{"id":9284,"date":"2011-01-31T21:24:34","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T13:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hongkiat.com\/blog\/?p=9284"},"modified":"2021-07-29T18:45:44","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T10:45:44","slug":"google-analytics-why-you-probably-dont-need-the-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hongkiat.com\/blog\/google-analytics-why-you-probably-dont-need-the-rest\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Powerful Google Analytics Features"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google Analytics<\/a> is much more robust than most people give it credit for. Contrary to popular belief, it can do most of the things more advanced analytics suites can do, except Google does it for free.<\/p>\n

Many web designers and developers complain about the limitations of Google Analytics. At first glance, it doesn\u2019t seem as powerful as some of the other web analytics suites out there because it doesn\u2019t let you track outbound links or see data in real-time. So, developers flock to premium products like Clicky and Mint, but those services can be expensive, especially if your web project isn\u2019t generating any income yet. Also, while they fix some of the limitations inherent in Google Analytics, they lack some of the Google-only tie-in features, such as Adwords and Adsense tracking.<\/p>\n

For those of you who don\u2019t know, Google Analytics is a web statistics service that allows you to see how many people visit your site, what pages they go to, and where they are coming from. It\u2019s a free service, and it works by sticking a piece of Javascript in your HTML code that loads when someone visits your page.<\/p>\n

But, that only scratches the surface: it also allows you to create specific campaigns, goals, funnels, and reports that build actionable data sets and provides key insight into otherwise nebulous data. Most people have analytics set up, but a lot of them fail to dig into the data and miss golden opportunities to optimize their site. Every time you change the copy, structure, or design of your website, your web analytics suite will tell you what you should change (and whether you should make any changes in the first place). By using the advanced features in Google Analytics, not only will you obliterate most of the reasons for paying for another analytics service, but you will understand your audience and your website in ways that your competitors on the web often won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Here are six advanced features you can use to power up Google Analytics and turbocharge data-driven decisions:<\/p>\n

1. Figure Out Where Your Audience is Going By Tracking Outbound Links <\/h2>\n

Even if your bounce rate is low, it is still key to understand where your visitors are going when they exit your page. By understanding the outbound link behavior of your users, you can optimize your website for conversion and your brand messaging for strategically maximum effect. This is true for two reasons.<\/p>\n

First, many web business models rely on driving traffic to a page that is located on a different domain. A good example of this is affiliate programs where you have to drive traffic to a landing page to make money. If you track the behavior of that outbound link, you\u2019ll know which domains convert the best. Paired with an 80-20 work ethic, you can then focus all of your marketing efforts on those media channels, and reserve your newfound free time to test out new ideas, perform freelance work, or take a nap.<\/p>\n

Second, by tracking outbound links, you\u2019ll know which spots on your page convert the best, and then you can plan according to which links you want to put in that prime position. For instance, you might want to remove a low-value link and replace it with a link to your best content, or to an outside blogger who has helped you significantly. If you find that none of your inbound or outbound links are converting well, you can easily pair up Google Analytics with Google Website Optimizer to do some split testing.<\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019ve convinced you to track outbound links, here\u2019s a crash course in how to do it. If you\u2019re using a custom-made CMS or web app, the best way to do it is to stick the following code into the <head><\/code> portion of your page:<\/p>\n

\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n\tfunction recordOutboundLink(link, category, action) {\r\n\t\ttry {\r\n\t\t\tvar myTracker=_gat._getTrackerByName();\r\n\t\t\t_gaq.push(['myTracker._trackEvent', ' + category + ', ' + action + ']);\r\n\t\t\tsetTimeout('document.location = \"' + link.href + '\"', 100)\r\n\t\t}catch(err){}\r\n\t}\r\n<\/script> \r\n<\/pre>\n
This will delay links from loading by a fraction of a second, giving Analytics time to record the click before the user leaves the page. Thankfully, the delay is so small that it won\u2019t affect the user experience, so you need not worry. Then, you can track any link you want by adding the following onClick function to the links you want to track:<\/p>\n
\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.example.com\" onClick=\"recordOutboundLink(this, 'Outbound Links', 'example.com'); return false;\">\r\n<\/pre>\n
There are two parameters in recordOutboundLink<\/code> that you might want to change to further customize your report. The second parameter, which has the value of Outbound Links<\/code> in the example above, refers to the folders that will be used to organize your data when you view it in Google Analytics. Renaming Outbound Links is a good first start, but it isn\u2019t descriptive enough to properly segment all of the data you\u2019re going to collect. A better way might be to classify outbound links by type: either \u201cblog,\u201d \u201clanding page,\u201d or \u201csocial media.\u201d Or, you can do it by the position on the page: \u201ctop,\u201d \u201csidebar,\u201d or \u201cbottom.\u201d The third parameter in the list is the individual identifier of the page. The truncated domain is a perfectly sane value for this, but you could also rename it to something more memorable if you would like, such as \u201cHongkiat\u201d or \u201cFacebook.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outbound link tracking is even easier to implement if you\u2019re using a popular CMS or web framework. If you\u2019re using WordPress, you can track links automatically with the Slimstat Analytics<\/a> plugin. On Rails, you can bake this into your models with the Google Analytics Gem<\/a>.<\/p>\n
2. Get Real Time Statistics (Kind of)<\/h2>\n
One of the main reasons why people use something other than Google Analytics is because they want built-in real time statistics. And they\u2019re right when they complain about how Google Analytics can\u2019t do that. But you can use a simple trick to get almost up-to-the-minute statistics<\/strong> without shelling out cash for a premium service. Google updates your statistics on an hourly basis. To get that data, all you need to do is click on the date selector calendar in your Analytics report, and select the current date as the end date. Of course, this data isn\u2019t completely up-to-date, but up to the hour is likely to close enough to take fast and intelligent action when your content goes viral.<\/p>\n
\"real<\/figure>\n
Normally, when you click on the date drop-down, you\u2019ll notice that the blue bar indicating the selected date only goes up to yesterday. To get it to show real-time data, select the first date in your preferred range, and then click the latest date that isn\u2019t grayed out. And voila! You have almost real-time tracking.<\/p>\n
3. Track Social Media Buttons<\/h2>\n
Social media is a powerful way to drive traffic to your site. Most bloggers encourage their readers to share their content via Facebook and Twitter \u2013 and when their users actually do so, it can be enough to bring in tens of thousands of new readers, subscribers, and consumers. We all want to go viral on social media. Therefore, it makes sense to track which users click on the buttons so we can focus our attention on the users that will reliably make our content go viral<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
When I launched Auric, my newest blog, I wanted to make sure that social media was incorporated as a key part of the experience. That meant tracking social media actions in the same way that I tracked page views so that I could view all of the information in the same report (and hopefully affect both with the same action). If you use the Facebook OpenGraph API to incorporate the ubiquitous \u201cLike\u201d buttons into your content, it\u2019s incredibly easy to track the users who click on it. First, though, if you aren\u2019t already familiar with embedding Facebook buttons on your site with the Javascript API, you\u2019ll want to read up on it over at the Facebook Developers<\/a> site.<\/p>\n
In a nutshell, you\u2019re going to merely add an onClick function to your FBML code that allows the event tracking engine in Google Analytics to fire up when people click on the button. Here\u2019s what the modified code will look like:<\/p>\n
\r\n<fb:like onclick=\"javascript: _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', 'example.com\/facebook']);\" href=\"http:\/\/www.example.com\/\"><\/fb:like>\r\n<\/pre>\n
When a user clicks on the Facebook button, Google Analytics will track it as a pageview, allowing it to show up in your reports in much the same way that a blog post or landing page would. Here, _trackPageview<\/code> has one parameter that specifies how the click will appear in your reports. I recommend customizing each of the buttons on your site by including something like the blog post ID, the permalink, or a URL-escaped title (like advanced-google-analytics<\/code>), followed by \/facebook<\/code> on the end. Then, you can see how each individual button is performing, and also easily aggregate the data together by searching for all instances of \/facebook<\/code> in your Google Analytics reports.<\/p>\n
You can use this technique to hack together event tracking for almost any clickable element on your page. For instance, it\u2019s simple to implement this on Twitter\u2019s official retweet button. All you have to do is call _trackPageview<\/code> asynchronously, and you\u2019re good. Here\u2019s how I would do it:<\/p>\n
\r\n<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/share\" class=\"twitter-share-button\" data-count=\"vertical\" onclick=\"javascript: _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', 'THENAMEOFYOURPAGE\/twitter']);\">Tweet<\/a>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\"><\/script>\r\n<\/pre>\n
Just like in the Facebook example above, you can edit the sole _trackPageview<\/code> parameter to customize how retweets appear in Analytics. I generally set my tracking identifiers to end in \/twitter<\/code>, but you can make it whatever you want.<\/p>\n
4. Create Custom Campaign URLs to Track the Effectiveness of Link Building Campaigns<\/h2>\n
While tracking how many users interact with your social media buttons will give you a level of insight significantly higher than most other sites on the web, it won\u2019t automatically tell you how effective social media buttons are at getting new users to visit your site (a la viral media). Of course, with a few modifications, you can easily change that. Google Analytics allows you to set up custom campaign URLs that automatically categorize and track the users who come in via those paths. To do it, all you need to do is add some parameters after the URL in the standard ?variable=value<\/code> format. Here\u2019s the variables you can use:<\/p>\n