Google Analytics: Essentials

General introduction to Google Analytics

• Understanding what Web Analytics can do for your web site
• Clarifying how Google stores and uses your data
• How Google Analytics works

Cookies

• Understanding how Google uses cookies and the information they track
• Know the differences between 1st party and 3rd party cookies, persistent and temporary cookies

Importance of configuring and customising Google Analytics properly

• Understand the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC), where to place it and how it can be customised
• How to verify your Google Analytics setup and troubleshoot common mistakes
• Implementing Google Tag Manager that allows a single tag to be managed through a simple interface
• Import cost date, performance metrics from non-Google search engine campaigns

Managing Google Analytics

• Best practice guidelines for analysing data and how to analyse data trends
• Creating accounts, setting data sharing preferences, exporting and emailing reports
• An overview of the Google Analytics dashboard and how to use data visualisations
• Understand how to create, use and share Dashboards
• Understand how to create, use and share Shortcuts

Adding annotations to reports

• Create automatic custom alerts (Intelligence Events) to notify you of significant statistical variations in your analytics
• Explore and understand Real Time Analytics
• Exercise - Intelligence for AdWords

Universal Analytics - a change to the way data is collected and organised

• Overview of Universal Analytics

Selecting data to include in your Google Analytics reports

• Setting date and comparison date ranges, changing the time graph by hour, day, week and month
• Plot specific rows in a report table in the time graph
• Segment your data and compare multiple metrics in the same report using Advanced Segments
• Exercise - Create an Advanced Segment
• View your data using primary and secondary dimensions in a single report and then use pivot tables to compare groups of data and detect trends
• Use Weighted Sort to show you the most actionable rows first within your reports
• Use Custom Dimensions and Custom Metrics to collect and analyse data that Google Analytics doesn’t automatically track like demographic data
• Learn how to customise standard reports to include information that may be missing
• Overview of how to select a sampling size and how to refresh report data stored in your browser cache
• Share templates of Dashboards, Advanced Segments and Custom Reports
• Use In-Page Analytics to make a visual assessment of how users interact with your web pages

Defining and measuring actionable metrics - Visits, Unique Visitors, Pageview and Time Metrics

• How Google Analytics calculates Visits, Unique Visitors and Pageviews
• Learn how Google Analytics uses two different techniques for counting Unique Visitors
• Understand the Length of Visit Report and how Time on Page and Time on Site are calculated
• Configuring segmented reports for New vs Returning Visitors, Pageview vs Unique Pageviews...
• Learn the meaning and causes of '(not set)' appearing in your reports
• Understand why discrepancies in numbers may appear - for example, Visits vs Entrances, Unique Visitors vs Visits in Custom Reports

Understand the Analytics Account Structure

• Overview of the hierarchy of Accounts, Users, Properties and Views
• Best practice for structuring and managing Accounts and Views
• Understanding when and how to create Views, edit settings and manage View assets
• Learn how to import AdWords data and edit settings
• An overview of common issues on the management of Google Analytics

Data Filters for View

• Best practices for using Filters - how Filters work, how to create them and when to apply them...
• Understand how to create Include and Exclude Filters, Search and Replace Filters
• How to use Filters and Views together to track certain kinds of traffic such as Googles AdWords traffic

Content Reports

• Overview of the fundamentals, how to use and interpret Content Reports to report what visitors are doing on your site
• Understanding the importance of reports for Top Landing Pages, Top Content and how to create Content Drilldown reports
• Understand Bounce Rate, common reasons why high Bounce Rates occur and how to improve
• Understand the differences between Exit Rates and Bounce Rates for pages in your site

Traffic Sources

• Understand the campaign Attribution Model, rules that determine how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in Conversion Paths
• Overview of Multi-Channel Funnels that show how your marketing channels work together to create sales and conversions
• Understanding different kinds of traffic sources and how to identify quality traffic and drivers of revenue and conversions
• How to tag for non-Google PPC campaigns such as Bing Ads, email campaigns, display advertising etc...
• Determine the origin of self-referrals and solutions to remove them from your reports

Organic Search Traffic

• Identify opportunities and prioritise your efforts to increase the number of quality organic visitors to your site
• In-depth reporting for SEO including Geographic reports, Search Query reports, Landing Page reports etc...
• Enabling and configuring the Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) data sharing allong with diagnostic tips
• Best practice and tips for using the Search Console and analytics SEO reports

Paid Search Tracking - Google AdWords & Bing Ads

• The benefits of auto-tagging and how to verify if auto-tagging for Google AdWords will work with your website
• Importing data from an AdWords account into an Analytics account and importing Analytics Goals and Transactions into AdWords
• Optimise performance by targeting more profitable locations and parts of the day, improving the performance of your landing pages, leveraging Site Search etc…
• Optimise your campaigns by learning how to uncover which ad positions generate more conversions or transactions
• Ensure you balance the use of generic and branded keywords to capture a wide range of customers and increase conversion opportunities
• Track the performance of text ads on Google and Google's Search Network
• Track the performance of display and video ads on the Content Network as well as audio and TV campaigns
• Customising Google Analytics to show even richer data and intelligence of Search Marketing campaigns

Social Media Traffic

• How to analyse the effectiveness of inbound links from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+
• Set up Goals and/or Ecommerce tracking in order to see values in your reporting
• Understand the elements of social impact - Network Referrals, Conversions, Landing pages and Social Plugins
• Identify social networks referring the highest quality traffic, uncover how people are talking about and engaging with your site
• Uncover how to replicate successful content and build relationships with those who frequently link to your site
• Set up Social Plug-In Analytics to learn what Google '+1' and Facebook 'Like' buttons are clicked and for which content
• Troubleshooting your Google '+1' analytics

Campaign Tracking

• Best practices for tagging links
• How to track Google and non-Google (Microsoft Bing Ads, Yahoo, email etc...) campaigns using manual tagged links
• Tracking and using reports for Google AdWords campaigns, how and when to use auto-tagging for Google Analytics

Goals and Funnels

• The purpose of using Goals, understanding Goal types, assigning Goal values and how to interpret their reports
• Assigning meaningful values to Goals and understanding how Goal conversions differ from transactions
• How to use and configure funnels, how to interpret the Funnel Visualisation report and tips on best practice
• Exercise - Setting up a Goal and Funnel
• How Google Analytics and Google AdWords conversion metrics are calculated differently
• Importing Google Analytics Goals and Ecommerce transactions into Google AdWords
• How the Goal Flow Report visualises the path your visitors travelled through a Funnel towards a Goal
• How Funnel Visualisaton and the Goal Flow report compare
• Troubleshooting such as Goals are not being tracked correctly, Visitors dropping out of Funnels, incorrect attribution of Entrance pages

eCommerce tracking

• How to enable and track e-commerce using Goal Value and Ecommerce revenue metrics

Internal site search

• The importance of internal site search, understanding the metrics and how to configure in Google Analytics
• Interpreting the site search usage, terms, start pages and destination pages reports

Event tracking and virtual pageviews

• Understanding when best to use virtual pageviews and event tracking
• Best practice for tracking PDF downloads, tracking outbound links, handling redirects