Two Great Google Analytics Solutions for Blogs

There's more to +Google Analytics than visits and pageviews. There's so much more that it can be overwhelming, especially if you're new to it.

But, earlier this week, Google released a suite of Analytics Solutions that take you straight to the "good stuff" to help you understand the data from your blog faster than ever.

Bloggers on any platform can use these new tools — all you need is Google Analytics installed on your blog. It helps if you've used it enough to know your way around the interface, but you don't need to be an Analytics champion to put these new tools to work.

(If you've never used Google Analytics before, check out the official Getting Started Guide, then come back here when you're done.)

You can browse the full collection of Analytics Solutions in the new Gallery. There are lots of them, and they're designed for many different purposes. So, I've gone through them all to find two great, easy-to-use solutions for bloggers. Let's check them out!

Custom Report: (not provided) Analysis

If you get a lot of traffic from Google searches, you probably see (not provided) up near the top of your "Keywords" list on your Traffic Sources Overview screen in Analytics.

The (not provided) "keyword" means that your visitor was logged into Google when they made the search that brought them to you. This is a privacy measure. As a Google user, I appreciate it. But, as a blogger, it's frustrating, because it makes it harder to determine what search terms brought readers to my blog.

The (not provided) Analysis report doesn't reveal the search terms of your logged-in Googlers, but it does reveal what page those visitors landed on. This can give you a pretty good idea of what your readers were looking for when they found you.

This custom report sets itself up for you with just a few clicks. To use it, go to the solutions gallery and set the first dropdown menu to "Custom Report", then look for "(not provided) Analysis" below.

Click the "download" link under "(not provided) Analysis", and you'll go to a sign-in screen for Google Analytics. Once you've signed in, you'll be prompted to select a profile if you have more than one website tracked in your account. If you just have one, it will take you straight to that site's profile.

As soon as the report is installed, you'll see the report screen. Here you can see the top landing pages for your (not provided) searches, along with other stats like visit percentage, bounce rate, and time on site. From this information, you can make an educated guess about what all those (not provided) visitors were seeking!

To get to the report the next time you log in, click "Customization" in the banner at the top of the page and you'll see your custom reports in the left sidebar.

Advanced Segments: Engaged Traffic

Advanced segments let you focus on very specific types of traffic. I'm going to show you how to install and use the "Engaged Traffic" advanced segment so you can get a feel for what they can do for you. There are many more advanced segments in the Gallery, and you can get a complete explanation of how to use them in the Google Analytics documentation.

The "Engaged Traffic" advanced segment helps you learn more about the readers who enjoy your site the most — in analytics terms, the readers that view more than 3 pages on your blog and stay for more than 3 minutes. Using this advanced segment, you can find out where in the world they're coming from, what pages they read, what brought them to your blog, and much more. If you have AdSense associated with your Google Analytics account, you can also see how much AdSense revenue readers in this group brought you.

To add the "Engaged Traffic" segment to your blog, set the first dropdown menu in the solutions gallery to "Advanced Segment", then click the "download" link under "Engaged Traffic".

On the next screen, choose the profile to apply the segment too (if you have more than one profile), and rename the segment if you like. It defaults to "Really Engaged Traffic", which works for me!

After you've decided on the name, press the "Create" button. On the next screen, you'll see that the parameters for the advanced segment have already been filled in. The "Page Depth" of 3 means that it will show visits with 3 or more pageviews. The "Visit Duration" of 180 means that it will show visits over 3 minutes (click the image to enlarge).

Press the "Save Segment" button at the bottom of the page to add the segment to your account.

Using Your Advanced Segment

Once you've set up your advanced segment, you can apply it to any Google Analytics report by clicking "Advanced Segments" near in the top navigation and clicking the checkbox next to your advanced segment (click to enlarge the screenshot).

If I wanted to find out which pages of my blog the Really Engaged Readers liked best, I'd go to the Content > Overview report and activate the "Really Engaged Readers" segment. The top ten pages my most engaged readers visited will show up at the bottom of the page. It's interesting to compare the favorite pages of engaged visitors with the pages that are popular with the average visitor — sometimes they're just about the same, but they can be surprisingly different.

Your most engaged visitors are often your biggest fans, so use the information you gather here to plan new content that makes them smile!

Keep Experimenting!

Now that you've been introduced to Google Analytics Solutions, you're ready to experiment. Take a little time to browse through the gallery and try out a new solution. Feel free to experiment and try different solutions, even if you're just curious about what they do. You can't hurt your blog or your data by trying out different solutions, so don't hold back!

Etsy Analytics: Further Reading

Congratulations, you've reached the end of the Etsy Analytics series! Miss any of the steps along the way? Here's the complete series:

• Part One: Getting Started with Etsy Analytics
• Part Two: Using Shop Stats
• Part Three: Using Campaign Tags
• Part Four: Putting it All Together

Want to read this series offline instead? This entire series is available in free ebook format via Readlists! Read it on your Kindle, your iPad/iPod/iPhone, or e-reader.

After all that, you're ready to measure your shop traffic like an entry-level boss. But, there's a whole lot more to learn about analytics! Let me set you up with some more resources for getting the most out of Google Analytics and Etsy Shop Stats.

Google Analytics

• You can't go wrong learning from the source. Check out Google Analytics' deep knowledge base for answers to your analytics questions.
• If your top incoming keyword is "Not Provided", check out How To Steal Some 'Not Provided' Data Back From Google, from Econsultancy.com. This is a tutorial that shows you how to set up a filter to change how "not provided" visits show up in your analytics dashboard.
• Etsy Success: Web Analytics Tips from the Etsy blog. Solid analytics tips, specific for Etsy shops.

Etsy Shop Stats

• Etsy Shop Stats at Handmadeology. A quick rundown on how to use Shop Stats for Etsy strategizing.
• Shop Stats Beta Team Any Etsy seller can join this group to preview new Shop Stats features and provide feedback on them before they go "live".

Analytics in General

If all this data-gathering and stats talk made you realize you're intrigued by analytics in general, do check out:

• Avinash Kaushik's blog. This blog helps you hone your analytics though process. Start with the Beginner's Guide to Web Data Analysis, and then read...well, everything else on the blog. The author also has a very pleasant twitter presence; he tweets about analytics, but also frequently posts through-provoking and entertaining links on other subjects.
• Justin Cutroni's blog. This guy is an analytics wizard. If you want to dig deeply into using and understanding Google Analytics, this dude is your guide.

Etsy Analytics: Putting it All Together

If you've been following along with this tutorial series, you've added Google Analytics to your Etsy account, taken a tour of Etsy Shop Stats, and set up campaign tags for your social media and advertising links. Nice job! You've laid the foundation for some serious data crunching!

Today we're going to talk about using your Google Analytics and Shop Stats data together to get a clear picture of what is (and isn't) bringing customers to your Etsy shop, and what your customers do when they get there.

First, one quick, important thing about using Google Analytics and Etsy Shop Stats together:

Don't Get Hung Up on Pageviews

Your pageview and visitor counts will be different in Shop Stats and Google Analytics. This is not a sign that anything's wrong; the two services measure visits in different ways.

They also handle your visits to your own shop differently. Etsy's Shop Stats automatically filters out your logged-in visits to your shop. If you visit your shop when you're not logged in, Shop Stats will record your visit.

Google Analytics will record all of your visits, logged in or not. You can filter yourself out by IP address if you have a static IP address, however if you have a dynamic IP address, IP filtering won't work.

These discrepancies alone aren't the only reason to relax about pageviews. Pageviews are not quite as important to a shop as they are to a blog or website that relies on pageviews to sell advertising. What matters in your shop is not how many people visit, but how many buy. When you're developing your promotional strategies, you need to make sure you're focusing on bringing in shoppers, not just visitors. That's where analytics can help!

What Shop Stats Can Show You

Visitor Reactions

Shop Stats gives you a personal, almost emotional, view of how your visitors interact with your shop. It literally shows you their "hearts"!

Shop Stats tells you which of your items get favorited or added to treasuries, which can help you identify which of your products to promote more heavily. Patterns in favoriting or treasury-ing can also give you an idea of which of your photos are your best.

Study your most popular products and compare them critically with your least popular — you may discover things you can change to boost the attractiveness of your more neglected products by comparing them with your most popular.

Sales Data

Only Shop Stats can tell you exactly what has sold in your shop; Google Analytics can't access this information. This information alone is useful, since it can help you identify your best sales seasons and give you a general idea of what shop promotions increase sales. When it's used in concert with data from Google Analytics, though, it becomes priceless. You can match sales data with your Google Analytics traffic to determine with certainty which campaigns, links, and promotions brought in the most sales.

What Google Analytics Can Show You

Repeat Visits

Often, your customers won't buy on their first visit to a shop. In Google Analytics, you can find out how many of your visitors have been to your shop before, and if you're using campaign tags, you can find out which campaign sent them, even after their first visit.

To view your repeat visitors, go to Audience > Behavior > New vs Returning. You'll see a summary of your total visits broken down into new visitors and returning visitors.

To see which of your visitors came in through one of your promotional campaigns, use the "Secondary Dimension" dropdown menu to select Traffic Sources > Campaign.

The page will refresh with an updated breakdown, showing you new visitors, returning visitors that came from non-campaign sources, as well as new and returning visitors referred by your individual campaigns.

This information is useful because it helps you measure the long-range value of social media links and advertising. It can be discouraging to tweet your heart out about your shop, then feel like you tweeted in vain when you don't get any sales that day. If you've campaign tagged your tweets, and match that info up with your Shop Stats, you may realize that a tweet from weeks ago caught the attention of a customer who came back today to buy!

Visitor Regions

When you sell online, it's important to know where in the world your visitors come from. For this example, let's say you ship all over North America, but don't ship outside of the continent.

Using Google Analytics and campaign tagging, you may discover that some of your campaigns are receiving a lot of attention in Europe. With this information, you might decide to expand your shipping area, which could be a great opportunity to increase sales! If it's not possible to add new delivery regions, this info can help you make changes to to your promotional campaign to ensure that you're reaching an audience within your shipping area. This might mean adjusting your tweeting schedule to better suit the right time zone. Or, you may realize that you need to advertise on different blogs if the blogs you advertise on now are skewing outside of your shipping area.

Stats for More Shop Pages

Shop Stats lumps all of your non-product pages into a general category of "Your Shop". Google Analytics can show you how many of your visitors looked at your shop's feedback, your circles, your favorites, your shop policies, etc.

This is good to know because you may discover that your shoppers are missing out on important information by skipping the shop policies page or your profile page. With this data, you can go from saying "It seems like nobody ever reads my policy page!" to "I know nobody ever reads my policy page, so I'm going to put this important info in my shop announcement/convo confirmations/product descriptions". This might help you head off customer service convos before they happen, and make it easier to close sales!

The Next Step

You've learned a lot about using the analytics tools available for your Etsy shop! Next, let me put a big long reading list in your hands to help you put the information you'll gather to good work.

Read Part Five: Further Reading

Want to read this series offline instead? This entire series is available in free ebook format via Readlists! Read it on your Kindle, your iPad/iPod/iPhone, or e-reader.

Etsy Analytics: Using Campaign Tags

So, you've set up Google Analytics for your Etsy store, toured Etsy's Shop Stats, and had a few days to look around at all the features. By now you're probably wondering how we're going to use all these tools to increase your Etsy sales! Today we're going to talk about using campaign tags to track the value of your social media links and online advertising. Identifying the best campaigns will not only save you time (and advertising cash!), it will help you concentrate your promotional efforts on the audiences most likely to buy.

What Are Campaign Tags?

You've probably seen campaign tags in action before. Ever click on a link in an email from your favorite shop and see a bunch of extra letters in the address bar? Like this:

http://www.codeitpretty.com/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spring

Everything after the codeitpretty.com in that link is a campaign tag component. Campaign tags make it easy to determine which of your links brought the most shoppers to your Etsy store.

When Should I Use Campaign Tags?

Campaign tags are handy any time you want to track the response to a link or group of related links. Let's use a hypothetical shop campaign as an example. Pretend you sell organic cloth diapers, and you want to promote a 15% off special on all your bamboo diapers through the month of July. We'll call that your july_special campaign. You're going to promote that special on your blog, on Twitter, on Facebook, in your email newsletter, and on a banner ad on another blog.

Phew! That's a lot of links.

Use campaign tags and you can track response to those links at a glance in Google Analytics.

Preparing Campaign Links

Google makes it super easy to create campaign links. Just go to the URL Builder and fill in the blanks. Exactly what to put in those blanks takes a little planning, and we'll do that now!

Let's build the first link for your july_special campaign. Let's say that you've planned four separate promotional posts for your blog during the month of the sale, with each post highlighting a diaper in one of four different colors. Here's how you'd set up a campaign link promoting your baby blue diapers:

There are 5 campaign fields you can fill in, but only 3 are required (source, medium, and name). We've filled out this form with my_blog as the Campaign Source (since you'll be using this link on your own blog), blog as the Campaign Medium, baby_blues as the Campaign Content since the link promotes baby blue diapers, and july_special as the Campaign Name. We've skipped Campaign Term because it's designed for use with keyword advertising, and doesn't apply here.

To make more links from your blog, just change the Campaign Content field to reflect the content of each of your promotional posts, for example, pink_diapers, yellow_diapers, green_diapers.

You'll use the same campaign name for each of your promotional channels to keep the campaign organized, but the source, medium, and content will change based on the context of the links. For another example, let's set up the link for your paid banner ad on another blog:

This time we've changed a few things: the link goes to the bamboo diaper section in your Etsy shop, instead of a specific diaper. We've changed the source to "paid_blog_name" (in real life, use the blog's real name!). We've changed medium to "banner", since it's a banner ad. We've changed content to "bamboo_overview" since the ad shows an overview of your bamboo diaper section. The campaign name stays the same since it's still part of your july_special campaign.

By the way, you don't need to set up campaign links for your Adwords advertisements when you use Adwords' auto-tagging feature, which Google strongly recommends for Adwords.

Using this pattern, you can create tagged links for all of your promotional channels so you can determine which gets the biggest response.

A Quick Note on Using Campaign Tags on Pinterest (Updated 7/16/12)

Pinterest has recently started removing campaign tags from Pins, so campaign tags no longer work for Pinterest. Bummer, I know!

The use of most campaign links is self-explanatory; you just create the link and use it in your post, tweet, or ad. But with Pinterest, you have to create the campaign URL, visit that URL, and then create a pin from that URL. An extra step, yes, but it's worth it!

Tracking Link Response

The day after your first campaign links have run, go to Traffic Sources > Sources > Campaigns. You'll see a summary of your campaigns and the visits they brought to your store.

Even if you've never set up a campaign before, you'll find some campaigns listed in here already. Don't worry, that's normal! Unknown campaigns will appear in the analytics for any Etsy shop. Google Analytics will report every campaign tag that lead to a visit to your store, including campaigns run by Etsy.

Campaign tagging helps you track your customers' response to the campaign in general, and their response to individual links and ads in specific. Here's how:

Campaign in general: When you land on the campaigns page, you'll see a list of your campaigns and a breakdown of the visits they sent. In the diaper shop example, you'd see july_special listed as a campaign.

Links in specific: Click on the campaign name and you'll see the visits broken down further by Source/Medium. Using our diaper shop example, you'd see my_blog, paid_blog_name, and the names you gave to social media channels and your email newsletter. At a glance, you can quickly determine which links in your campaign brought the most traffic to your shop.

The Next Step

Ready to move on? Read Etsy Analytics: Putting it All Together.

Want to read this series offline instead? This entire series is available in free ebook format via Readlists! Read it on your Kindle, your iPad/iPod/iPhone, or e-reader.

Getting Started with Etsy Analytics

This is the first post in a series to help you use analytics to increase your Etsy sales. We'll use a combination of Google Analytics for Etsy and Etsy's built-in Shop Stats to access all the analytics data available to you as an Etsy seller.

In this installment, I'll show you how to enable Google Analytics for your Etsy shop, and I'll introduce you to the Google Analytics interface.

Every Etsy Shop Needs Analytics

Even the smallest Etsy shop can benefit from analytics data. With Google Analytics you can figure out:

• How your visitors are finding out about you
• What they look at in your shop
• Where in the world they are
• What visitors like about your shop, and what they don't

...And really, that's just a small sample of what you can learn with analytics data.

Even if you're new and only getting a few visitors a day, you should set up analytics now to start measuring visitor stats. The sooner you add it, the sooner you can begin to learn from it. Get it set up now, and you'll be so glad you did when your shop gets busier.

In fact, you'll be able to use the analytics data to find out how your shop got busier, which can help you get even busier!

Starting a Google Analytics Account

For new Google Analytics users: To start a new Google Analytics account, go to www.google.com/analytics, and click the "sign in" link to sign in with your Google account. If you don't have a Google account yet, click the "Create an Account" link to open one. Once you've created your Google account, you'll be sent to this analytics sign up screen:

Click the "Sign Up" button. On the "Create New Account" page, you'll have to fill in a few fields. First, in the "Account Name" field enter your shop name in this format: shopname.etsy.com. For the "Website's URL" field, select http:// from the dropdown menu and enter www.etsy.com. Set the time zone dropdown to your local time.

After you've added your personal settings, review the data sharing settings and decide if you'd like to enable or disable data sharing. Then, read the user agreement. After you accept the user agreement, you're signed up! On the next page you'll get your Web Property ID number. Copy and paste that somewhere so you have it handy for our next step.

Existing Google Analytics users: If you already have a Google Analytics account (for your blog or another website), you don't need to sign up again to track your Etsy shop. Instead, you can add your Etsy shop as a new account within your Google Analytics account. To do this, click the "Admin" link in the orange stripe up top. That will take you to the "Account Administration" page. Press the "New Account" button, and follow the steps above for entering your shop information and getting your new Web Property ID.

Adding the Tracking Code to Your Shop

Etsy makes it very easy to add your Google Analytics tracking code to your shop. Go to Shop Settings > Options, and click the "Web Analytics" tab. Enter your Web Property ID and press the Save button. That's it! Google Analytics will start collecting data from your Etsy shop within 24 hours.

Getting to Know the Google Analytics Interface

Google Analytics is a massively powerful tool, and the interface can be a bit daunting if you're new to it. I'm going to introduce you to a few interesting features to help you get started, and we'll build and expand upon what you learn today in future installments.

Visitors Overview

This is usually the first page you'll see when you log into Google Analytics. On this page you'll see how many visitors you've had in your chosen date range (default is the past 30 days). You'll also see total pageviews, pages per visit, average visit duration, a pie chart representing how many of your visitors were new vs. returning, and a breakdown of what language your visitors speak (based on their browser settings).

Many analytics users never venture beyond this page. While that's understandable, those who stop here miss out on what makes Google Analytics so awesome. Like, for example, Real Time Analytics.

Real Time Analytics

Warning: Real Time analytics are addictive. Use with caution.

From the Analytics dashboard, click the "Home" link. Click the "Real Time" link in the navigation column at the left, then click "Overview". Now you'll see visitors in your shop, live! You'll see how many visitors are in your shop, where they came from, where they are in the world, and what page they're looking at. Wooo! Please promise me you'll remember to tear yourself away for dinner every now and then.

Traffic Sources

As a default, the "Traffic Sources" overview shows you a pie chart with a breakdown of the different ways your visitors found your shop. You can see some of their Google search keywords in the "Keyword" column. I say "some", because you may find that the very frustrating "Not Provided" keyword is dominating your keyword list (I'll point you to some resources for working with "not provided" results in the reading list at the end of this series).

If you click the "Referral Traffic" Source link, you'll see a breakdown of all the links around the web that sent visitors to your shop. Very handy for tracking the value of guest posts and sponsored links!

Start Gathering Some Data!

Ok, you're all set to start tracking visits to your Etsy shop, and you've had a little look around at what you can learn from your analytics.

Google Analytics usually starts working quickly, but it can sometimes take up to 24 hours to get working. Give it at least that long before you worry, but if you've gone over 24 hours without data, retrace your steps and make sure everything's in its right place.

Ready to move on to the next step? Read Part Two: Using Shop Stats.

Want to read this series offline instead? This entire series is available in free ebook format via Readlists! Read it on your Kindle, your iPad/iPod/iPhone, or e-reader.