National Tiger Sanctuary Monthly Report

I decided to take a look at the whole month of October for the National Tiger Sanctuary and see how the website was doing. When taking a look at the new visitors compared to the returning visitors to the site there was 12.1% who actually returned to the site for the month of October. I think there should be a higher percentage of people who return to the website but unfortunately there was not.

The number of pageviews was 131 with 116 sessions. More than majority of the sessions lasted anywhere between 0-10 seconds, which means that the users did not tend to stay on the website for very long. The National Tiger Sanctuary can utilize this information to see how they can keep users on their website as well as gain new users. Engagement is important because this is what helps websites become successful. Lastly, the top three channels that were used during the month of October for the website was direct, organic search, and referral. The top channel used was the referral channel, which was 90.5%. This is important to know because it helps a company figure out how people are getting to the website.

Google Analytics Certification

Throughout our Web Analytics course we have been working towards becoming certified in Google Analytics. This is an important skill to have because it was one of the top skills that was listed on LinkedIn that helped people get hired in 2013. Google Analytics may seem intimidating at first; however, the best way to go about getting certified is to just try it out. Try taking the test first and see what your score ends up being; then afterwards you can start to study for the certification and try out different things in Google Analytics to get some real life practice.

There are a lot of different resources on the web that can help prepare you for the Google Analytics certification. It may seem demanding at first to have to dedicate time and effort to learning Google Analytics, but in the end it will be worth it. By having the certification, it can help you to find a job that you can potentially use the material you learned. As well as, Google Analytics can
increase your skills and tools which you can then use from your "toolbox" to help your company and/or self grow.

eCommerce Analytics - Gumroad

Analytics helps you to make an advertising campaign more effective, and more efficient, and this is extremely valuable for your business. It helps your business also to generate more revenue and use existing budget more wisely. An example site that has a built-in analytics feature is Gumroad, https://gumroad.com/. This site will tell you how many people visited the site, and how many people went on to actually purchase an item.This is a great starting point if you are just beginning with learning the basics of analytics.

Gumroad is mainly a site where individuals come and sell digital downloads. The more downloads someone sells the better the conversion rate will be. You are able to calculate this rate by taking the number of sales you make and dividing it by the number of visitors you get. My suggestion is to just try making an account and testing it out for yourself. Once you become more comfortable with working in Gumroad and Google Analytics than you can move on to trying to make "goals" in Google Analytics. Overall, you have to be willing to try new things in order to become better at them and Google Analytics is no exception.

Analytics Report

This week in class we were reporting analytics data for different websites. The website I had was for National Tiger Sanctuary. I set the date range to be from 10/03-10/09/16 and from there I examined the analytics data. I started off by going to acquisition and then looking at the overview report for the National Tiger Sanctuary site. The below graph displays how many people visit the site and where they came from. As shown, 97% of the visitors came to the site because of a referral. Referral Traffic means that a user clicked on a link from another website that linked back to the National Tiger Sanctuary website. This data is good to know because it shows how people are hearing about the website and actually going to it.

Another important display to look at is the landing page to know how visitors are entering your site because it is a key component to be successful. Presented below shows the data from the landing page, of those who visited the site during this date range, 29 of the users were new. The only landing page that was presented was the home page, therefore, those users were taken to the home page of the National Tiger Sanctuary site, which was interesting to see. 

eCommerce Analytics

Tracking ROI is an extremely important skill to have for anyone who wants to make money. The best way to track ROI is by being able to do "real" conversation tracking, which means you can tell exactly how effective a particular ad has been, in terms of making money. Google Adwords with the help of analytics can tell you exactly how much money you are spending. Based off this information I highly recommend trying it out for yourself.

An eCommerce site that you can set up all on your own, is called shopify, and you can learn how to track ROI by going to the site: https://www.shopify.com/. To get started, go to the site and click the get started button. From there you have to enter some information about yourself, such as your email address, a password, a store name, and then you will have to fill out your name and address information. The next step you would have to choose between selling physical products online or digital products, I would recommend for your first time keeping it simple and selling digital products. After you decide what you are going to sell you can customize the look of your store to appeal to consumers. You will eventually proceed to the putting in your billing information and setting a price for your products. Once everything is set up you are able to start making money and tracking ROI. 

Traffic in Blogger

Blogger is an excellent example of utilizing Web Analytics, because it tracks the number of clicks to the site. In order to check the traffic of your Blogger you have to go to the Stats link and it will open up to the week tab. However, if you are curious about your blog and would prefer to see a longer view of the traffic trends then all you have to do is click the all time tab on the top right. A great way to increase the amount of traffic to your blog is by adding quality content that is worth reading and making an effort to promote your blog, such as using social media.

An important concept to look at when working with Analytics is to see what is "trending". This basically means to look at how things perform over time. In Blogger you can examine a lot of information that is similar to using Google Analytics but it is just on a smaller scale. If you have not already set up a Blogger account I highly recommend making one in order to track traffic and see how well your site does. My Blogger Stats are listed below indicating that last month I had 130 pageviews, however, in the past couple of days it has not been that high which is something I need to work on.

Website Data

This week I have officially started to work with Google Analytics and it has been interesting to see what can be done with this tool. I have been examining data from the National Tiger Sanctuary and in Google Analytics I can view how many users there are, number of pageviews, as well as new and returning visitors on a website. The Google Analytics tool also shows the the top demographics of people who view the website: including the language, country, and city of those individuals.

As presented above, this graph demonstrates the pageviews over the last week. As you can see this National Tiger Sanctuary's website pageviews has been declining which is not very good. By using Google Analytics it can help an organization figure out what it has to do in order to have more pageviews as well as it can have a positive impact on the overall success of a company. 

Creating A Google Analytics Account

Google Analytics is a great way to view your website's performance. The way to go about creating an account is pretty easy if you have a google account already set up. Once you are signed into your Gmail/Google account you will be able to access Google Analytics by going to the link presented below and signing in or clicking "create an account" and pressing the Google Analytics button: https://www.google.com/analytics/ . After creating an account try playing around with the material by putting in your organization's URL address to see how it is performing. Once you get the Tracking ID number you can link it to your blog to track how many people visit your website and to get even more traffic try sharing your blog on Facebook.

If you followed these simple steps to creating a Google Analytics account, then you would be able to see something like this, which shows your website's performance.

The above picture displays how many people visit your website and ultimately helps track revenue. Google Analytics is an excellent way to help any business keep track of customer behavior and see its overall website performance. 

Web Analytics Introduction

Web Analytics is an important tool to have when entering the business world. This tool helps to collect, analysis and report web data that can further assist the understanding of web usage and how to optimize it. Web Analytics does not necessarily have to be boring, rather it can be fun to learn, especially when trying to track return on investment.

Now a days when looking for a career there are a lot of options to choose from. Some of which include: Social Media Marketing, Digital and Online Marketing, and Business Intelligence. By understanding and learning how analytics works this can have a major impact on ones career and how much they end up making. The more skills one has on their resume, the more qualified they are for higher up positions at companies seeking to gain knowledge of information on the company's return on investment.

A great tool to start getting familiar with is Google Analytics because it is increasing in power and in some cases exceeding the performance of other Web Analytics sites. If one has some free time and is willing to spend a little extra cash to gain more knowledge of what web analytics entails then they should try and get "Google Analytics Qualified". This certification is a great credibility source with potential employers and colleagues, which can help in ones overall career.