Google Analytics: The Complete Guide

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 & 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 & Organised

• Overview of Universal Analytics
• Best practice guidelines on how to set up Universal Analytics
• Overview of advanced Universal Analytics features such as session and campaign timeout handling, customising organic search sources and excluding referrals and search terms in reports

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
• Overview of Content Experiments to test which version of a landing page leads to the greatest improvement in goal completion or metric value

Defining and Measuring Actionable Metrics - Visits, Unique Visitors, Pageview & 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
• A look at advanced Filters - cascading Filters, Filters for sub-domains etc...
• An overview of when and how to use common regular expressions (Regex) in Google Analytics with examples

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
• Valuing Content using Page Value to get an idea of which pages in your site contributed more to your site's revenue

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
• How to analyse cost data with Attribution Modelling

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 along with diagnostic tips
• Best practice and tips for using the Search Console and analytics SEO reports
• Exploring and analysing '(not provided)' keywords
• Creating and sharing Advanced Segments for SEO
• Creating and sharing a Dashboard for SEO
• Creating and sharing a Custom Report for SEO
• Creating advanced Filters for SEO

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
• Creating and sharing Advanced Segments for PPC
• Creating and sharing a Dashboard for PPC
• Creating and sharing a Custom Report for PPC
• Creating advanced Filters for PPC

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
• Evaluating Social Sources to uncover when your content is shared via a 'Reshare' or '+1'
• Creating and sharing Advanced Segments for Social Media
• Creating and sharing a Dashboard for Social Media
• Creating and sharing a Custom Report for Social Media
• Creating advanced Filters for Social Media

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
• Capitalise on Mobile traffic growth and trends to your website, learn which devices visitors are using
• Learn how to expand your mobile advertising efforts to areas with a high number of mobile visitors who aren't yet converting

Goals & 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, incorret attribution of Entrance pages
• Details of Exact and Head Match Types, and an overview of Regular Expression Match Types used in setting up Goals
• Flow anslysis of Goals and Funnels such as popular pages etc...
• Using Goal Flow reports to optimise your website
• Identify the origin of visitors, conversions etc... who complete Goals using Goal Flow reports
• Advanced analysis such as Keyword analysis and Browser analysis using Goal Flow reports
• Special case Goals such as Goals for Downloads, Goals and Funnel steps on third-party sites
• Setting up complex Goals such as for variable URLs, identical URLs across multiple steps, Goals for multiple
• criteria etc...
• Details of Regular Expression Match Type used in setting up Goals

Ecommerce Tracking

• How to enable and track e-commerce using Goal Value and Ecommerce revenue metrics
• Troubleshooting Ecommerce tracking such as missing Ecommerce data or data that is different in your third-party shopping cart
• How to reverse Ecommerce transactions when an order does not go through or is disallowed

Multi-Channel Funnels

• How Multi-Channel Funnels show how your marketing channels work together to create sales and conversions
• Default Channel groupings, labels used in reports and creating customised Channel Groupings and labels
• Understand the roles a channel plays in the conversion path - last interaction, assist interaction and first interaction
• Analyse conversion paths such as Channel Interactions and Conversion Path Length
• Strategies for strengthening your PPC campaigns by identifying missing or inder-invested Keywords
• Strategies to optimise your messaging and creatives by knowing which Channels and ads work together on the path to conversion
• How Conversion Segments let you isolate and analyse specific sets of conversion paths in your reports
• Evaluate Google Display Network assisted conversions using Multi-Channel Funnels
• Best practice when using Multi-Channel Funnels

Advanced Reporting

• An overview of how to create, edit and share Custom Reports
• Exercise - Create a Custom Report
• How to create and modify Advanced Segments and how they differ from Filtered Views
• Implement Enhance Link Attribution to see separate infromation for multiple links on a page with the same destination
• Content Experiments interface and elements of Experiments that can be tested
• Understand the implications of using Experiments on SEO rankings and how to deal with the implications
• Overview of Multi-Armed Bandit Experiments

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
• An overview of advanced features that includes setting up Site Search Categories and how to find Site Search Trending

Event Tracking & Virtual Pageviews

• Understanding when best to use Virtual Pageviews and Event tracking
• Best practice for tracking PDF downloads, tracking outbound links, handling redirects...
• An overview of advanced features such things as 404 errors, server errors, downloads, for completion etc...
• Using Advanced Segments and Event Tracking

The Custom Visitor Segment Variable

• Best practices for setting and using the User Defined variable
• How to view User Defined values in reports

Advanced Customisation

• An overview of advanced techniques showing how to change such things as session timeout values, campaign expiration etc...