers is $250 then you could set the value at 10%, then the Goal Completion will be valued at $25. On the other hand if a user fills out your contact form and the average transaction is only $20, you can set the Goal Value to 1% or $2 per Goal Completion.

Another method to calculate Goal Value is to use the total revenue generated by the measureable action divided by the number of goal completions. Not all of your Goals will be worth the same to you monetarily or business-wise.

Is someone downloading a White Paper more or less valuable than someone filling out your contact form? Is a user that stays on your site for longer than 5 minutes more valuable than the user that clicked through 10 pages of your site?

Once you take the time to set your Goals and Goal Values, you will be able to start tracking your Goal Conversion Rate.

Revisiting your Goals and Goal Values every quarter is a valid method to distinguish if the Goals you have set are still providing valuable insights and are converting at the rate you set.

Before you implement any of the coding necessary to track social media interaction, you will need to start by adding this code snippet before the </head> tag.

<!– Google Analytics Social Button Tracking –>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.yoursite.com/_js/ga_social_tracking.js”></script>

Google +1 social engagement interactions are tracked by default in Google Analytics, but to track other valuable metrics such as Facebook,  Twitter or LinkedIn you will have to use the  _trackSocial method.

Here is a description of the _trackSocial method:

_gaq.push(['_trackSocial', network, socialAction, opt_target, opt_pagePath]);

Where the parameters represent:

network
Required. A string representing the social network being tracked (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)

socialAction
Required. A string representing the social action being tracked (e.g. Like, Share, Tweet)

opt_target
Optional. A string representing the URL (or resource) which receives the action. For example, if a user clicks the Like button on a page, the the opt_target might be set to the title of the page, or an ID used to identify the page in a content management system. In many cases, the page you Like is the same page you are on. So if this parameter is undefined, or omitted, the tracking code defaults to using document.location.href.

opt_pagePath
Optional. A string representing the page by path (including parameters) from which the action occurred. For example, if you click a Like button on http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/index.html, then opt_pagePath should be set to /apis/analytics/docs/index.html. Almost always, the path of the page is the source of the social action. So if this parameter is undefined or omitted, the tracking code defaults to using location.pathname plus location.search. You generally only need to set this if you are tracking virtual pageviews by modifying the optional page path parameter with the Google Analytics _trackPageview method.

Once you have the _trackSocial set up, there are methods used to track Facebook Likes, Facebook Unlikes and Shares.

Facebook  LIKES
  
FB.Event.subscribe(‘edge.create’, function(targetUrl) {
  _gaq.push(['_trackSocial', 'facebook', 'like', targetUrl]);
});

Facebook UNLIKES

FB.Event.subscribe(‘edge.remove’, function(targetUrl) {
  _gaq.push(['_trackSocial', 'facebook', 'unlike', targetUrl]);
});

Facebook SHARES

FB.Event.subscribe(‘message.send’, function(targetUrl) {
  _gaq.push(['_trackSocial', 'facebook', 'send', targetUrl]);
});

View a demo of this in action:
http://analytics-api-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/tracking/javascript/v5/social/facebook_js_async.html

Facebook also has buttons available from the Facebook Developers page found here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/

If you use the buttons from Facebook, you will have to add this code to get tracking numbers from Google Analytics:

 <script type=”text/javascript”>_ga.trackFacebook();</script>

This is Twitter’s _trackSocial set up.

To add a Twitter button:

  <script src=”http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
  <a href=”http://code.google.com/apis/analytics”
     data-url=”http://code.google.com/apis/analytics”
    >Tweet</a>

Another option is to use buttons provided by Twitter. Those are accessible at:
http://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons#tweet

To track the Tweet Button you will have to add this code to the Tweet event.

twttr.events.bind(‘tweet’, function(event) {
  if (event) {
    var targetUrl;
    if (event.target && event.target.nodeName == ‘IFRAME’) {
      targetUrl = extractParamFromUri(event.target.src, ‘url’);
    }
    _gaq.push(['_trackSocial', 'twitter', 'tweet', targetUrl]);
  }
});

To track LinkedIn, you first need to get the code for the LinkedIn Share button from the LinkedIn Site:

https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/share-button

Then add this code to your site:

<script src=”http://platform.linkedin.com/in.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
<script type=”IN/Share” data-counter=”right”></script>

You can set the data-counter to left or right. If you do not want to have a LinkedIn number, you can leave that portion out of the code.

With social media continuing to grow, being used every minute of the day and driving traffic to you site, it is an invaluable metric that should be tracked and reviewed.

If you have not already taken a look at the Assisted Conversions Multi-Channel Funnels Report, we highly suggest it.  The following company can see that 45 percent of their Direct traffic was first assisted by another channel.  You can access this report by the following path: Standard Reporting>Conversions>Multi-Channel Funnels>Assisted Conversions.

Let’s say that the marketing manager, upon seeing this report, wants to see a breakdown of what channels are assisting Direct conversions.  By navigating to the Top Conversion Paths report (Standard Reporting>Conversions>Multi-Channel Funnels>Top Conversion Paths), they can see this data, an example screen shot is included below and has been sorted to collect only paths that involve Direct traffic.

This report shows that the Basic Channel Grouping Path delivering the most conversions during this date range is Organic Search followed by a Direct Visit.  The marketing manager can now show that Search Engine Optimization helps to bring people to the website who then visit the website again to convert.

Are you interested in learning more about the Multi-Channel Funnels reports?  Visit our Google Analytics Consulting page to sign up for a free analytics consultation and continue reading the MoreVisibility Analytics Blog.

There are two types of flow visualization that you are able to access to view the data you need to determine how your site is driving traffic and the path that traffic is taking. Traffic is not the only thing that is key, knowing where the traffic is going will give you a better understanding of the functionality of your web site.

The two reports are only available in the new, beta version of Google Analytics.

The first flow visualization is the visitor flow, which is used to show how your users move and flow through your web site.  Visitor flow visualizes the user’s traffic flow, drop-off point and bounce rate. Using the visitor flow you will be able to determine what is working on your site and what you might need to change and or update to increase traffic. Increased traffic will hopefully increase leads and sales.

The Visitors Flow is found in the left navigation under Audience tab > Visitors Flow within the Standard Reporting Tab. The report is shown with specific nodes and connections. Nodes are a single metric that you are filtering; while connections are the path the user took while visiting your site. This is the perfect way to see how your users are using a specific portion of your site.

The second flow visualization is the Goal Flow which is how users flow through the goal steps you establish and where they drop-off. The focus of Goal Flow is tracking conversions for goals and multi-step funnels.

The Goal Flow is found under Conversions > Goals > Goal Flow within the Standard Reporting Tab.

With Goal Flow you will be able to better understand where visitors navigate through your goal steps, the rate at which they abandon the site during the goal process, where the traffic is coming from and how the user interacted with the web site.

“Reverse Paths” may also be set up so you can visualize the site in a “backwards” path to see where the traffic came from in the goal path.

At the beginning, only URL Goals will be tracked in Goal Flow.

If you have not done so already, we strongly recommend that you access a report about the mobile devices currently sending traffic to your website.  You can reach The Devices Report by navigating through Standard Reporting>Audience>Mobile>Devices.  The Devices Report breaks down your traffic by Mobile Device and allows you to see how Site Usage numbers are performing over time (for example, set the date range to compare to the same time last year).  Additionally, you can set the report to one of your Goal Sets or to Ecommerce, to see which mobile devices are delivering converting traffic.

This report can also be used to view Dimensions such as Mobile Device Branding (the maker of a device, such as Apple, HTC, SonyEricsson, or T-Mobile), Service Provider (such as T-Mobile, AT&T, Comcast, or Sprint), and Mobile Input Selector (such as touchscreen, joystick, or clickwheel).  You can also select the Map Overlay tab to view mobile traffic by country of origin (or delve deeper into the report to view mobile traffic by City, Continent, or Sub Continent Region).  A nice feature of the Mobile Device Info section of this report is the little grey camera icon, that when clicked, has a pop-up of images pulled by Google of the device, so that you can visually associate the item with the name in the Mobile Device Info column.

If you are interested in discussing how mobile search and mobile visitors can impact your business, please contact us.  If you are interested in learning more about how MoreVisibility can help develop a mobile version of your website, please visit our Mobile Website Design Services Page.

Michael Martin recently wrote a post for Search Engine Land titled, SEO Considerations For Google Mobile Search In 2012 that gives a few tips for preparing and reacting to mobile search changes.  These tips include enabling user-agent detection, keeping an eye on load time and user experience, using semantic coding with microformats, and coding with HTML5 and jQuery.  Google has already made it clear that they are pushing improvements for mobile reporting and mobile search user experience in a blog post entitled, A look back at 2011 on the Google Mobile Ads Blog.  This post gave some detailed statistics for mobile trends in 2011 that are shaping mobile advancements slated for 2012.

If you are interested in discussing how mobile search and mobile visitors can impact your business, please contact us.  If you are interested in learning more about how MoreVisibility can help develop a mobile version of your website, please visit our Mobile Website Design Services Page.

Are Visitors Using Mobile Devices? 

The New Version of Google Analytics has two reports specifically designed to track Mobile traffic: the Mobile Overview Report and the Mobile Devices Report.  You can reach The Overview Report by navigating through Standard Reporting>Audience>Mobile>Overview and you can reach The Devices Report by navigating through Standard Reporting>Audience>Mobile>Devices.  The Mobile Overview Report, set to Ecommerce can quickly tell you if your mobile traffic is converting.  

Where Are Visitors Going on My Website?

There are a number of different reports that could answer this question, depending on what you are looking for specifically.  Check out the reports within the Site Content section located under Standard Reporting>Content>Site Content.  The Pages Report in particular has a wealth of data about pages on your website.  The Explorer tab within the report allows you to view data about specific pages, the Navigation Summary tab allows you to select a page and see the number of pageviews for those who entered or exited your site from that page.  You can also see the previous and next pages visited.  The third tab on the Pages Report, In-Page, overlays bubbles with data (such as percentage of clicks, transactions, revenue, or specific goals) so you can see where visitors clicked on your site and followed through with an action (in the case of transactions, revenue, etc.).

The examples above are only a few of the thousands of questions Google Analytics can help answer.  If you have a specific question, please contact us or sign up for a free analytics consultation.

• Social Engagement
• Social Action
• Social Pages

The Social Engagement Report located under the Standard Reporting>Audience>Engagement section breaks down visitor traffic into two buckets: Not Socially Engaged and Socially Engaged.  Clicking on the Socially Engaged Social Type will break down the visits by Social Source and Action pairings, for example Facebook : View, Google+ : View, and Google : +1.  This deeper breakdown is similar to the Social Action Report.

The Social Action Report located under the Standard Reporting>Audience>Action visually displays the different Social Source and Action pairings by a percentage of total social actions.  You can modify the data to display the number of Social Actions, Unique Social Actions, or Actions Per Social Visit for each Social Source and Action pairing.

The Social Pages Report located under the Standard Reporting>Audience>Pages shows a list of pages (under the headline Social Entity) and which Social Source and Action pairings are delivering Social Actions to each page.

The three reports above are only a few of the ways with which you can view your data through Google Analytics to learn more about the visitors coming to your site.  If you would like more information about how Google Analytics can help your business, please contact us or sign up for a free analytics consultation.