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/
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