Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

After our recent post covering ways that some of our Grants recipients are using analytics, we'd like to walk through the basics of Google Analytics: how to implement it and how to make the most of it as a non-profit, so that you can take advantage of the program and make sure your campaigns are as effective as possible.

This post is the first in a multi-part series that explains how to install Google Analytics and run meaningful reports as a non-profit. We have also created a Google Analytics Guide specifically for Google Grants recipients which can be downloaded for future reference.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free hosted web-analytics service that enables website owners to better understand and respond to visitor behavior while generating a higher ROI on marketing and advertising initiatives. ROI can measure many things, including donations, volunteer recruitment, newsletter downloads, website traffic, and so on.

It works by using a first-party cookie and a snippet of JavaScript code to collect information about your website traffic and track your advertising campaign data.

Anyone can sign up for a free Google Analytics account by visiting the analytics homepage or Google's Webmaster Central page. As a Google Grant recipient, it's even easier to access via your Google Grants AdWords account, as an "Analytics" tab automatically appears in your AdWords interface to get you started.

How do I install Google Analytics with my Google Grants account?

1. Login to your AdWords account and select the "Analytics" tab. You'll be asked to fill out basic information and agree to the Terms of Service.


2. Insert the Google Analytics tracking-code snippet into your website code -- the most important step. Every Analytics user is given a unique piece of JavaScript to insert in all of their website's pages immediately before the tag. The snippet looks like this:

SAMPLE CODE


Your "UA-#######-#" number will be unique to you. It's important to insert the code on all of your site's pages, or Analytics won't work properly.

You don't have to insert it immediately, though; you can continue through the signup process until you get to the administrative page. The administrative page automatically detects whether you've installed the code, and if you haven't yet, it'll let you know by showing you the message below when you visit the Analytics tab in your AdWords account.

You can retrieve your code snippet at any time; we'll explain how next. (Detailed instructions for this step can be found in the Google Grants Analytics Guide on page 14.)

3. The most important part of the administrative page is the "Website Profiles" box.

If you've signed up for the first time, you probably only have one website profile. The components of the profile are the 'Name', which is whatever you named it during sign up, and 'Reports', which you can view by following the 'View Reports' link.

You can also edit your settings and check the status of your tracking code. The 'Check Status' link is where you can get your code snippet again if you haven't finished installing it. Your administrative page will tell you when installation is complete.

It's important to note, however, that it takes anywhere from a few hours to a full day after you install your code for your reports to start showing information.

You'll now start receiving reports in your account with a wealth of valuable information about your website.

If you'd like to have a step-by-step guide on hand for the process, feel free to download a copy of our Google Grants Analytics Guide for reference. You can also skip ahead by visiting the Analytics Help Center for information about the tool and its capabilities.

Next time we'll review setting up goals for your account. Goals are different for non-profits than for traditional businesses, so we'll share some metrics to represent success in this industry and how to set up corresponding goals.

In a recent webinar, we found out that there are a growing number of grantees and non-profits using Google Analytics to make the most of their AdWords accounts.

This is great news! It means that more of you are able to see what works best for your particular organization's website and what changes you can make to your marketing initiatives to further your org's mission.

Something we also discovered in this webinar was that there are a couple of questions common to a majority of Analytics users. So, to get everyone on the same page, we wanted to share those questions and their answers.


How do I link my AdWords account to my Analytics account?

If you already have an analytics account, just follow these steps to link your AdWords account to your Analytics account.

1. Log in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com
2. Click the Analytics tab
3. In the "Steps to get Google Analytics" box, click "I already have a Google Analytics account" (at the bottom of the page)
4. From the Existing Google Analytics Account drop-down list, select your Analytics account number which will start with UA-_________
5. Click "Link Account"

Why are numbers in Google Analytics and AdWords sometimes different?

There are a variety of reasons why numbers in your AdWords reports might look different than your numbers in Analytics. The two most common reasons for this discrepancy are the difference between the terms you're comparing and the filters active in your AdWords account.

First, make sure that you're comparing equivalent items. Google AdWords tracks clicks, while Google Analytics tracks visits. If a user clicks on your ad twice in half an hour without closing his or her browser, this will be registered by Analytics as one visit to your site, even if the user left your site and then returned shortly after. In AdWords, this would be registered as two clicks.

Also, AdWords automatically filters certain clicks from your reports, while Analytics will report on the resulting visits to your website. If someone is repeatedly clicking on your ads, AdWords considers this click spam and doesn’t show it in reports or charge you for the clicks, but Analytics will show these visits in your reports.

If you want to know more about the differences between how data is shown in AdWords vs Analytics, check out this article for details.

We hope you found these answers helpful for managing your own analytics account and we encourage you to bring up similarly vexing questions with the members in the Google Grants Help Group.

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

With Google Analytics you can customize and view reports about your account. You can pull these reports manually or have them e-mailed to you at intervals you specify.

If you've been following this series and seen how Google Analytics can help you gauge your website's performance, you may be wondering how to organize all the information you get.

Scheduling reports allows you to receive regular updates on the data that matters most to your organization. If you'd like a step-by-step guide on hand for the setup process, feel free to download a copy of our Google Grants Scheduled Report Guide for reference. This guide also helps you set up scheduled reports to answer the specific questions in your quarterly analytics survey, if you are required to do so as a participant in our Additional Services program.

Scheduling a report
To view a report, login to Analytics and choose data to view from the choices on the toolbar. You can customize the date range for the data by clicking on the date in the top-right corner of your view and choosing dates from the drop-down box.


Once you've specified dates for your data, click the "Email" button above the data to have that report emailed to you as a PDF, CSV (for Excel), XML or TSV file.

From this screen, you can set scheduled reports to be sent to you on a daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly basis by choosing the "Schedule" tab.

To schedule reports:

1. From the Schedule tab in the Set Up Email screen, enter the email addresses that should receive this report. Check the box next to "Send to me" if you'd like the report sent to the email address on the account.
2. In the Subject field, enter a subject that will get your attention when it arrives in your Inbox, such as "Monthly traffic report from Google Analytics."
   
3. In the Description field, describe the report's content for easy reference—for example, "Monthly traffic to Donations page."
4. Choose the file format that works best for you. A PDF looks like the report screen in Google Analytics; a CSV is a spreadsheet you can manipulate.
   
5. Choose the schedule on which you'd like your reports: daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
   
6. Check the box next to "Include date comparison" if you'd like to see this month's data compared to another month's.

You can then add additional reports by choosing the "Add to Existing" tab the next time you choose to e-mail a report.


If you want to change your scheduled reports later, just click Email from the Settings menu on the left navigation bar and change, add or delete reports.


That's all for our series about Google Analytics for now. If there are other components of Analytics you'd like to have us explain in more detail on the blog, let us know what you'd be interested in and we'll put together a walk-through for all the Google Grants Analytics users to read right here on the blog. We're excited to see the use of Google Analytics data grow among non-profits and Google Grant recipients. To learn more about the program's benefits:

• discuss it with your peers in the Google Grants Help Group
• review the Scheduled Reports and Analytics guides
• visit the Analytics Help Center
  
• subscribe to the Google Analytics Blog

Happy tracking!

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

I think Analytics is a great tool for all advertisers, not just those with shopping carts or e-commerce, and as non-profits there are ways you can make analytics work for you and your organization.

But what is analytics? Analytics is a service that helps you understand the way visitors interact with your website by tracking traffic as it comes into your site, moves through your content and eventually exits to other pages. Analytics can help you understand and respond to visitor behavior while generating a higher ROI on marketing and advertising initiatives.

Some of our savvy Google Grant recipients are using analytics right now and they've given us some insight into ways that analytics can be used specifically for non-profits.

Objectives
From what I've seen, organizations in our program have one or more of three main objectives for their site:

1. Raise awareness
   
2. Increase donations
   and/or
   
3. Generate interest/participation

Goals
To measure these goals, grant recipients have developed some creative metrics and methods for tracking success through analytics.

The most common metrics used to track awareness are new user registration, info-sheet downloads and page-specific site traffic (like initiatives or About Us pages).

Among organizations raising donations through online transactions, tracking "Thank You" pages for both donations and purchases is the key measurement metric.

Of the organizations whose goals are to generate interest around their cause and increase participation in cause-specific activities, event and activity sign-ups are effective metrics, as are service and information requests and online volunteer sign-ups.

Measurement
Setting up goals in analytics is the key to getting insight into the important activity on your site. Once you've set up tracking for your goals, you'll be able to see how your goals are performing and where you need to make changes to improve performance.

We'll cover measurement as well as installation, goal setting and reporting in our upcoming blog series, "Analytics Demystified", so stay tuned!

If you'd like to get a head start, you can download our Analytics Guide and start a discussion in the Google Grants Help Group.

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

If you've already set up Google Analytics for your Google Grants account, you're ready to set goals and track the performance of your campaigns. If not, you can go through the setup steps in part 1 of this series to get up to speed.

A crucial part of using Google Analytics is to determine and set goals that can track the impact of your marketing efforts. While tracking traffic to your site is useful and eye-opening, setting goals lets you monitor the most crucial initiatives of your organization and make changes to improve their performance. You'll also get insight into your site's design and how you can improve it to suit your visitors' needs.

A first step in choosing goals for your Google Grants account is to think about what you're trying to achieve with your website. If your goal is for visitors to sign up for your newsletter or donate to your organization, you should set up corresponding goals in Google Analytics so that you can track the changes around these efforts.

As we discussed in a previous post, non-profits use analytics in interesting ways and track metrics that are unique to the non-profit market. Some goals that we often see non-profits track are:

• Volunteer sign-ups
• Newsletter sign-ups
• Research or report downloads
• Donations
• Information inquiries
  

Once you've determined your goals, set them up! A step-by-step guide for this process can be found in our Google Grants Analytics Guide (pg. 19).

To set up goals:

1. Login to your AdWords account and select the Analytics tab
   
2. Click the Edit link under Settings next to the profile for which you want to create a goal
3. Under "Conversion Goals and Funnel," select one of the four goal slots available for that profile, and click Edit
   
   
4. In the Goal URL field, type the web address that marks a successful goal completion when reached. This address can be the "Thank you" page that donors see after they've charged a donation or a confirmation page that visitors see once they've signed up for your newsletter.
   
5. In the Goal name field, name the goal as you want it to appear in your Goal and Funnel reports. The name should be one you will easily recognize, such as "Newsletter Sign-Up" or "Donation."
   
6. Turn on the goal by selecting the "On" radio button
7. Define your funnel path. The funnel path is the path of pages that visitors click through on the way toward the goal you've set. If you're tracking donations, for instance, enter the series of pages visitors would visit before donating; this path could include the URLs for your homepage, your donation page, the shopping cart page, and your goal page
   
8. Configure your settings by choosing "Case Sensitive," if your URLs are case-sensitive, and setting Goal Values if you've assigned dollar values to your goals. More details about this step are on pages 23 and 45 of the Google Grants Analytics Guide.

If you have any trouble, consult the guide's section on creating goals and funnels (pg. 15) or refer to the Analytics Help Center section on Goals and Funnels.

Next time we'll explain how data is divided in Google Analytics and how you can view this data in reports to better understand and improve your account's performance. Once your account is up and running, you'll get a wealth of valuable insights!

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

Reports are the meat of Google Analytics. This is where the data about your site's performance lives and where you can see changes to and improve your ad campaigns and even your website.

You can access your site's reports by logging into AdWords and clicking on the Analytics tab.

To ensure the accuracy of your reports you should set up your analytics account to filter out internal IP addresses. This way traffic generated by people in your office as they work with your website isn't counted toward the total traffic and interactions on your site. Follow these quick steps to make your reports to filter your internal IP addresses and make your reports more meaningful.

Google Analytics data is divided into four main categories: Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content and Goals.

Visitor data shows you the traits of different visitor segments and examines the factors that comprise visit quality. You can see how long visitors were on your site, where they came from and where they went when they left.


Traffic Source data outlines the different sources that send traffic to your site: which sites and search engines refer traffic to your site, which keywords drive traffic to your site, and how your AdWords and other online ad campaigns are performing.

Content data shows you how well the content on your site is performing and which pages are most responsible for driving pageviews. As a good rule of thumb, check for pages with a high bounce rates and consider redesigning them for relevance: this is where your traffic tends to leave to seek information on other sites.

The Goals section shows you how well your site is performing against the goals you set. Goals don't have to be e-commerce-related and, in the non-profit world, might include:

• newsletter downloads
• mailing-list subscriptions
• petition sign-ups
• donations
• volunteer opportunities
• requests for information

Take some time to get familiar with your data. We suggest playing around by trying to find answers to a question you may have about your site: Where in the world does traffic come from? Which site refers the most traffic to your site? How many visitors come from your ad campaigns? If you have questions while exploring reports, you can always refer to the Reports Central section of the Google Analytics Help Center, or post a question to the Analytics Help Group or our Google Grants Help Group.

Next time we'll go through setting up scheduled reports for your account. Scheduled reports, which automatically send your pre-made reports to your inbox at intervals you specify, help you monitor your goals' performance. Then you won't have to build reports every time you visit Google Analytics and you'll get a regular reminder to check in on the performance of your accounts.