Analytics for UX Workshop - ConveyUX

Web Analytics for UX, ConveyUX, @uxmikebeasley

Analytics for UX Workshop

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About Me

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Mike Beasley@UXMikeBeasley

UX Architect, ITHAKAAuthor, Practical Web Analytics for User ExperienceCo-founder, Ignite UX Michigan (igniteuxmi.com)


Meet Google Analytics

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What Can You Use Analytics Data For?

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Why Are People Coming to Your Site?

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What Did People Do On Your Site?

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Examine Relationships Between Pages

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Measure the Effects of a Design Change

● A/B Testing● Looking back on a design change on your actual

site

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Triangulate with Other Data Sources

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Analytics vs. Other Methods

Analytics is good at:● Large datasets● Historical data on

actual behavior● Answering questions

relatively quickly

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But not so good at:● Understanding “why”● Measuring types of

behavior you didn’t think to measure in advance

● Generating new ideas, mostly


It’s easier than ever to do quantitative work

● Web analytics tools like Google Analytics● A/B Testing tools like Optimizely (and Google

Analytics)● Books

○ Quantifying the User Experience○ Measuring the User Experience○ Search Analytics for Your Site○ And if you want to be exhaustive, my book

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Today’s Agenda

1. How to think with quantitatively and use web analytics tools

2. Understanding how people use your site3. Funnels4. Understanding why people come to your site

a. Segmentation

5. Wrap-up

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How to Think Quantitatively(And use web analytics tools)

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Understanding Data with Averages

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Look at Proportions

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Rates

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No Data Are Perfect

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Look at Trends and Compare Proportions

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Understand the Data

● For seeing the story of data, visualizations are your friend

● Rates and proportions are important, but don’t ignore the magnitude of the numbers.

● Ask:○ “What do these data tell me?”○ “What action do I want to take based on data?”○ “How were the data collected? What do they measure?”○ “What haven’t we measured?”○ “Are there others factors that may influence users?”

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Understanding How People Use Your Site

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In this Section

1. Page Level Metrics2. Visitor Flow3. And an exercise!

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Page Level Metrics

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What Are You Looking For?

● Ratio of pageviews to unique pageviews● A bounce rate that is unusually high compared to

other pages○ And does that page get a lot of entrances, or only a few?

● An average time on page or exit rate that is much higher or lower than other pages

● Really high or really low values for anything

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Why Look at Paths?

● Find places where people may be having trouble navigating

● Infer users’ intent about why they go to a page● Learn what features on a page people use

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Visitor Flow

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Visitor Flow

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What Are You Looking For?

● Thrashing / pogo-sticking: Moving to the same page repeatedly or back and forth between a few pages

● Unexpected pages● Unexpected places where people exit the site● Compare usage of different features / clicks on

different links

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Limits of This Approach

● You can only visualize the most common paths, but that may still be a minority of your users

● Best for looking at relationships between a few pages—there are too much data to look at complete visits

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Next Page: Google Analytics

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Exercise 1

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1. Break into groups2. Discuss the questions and data in the exercise

handout3. Someone in the group should be prepared to speak

about what your group discussed


Funnels

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In this Section

● Just funnels.

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What’s a Funnel? What’s it For?

● For a sequence of pages or actions on your site where users go through them in order:○ Where are people dropping out of the sequence rather than

completing it?○ How many people are dropping out at each step?○ What’s the overall completion rate for this sequence?

● The classic example is an ecommerce checkout

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An eCommerce Checkout

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Funnels

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Things to Remember About Funnels

● They don’t show people that enter the funnel after the first step

● They don’t represent pages that people visit in-between the “checkpoint” pages

● People may visit the “checkpoint” pages multiple times and funnels won’t represent this

● As always: “good” or “bad” is relative

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How Do You Use Funnels?

● Google Analytics (free edition): You set them up in advance and only have a few

● Google Analytics (premium): You can set them up ad hoc on existing data

● Adobe Analytics: You can set them up ad hoc on existing data

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Understanding Why People Came to Your Site

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In this Section

● Understanding where people came from● Referrals● Landing pages● Segmentation● An exercise!

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How to Approach “Why People Arrive?”

● Where do they come from● What specific pages do they arrive on?● What did they search for?● What content did they view?

Caveat: You can only infer intent from web analytics data

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Where People Came From

● Referrals● Organic search● Direct / “(none)”● Paid search● Social

Typically, these will be called “channels.”

You may see more channels in your analytics account, depending on marketing activities.

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Hypothetical Example: Graduate Program Applications

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Google Analytics Channels Report

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Google Analytics Referrals Report

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Landing Page Report

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Queries Report (Search Engine Keywords)

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What is Segmentation?

Isolating a subset of all of your users based on some characteristic and only looking at their data

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How Can You Segment Data?

● Some trait that they have (browser, geographic location)

● A behavior (whether they viewed a particular page, what they searched for)

● Basically, according to any of the data you gather about users

● Some tools, like Google Analytics, let you segment according to whether users did a specific sequence of actions

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What Can You Do with Segmentation?

● Analyze differences in behavior between groups of users○ “Did people buy more stuff if they came from a Google

search or they came directly to our site?”● Filter out noise from users that you don’t want to

analyze○ “Only 5% of our users visit the subscription page. Let’s just

look at data about how those people .”

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A segmentation example

1. What pages do people land on based on what they searched for?

2. Among people that went to the university application page, what pages did they land on?

3. Among those people that went to the application page, what paths did they take through the site?

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Segmentation Example 1

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Advanced Segments, Part 1

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What to look for with “why they came to your site”

● Flesh out personas with real usage data● Characterize user needs

○ Uncover unknown user needs○ Look for gaps in your content or features○ Find out what language people use

● Ultimately, it’s dependent on what you’re trying to find out about users

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Exercise 2

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Measuring the Effects of Design Changes

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In this Section

● Look at data about stuff that’s live (backward-facing)

● A/B testing (front-facing)

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Framing the Question of “How Well is it Working?”

● What is the purpose of the design change?● How does this purpose map to something analytics

can measure?● Approximately how many visits do you need?

Quantifying the User Experience, Sauro and Lewishttps://www.optimizely.com/resources/sample-size-calculator/

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How Do You Measure Success?

● Why are you designing and building something?○ What business goal does it tie into? How does it help the

organization?● What specific behavior are you trying to influence?

○ Immediate: Clicking on a button, registering for an account, downloading a white paper

○ Ultimate: Buying something, subscribing, donating, registering, applying

● Find specific actions users can take on your site indicating they met the short and long term goals.

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Hypothetical Example: Graduate Program Applications

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A Trend Line

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Comparing a trend line to a trend line

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Analytics Goals

● In web analytics, a “goal” refers to an action that users can take on your site that contributes to the success of the organization or the website.

● As such, they make good candidates for things you want to influence through design changes.

● In Google Analytics, go to the “Conversions” section to see these reports.

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A funnel visualization report from Google Analytics(Screenshot from http://online-behavior.com/analytics/goals-facts)

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How Could We Measure Success Better?

We care about whether people leave the website to apply to grad school, but what’s the ultimate goal of the application page?

Enrollments

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A/B Testing

● http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/24/the-ultimate-guide-to-a-b-testing/

● Measuring the User Experience, Tullis and Albert

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http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/24/the-ultimate-guide-to-a-b-testing/





The Best Way to Learn is by Doing

So let’s frame some design questions!

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Wrap-up: Topics I Didn’t Get To

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Topics I Didn’t Get To

● Event tracking● Search engine keywords● Site search keywords● Getting involved with setting up analytics● How does this apply to apps?

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The End!

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Analytics for UX Workshop - ConveyUX

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