As noted in the Conversion University overview, obtaining and reviewing data can help businesses and organizations gain valuable information from their consumers (Conversion University, 2010). This information can help us determine if our site is designed in such a way that visitors actually come to the site, how long they stay there, what they look at while they are they and how they interact with our site pages.
This week we began using Google Analytics on our blogs (i.e., Getting your arms around social media). As with much of the search engine information I have experienced so far, I found the assignment to once again be challenging. I think the biggest challenge, and the one that affects me the most, is the use of very technical terminology in the directions/instructions on how to use/set up Google Analytics tools in your profile. The information as it is presented is not done in “easy to understand” terms, unless you are someone who works with this type of data on a regular basis. Even when going to the “help” section, I didn’t get my questions answered.
So, after some help from the professor, I was finally able to get a link into the code to get the tracking set up. Once that was done, I returned to the tool to start adding some parameters/goals as part of the tracking process. Because our blogs are fairly simple, the number of pages and opportunities to actually set up parameters for information is slim. One of the areas I that I would like to get more information about is which links/articles the visitors go to when visiting the site. From the report, it doesn't appear that this information is included; it only reports the pageviews and is not specific to which pages are viewed. I think this information will help to see what information they are viewing and how long visitors spend on certain topics.
Additionally, I would also be interested in knowing which links users click on when reading through the articles. This will help me determine if people are finding the links useful when reading through the material.
I think determining what you want to track and how to set it up through the analytical tool is fairly complicated. When I edited my profile, I came to the area where it asks “track site search.” I thought that I probably should add that as part of my profile, but once I clicked “yes,” I was asked to set query parameters. Unfortunately, I had no idea what that meant, and the help section was of no help, so I decided that I guess I wouldn’t/couldn’t track the site. But when reading the report from the blog, it appears that information is already in the content information. It is not clear to me what the goals are and why/how to set those up.
For me, trying to grasp the technical terms/information has been the biggest challenge in setting up the Google Analytics tool. This again goes back to the fact that I am a novice at looking at/using this information and the information is not presented for a novice. But, I’ll continue plugging along, hoping that a light bulb will eventually go off in my head!
References:
Google (2010). Google.com. Retrieved February 7, 2010, from http://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics (2010). Conversion University. Retrieved February 7, 2010, from http://services.google.com/analytics/breeze/en/ga_intro/index.html
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