Google Analytics Seminars for Success

Google Analytics Certified TrainerAre you really getting everything you can out of your Google Analytics? Or are you just another company suffering from “so much data, so little insight?”

At our Seminar for Success we’ll dig in and explore ways to use your Google Analytics to gather more meaningful data, analyze it better, and make your website perform.

Seminars for Success is a Google-approved program for training on Google Analytics and other products. There are three full-day courses:

Which one to choose? If this were driver’s education, we would say that 101 is about learning to drive a car. 201 is about learning to drive a race car. And 301 is about learning to be a mechanic….

You can choose to attend one, two, or all three sessions, depending on your needs. One day is $499, and you get $50 off for attending two days, or $100 off for attending all three.

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Still not sure? Look at the course descriptions below, check out our frequently asked questions, or read about our trainers.

GA 101 Beginner Analysis

What are Web Analytics?

If you are new to both Google Analytics and analytics in general, this session is designed for you. Learn what success means to visitors, how to tell a story with your analytics, and what your analytics can’t do for you

Getting Started with Google Analytics

This session will start with some real basics, such as learning how to sign up for an account, and will move on to give you an overview of the main sections of GA. Things you’ll learn:

  • What are we trying to figure out with analytics?
  • How does Google Analytics work?
  • What do the metrics mean? Which ones do we care about?

Traffic Sources: How did they get here?

You’ll get a very high-level overview of GA’s traffic capabilities, and then get down to the level of dimensions vs. metrics, medium vs. source. Things you’ll learn:

  • Where do visitors come from?
  • Direct, referring sites, search engines and keywords
  • Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click advertising
  • Tagging campaigns for email, social media, and offline marketing

Content: What did they do on the site?

Once the visitor arrives, what did they do? Which pages were looked at, which pages cause the visitor to leave, which pages should you be testing, how is your on-site search doing? Things you’ll learn:

  • Which pages did they view?
  • Where did they land? How did they navigate?
  • What did they search for?

Visitors: Who are these people, anyway?

You can use the Visitor reports to learn what language preference your visitors have, what continent/country/region/city they visited from, and even, at times, the name of their company. Things you’ll learn:

  • How unique visitors are measured
  • Geography
  • Custom variables

Goals and Ecommerce: Did they do what we wanted them to do?

What are goals, how do you set them up, how do they differ from ecommerce, what are the special reports (days to purchase, visits to purchase) that the ecommerce provides? What’s so great about goals (or ecommerce, anyway?) Things you’ll learn:

  • How goals are defined
  • Goal reporting
  • Ecommerce reporting

Actionable Insights and the Big Picture

We’ll review the major takeaways from the day (so that you have some to-do’s for the next day) and help you understand how to get the rest of the organization on board. Things you’ll learn:

  • Takeaways
  • Sharing and communicating data

GA 201 Intermediate Analysis

What does a great analyst need to know?

Learn how to have goals for your analysis (not just for your data) and an analysis strategy. Things you’ll learn:

  • What are our goals for analysis?
  • What other sources of data should we consider?

Finding the Needle in the Haystack

Learn the newest and most powerful tools in Google Analytics for finding what’s important in your analytics data. Intelligence alerts will help you find the data you should be paying attention to, and advanced segments allow you to slice and dice your data to learn what is working for you (and what isn’t). Things you’ll learn:

  • Intelligence reports
  • Advanced segments
  • Multi-Channel Funnels
  • Flow Visualization
  • Real-Time analytics

Best Practices: Marketing and Advertising

Use your data to help you get a better return on your marketing spend. Start to pull all these tools together by (for example) creating an advanced segment to compare branded and non-branded keywords. From there, you can evaluate your SEO (or paid search) efforts. Things you’ll learn:

  • Search engine optimization
  • Google webmaster Tools reports
  • AdWords & other paid search advertising
  • Email, social media, and other online marketing
  • Offline marketing

Best Practices: Engagement

Measure user engagement by working with content, events, and on-site search data to improve user involvement. What did your visitors do on your site? How well is your on-site search engine working for you (and can you argue for a better search)? Do visitors come and leave? Are specific pages problems? Things you’ll learn:

  • Review of content and site search data
  • Event tracking for downloads, videos, Flash, and other non-pageview interactions
  • Mobile device reports
  • Social tracking

Best Practices: Conversion

Advanced goals, negative goals, and more. We’ll have talked about simple goals in GA 101; for this advanced audience, we’ll discuss the use of engagement goals (e.g. time on site), negative goals (did they look at fewer than x pages?) and we’ll get into Ecommerce, too. Things you’ll learn:

  • Goals for lead generation, content, and ecommerce
  • Complex goals, negative goals

Improving Your Site: Google Website Optimizer

An introduction to website experimentation to improve your conversion rate: the why’s and how’s of A/B and multivariate testing with Google Website Optimizer. Things you’ll learn:

  • Website experimentation to improve conversions
  • Types of testing
  • Testing data
  • Introduction to Google Website Optimizer

Best Practices: Sharing with the Organization

We’ll talk about your role as the analyst: giving context and meaning to data, picking out what’s important, and ways to disseminate it. Custom reports (and how to create them) as well as custom alerts and sharing them will be covered.

GA 301 Technical

Configuration and Administration

How accounts and profiles are organized, and how to manage user access. Things you’ll learn:

  • Relationship between usernames, accounts, web property IDs and profiles
  • How to add a user; difference between administrator and read-only users
  • Navigate account and profile settings
  • Profile settings

How Google Analytics Tracking Code Works

The low-down details about how Google Analytics measures your site. How the JavaScript tracking code works with GIF requests and cookies, as well as alternate tracking options such as the asynchronous code, mobile, and Flash. Things you’ll learn:

  • How Google Analytics works
  • Standard and asynchronous tracking code
  • Alternative tracking code (mobile, Flash, etc.)
  • Site Speed reports and code
  • Google Webmaster Tools integration

Cleaning Up Your Data

Learn how you can use filters to manipulate the data in Google Analytics, including an introduction to regular expressions for matching and replacing patterns in text. Best practices for filters and profile settings including removing internal traffic, cleaning up URLs, and setting up site search. Things you’ll learn:

  • Introduction to Regular Expressions
  • Removing internal traffic
  • Cleaning up URLs and other data

Measuring Conversion

How to set up goals and funnels in Google Analytics, including examples and hard-to-track goals. Implementing ecommerce tracking code for ecommerce sites. Things you’ll learn:

  • Setting up goals
  • Ecommerce tracking code

Measuring Traffic

How campaign tagging works and dealing with redirects and other situations. How to integrate AdWords accounts with Google Analytics. Things you’ll learn:

  • Linking and AdWords account with Google Analytics
  • Using manual campaign tagging
  • Understanding options for changing how manual tagging functions
  • Add additional search engines to Google Analytcs
  • Troubleshoot problems with tracking traffic sources

Measuring Content

Using Event Tracking to track downloads, outbound links, interactive AJAX elements, and other non-pageview events, including how to use tracking within Flash. Integrating AdSense tracking with Google Analytics. Tracking interactions with social plugins on your page (Facebook like, shares, tweets, etc.). Things you’ll learn:

  • Setting up Site Search reporting
  • Measuring downloads, outbound links, videos, etc.
  • Event Tracking and virtual pageviews
  • Flash
  • Social tracking

Measuring Visitors

Using custom variables to track information about visitors. Things you’ll learn:

  • Changing the expiration date of Google Analytics cookes
  • Understanding the use of custom variables
  • Implementing custom variable code
  • Differences between custom variables and the user defined field

Managing Cookies and Tracking

How cookies work in Google Analytics, tracking traffic on multiple domains or subdomains, avoiding conflicts with Google Website Optimizer and integrating GWO with GA. Things you’ll learn:

  • Understanding how Google Analytics uses cookies to store information
  • Understanding the issues with tracking domains and subdomains
  • Implementing tracking for subdomains and cross domains

Conversion Optimization

Learn how to take conversion optimization to the next level with advanced uses of Google Website Optimizer. Things you’ll learn:

  • Understanding and implementing A/B tests and multivariate tests
  • Implementing multi-page, sitewide tests
  • Testing dynamic pages

Extracting Data

Tools within Google Analytics such as exporting and emailing reports in various formats, as well as an introduction to the data export API. Things you’ll learn:

  • Using tools to export, email and schedule reports
  • Creating custom reports
  • Understanding the scope of the Google Analytics API

Understanding Each Other: IT and Marketing

Learn what business users need out of analytics and how to talk with them about the many technical options for achieving their needs.

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