Google Analytics / Edition 3 available in Paperback
Google Analytics / Edition 3
- ISBN-10:
- 0470531282
- ISBN-13:
- 9780470531280
- Pub. Date:
- 12/09/2009
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Google Analytics / Edition 3
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Overview
Google Analytics allows you to discover vital information about how end users interact with their Web sites by collecting vital data and providing tools to analyze it, with the intention of improving the end-user experience and, ultimately converting users into customers. This indispensible guide delves into the latest updates to the newest version of Google Analytics—3.0—and explains the concepts behind this amazing free tool.
You'll discover what information to track, how to choose the right goals and filters, techniques for reading Google Analytics reports and graphs, and, most importantly, how to compile this data and use it to improve your Web site and attract more potential customers.
- Takes an in-depth look at Google Analytics 3.0 and walks you through the possibilities it offers
- Explains how to read Google Analytics reports and graphs so that you can compile this data and use it to improve your Web site and attract more users
- Shares techniques for converting end users into customers
- Features tips and suggestions for getting the information you need from Google Analytics reports and then converting that information into actionable tasks you can use
With Google Analytics, Third Edition, you&'ll be well on your way to retrieving the information you need to convert visitors to your site into customers!
Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780470531280 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Wiley |
Publication date: | 12/09/2009 |
Pages: | 448 |
Product dimensions: | 7.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Jerri Ledford has written more than 1,000 articles, news stories, and reports that have appeared in Network World, Information Security Magazine, CRM Magazine, IT Manager's Journal, and others.
Joe Teixeira is Manager of Web Intelligence for MoreVisibility, an online advertising agency, and a top contributor to the Google Analytics Help Forum.
Mary E. Tyler is a professional technology journalist and a former Web and software developer.
Read an Excerpt
Table of Contents
Introduction xxiii
Part I Getting Started with Google Analytics 1
Chapter 1 What’s New in Google Analytics 3
Two Years Equals Lots of Changes 3
Betas Galore 5
Custom Reporting 5
Advanced Segmenting 5
Motion Charts 6
Chapter 2 Why Analytics? 9
What Are Analytics? 10
Collecting Raw Data 10
Measurement Techniques 13
How Did Google Analytics Come to Be? 14
What Can Google Analytics Do for Me? 15
What Google Analytics Is Not 16
Chapter 3 Creating Your Analytics Account 17
First, You Need a Google Account 17
Signing Up for Google Analytics 19
Adding Tracking Code to Your Pages 22
Google Analytics on Secure Pages (https) 24
The Easy Way 24
The Hard Way 25
Understanding the Tracking Code 26
Checking Tracking Status 27
Navigating Analytics 30
Chapter 4 The Settings Dashboard 35
Analytics Settings 35
Web-Site Profiles 37
Adding a Profile 38
Checking Status 40
Editing a Profile Name 41
Starring and Sorting Web-Site Profiles 42
Editing Profile Settings 43
Deleting a Profile 45
User Management 46
Adding a User 47
Setting User Permissions 48
Deleting a User 49
Chapter 5 Account Dashboard Basics 51
Navigating from the Dashboard 51
Standard Dashboard Modules 52
Interacting with the Site Usage Report 55
Adding Reports 58
Deleting Reports 60
Sorting Data with Segmentation 61
Enabling Segmentation 62
Creating Custom Segments 62
Working with Date Ranges 66
Using the Calendar 67
Comparing Ranges 68
Using the Timeline 69
Part II Analytics and Site Statistics: Concepts and Methods 71
Chapter 6 E-commerce Concepts and Methods 73
What Works in E-commerce 73
Understanding Your Customers 75
What Measurements Matter 76
Chapter 7 Basic Metrics and Concepts 79
Identifying People and Not-People 79
Visits and Visitor Metrics 81
Hits vs. Pages 81
Visits, Unique Visits, and New Visits 82
New, Returning, and Repeat Visits 83
Visit Duration 85
Bounces and Single-Page Visits 86
Traffic Metrics 87
Direct Traffic, Referrers, and Referring URLs 87
Keywords and Phrases 88
Chapter 8 Setting Up E-commerce 91
Enabling E-commerce within Your Profile(s) 92
The Google Analytics E-commerce Code 93
General E-commerce Coding Guidelines 94
E-commerce Tracking on Subdomains and Separate (Third-Party) Domains 98
Tracking E-commerce on Subdomains 99
Tracking E-commerce on Separate/Third-Party Domains 99
A Few Important Notes about Tracking E-commerce on Third-Party Domains 101
E-commerce Tracking with Google Checkout; Other E-commerce Platforms 102
Tracking Other E-commerce Platforms 104
Part III Advanced Implementation 107
Chapter 9 Advanced Dashboard Features 109
Creating Special-Purpose Dashboards 110
User Access to Dashboards 111
Sharing Your Dashboard Information 111
Suggested Dashboards for Specific Roles 111
Executive 112
Marketing 114
Webmaster 114
Small Business 117
Content Site 117
E-commerce Site 120
Local Business Only 120
Creating Custom Reports 123
How the Report Is Created 123
Editing and Managing Custom Reports 127
Chapter 10 Filtering Analytics Data 129
Using Filters to Further Segment Visitors 129
A Short Lesson in Regular Expressions 132
A Slightly Longer Lesson on Regular Expressions 134
Matching an IP Address 135
Matching a Directory Name 135
Matching a Variable Name/Value Pair 137
Managing Filters 140
Creating New Filters 140
Custom Filters 144
Advanced Filters 149
Creating Advanced Filters 149
Improve Your SEO/CPC Reporting with Filters 155
Organic Traffic Only 155
Editing and Deleting Filters 157
The Power of Filters 158
Chapter 11 Setting Goals 159
Understanding Goal-Setting 160
Why Set Goals? 161
Choosing Which Goals To Set 162
Monetizing Goals 163
Content-Site Goals 164
Tracking Dynamic Pages 170
Setting Up Goals 173
Choosing the Right Goal Information 175
Editing and Inactivating Goals 176
Measuring Goals That Result in Conversions 177
Goals Overview 178
Total Conversions 180
Conversion Rate 181
Goal Verification 183
Reverse Goal Path 183
Goal Value 185
And a Couple More… 186
Chapter 12 Funneling Visitors to Their Destination 187
What’s a Funnel and Why Is It Important? 188
Establishing Funnels 190
Creating Standard Funnels 190
Creating Nonstandard Funnels 195
Funnel Quirks 196
Tracking Funnel Results 197
Goal Abandoned Funnels 197
Funnel Visualization 199
Chapter 13 Google AdWords Integration 201
Why Sync in the First Place? 201
Syncing Your Google AdWords and Analytics Accounts 202
You Have Neither an AdWords Nor an Analytics Account 203
You Have an AdWords Account, but Not an Analytics Account 204
You Have an Analytics Account, but Not an AdWords Account 205
You Have Both an AdWords and an Analytics Account 205
Special Cases and the GCLID 205
Tracking E-mail, Banner, and Other Non-AdWords Marketing 206
Putting It All Together 207
Notes and Tips about URL Tagging 208
The Google Analytics URL Builder 209
The AdWords Report Section 210
The AdWords Campaigns Report 210
The Difference between a Visit and a Click 213
The Keyword Positions Report 213
The TV Campaigns Report 214
Other Reports Displaying AdWords and Non-AdWords Data 216
Chapter 14 Hacking Google Analytics 219
A Review of Subdomain/Cross-Domain Tracking 219
Tracking Subdomains 220
Tracking Multiple Domains 220
Tracking Multiple Subdomains and Multiple Domains 221
Setting up Duplicate Profiles 222
Why Create Duplicate Profiles? 224
Filtering Out Internal Traffic 225
Excluding a Single IP Address 225
Excluding Two (or More) IP Addresses 225
Excluding a Range of IP Addresses 226
Excluding Internal Traffic That Uses Dynamic IP Addresses 227
Other Neat (Advanced) Filters 228
Writing the Hostname in Front of the Request URI 228
Appending the Source after the Campaign 229
Three-Step Filter: Adding Campaign Source,
Visitor Country, and Campaign Term to the Transaction ID 230
Tracking Google Search Engine Rankings 231
Tracking PDF (and Other) File Downloads 232
Tracking PDF/Downloadable Files as Content 233
Setting Up Goals for Your Downloadable Files 233
Customizations with the Google Analytics Tracking Code 234
Tracking Virtual Page Views 234
Tracking Two Accounts Simultaneously 235
Custom Segmentation (User-Defined) 236
Modifying the Session Timeout 236
Modifying the Campaign Conversion Timeout 237
Modifying Conversion Attribution (Last to First) 237
Using the Anchor (#) Symbol in Destination URLs 238
Recognizing ‘Nonstandard’ URL Query Parameters 238
Counting Keywords and Referring Sites as ‘Direct’ Traffic 239
Setting the Cookie Path to a Subdirectory 239
Controlling Data Collection Settings 240
Tracking a New Organic Search Engine 240
Tracking Coupons and Discounts (E-commerce) 241
Tracking Social Media 241
Part IV The Reports 243
Chapter 15 Analyzing Visitors 245
Visitors Overview 246
Visitors 247
Visitor Segmentation 249
Technical Profile 250
Benchmarking 251
What’s Collected and Why It’s Needed 252
How Accurate Is Benchmarking? 253
Enabling Benchmarking on Your Site 253
Map Overlay 255
New vs. Returning 257
Languages 258
Visitor Trending 259
Visits 260
Absolute Unique Visitors 260
Page Views 265
Average Page Views 266
Time on Site 268
Bounce Rate 269
Visitor Loyalty 271
Loyalty 271
Recency 272
Length of Visit 273
Depth of Visit 274
Browser Capabilities 275
Browser 276
Operating System 278
Browser and Operating System 279
Screen Colors 280
Screen Resolution 280
Flash Version 281
Java Support 282
Network Properties 284
Network Location 285
Hostnames 286
Connection Speeds 287
User Defined 288
Adding a Variable 289
What to Segment 290
Chapter 16 Traffic Sources 293
What Traffic Analysis Can Tell You 293
Traffic Sources Overview 294
Direct Traffic 296
Referring Sites 297
Search Engines 299
All Traffic Sources 300
AdWords 303
AdWords Campaigns 304
Keyword Positions 308
TV Campaigns 310
Keywords 311
Campaigns 314
Source 317
Medium 317
Ad Versions 318
A/B Testing 319
URL Builder 320
Chapter 17 Content Overview 323
Determining the Value of Web-Site Content 324
Content Overview 324
Navigation Analysis 325
Landing Page Optimization 329
Click Patterns 330
Additional Content Reports 331
Top Content 331
Content by Title 333
Content Drilldown 334
Top Landing Pages 335
Top Exit Pages 337
Site Overlay 338
And One More… 340
Chapter 18 Site Search 341
Configuring Your Profile(s) 341
What If I’m Not Using Google Site Search? 343
What If I’m Not Using Any Search Tool? 344
Site Search Overview (Metrics) 345
Site Search Reports 347
The Usage Report 347
The Search Terms Report 348
Start Pages and Destination Pages Reports 350
The Categories Report 351
The Trending Report 351
The Philosophy of Site Search 352
Why Are People Searching on My Web Site in the First Place? 354
Chapter 19 Event Tracking 357
Why Bother with Event Tracking? 357
Implementing Event Tracking 358
The Event Tracking Module 359
Implicit Count: What It Is and What You Need to Know 360
Does Event Tracking Affect Bounce Rate? 361
Are There Any Limitations on What I Can Track? 361
Tracking File Downloads as Events 362
Can Events Be Tracked as Goals? 363
Event Tracking Reports 363
The Event Tracking Overview Report 363
The Event Tracking Categories Report 364
The Event Tracking Actions Report 365
The Event Tracking Labels Report 366
The Event Tracking Trending Report 367
The Event Tracking Hostnames Report 367
Using Events in Advanced Segments 369
Chapter 20 E-Commerce Tracking 371
Ecommerce Overview 372
Total Revenue 373
Conversion Rate 375
Average Order Value 376
Product Performance 377
Product Overview 379
Product SKUs 380
Categories 382
Transactions 383
Visits to Purchase 385
Days to Purchase 386
Appendix A Where To Go from Here 389
Google Resources 389
Navigating Google Help Files 390
Conversion University 391
Searching Help Files 391
Google Analytics Forums 392
Google Analytics Blogs 392
Index 395