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Nov
06
2007
5 Great Google Analytics Tips
Written by Steve Burge   
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Google AnalyticsAs a follow-up from my last post which pointed about Brian Clark's quote about reading more books, I'd love to highlight a great eBook I read over the weekend.

At the last JoomlaSouthEast meeting, Brent from 3by400 showed me a great Google Analytics book called simply "Google Analytics Short Cut". Wow, does it pack a lot of useful information into a $10 PDF. 9780596514969_cat

The book certainly isn't an introduction to GA. Its pretty technical at times and won't help beginners, but for people already familiar with GA its full of great information. I've reproduced some of the best tips here.

1) Put the GA Code in the Site Footer

Do this for the simple reason that if the GA code is slow in loading, your site will still resolve. Lots of Joomla GA mambots place the code in the head - avoid this.

2) Double Counting Page Views

If our homepage was alledia.com/index.html, GA would count two page views: alledia.com and alledia.com/index.html. Avoid this by setting index.html as your default page inside Profile Settings >> Main Website Profile Information.

3) Tracking Clicks on Images and Buttons

You can use GA to track how often people click on an image or button. Simply add urchinTracker() to the onClick event of that elementGA will then record a page view for image.jpg.

4) GA Filters Understands Regions

If you want to track how visitors from a certain region are behaving, you can create a custom filter for "Visitor Region" and place "New York" or "California" in the "Filter Pattern" field.

5) Get Around the Four Goal Limit

It is possible to track multiple conversion activities in a single goal. For example, both these pages might be conversion pages:

  • http://www.alledia.com/blog/outbound/rss/google
  • http://www.alledia.com/blog/outbound/rss/rss
GA Goals allow regular expressions so we cover both URLs by using /rss/(google|rss)$. Both URLs match the regular expression and would count toward the goal tally. To drill down into the data and differentiate which URL generated more goals, use the Goal Verification report.

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Note: Once you change data in GA it can't be changed back. Run all changes on a test profile first.

 

Comments  

 
#1 David Towers 2007-11-06 09:24
Thank you for these tips! (2) is one I'll do straight away - thanks Steve.
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#2 ulas 2007-11-07 02:10
analitics and the other google services are becoming more intresting day by day.

i'm learning a new think everyday. your tips are one of them.

Thanks for the tips :-)
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#3 Ferdy Korpershoek 2007-11-09 07:30
Thanks for the tips!! They helped me!!
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#4 Anne Hennegar 2007-11-09 14:32
Thanks for the pointer to the Short Cuts as it looks great. As a FYI, some public libraries have online subscriptions which include O'Reilly's Safari. My county does which is very nice. You may not get all the permissions/features of a corporate user, but it is still a great resource.
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#5 David Towers 2008-01-18 11:05
Another great tip is installing this javascript just above the analytics code, which automatically tracks downloads of pdfs/mp3s/etc on the webpage without needing to installing the on-click event for every link:

http://www.iqcontent.com/blog/2006/11/tracking-document-downloads-in-google-analytics

Extremely useful on bigger sites! I installed it on a clients site today :-)
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#6 Max Burgstaller 2008-02-07 14:06
I do not know, but you, and I will listen to you. 8)
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#7 David Towers 2008-02-11 04:42
I think tracking downloads in Google Analytics is really important. So important in fact that I posted a JavaScript which makes tracking downloads with the tracking code automatic. I hope this will be really useful for sites where tracking downloads and clicks to external links is important:

www.goodwebpractices.com/roi/track-downloads-in-google-analytics-automatically.html
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#8 Max Burgstaller 2008-02-12 04:38
Many thanks for the reply. I am convinced that the tracking downloads important. At the time, I hope that my side occasionally by Alledia or Alledia specialists will be reviewed and I appropriate measures for a better search on the site beltec.aero can take. The topic of search engines is for me to be very difficult to understand. (The age ..)
Cordial greetings
Maxburg
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#9 Space Zone 2008-07-20 10:38
"GA Goals allow regular expressions "
that's new to hear it will be useful really cause some affiliate links I got and need to track them
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#10 Shruti 2009-03-28 01:04
Thanks. The great tips. I am just searching out how to install google analytics code with Joomla. The tip to include it in footer is useful.
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