3 Key Google Analytics Features In-House Practitioners Should Be Using

Working as a practitioner in house at a technology company, one of my jobs is to teach my team members how to fish with Google Analytics. What should they be looking for in GA? Where do they start? What is meaningful? Are the campaigns being measured? Are the microsites tagged? These are the types of questions I get everyday, and very likely, you do too. 

I've narrowed down my tips to 3 key things I try to get people comfortable with first (bite sized bits to get them hooked). 

1. Event Tracking

Most of the things that people are interested in are actions on a page. Did a visitor click on button X? Did they complete form Y? Watch video Z? These are all questions we can answer with event tracking. 

Because event tracking in Google Analytics is a blank slate in terms of setup and use, there is no one right answer for how to set it up and use. Given that most of my account was setup before I arrived in this position, I too have had to get used to a new architecture. The way I do this, and the way I explain it to my colleagues, is by investigating the event hierarchy. What are the categories, actions, and labels? How is data organized into these three tiers? 

While there is no one 'best way' of organizing an event tagging hierarchy, and while it will vary site to site, I like to set mine up like this:

• Category: location of event (Homepage, About Us page, Resources page, etc)
• Action: action the user took (Video, Whitepaper download, Start Trial, etc)
• Label: specifics about action (Video name, Whitepaper name, detail of linked clicked if there are multiple with same action (ex. Learn more - product A, learn more - product B, etc) 

2. Advanced Segments

Advanced segments are a great way to filter data to be more specific to the question you are trying to ask. For example, you can create a segment for a region (North America = US + Canada), or you can create a segment for a set of pages (meaning visit applies to homepage and/or about us page). To evangelize and teach this, I've created a Google doc that I've shared with my team with step by step instructions and links to some pre-built regional segments. 

As an account admin, it's great to share out globally the segments you make that may apply to multiple consumers. And you can easily share links to segments for users to apply to their own account.

Regional Segment example:

3. Shortcuts

Normally when an internal user asks for GA training and/or help pulling a report, it's for something they plan to look at on more than one occasion. Depending on how complex the report is, it may be useful to create a shortcut.

Ex. Your account has 5000 uniques pages tracked in the pages report. You are interested in 4 pages that all share the same sub-domain (they may be steps in flow - example:www.myshoppingsite.com/women, www.myshoppingsite.com/accessories,www.myshoppingsite.com/handbags, www.myshoppingsite.com/gucci). 

You can filter the pages report (using advanced filters) to show only these 4 pages. Then you want to know how many visits to those pages had a checkout, so you apply a checkout segment onto the report. Then you also want to define that group one more step by only looking at North America traffic, so you apply a second advanced segment for North America. Then, just for kicks (or analysis) you want to know what the landing page was for this subset of purchasers, so you apply a secondary dimension for landing page. 

Now that's a fairly complicated report that took several steps to build. Your may not want to go through all those steps the next time you need this report (nor as an admin/power user do you want to have to show them again), so you can create a shortcut for this report. The shortcut link is a new beta feature located on the top nav bar that allows you to save a report as is and provides a shortcut link on the left hand nav to get back to it quickly. Pretty handy.

As an admin or power user: Once your users have these three functions handled they will a) be able to pull a lot of their own data, freeing up your time, and b) feel more confident and excited about using Google Analytics to make data driven decisions. Win-win.

Posted by Krista Seiden, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

4 Improvements To Google Analytics Real-Time Reports

Real-time reports provide useful insights for businesses that help them understand how their systems are reacting, instantly, such as when you send out an email campaign or engage in marketing that has a temporal nature. It provides alerting / intelligence, giving insight into things that are new or different such as a sudden increase in site traffic. Real-time also lets you win social by capitalizing on trending topics. For example, if you noticed a blog post you published previously is suddenly gaining attention due to something happening in the news, you could highlight it on the front page of your site to draw additional attention and ‘pour fuel’ on the social fire. 

Today, we're announcing 4 improvements to real-time reports. You can now:

1. Analyze Events in real-time
2. Breakdown real-time by Desktop/Tablet/Mobile traffic
3. Create shortcuts to your favorite real-time segments
4. Compare real-time filtered data against overall real-time data

Let’s go through the changes in more detail:

1. Realtime Events Report

With the real-time events report, you can now not only see the top events as they occur but also filter on particular event categories (and actions). Additionally, you can see whether particular segments of visitors trigger different events and debug your events deployment in real time.

To access this report, navigate to the real-time section of Google Analytics and click on the Events section. You should see a report similar to this:

Clicking on any of the Event Category will drill down and show all the Event Actions and Event Labels for that particular category.

If you are trying to see what events a particular segment of visitors generate, that is easy as well. Any filters you set up in any part of real-time are preserved in the Events report. For example, in the above screengrab we have set up a filter here to see what events are triggered from visitors coming via organic search.

2. Content Breakdown by Desktop/Tablet/Mobile

We live in an increasingly multi-screen world, and now you can see in real-time the type of device that visitors are using to visit your web site (desktop, tablet and mobile). This is available in the content report as shown below:

As with real-time reports, you can easily see your visitors filtered by the device type (by clicking on either of “Desktop” “Tablet” “Mobile”).

3. Shortcuts for your important real-time segments

We’ve heard from users that you like to look at certain segments of visitors in real-time, but dislike setting up the filters each time. Now, you can use the “Create Shortcut” feature to store your favorite segments. 

Now all you need to do is open up Shortcuts from the left navigation menu and click to any of your shortcuts.

4. Comparison real-time to overall data

Finally, you can compare the pageviews of your segmented visitors to overall traffic as shown below. This is nifty if you want to see quick comparison trends. For example, many times, after a G+ post, I create a filter by device type of “Mobile” and can see that the mobile traffic picks up much faster and also contributes more to the initial increase in pageviews.

Stay tuned for continued improvements to real-time, a growing area of importance for your digital marketing.

Posted by the Google Analytics Real-Time team

Updating Export And Send Features To Support Your Legacy Technology

We believe you should be able to access your Google Analytics data from wherever, whenever. And while yes, it’s pretty convenient to be able to export data to Google Spreadsheets or send a report to an email recipient with a few simple clicks, we recognize there are other ways people like to be able to share their data as well. That’s why we’ve re-imagined our Export and ‘Send To’ options to give you even more options and support some of our favorite legacy technology.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out a new set of old school export and send-to options that aren’t just useful, they’re fun. So flex those creative muscles and think of all the ways you might use these to do your job better:

Updated export options - moving beyond web:

CDROM: not only can you soon export to CDROM, we’ll automatically label the CDs for you to avoid the dreaded stack of unlabeled CDs that plagued users in the past. Bonus: insert your CDs into your car CD or portable CD player and we’ll play either upbeat or melancholy sounds, depending on if your reports are trending the right direction.

3.5 Floppy: have you ever wanted to access your reports on your old IIGS, 486 or similar? Yes it takes us back to those joyful memories of coding forever, hitting execute and watching with glee as it drew a blue star in 30 seconds. Take your data easily to them (or share with a friend) via a colorful 3.5 floppy. Now you can work on reports while you also play classics like The Oregon Trail or Odell Lake.   

Sticky note: ever just wanted to share one quick dashboard with your boss that shows how yourconversions are trending “up and to the right,” but you just can’t get them to read your email? We hear you. Export just one graph to a bright fluorescent sticky note and put it right on their desk where they can’t ignore it. You’ll soon be the most talked about marketer at the water cooler. 

Papyrus: papyrus, the thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant is back. First manufactured in Egypt as far back as the third millennium BC, it is actually still used by communities living in the vicinity of swamps. We’ve heard the requests loud and clear: papyrus report exports would be an exciting option that would provide a “wow” factor at your next presentation and make your data more tangible. Just be sure you keep them in a dry climate where it is most stable. Next time your HIPPO questions the data break out the Papyrus and Abacus and prove them wrong!

Updated 'send to' section - beyond email:

Fax Machine: have a client or executive who prefers to receive faxes? No problem. You can now export reports, in full color, directly to the fax machine of your choice along with a branded cover page.

Electronic Telegraph: have a friend still obsessed with 1800’s business culture? Put on a monocle, your classiest suit and get ready to send a telegraph with an encoded message of the data of your choosing. For those super important “your eyes only” reports we also support encrypted morse code options as well. Note, the cost of sending 10 words (approximately 45 characters) is $1.55 (per the going rate of the 1850’s) so choose the data you send wisely. 

Carrier Pigeon: pigeons aren’t just used to sort our web index any longer. We’ve trained a select set of our trusty PigeonRank™ pigeons to fly your reports to their intended recipient. Note there is a weight limit associated with this option, so only choose rows 1-25 of data are selected at most or your pigeons may not be able to take off.  

Telegram Messenger: sometimes, it’s necessary to send a physical person to deliver your reports. The send via telegram option will dispatch a telegram messenger on a Google bike to share a physical printout of the reports of your choosing. A future iteration of this option will include telegram messengers dressed up as characters who can deliver “hug-o-gram” reports to cheer people up.

We hope you enjoy these new options and share your data in even more places! 

Analytics Pros Best Practices Conference: May 2, San Francisco

The following is a guest post contributed by Caleb Whitmore, founder of Analytics Pros and theBEST Practices Conference, Google Analytics enthusiast, and aspiring mountaineer.

Join us on May 2nd in San Francisco to learn about the best practices for Google Analytics. At this interactive conference you will be engaged, learn strategy for Google Analytics and be trained in using and optimizing the tool.

We think about our conference like this:

 Looks like useful fun, right?  We promise it will be well worth your time.  

A side note, just in case you were wondering: my prior conference, GAUGE (now “retired”) was an initiative to bring together users across the Google Analytics community to learn from each other. The BEST Practices conference series builds on this legacy and delivers hands on tutorials and interactive sessions.

Look forward to hear from thought leaders in the Google Analytics space, including Google’s Jesse Nichols, Andrew Wales and Ian Myszenski.  We are excited to have Dan Siroker from  Optimizely and I will weigh in with my latest finds and processes as well.  We will talk and work with you onUniversal Analytics, Multi-Channel Funnels, Attribution Modeling and more tips and tricks that we apply to our use of GA. 

Our San Francisco conference includes:

• An after-party event hosted by the Google Analytics Premium team at the San Francisco Google office
• Hands-on sessions and workshops led by top GA experts
• Interactive “Table Topics” lunch session, including teaching and roundtable discussion on Universal Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Mobile Strategy and more
• Opportunities to interact with digital analytics peers and experts
• Insights into the Google Analytics strategies of leading companies
• An amazing conference venue that allows for big-picture thinking, the Jewish Contemporary Museum

Join us in San Francisco on May 2nd for our Spring event.  Use discount code BESTAnalyticsBlogfor a 20% discount off the Conference Pass. We also offer a 50% discount for government, non-profit employees and full-time students.

And don’t forget to check out other BEST Practices conferences as we storm the country. We’re headed to Boston on October 3rd and back to the Pacific Northwest in Seattle on November 14th - don’t miss out!

To keep up to date on what’s coming, follow our team at @analyticspros and @BEST_con to hear about the latest speakers, locations and events. As a bonus, this video should provide a good introduction to our event if you've never been to one in the past: