In addition to guest posting on the UpCity blog, Grow Law Firm is featured as one of the Top Digital Marketing Agencies in the United States. Check out their profile!
Do you want to use Google Analytics (GA) to analyze your data but struggle with it? With our Google Analytics tips, you’ll be able to track how much traffic comes to your website more effectively and obtain insights that will help you improve your content strategy and online marketing efforts.
What is Google Analytics? It’s a service that monitors your website traffic and other online statistics in real time. With this information, you can make informed decisions about what to do with your business to increase revenue, conversion rate, time on site, etc.
Keep in mind that there are currently two different versions of Google Analytics you can use for data analysis—Universal Analytics (UA) and Google Analytics 4 (GA4). From their interface alone, you will know which one you are working with. This post will focus on data analysis with Universal Analytics, the simple and widely used version.
Setting up Goals and Goal Values
One of the most important Google Analytics tips is setting goals. Goals are specific actions you want valuable customers to take on your site, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. The monetary value of a completed conversion or goal to your organization is either a goal value, conversion value, or business value.
It is important to set them up and track them accordingly because only a small number of your website visitors take active steps. The conversion funnel accurately depicts the steps, creating an excellent way to define your goals. The funnel follows the Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action—AIDA—structure.
Types of Goals on Google Analytics
Before moving on to the next section of goal setting, we will briefly discuss primary and secondary goals.
-
The primary goals of a business are referred to as macro goals. They represent major actions that visitors take, such as making a purchase or scheduling a consultation with a lawyer, and so on.
-
Your website’s secondary goals are called micro goals. They are smaller conversions that help achieve the macro goal, such as downloading a brochure, watching the preview of a webinar, or requesting more information.
How to Set up a Goal on Google Analytics
Fortunately, creating goals in Google Analytics is a breeze. Simply sign in to your Google Analytics account if you already have one, or sign up if you are a new user. After that:
1. Go to your desired view after clicking Admin.
2. Select Goals from the VIEW column.
3. Click on the red ‘+ NEW GOAL’ button or ‘Import from Gallery’ to create a new goal.
4. Give your Goal a name like—‘Place an Order.’ Then, choose how you want your goal to be tracked.
5. Fill out your goal details, add the URL, include the Value and Funnel if you want, and click Save. Your goal is ready to be tracked.
Ways to Track Your Goals on Google Analytics
There are 4 ways of tracking your goals on Google Analytics:
-
Destination: You can use this goal to track when users visit a specific page, such as the thank you or confirmation page. Every time a user visits that page, it counts as a conversion toward your goal.
-
Duration: This goal is used to monitor how many visitors stay on your web page for a specified period of time.
-
Pages/Screen per session: Counts conversions based on how many pages visitors view before leaving your site.
-
Event: This is based on specific user interactions that you’ve previously set as Events on your site. These interactions include watching a video, downloading a file, clicking a button, and so on.
Google Analytics Annotations
Google Analytics Annotations is a feature that allows you to make notes in your Google Analytics account. This is useful for leaving reminders for yourself or others using your account. For example, you could annotate a traffic spike to inform yourself that it was due to a promotion you ran. Annotations are visible to anyone who has access to your Google Analytics account.
More Examples of What to Annotate
-
Website problems.
-
Website changes, which may include adding a new website or making modifications.
-
Offline advertising reaching a large audience.
-
Seasonal events like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Black Friday, etc.
-
New marketing campaigns.
-
Competitor’s activities.
How to Create Annotations on Google Analytics
The are two main ways to create Google Analytics Annotations—the Reporting and Admin Interfaces. The Reporting Interface and Admin Interface are web-based interfaces allowing users to access Google Analytics reports and configure settings.
The Reporting Interface is the main interface you can use to generate reports and view data. The web analytics tool provides detailed information about their website traffic, including pageviews, unique visitors, and conversion optimization rates (CRO).
The Admin Interface is an interface that is used to manage users, permissions, and other account settings. It allows you to manage and view your website data in more detail.
Creating Annotations Through Reporting Interface
1. Go to your Google Analytics reporting screen.
2. Click the small arrow in the upper left corner and then the ‘+create new annotation’ button in the upper right corner.
3. On the next screen, you should do the following:
-
Choose a date for the annotation (it is impossible to add future dates).
-
Insert a note (up to 160 characters, including spaces).
-
Choose the annotation’s visibility (shared or private). If you choose shared, others will be able to view your annotations.
-
Click the ‘Save’ button to save the annotation.
Creating Annotations Through Admin Interface
1. Go to the admin interface, scroll down, and click ‘Annotations.’
2. On the next screen, click the new annotation link.
3. Fill in all the information for your annotation as stated in Report Interface above.
Many individuals prefer using Admin Interface because, unlike the Reporting Interface, you can add future dates.
Google Analytics Events
You can use the information obtained to improve your website optimization, content, and user experience. You can track events, see which actions are most popular, which pages are most visited, and how users flow through your site. This can be extremely valuable in understanding the most popular content, what users struggle with, and where they drop off.
You could make an Event for ‘video views.’ for example, if you created a video for your website and want to see whether people are watching this video. Once you have created the event, you can then start tracking to see the number of views on your video.
Event Tracking Reports on Google Analytics
There are 4 event tracking reports on GA.
1. Overview
The report summarizes the events that have been monitored on your website. You can see the Total Events, Unique Events, Event Value, Average Value, Session with Events, and Events/Session with Events.
2. Top Events
Through the ‘Top Events,’ you can determine the most popular events, and the number of times the event happened is measured in terms of total events. And if you set an event value, the report shows you each event’s total and average value.
3. Pages
You can determine the pages of your website on which the most events were recorded on Google Analytics by using the ‘Pages’ option.
4. Event Flow
You can view the order in which visitors triggered events on your website using the ‘Event Flow.’ The report helps you comprehend the events that keep users engaged.
Google Analytics Segments
Segments allow you to break down your data and view it differently, which can help identify patterns and trends. This can be extremely valuable for making informed decisions about your content, marketing, and product strategy.
For example, if the visitors who mostly subscribe to your master class pricing page are from the Northeast U.S. Knowing this could help you tailor messages or content that benefit your data analysis for that particular region.
You can also use Segments to compare different groups of people, such as those who converted and those who didn’t. This can help you identify factors influencing conversion rates and make changes accordingly.
Scope of Google Analytics Segments
On Google Analytics:
1. Segments are based on the dimensions of your data (e.g., country, device, content).
2. Segments are based on the metrics of your data (e.g., bounce rate, conversion rate).
For instance,
-
User type matches “Returning User.”
-
Country/territory matches “Chicago.”
-
eCommerce bounce rate > “72.8%.”
Hear From Industry Experts
Read the latest tips, research, best practices, and insights from our community of expert B2B service providers.
Types of Segments
Overall, using segments can help you better understand your data and how different groups of people interact with your website.
Segments on Google Analytics are divided into 3 data targets.
1. Session: A visitor’s behavior within a single session, such as the goals users completed during a session or the revenue they generated. For example, users who have previously used your legal services, users who purchased your ebook, and so on.
2. User: It provides detailed information on user behavior over all sessions for the selected date range, which can span up to 93 days. For example, sessions got from Campaign B or sessions where users subscribe to a service.
3. Hits: During a session, interactions are referred to as hits. For example, all hits where visitors sign up to your newsletter, in which revenue was greater than $100.
Segments on Google Analytics
Segments come in 2 types, default and custom. The default user segment for each report will be ‘All Users,’ which includes all website visitors within a specific period.
What if You Want to View Your Default Google Analytics Segments?
Since you already have Google Analytics segments waiting for you, you just need to follow these steps to view them.
1. Open Google Analytics, look through your Audience Overview, and click ‘+ Add Segment’ on the top middle of your reporting screen.
2. Once the segments are opened, you will see ‘VIEW SEGMENTS.’ Under that, you have:
-
All
-
System
-
Custom
-
Shared
-
Starred
-
Selected
3. ‘System’ should be selected. There, you’ll find a plethora of pre-built segments from Google Analytics.
Improve Your Insights With Google Analytics Advanced Segments
While the default segments come in handy, the Custom Segments contain the most insightful data. In Google Analytics, you can add custom segments to any report, and you can use up to 4 at the same time.
How to Create Custom Segments on Google Analytics
1. Go to the Admin page on Google Analytics.
2. Select ‘+ Add Segment.’
3. Select ‘+ NEW SEGMENT.’
4. Name the segment.
5. Configure the filters you want for your segment using the options in the various categories. You have 5 types of segments to choose from, including
-
Demographics allows you to choose the age range, gender, language, and location you wish to segment.
-
Technology shows you the operating system, browser, screen resolution, device, and mobile used by visitors.
-
Behavior, create user categories based on how frequently they visit and take action.
-
Date of First Visit classifies your users by their first visit to your site.
-
Traffic Sources, utilize the campaign and source to categorize your users based on how they found you.
6. Once you’ve configured the filters, you can preview and test the segment.
7. Click Save to finish building the segment and apply it to your Google Analytics reports once you are sure it contains all the required information.
If you want the raw data view of your Google Analytics Segments, you can leave out filters.
8 Key Segmentation for Google Analytics You Can Use
1. Segmentation using the type of visitor—new or returning visitors.
2. Segmentation using the source of traffic—mobile traffic, referral traffic, or direct traffic.
3. Segmentation using the content viewed—product landing page or academy page.
4. Segmentation using the geographical location—USA, FRN, CHI, UK.
5. Segmentation using the type of landing page.
6. Segmentation using the actions taken—purchased the hard copy of your book ‘How to Lawyer Up.’
7. Segmentation using the platform—tablet and PC, mobile and tablets, or Google.
8. Segmentation using the attribution model.
Campaign Tracking
To properly understand a marketing campaign’s effectiveness, it is essential to do data analysis afterward. By monitoring data, marketers can see which methods are working and which ones are not.
How Can You Track Google Analytics Campaigns?
We recommend using the Google URL builder to monitor the links you need to keep track of. You can use the Campaign URL builder to track each marketing campaign separately in Google Analytics. You can only tell what’s working, and what’s not, if you track your digital campaigns separately. This is especially important for your PPC ads and campaign tracking audit.
Parameters
You can gather data about the general effectiveness of your ad campaigns and learn where they are most successful by adding campaign parameters to the destination URLs you use.
The Google Analytics URL Builder is a tool that allows you to add 5 parameters to your URLs so you can track your campaigns in Google Analytics.
1. utm_source: Identify the advertiser, site, publication, or other entity sending traffic to your property, such as Google, Newsletter, or a brochure.
2. utm_medium: A marketing or advertising medium, such as CPC, banner, or email newsletter.
3. utm_campaign: A product’s specific campaign name, slogan, bonus, and so on.
4. utm_term: Discover paid search terms. If you’re manually tagging paid keyword campaigns, you should specify the keyword with utm_term.
5. utm_content: This parameter distinguishes between similar content or links within the same ad. For example, suppose you have two buttons on your page, one for call and the other for email. In that case, you can use utm_content to assign different values to each to determine which is more effective.
Real-Time Tracking on Google Analytics Reports
Real-time monitoring on your website or app enables you to keep an eye on activity as it happens. You can see, for instance, which pages users are interacting with and what goal conversions have taken place. Each hit is reported within seconds of it happening, and the reports are updated continuously.
To view real-time data on Google Analytics,
-
Go to your preferred view;
-
Open reports;
-
Select Real-Time.
How to Use Google Analytics Real-Time Reports
Here are a few examples of how you might use Real-Time:
-
Keep track of goal completion as you test out website optimization
-
Observe the effects of a newsletter, blog post, or tweet on traffic
-
Make sure your website or application’s tracking code is up and running
-
Monitor how many people visit the new and updated content on your website
Automating Google Analytics Reporting
You can quickly identify trends and patterns by automatically generating a report in Google Analytics. Additionally, you can spot anomalies and track changes over time when you automate reports.
There are several ways to automate Google Analytics reporting. One option is to use Google Analytics dashboards like Google Data Studio. Another option is to use the Google Analytics API.
Whichever method you choose, automating your Google Analytics reporting can save you time and help you obtain insights from your data more quickly and easily.
Google Analytics Spreadsheets Add-on for Automation
The Google Analytics spreadsheet add-on combines the strength of the Google Analytics API with the strength of Google Spreadsheets’ data manipulation capabilities. This tool allows you to:
-
Measure and display customized calculated metrics
-
Create visual representations and embed them on third-party websites
-
Plan your reports to run and update automatically
-
Query and report data from various outlooks
How to Integrate Google Analytics With Google Sheets Add-on
1. Start a new Google Sheet or open an existing one.
2. Select ‘Add-ons > Get Add-ons’ from the menu bar.
3. Locate and select the Google Analytics Add-on from the add-ons gallery.
4. To add this add-on to your spreadsheet, go to the add-on description page and click the ‘+’icon in the top right corner.
5. A dialog box should appear asking for your permission to access your Google Analytics data. Click the ‘Accept’ button.
6. The Add-ons menu will have a ‘Google Analytics’ submenu after successful installation.
A Couple of Words on Shortcuts
You can quickly and easily get the information you need by taking advantage of the various shortcuts available. This can save you time and make your data analysis on Google Analytics much more efficient.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Google Analytics shortcuts feature functions like normal commands such as ‘ctrl + c to copy’ or ‘ctrl + p to paste.’ And just like those commands, it is very easy for Google Analytics users to memorize keyboard shortcuts. Press ‘?’ on your keyboard to see a list of all available keyboard shortcuts on Google Analytics. The following will appear:
Application Keyboard Shortcuts
a: Launch the account picker
m: Open and close the left-hand navigation screen
s or /: Open the search bar in Google Analytics for reports
Date Range Shortcuts
d t = today
d y = yesterday
d w = o a week ago
d 7 = the last 7 days
d 3 0 = the last 30 days
d c: Apply the last-period comparison to the date range
d x: Apply the year-ago comparison to the date range
Report Shortcuts
The Report Shortcut provides quick access to commonly used reports, such as the Audience Overview or the Acquisition Report. Click Shortcut after viewing any report to add it to the Shortcuts section.
It’s useful, especially when using filters and segments, which are also commonly used shortcuts. So, rather than creating this filter each time, you just create it once, click Shortcut, name it— e.g., CPC report, and then click OK.
When you want to access that report, you can do so with a single click, saving you time from having to create that filter again and again.
Conclusion
Although Google Analytics setup makes it a powerful tool for data analysis, it can take time to interpret the data correctly. Numerous factors, such as incorrect tracking code implementation and website optimization, can contribute to inaccuracies.
You can do a few key things to implement Google Analytics data analysis. First, make sure you have access to all the information you need for data analysis. Second, use tools like Google Analytics filters and segments to break down all the data and make it more manageable.
Finally, if you need help analyzing your data even after following the Google Analytics tips above, remember you can hire a professional digital marketing agency. A professional digital marketing agency, such as Grow Law Firm, can help you analyze your website behavior to ensure that your data is accurate.