Week 11 - Weebly Conversion Tracking

Hey Everyone !

This blog is going to be going over my weekly account and tracking of google analytics. As you all know in one of my previous blogs I linked google analytics to my Weebly account (Fordmuscle.weebly.com). Specifically I up a goal for the site that I want to go over.

The goal I set up in Google Analytics was to track how many times I get an email submission. Specifically when visitor sends an email from my comments page, they get redirected to a thank you page. Analytics is tracking that too. 

Before I set the goal up, I had to set up my thank you page. So the thank you page was simple to set up, you just create a new page and you can name it whatever you would like, I named mine thank you. Then I spent a few minutes making it look presentable with a nice photo that has "Thank You" going across it. Next, I had to change the settings of the thank you page. I made the page so that it was not accessible from clicking one of the pages at the top of the website. To do this I had to select the "Hide in Navigation" button. 

Next, I had to set up the goal in Google Analytics. After logging in, select the admin link at the top of the page. Now on the page you will see three sections. Account, Property, and View. First under property make sure that you select the website that you want to create a goal for. So for me, I selected Ford Muscle as that is what I named my website name in Google Analytics. Now you will want to go over to the view sections and you will see Goals three words down, you will want to click this. 

When you click goals it will be blank if you have yet to create a goal for your website. Go ahead and click new goal. Google will then give you the option to create a custom goal or go off of a template. It doesn't really matter which one you do for this goal conversion. For mine I selected the custom option. Next it asks for a name, so I named mine "Thank You". Then under the type you will want to select the destination option. Lastly it will ask you for the destination web page URL. For this you will want to go to your thank you page from your website and see what the URL is. You will want to copt just the ending of the URL. For example just select /thankyou.html. Finally, hit save and your goal is now set up.

Currently for mine I was able to get one conversion since setting the goal up a few days ago. This is what it will look like in your Google Analytics account.

Goal tracking is important if you want to evaluate the performance of a specific part of your website. If you have any questions leave them in the comments below and I will help you set up a similar goal. Also if you have not already, check out Fordmuscle.weebly.com and let me know what you think.

 -STURCO

Week 10 - Weebly Website

Recently I created a website at weekly.com for a project in my class. The purpose of the project is for analytical reasons as well as good tips and suggestions for websites. If you want to check out my website it is fordmuscle.weebly.com, featuring the automotive company Ford and their creations.
This blog will be covering how to link Google Analytics to a Weebly account.

Before I linked google analytics to my website I wanted to cover some of the basic areas.
First in the website creation it is important to have a clever and catchy home page. It needs to be inviting to the users. Next, I created a page for users to comment, share, or ask questions. A tip that was given was to redirect a user to a thank you page after submitting the form. Also I had created a simple page on the Ford Mustang. After messing around with the website I finally felt that it was time to link it to Google Analytics.

The linkage between the website and Google Analytics is fairly easy. First you have to go into Google Analytics Admin page. From there you will go and create a new property. When creating a new property to track Google will have you fill out some information regarding the website it is going to be tracking. After filling out the information Google will give you a tracking number and code.

You will want to copy the tracking code and go back to your weekly website. Once logged into the weekly account you will want to select "edit site". At the top of the page you will see multiple links, "Build, Design, Pages, Store, Settings", you will want to select Settings. You will then be redirected to the settings page where there will be a few options on the right hand sidebar. You will want to click on SEO. Then you will see an area for header and footer. You will want to past the Google Analytics code into either one of these sections. Entering this code into the header or footer section will then add the code to every page the website has. Now the bridge between Google Analytics and Weebly has been created.

You can go into the Google Analytics account and see the daily activity the website is experiencing, set up goals, and even see where your views are coming from. I hope this helps if you are looking to link Google Analytics to your weekly account. If you have any questions please ask and don't forget to checkout my website! Fordmuscle.weebly.com
-STURCO

Week 7 - Casa marketing Chapter 4 & Google Analytics

This blog post will focus on Chapter 4: Reviewing Performance of Campaigns from Casa Marketing Intro to Google Analytics and my personal experience adding Google Analytics to my blogger account.

First thing, make a Google Analytics account - http://www.google.com/analytics/ 
After doing this you will need to either add the codes into your website or if you are also using blogger it is simple to add it in. For blogger you will need to go into the settings portion of blogger and select "Other". At the bottom of a page there is a section that allows you to add the tracking ID the Google Analytics provides you with.

After applying Google Analytics to your website or blog, give it a few days to populate some data. Once a few days go by, log into your Google Analytics account and you will be able to see all the data. At first it will look overwhelming and confusing but only track a few metrics initially. When starting you will want to go to "Behavior" and select "Overview".

 

In here you can see the typical data sets like page views, unique page views, average time on page, bounce rate, and exit rate. The most important thing you will want to remember is the time frame setting located at the top right corner. Always select the appropriate time frame that you want to view.

      

Another quick tip would be to create a dashboard to just overlook all the main things you want to monitor. What I find interesting is that you can watch where your visitors are coming from a geographical stand point. 

 

From personal experience, just mess around with your settings to get a feel for Google Analytics. Hope everything works out for everyone. 

-STURCO