Geek Week: Google Analytics

Okay, so last week I was all about web dev software and server tricks. Once you have great tools, that makes it a lot easier to do what you want to do. This week, I’m going to be talking about general cool stuff, with a focus on analytics and analytics tools.

First of all, what ARE analytics, and why should you care?
Analytics are nothing new – it’s becoming a buzz word because it’s become increasingly possible to track data online – something that’s very relevant to anyone online with a website who wants to attract visitors/customers/whatever.

You’re already using analytics.
Say what? You heard me. With the new tracking feature, you can see and analyze data about your visitors. It’s likely that you see data and you go, “man, it would be great if I could affect that data,”

The simplest form of analytics data is hit tracking. Hits are the number of visits you receive to a website. More sophisticated tracking methods only count unique hits (by using a cookie) and allow you the option of not tracking yourself (which can radically skew results if left unchecked).

Beyond hit tracking, why should you care about analytics? Because it’s kind of a big deal. Things that are kind of a big deal mean that if you understand them and can use them effectively, you can make money. I’m always about providing you guys with real-life money making opportunities since I know that making comics for a living is a statistical improbability for most of us.

It’s kind of a big deal because, as I said before, it allows people to collect lots of interesting data about visitors. While all of this data is interesting, the value is in how you apply and interpret it. I’m not going to get into that too much, but if you’re interested, definitely explore the subject.

What I am going to get into is Goals. With a capital G.

Analytics and Goals
So, I use google analytics, and I know a few of you also use analytics. A lot of you also don’t know what the frack to do with it now that you have it, but it’s free, and you got it installed, so that’s something.

Two of the coolest functions of google analytics is the ability to set goals and track campaigns. Let’s talk about tracking goals and figuring out what a good goal is.

1. What is a goal?
A goal is a hoped for achievable, trackable result. We call these results conversions, because historically, the goal has been to convert a visitor into a customer. Tracking this conversion is seeing the exact moment in which a visitor purchases something and telling our analytics software to make a note of all the visitors to get to the conversion page – typically a “thanks for buying our crap” page. These pages, while courteous, serve a much more important purpose: they are benchmarks for tracking goals and conversions.

2. We aren’t selling anything, so what’s a good goal?
Good goals for sites on SJ are as follows:
a. voting thank you pages – track how many people vote for your comic. which incentives are most effective, where people abandon the process (leave without fulfilling the goal), etc.
b. Paypal donations. Where are people coming in to donate from? What pages prompt a donation?
c. Hits! Comics are all about popularity – track where people are coming from, why they stay and use web developer tools to find out why they leave – is it your content, your template, your user interface, what?

To set complex goals like these that answer the questions above, you need to use funnels in google analytics. Funnels are powerful tools that track a users trip through specific pages – pages intended to guide them through a specific process towards a conversion. You probably already have pages like these without even realizing it.

Campaigns
What’s a campaign? A campaign is any type of outside advertising you do for your site. This includes link exchanges, advertising your comic on this forum, paid banner ads on any sites, and anywhere other than your comic site where you link to your comic.

Why is this powerful as all holy get out?
You can track exactly where people are coming to your comic from – see what’s most effective, what’s least effective and focus your money/energy on the appropriate form of advertising.

Whew! I think that wraps it up for this week. But wait, if you’re a mac user, check out some free alternatives to popular mac apps:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/free-alternatives-to-popular-commercial-mac-applications/

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