Looking at Google Analytics Goals, Funnels and Filters

This week I continued to look at the different tools available from Google Analytics. I was able to take what I learned and apply a few changes to my blog to generate traffic. I planned out a set of goals to accomplish this week. These included a duration goal, a URL goal and a pages visited goal. I also added a custom filter to find more specific data. Unfortunately, I have low traffic to my blog site so the funnel function does not give me much information. Even though my results are minimal, I am able to use what I have to help change this for future blogs and websites. I will also look at how these parameters can affect other businesses as well.

Goals

Setting up goals within Google Analytics is the best way to measure the success rate of a blog or website (Sparks, 2010). There are a variety of goals that businesses should track. Some of these include comments, social bookmarking actions, newsletter subscriptions or email signups, new accounts and for ecommerce sites, sales. By tracking comments, the business can allow their users to become more engaged (Ran, 2009). Tracking these also encourages the business to react quickly to different comments. Social bookmarking helps the business know whether users are clicking on the social icons on the page and connecting on other social media. The newsletter and email signup goals show the business whether the visitors are interested enough in the content to want regular updates. New accounts are an obvious goal to track to understand how the business is attracting new visitors or customers. When tracking a sales goal, it is important to track every step along the way to better understand where to improve the process (Ran, 2009). All of these goals should help give the business a better understanding how to improve their website.

Goal One: Duration

The first of my goals I will look at is the duration goal. This type of goal gives information about a particular type of behavior on the site (PI Reed, 2013). My goal was a visit duration time of more than 2 minutes and 30 seconds. On Saturday February 23 I completed this goal. One visitor stayed on the page for more than the assigned time. Looking at the screenshot below, the average duration time was 8 minutes and 30 seconds. This increased from the week before when the average duration was 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

This shows me my content is worth reading to hold a visitor for more than 8 minutes. The next step would be to turn this good duration time into engagement in the form of comments.

Goal Two: URL

The second goal I set up was a URL goal. I wanted to see if I was getting visits to my Google plus page from my blog site. This goal was, however, left incomplete. I think I can attribute this to the placement of my Google plus profile link on my blog. On the home page, the widget is at the very bottom of the page. This makes it hard to find because it requires the visitor to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. To complete this goal, I think I will change the positioning of the widget to the right sidebar instead of the bottom. This will hopefully generate traffic to my profile.

Goal Three: Page/Visit

The third goal was finding out the number of pages viewed per visit. I set the goal to complete when they visited two or more pages. The visitors viewed an average of 7.25 pages during one visit. I think this is a success and shows me that different posts have been viewed at different times. When looking at the screenshot below, I can see my blog post, Google All the Way is the most viewed, other than the homepage. My post, Basic Metrics is the least viewed. I can take this information, compare the content in each post and figure out what works and what does not for my viewing audience.

I also experimented with added page. I added an About Me page with my other social media profiles and website. I wanted to see what type of traffic I could attract to my profiles. I planned to set another URL goal for visiting my other website but I thought there was an error with the page. I was unable to view the new page on my blog. However, it looks as if there have been two views to this page since I added it to the blog. My next move is to figure out how to generate more traffic to the About Me page and set a new goal.

Filters

Filters are a powerful tool when applied the right way. They can manipulate the data being recorded to provide accurate results (PI Reed, 2013). One of the most popular filters for businesses is the one that ‘excludes’ their staff (Overland, 2009). This makes sense because it helps narrow down the information to just those unique visitors completely new to the site. This led me to set a custom browser filter.

Browser Filter

I realized my own views and interactions with the blog were being counted and skewing my data. I set the filter to exclude all visits from a Google Chrome web browser, seeing as that is what I use to view the blog. Hopefully, this will give me a better set of data to analyze. On the other hand, a majority of my views come from a Google Chrome web browser so I may be eliminating important data. I will have to find a new filter to use to eliminate my own blog interaction.

Funnels

A funnel is the path the visitor is expected to take once visiting the website (PI Reed, 2013). This gives businesses an idea at what point visitors abandon their website. This shows them the problem areas and they can figure out what they may need to do to fix it. Unfortunately, I do not have enough pages on my blog to have the need for a funnel.

Conclusion

The goals, filters and funnel tools in Google Analytics can be very beneficial. Goals help measure the website success rate, filters help give accurate data and results and the funnels show where website problems occur. For my blog, I have found from my goals that my visits are increasing when posted on the right day and the content is interesting enough to keep the visitors engaged. I have also found what to eliminate using certain filters and how to establish a funnel if needed in the future. Businesses should be sure to study each tool to figure out what works best for them and their website.

References

Overland, H. (2009). Google analytics filter best practices. Search Engine People, Retrieved from http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/google-analytics-filter-best-practices.html

PI Reed School of Journalism. (2013). Lesson 6: Successful approaches in Google Analytics. Retrieved February 24, 2013 from ecampus.wvu.edu

Ran. (2009). 10 must track google analytics goals. Web Analytics World, Retrieved from http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2009/03/10-must-track-google-analytics-goals.html

Sparks, D. (2010). Google analytics in depth: Goals and funnels. Six Revisions, Retrieved from http://sixrevisions.com/tools/google-analytics-in-depth-goals-and-funnels/

Generating Traffic with Google Analytics

Blogging is still relatively new to me. With the added use of Google Analytics, I am able to get a better idea of what works and what does not. Since I am new to both, I figured I go simple and use the tools to just generate visitors to my blog with the hopes of a posted comment or two. Every week I post my new blog entries onto social media sites. This includes Google + and Facebook and I added Twitter and LinkedIn into the mix to widen my audience range. However, I was not seeing a high rate of visitors to my page. I chose to look at several different measurements to figure out why this is. These include the visitors and visitors flow tools, the bounce rate, the different traffic sources, in-page analytics and the real time reports. 

Visitors

The visitor tool was the obvious first step in analyzing the data. It gives a break down of new visitors versus unique visitors, the different browser each visitor uses as well as where they are located (“Lesson 5: Google”, 2013). I can easily see what days of the week people are visiting the blog and how long they are staying on each page. I found I had the most unique visitors on my page on a Sunday compared to Wednesday. This showed me Sunday was a more successful posting day. However, the visitors stayed on my blog longer on Wednesday than Sunday. This means the content posted on Wednesday was more intriguing but should be posted at a better time. From here I looked at the visitors flow.

Visitors Flow

The visitor flow report can be used to visualize the ‘flow’ of visitors on my blog (Gerson, 2011). When looking at the visitor flow chart, I found most people dropped off on the starting page. This showed me something about the front page was not inviting enough to keep visitors. Only a third of these visitors moved on to a new page but once on a new page most of them remained. There was a low number of drop offs on the first and second interaction pages. Check out the screenshot below.

It helps me determine at which point people are leaving the blog and I can use this information to keep visitors on my site.

Bounce rate

I chose the bounce rate because it can also help me determine the performance of my entry pages based on the actions the visitors may or may not have taken (Peters, 2012). A high bounce rate could mean the content is not shaped for the audience visiting my site (Kaushik, 2010). On Thursday, the bounce rate was at 100%. Due to this, I reposted my blog on different social media channels. On Sunday, the bounce rate had dropped to 56%. That is still high but puts me in the right direction. This connects back to the visitors tool that noted Sunday was a good day for posting. It seems as if I am to post in the middle of the week, the content has to be specific to the audience that will see it. Or to get the most interaction I should post on the weekends.

Traffic Sources

The traffic sources tool shows where people are finding my blog. A direct traffic source is when a visitor entered the blog URL directly. Referring sites or traffic sources represent other websites that link to my blog, including other classmate blogs, websites or social media sites (Kaushik, 2010). When looking at my data, 75% of my traffic came from a referral source and the other 25% came from a direct source. The majority of my visits came from Facebook. This tells me it is the most popular among the social media sites where I posted my blog. Combine that with the bounce rate information and the graph of which day people visited and I can increase the number of visits by posting more often to Facebook and on the right days. It could also help me try to increase my number of direct source visits by building awareness of my blog on social media.

In-page Analytics

The in-page analytics tool shows which parts of the website attracted the most interaction. The percentage of is shown for every click a visitor made. It gave me a comparison view of whether visitors were clicking directly on the blog post or on the title of it on the sidebar. I can also click on each post to see what links the visitors looked at from within the post. None of the links within the posts were clicked on. This could be due to layout design or lack of interest in the topic. My blog is dark colors and the links are in a light grey. The links may not have stood out enough to prompt a visitor to click. It also helps me realize I need to evaluate the content to make it worth clicking on.

Real-Time

With the real-time reports, I can view the activity as it happens on my site. This helps me figure out which pages are most active and the best referral sources that may be driving traffic (Gerson, 2011). As soon as I publish a new blog post and share it on social media, I can use these reports to see whether or not people are instantly reacting to my post. It can show me whether Facebook is a faster referral source than Google + or if the content of the blog results in a view to the website.

Overview

All of the above data has given me a better picture as to what works for my blog. It has shown me the best days to post and which platform to share it on. From here I can use the data to enhance other features and start creating goals for the blog other than generating traffic. My next steps will be to make the blog more intriguing to increase visit duration and create different content to illicit responses out of those visiting my site. If you have any suggestions of other tools that could be beneficial, please comment below.

References

(2013). Lesson 5: Google Analytics. PI Reed School of Journalism. Retrieved February 18, 2013 from ecampus.wvu.edu

Gerson, R. (2011). 10 new google analytics features you need to start using. Mashable Social Media, Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2011/11/30/google-analytics-new-features/

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing.

Peters, M. (2012). How to get the most out of google analytics. Mashable Social Media, Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/01/04/google-analytics-guide/

Google all the Way

AdWords and Facebook ads are advertising platforms for both Google and Facebook. Both platforms allow marketers to reach any audience, small or large. They also use geographic targeting to narrow down the audience. Both platforms are designed to allow the marketer to set their own budget and create their own ads. The major differences in the two platforms are how they target the audiences.

Google AdWords advertise to people who are already searching for a specific product or service. The ads show up in response to a certain demand. When creating the ads, marketers can enter keywords that consumers will search and are related to the listed ad. They can also target ads based on consumers’ interests that are collected from browsing history. Google has created a retargeting platform called Google AdWords Remarketing. This is when the ads target people who have previously visited a website or similar websites.  

Facebook ads rely on data collected from consumer profiles. Opposite of Google AdWords, Facebook ads are displayed to people who are not necessarily searching for a specific product or service but may have indicated interest in something similar. When on Facebook, the ads are shown based on user attributes. Interestingly, they also target ads based on the language used in the ad itself.

When comparing the two platforms, Facebook has had less success than Google. According to Mashable.com, Facebook has an average CTR of .051% and Google has an average CTR of 0.4%. Facebook display revenues reached $1.06 billion in Q1 in 2012 but Google doubled this with display revenues equaling $2.9 billion. Facebook is also behind on mobile advertising and has a weaker ad format.

To increase the separation between the two platforms, Google recently launched an AdWords video platform for YouTube. According to an article on Huffington Post, the new platform will offer several ways for businesses to understand what consumers show the most interest in. This includes a variety of products and different industries. YouTube has over 800 million monthly visitors and one video advertisement can take a business to the next level. YouTube search keywords can also now be integrated into the AdWords platform. This helps expand the search for different audiences.

To kickoff this new platform, Google is offering $50 million in free advertising. They are giving 500,000 plus businesses $75 worth of free advertising. While AdWords allows for pay per clicks or set budgets, with this new platform, advertisers will only pay when the video is watched. This is their attempt to monetize on YouTube which is thought to estimate $1 billion in revenue a year.

Ultimately, Google has had better success with their ad platform than Facebook. They generate more revenue, have better click-through rates, and give more format options. Google supports mobile formatting while Facebook does not and has created a new form of targeting based on visits to other websites. On top of all that, Google has successfully launched a video platform that expands their reach to different audiences. When it comes to display advertisements, Google is better choice. Facebook has yet to figure it all out and could learn from Google.

Content over Conversation

Content creation is an important part to social media and online marketing. Many marketers argue it is the driving factor to building a brand relationship. However, there are some marketers who believe conversation is more important than content. In other words, they think content is just something to talk about and the conversations that follow create the relationship. Conversations are built on content and if content is not created correctly, it may not encourage conversation. Content is necessary to drive engagement and increase interaction among consumers, users and brands. Conversation is that engagement put in motion by content creation. In the content versus conversation debate, content is the winner.

Content can be as simple as a status update on Facebook to a short film posted on YouTube. The idea behind it is that the content grabs the attention of the audience enough to cause a reaction or start a conversation. A great example of this is a recent Coca Cola short film. CAA Marketing, a division of Creative Artists Agency created this film as a way to generate interest online. The film starred the animated polar bears that have become a standard brand icon. It was created as entertainment and not as an advertisement. One strategist questioned the ad, wondering what it was supposed to be selling her. There are no links or promotions offered in the ad, so what was the point? The point was to promote the Coca Cola brand persona. Branded content marketing is not necessarily about clicks and sales but about the brand image itself. The short film is for consumer entertainment but also helps increase brand awareness.

Another great example is Red Bull. They are content marketing kings and marketers are unable to figure out how they do it. Red Bull started out manufacturing energy drinks and has turned their brand into a world of extreme sports empire. The content they produce screams interaction and that is prior to conversations. On RedBull.com, there is a button on one of the side bars that says “JUST EPIC”. Immediately, the word epic is inviting and just draws the consumer in. After clicking, the world of extreme sports is displayed. This comes in the form of 12-year-olds doing almost impossible skateboard tricks or men skimming tall treetops. They are not marketing their sports drink; they are marketing a feeling and more importantly, their brand. Red Bull creates content specifically not focusing on their products. They built a media house for the purpose of content creation and not just for themselves. Red Bull houses other brands within their media house as well. They have taken to helping others with content creation. This is why content is the winner. Red Bull uses content marketing to start conversations and not the other way around. They are leaders in the industry, not followers.

Content will be the focus of marketing strategies in years to come. Brands will be breaking news as it happens instead of waiting on PR or publishers to react to the news. With the instant nature of social media, brands will need to own their content and deliver what the audience wants. They will want to lead the conversations with their content just as Red Bull did with their Stratos campaign. This campaign of pure content broke social media records. The number of conversations created was like no other campaign. This is why content is the winner and other brands would be smart to follow the lead of Red Bull and Coca Cola.