Google Analytics

Webmaster Discussion
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#1

Anyone here a good Analytics pro, that can:

  1. Explain how to set up Goals?
  2. Explain how to use & set up Filters?
  3. Use regular words, rather than all that techie mumbo jumbo?

Would be appreciated if you could maybe post it, so other blonds like me, can refer to it, use it, and uh, understand it, better. lol

#2

Re: Google Analytics

Not sure what you are really asking… Goals and filters are pretty straight forward to set up as long as you know what they are and are used for.

This is probably the best information -

Goals -
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55515
Filters -
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55494
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55496

I use goal tracking on some mainstream sites, mainly to track the % of visitors that click a submit button. I haven’t found filters all that useful except to track traffic to sub directories.

#3

Re: Google Analytics

How about starting at the basics: what is a goal?

In my mind a goal is increasing my traffic by 25% or increasing sales by 10%. What is a goal in GA’s mind?

#4

Re: Google Analytics

I tried to use it, but got stuck. Too complicated and it seems mainly aimed at selling products / e-commerce sites as it kind of requires a action or final destination to work. If your final destination or GOAL is for a surfer to leave your site (affiliate links) it kind doesn’t work. Or thats my impression.

#5

Re: Google Analytics

Well I think it can be used to maybe track outbound hits to affiliates and things - so can be useful seeing which pages get the most click throughs etc.

I think we need rawtop in here :slight_smile:

#6

Re: Google Analytics

I find Google Analytics suffers, like most things computer related, from techie-itis; that is, they let the techies design the program, develop the nomenclature, and write the manuals. We’ve all seen the ad that says “Your computer has a fatal exception error, do you really want to erase your hard drive?” and both options are “yes” and “yes.”

A lot of these programs, and GA is no exception, don’t define words and concepts fully enough or, in some cases, even at all. In GA’s case they define a goal as “A goal is a website page which a visitor reaches once they have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download.” I’m sorry but their concept of a goal is far enough from the true meaning of the word that they should have come up with a better word.

I’ve always said that software companies ought to give the software (when it’s completed) to the company’s secretary or janitor, let them try to use the manual, and then, fix the manual as the secretary or janitor stumbles.

The only good thing about GA is that so many people use it, it’s not hard to find help wading up the learning curve.

#7

Re: Google Analytics

Goals are things you want your users to do. Clicking on a link to a sponsor is the obvious goal for all affiliate sites. If you’re a paysite, buying a membership would be the obvious goal. Once you set up a goal if a person does that action it’s considered a “conversion” and you can look at the conversion rate for different types of traffic. So you can compare new visitors to return visitors, organic traffic to direct traffic, etc.

All of that will help you figure out which types of traffic you should be trying to get. Typically return visitors have lower conversion rates than new visitors (though I just noticed in my case they’re almost the same), and you can see that organic traffic has much higher conversion rates than say direct traffic which is why community sites like forums and hookup sites typically have lower conversion rates.

Filters are typically used to exclude traffic from your reports. I exclude my own visits from my sites. If I’m launching a new site my own traffic is actually visible. As it gets bigger it gets overwhelmed by all the other traffic.

You can set up multiple profiles per site and have different filters for each profile. There was a time when it looked like Google Images traffic was acting weird on a client’s site so we set up a 2nd profile for the site and restricted it to only Google Images traffic so we could have a close look at what was happening (and indeed Google Images traffic is not handled very well by Google Analytics).

I’ve attached screenshots of my outbound sponsor click goal settings, and how filter my own visits from my sites…

goal.jpg

filter.jpg

#8

Re: Google Analytics

So where you have the URL “/outbound/” is that from a jump script or something you just set to keep track of?

#9

Re: Google Analytics

I just had an e-mail from someone on here that made me realize I forgot an important item on goal tracking… Namely, that the URLs that define the goals have to be URLs that are tracked by Google Analytics. I don’t actually have any files in an /outbound/ directory. My redirect script is in /scripts/outbound.php?lnk=xxx it’s not even in /outbound/. All the /outbound/ URLs are fake tracking URLs. My links look something like this…

<a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/breed-me-raw');" href="http://www.rawtop.com/scripts/outbound.php?lnk=415" target="site10105">Some link text or image</a>

Notice the Javascript call to pageTracker._trackPageview - that creates a fake page hit in Google Analytics and it’s that fake page view which is the goal URL.

The reason that’s necessary is that the redirect script is a simple PHP redirector that doesn’t fire Google Analytics. Even if it were a real page the chances are that the redirect would happen before the Google Analytics loaded and executed, so the onclick Javascript event is more reliable, but even it isn’t perfect and drops hits.

If the goal is to go to a real URL on your site (like a join page), then you don’t have to do any of those tricks. But things get complicated when you’re tracking a page where your tracking code isn’t executed. For example if you send the person off to a billing processor for the purchase… That’s handled yet another way…

Hope that clears things up…

#10

Re: Google Analytics

The destination url goal is the most useful and could be used by many who run adult sites. There are so many uses for them as long as you are willing to do AB testing to get the final results you want.

#11

Re: Google Analytics

Well that is nice, so uh HOW? :bang:

And too, many uses, cool, and they are?

I wonder, is there a Dummies Book out there for GA?

#12

Re: Google Analytics

Here are two really good books -

Google Analytics -
http://www.amazon.com/Google-Analytics-3rd-Jerri-Ledford/dp/0470531282/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269279703&sr=8-1

and Landing Page Optimization
http://www.amazon.com/Landing-Page-Optimization-Definitive-Conversions/dp/0470174625/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269279703&sr=8-9