How do I get started with Google Analytics?

That is great news that you are going to be using Google Analytics, and – you are correct – you will certainly have a wealth of information at your fingertips. The key, however, is to not become overwhelmed by data or find yourself spending hours preparing and delivering meaningless reports to colleagues and management who don’t read them or utilise the information.

So you really are taking the right approach by stopping to ask the question “how do I get started?”, particularly before your web developers start setting it up for you.

Let me deal first with your question, “which reports are the most useful for an arts organisation?” The answer is that this depends entirely on the organisational, marketing and online goals you have and how you want to measure your achievement of them. Every scenario and organisation is different.

For example, one of your goals may be to create stronger community online, using your website and social media pages as platforms.  In this instance the Visitor Loyalty reports such as length and depth of visit become important, as do the campaign reports for the tagged links you might use on your social media pages.

Another organisation, such as a festival, may be focussed on gaining international audiences. The “map overlay” reports then become very important, as do the campaign reports within the “Traffic” section. They may also be undertaking an email acquisition drive, with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) based around growth of email registration. In which case the “Goals” section of Google Analytics becomes crucial, with goals set up to measure successful registrations and conversions.

The most important place to start is to decide what the questions are that you want answers to. If you can do that now, then 1. your developers can create the right goal paths for you and 2. You can start by focusing on the reports which provide the right data to answer these questions.

I love the straightforward approach that web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik recommends in his blog post “How to excite people about web analytics” ( http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/04/how-to-excite-people-about-web-an... ). He suggests talking to each key person in your organisation and asking:

““Please tell me a little bit about your job?“
“What aspects of your life / job touch our website?“
“What’s one question you wish you could get answered about our website, or what’s one thing you could learn from our website Visitors?“

Not only is this a great way to decide which analytics reports to focus on, but it also creates a sense of engagement from your team. As Kaushik says : “Now go back and answer that one solitary question. Don’t send a report back. Call them and tell them the answer. They’ll be hooked after you do this once or twice. “

Once you know which questions exist, you’re in a position to create the right format and delivery mechanisms for the right answers from Google Analytics.