Google Analytics Breakthrough

From Zero to Business Impact

Feras Alhlou, Shiraz Asif, Eric Fettman

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781119144014
• eBook ISBN: 9781119231691
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

A complete, start-to-finish guide to Google Analytics instrumentation and reporting

Google Analytics Breakthrough is a much-needed comprehensive resource for the world's most widely adopted analytics tool. Designed to provide a complete, best-practices foundation in measurement strategy, implementation, reporting, and optimization, this book systematically demystifies the broad range of Google Analytics features and configurations. Throughout the end-to-end learning experience, you'll sharpen your core competencies, discover hidden functionality, learn to avoid common pitfalls, and develop next-generation tracking and analysis strategies so you can understand what is helping or hindering your digital performance and begin driving more success.

Google Analytics Breakthrough offers practical instruction and expert perspectives on the full range of implementation and reporting skills:

• Learn how to campaign-tag inbound links to uncover the email, social, PPC, and banner/remarketing traffic hiding as other traffic sources and to confidently measure the ROI of each marketing channel
• Add event tracking to capture the many important user interactions that Google Analytics does not record by default, such as video plays, PDF downloads, scrolling, and AJAX updates
• Master Google Tag Manager for greater flexibility and process control in implementation
• Set up goals and Enhanced Ecommerce tracking to measure performance against organizational KPIs and configure conversion funnels to isolate drop-off
• Create audience segments that map to your audience constituencies, amplify trends, and help identify optimization opportunities
• Populate custom dimensions that reflect your organization, your content, and your visitors so Google Analytics can speak your language
• Gain a more complete view of customer behavior with mobile app and cross-device tracking
• Incorporate related tools and techniques: third-party data visualization, CRM integration for long-term value and lead qualification, marketing automation, phone conversion tracking, usability, and A/B testing
• Improve data storytelling and foster analytics adoption in the enterprise

Millions of organizations have installed Google Analytics, including an estimated 67 percent of Fortune 500 companies, but deficiencies plague most implementations, and inadequate reporting practices continue to hinder meaningful analysis. By following the strategies and techniques in Google Analytics Breakthrough, you can address the gaps in your own still set, transcend the common limitations, and begin using Google Analytics for real competitive advantage.

Critical contributions from industry luminaries such as Brian Clifton, Tim Ash, Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, and Jim Sterne – and a foreword by Avinash Kaushik – enhance the learning experience and empower you to drive consistent, real-world improvement through analytics.

1
Introduction

Why This Book?

Many very useful Google Analytics (GA) resources are readily accessible online: Google Analytics Academy, the Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager Solutions Guides, and a broad range of GA-focused blogs, e-books, and tutorials—including those that we produce ourselves—that steadily enrich the conversation and provide real value for learning. Why, then, did we go the extra step and take on the significant task to write a Google Analytics book? Much more importantly, why should you invest your time and energy to read it?

Consolidated Resource for Learning Effectiveness With millions of GA installations worldwide, the fact remains that only a small percentage of organizations are using GA to anywhere near its full power.

We’ve worked with hundreds of clients, from start-ups to the Fortune 25, and we’ve seen the ongoing struggle of marketers to achieve a complete GA implementation for their websites and mobile apps, master the specialized reporting capabilities, optimize their channel attribution, integrate GA data with other data sources, and move from data to insight to performance improvement. The objective of this book is to provide a consolidated and focused learning experience that guides you from potential confusion and frustration to solid understanding and confident action, starting with the core nuts-and-bolts competencies and building to more advanced and future-facing strategies and techniques.

Not the Encyclopedia of Google Analytics While comprehensive in scope, this book is not designed as a full reference of every GA feature—the Google help articles are there to serve this purpose. Furthermore, much of the GA reporting functionality becomes intuitive as soon as you begin navigating through the reports, so it would not be the best use of space or time to explain what’s easy and obvious.

A Focus on What’s Difficult and Most Important To contrast with the previous point, the book does thoroughly cover the fundamentals of measurement strategy, implementation, and reporting, and goes on to focus on the topics that normally present the most challenges and/or typically generate the greatest insight and actionability. We have also endeavored to call out potential sticking points, gotchas, and pitfalls along the way, and especially to warn you where real danger lurks.

Framework for Conversion Optimization, Marketing ROI, and Competitive Advantage The book is conceived, above all, to help you improve your own key performance indicators (KPIs), such as Ecommerce transactions, lead submissions, or content engagement. With detailed discussions about conversion tracking, including goal and Enhanced Ecommerce funnels, you’ll learn how to identify the website or mobile app elements that are helping or hurting your conversion success.

It’s not enough, however, to track conversion rates. You must have clean traffic attribution to understand where your success and return on investment (ROI) are coming from, so we devote in-depth discussions to attribution reporting—campaign tracking in particular—and go beyond last-click attribution to identify which traffic sources are providing conversion support prior to the session in which the goal completion or Ecommerce transaction occurs.

When you begin to understand what really is and is not working, analytics has become your long-term competitive advantage. And the time to gain that understanding is in periods of stability; emergency analytics ramp-ups do not usually solve mysteries or relieve crises.

Contributions from Industry Luminaries and Leading Analytics and Optimization Practitioners We sought out input from world-recognized experts, members of the GA team itself, and practitioners who are doing amazing things in analytics and optimization each day. Their contributions add immeasurably to the learning experience and provide a range and depth of insight and technique that are rarely found within a single resource.

Graphical Format Since the book is not an encyclopedia, it’s not written or designed like one. The many annotated screen shots, color diagrams, and special callouts are included to make the discussions more approachable and, overall, to provide a more interesting and impactful learning experience.

Technical Deep Dives The previous paragraph notwithstanding, we do not shy away from the technical details where they are needed. Following the advice of Albert Einstein, we’ve aimed to make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. Whether for the event tracking through the Google Tag Manager data layer, the formula for Google page value calculation, or the coding required for Enhanced Ecommerce, we go deep into the concepts and procedures that you need for successful implementation and advanced skill in reporting and analysis.

User Focus, Qualitative Inputs, and Testing Taking a broader perspective on optimization, we learn techniques for designing and evaluating for user experience, including survey tools, A/B testing, and their integrations into GA.

Specialized Techniques and Advanced Integrations As the chapters progress, the book discusses many specialized techniques, such as remarketing audience configuration and phone tracking setup, and introduces advanced integrations with CRM, data extraction and visualization tools, and marketing automation.

Your Role as Communicator and Change Agent Analysis tends to have little organizational impact without clear and effective communication. Throughout the book, we offer insights on streamlined presentation of Google Analytics reporting to clients and internal stakeholders as well as communication and collaboration between the marketing and IT departments for implementation initiatives.

Key Takeaways and Actions Each chapter concludes with “Key Takeaways” and “Actions and Exercises,” so you can review the main points of the chapter and immediately try out the techniques and begin planning broader, longer-term objectives.

Foundation for Ongoing Learning and Achievement Google is on a fast-paced innovation path. With no doubt, Google Analytics will introduce new capabilities between the time we finished writing and publication date, but the concepts, techniques, and best practices will still be very applicable and will empower you to continue exploring, learning, and taking advantage of the tool’s new capabilities. Additionally, the implementation and reporting checklists available and the resource recommendations maintained at http://www.e-nor.com/gabook will help keep you up to date.

Even very experienced GA users constantly refine their existing techniques and learn new approaches. This book is designed to build the foundation from which your own analytics skills can evolve and deepen with each measurement challenge and each feature update.

The Benefits of Analytics and Optimization We’ve seen first-hand the remarkable improvements that Google Analytics can generate, but these are possible only with a sound implementation, the right reporting know-how, and a long-term commitment to optimization of user experience, marketing ROI, and conversion performance. The book is designed to provide the technical building blocks and inspire the initiative and dedication necessary for ongoing improvement.

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is written with the premise that within an organization, Google Analytics should be “owned” by Marketing or a dedicated Analytics/Business Intelligence team rather than by IT. That said, IT support is critical, as many of the Google Analytics implementation steps require close developer involvement.

Thus, while many of the discussions are intended primarily for a marketer or analyst, many others are geared more toward the technical team, or toward the marketer or analyst who needs to understand how data gets into GA and articulate code-level implementation requirements to the technical team. To facilitate this communication, even the more technical discussions are broken down into manageable, understandable steps and concepts.

Product managers, designers, user experience (UX) specialists, content writers, and individuals in various roles at advertising and design agencies can also use this book to learn how GA and the optimization mind-set can help them gain data-driven insights and improve their results.

If you’re approaching GA from a data science or broader business intelligence role, the later chapters on data integration and visualization should be particularly relevant.

The book can also serve as an introduction to GA capabilities for managers and executives. With the callouts, guest contributions, illustrations, and key takeaways throughout, the book can provide a good overview of GA, even if the more detailed and technical discussions are skipped.

Regardless of your role, if you’re new to GA or have been using GA for some time but have yet to attain the level of proficiency that you want and need, the book can, in fact, provide the blueprint for your own GA breakthrough, taking you beyond the default gaps and usage toward mastery and real effectiveness. If you’re already fairly adept with GA, the book will provide a solid review of best practices and surely many new tips and perspectives.

As a related note, the book was not written with the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ) in mind, but if you read the book and apply the learning, you should be well equipped to take and pass the exam.

Chapter Summary

Chapter 2: Google Analytics Reporting Overview Before our discussion of measurement strategy and GA implementation in the following chapters, this chapter provides an overview of the Audience and Behavior reports as well as a thorough walk-through of the functionalities that wil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author(s)
• About the Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Google Analytics Reporting Overview: User Characteristics and Behavior
• 3 Measurement Strategy
• 4 Account Creation and Tracking Code Installation
• 5 Google Tag Manager Concepts
• 6 Events, Virtual Pageviews, Social Actions, and Errors
• 7 Acquisition Reports
• 8 Goal and Ecommerce Tracking
• 9 View Settings, View Filters, and Access Rights
• 10 Segments
• 11 Dashboards, Custom Reports, and Intelligence Alerts
• 12 Implementation Customizations
• 13 Mobile App Measurement
• 14 Google Analytics Integrations— The Power of Together
• 15 Integrating Google Analytics with CRM Data
• 16 Advanced Reporting and Visualization with Third-Party Tools
• 17 Data Import and Measurement Protocol
• 18 Analytics 360
• Appendix A: Broadening Your Optimization Program
• Appendix B: Resources
• Index
• EULA