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Add Web Analytics

Contents

  1. Overview
  2. Installation
    1. No CNAME
    2. Using a CNAME
    3. Where to put the code: Themes
    4. Where to put the code: Manual Customization
  3. Interpretation Basics
  4. Setting up Site Search
  5. Creating a Goal
  6. Viewing the Funnel

Overview

"Web analytics" refers to the collection and analysis of data about a given website. Once analytics code has been installed on your website, you can almost immediately start gathering very detailed information about who's visiting your site, what they're doing there, how long they're staying, and much more. Analytics data provides an unprecedented level of insight into what is and isn't working for site visitors, which can prove to be extremely valuable, particularly to those selling a product or service on their sites.

The goal of analytics is to give us a measurable baseline of activity on our website from which we can create data-driven decisions about our marketing activity.

Time and resources for most photographers are scarce commodities. Therefore, we cannot be rash or impulsive about how we allocate them. Analytics give us empirical data from which we can make informed decisions.

There are many tools available online for capturing and reporting this data back to you, but Google Analytics is the industry standard we recommend. It's extremely thorough, constantly evolving, and totally free of charge to its users!

Please note: We cannot provide support on Google Analytics-related questions. Please use their forums or our forums to gain advice from other users.

Installation

We provide an easy way to integrate Google Analytics tracking code (or tracking code from any other provider) to your customized PhotoShelter pages. Please read through the below documentation for some guidance on getting started. Standard or Pro users only. Starter or Basic subscriber? Upgrade today.

I want to use Google Analytics with my PhotoShelter account. What do I do?

  1. Head to http://www.google.com/analytics and follow the registration instructions. If you already have a Google account for Gmail or any of their other services, you may use the same username and password to register for an Analytics account.
  2. Once you're into your account, you'll be prompted enter the URL of the website you'd like to track. There are various approaches here, so the next step depends on what type of setup you have. For further instructions, please choose from the following options for the one that fits you best.

    Option A:

    My customized PhotoShelter portfolio stands alone; it is not integrated into another site.

    Please choose between the following two options:

    • I do not use a CNAME for my PhotoShelter URL.
      The URL you should enter is in this format: http://[yourname].photoshelter.com.
    • I use a CNAME (also known as a "vanity domain") as an alias for my PhotoShelter URL.
      The URL you should enter is in this format: http://[CNAME].yourdomain.com.
      You'll need to take an extra step later — please see below for "A Note on Cross-Domain Tracking".

    Option B:

    My customized PhotoShelter portfolio is integrated into another site.
    That means that you maintain a site with pages at http://www.yourdomain.com that link off to your PhotoShelter pages. (Please see an example at http://manginphotography.com — when "Search Archive" is clicked, his PhotoShelter environment opens.)

    • I would like to track all my traffic — to PhotoShelter and non-PhotoShelter pages — in one place. The URL you should enter is in this format: http://www.yourdomain.com. You'll need to take an extra step later — please see below for "A Note on Cross-Domain Tracking".

    • I don't care about tracking the other pages in my account (or I will track these separately) — now, I just want to track my PhotoShelter pages. In this case, please refer to Option 2B above ("My customized PhotoShelter portfolio stands alone; it is not integrated into another site."), and follow the instructions from there.

  3. Once you've set up your account, you will be provided with tracking code, which should look something like this:
    <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-YOUR ACCOUNT NUMBER-X"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}</script>
    Copy this code exactly as it appears.

  4. If you've selected a theme: paste the google code into the Analytics Code section of your PhotoShelter account, which is located in your Customization Settings.
    If you've selected one of the available themes, cut and paste the code into the analytics textbox on the "Settings" page.
    Click "Save Settings," and you're good to go!

  5. If you've select Manual Customization: you need to paste the code into the footer section of the Public Page Master Template and the Customer Page Master Template.
    Manual customization users need to click "edit" next to the two master page templates to insert the analytics code.

A Note on Cross Domain Tracking

If you are either using a CNAME for your PhotoShelter portfolio or are integrating your PhotoShelter pages with another site, you'll need to make a slight adjustment to your tracking code to account for users who start at one domain and click over to any pages served from the photoshelter.com domain.

Please follow these instructions. This is effectively just adding these two lines of code in to your tracking code as indicated in the link:

pageTracker._setDomainName("none");
pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);

Please note that if you're using a CNAME alone and are not tracking your PhotoShelter pages as part of another site, you need only follow step 1 at the above link.

I've installed the data. Now what?

First things first — you need to collect at least 1 month of data before being able to truly establish trending. In the meantime, if you want to start getting your feet wet, we recommend the following first steps:Ó

However, we recommend the introductory steps/fields of inquiry:

  • Define a goal for what you want your visitors to do. (Sign up for an account? Make a purchase?)
  • Analyze your goal "funnel" — how many people come close to reaching the goal you've set but then bail out? Where are they leaving in the process?
  • Study your audience and how they're finding your site. Where are your visitors referred from? How long are they staying? How many do you have? Where do they live?
  • Measure the effectiveness of your keywording. What are your visitors searching for? What are your top keywords? Are people searching for content you don't have?
  • How does featuring content on your homepage affect views?
  • Does different content drive better pageviews and time on site?
  • How have external promotions (e.g. blogs, editorial placement, Facebook, Twitter, etc) altered historical traffic trends?
  • Did your free photo shoot that you bartered in exchange for publicity really generate any traffic?

Analytics Interpretation Basics

Like any set of data, there is no magic in interpretation. Analytics provides us with a baseline of activity from which we can experiment to alter the trend information.

Dashboard

The dashboard gives us an overview of basic traffic patterns. Traffic on most sites typically yields a gently sloping curve during the week with peak traffic on Mondays, and decidedly lower traffic on the weekends. We should expect this pattern to recur unless we have some sort of promotional activity.

Because GA allows us to query by date range, we have the ability to really view trends over long periods of time. Our goal should be to increase or maintain the main metrics on our site, with the ultimate goal of improving "conversion." "Conversion" can be any outcome activity that you deem: calling you, e-mailing you, successful cart checkout, etc.

Visits

In marketing parlance, this is the size of your funnel, and is important because the greater this absolute number, the more chance of conversion that you have. If you are driving less than 1,000 visits per month, you're probably not leveraging your website as effectively as you could.

Pages/Visit

The more pages per visit, the more likely that you have an engaged visitor. You should strive to increase this number.

Average Time on Site

This should roughly correspond to your pages/visit. You'll notice that when the promotion began, there was a significant increase in "time on site," but the duration of the spike was brief.

% New Visits

Most photographer websites will have a high percentage of new visitors, compared to a service-based industry like banking. New visitors are not bad at all, but it serves to underscore the potential of SEO to affect traffic to your site.

Traffic Sources

There is no "right" ratio for traffic sources. In this example, we see that 23% of the site traffic is "direct," meaning the user knew the URL of the domain. This is instructive because we normally think that people know our URL and those visitors are the bulk of our traffic, so it might be surprising to find out that the majority of traffic is really coming from search engines in this example. Lastly, the absolute number of referring sites is important because it's an indicator of inbound linking, which is the most significant factor in search engine optimization. You should try to build this number over time.

If you have a high % of direct traffic, but low overall traffic (e.g. < 1000 visits/month), then you can probably leverage SEO more effectively to drive unsolicited visitors to your website. SEO is the most inexpensive (and probably underutilized) way to drive traffic.

Content Overview

Clicking on "view report" under the content overview will give us increased detail, but even in this truncated view, we can see that a relatively large chunk of traffic hits the homepage (13.86%) then disperses quickly to other parts of the site. This is not unusual at all.

Content: Keywords

The keyword terms that users are searching upon to find your site can be found in the Content->Keywords section of Google Analytics. Most sites have high keyword concentraion on the site name (e.g. "Joe Photographer"), which isn't surprising, but it's also uninstructive and non-actionable. Instead, look at the terms following your name to see what people are finding. You might find that an obscure image is highly optimized and driving lots of traffic. You might find that you're a Chicago Wedding Photographer, but in fact, none of those terms are yielding search results for you.

You need to determine which keywords are important to you and use tools like Google AdWords to determine if 1) there is search volume on the term, and 2) if the term is "ownable" through an SEO strategy. Some terms have too much competition for a single individual with a low-trafficked website to acquire.

Setting up Site Search

The Google Analytics Site Search option allows you to see what terms users are searching for on your website. This comes in handy particularly if you are using a Theme with an Archive search embedded on the homepage, or if you have manually embedded a search field on your PhotoShelter site.

Follow Google's instructions for setting up your profile to track searches.

On the "Edit Profile Information" page, fill in the following fields:

  • Exclude URL Query Parameters: ph,po,_bqH,_bqO,_bqG,_bqR
  • Do Track Site Search
  • Query Parameter: I_DSC
  • Yes, strip query parameters out of URL
  • Do you use categories for site search: No
Once you've saved the setting, you should begin to receive data in about 24 hours by going to Content -> Site Search

ALERT: Change Suggested Following June 10, 2010 Site Upgrade

As of June 10, 2010 at approximately 12:01 am EDT, the structure of PhotoShelter website URLs was changed to the following format:

http://yourname.photoshelter.com

from the old format:

http://www.photoshelter.com/c/yourname

If you had set up your Google Analytics account prior to June 10, 2010, we suggest that you make a change to your Google Analytics profile to support the new link structure.

Please note that if you are using a CNAME in your Analytics, this action is not needed, but this would be a good time to verify that you have selected to track Òmultiple top level domainsÓ when copying your tracking code.

To make this change, you should follow these steps:

  1. Head to your Google Analytics Overview.
  2. Click on the name of the account for your PhotoShelter website.
  3. Next to the profile for your PhotoShelter site URL, click the "Edit" button.
  4. In the Main Website Profile Information box on this page, click the "Edit" button in the upper right hand corner.
  5. Here, change the "Website URL" value from your existing site address (should be in the http://www.photoshelter.com/c/yourname format) to your new website URL, which should be in the format of http://yourname.photoshelter.com (substituting "yourname" in this link for the value you've defined for your site). If you don't know what your website URL is, you may find it in the first box on your Customize -> Website Settings page.
  6. Click "Save Changes". You're done! Sit back and enjoy your data.

Creating a Goal

Unlike a straight portfolio site, PhotoShelter gives you the ability to serve up e-commerce. Completion of a sale is a tangible goal that we can track through analytics. In this section, we'll show you how to track the following steps:
  • Adding items to the shopping cart
  • Confirming the contents of the cart
  • Entering shipping address (for physical fulfillments)
  • Entering shipping methods
  • Final confirmation & payment
The addition of a goal in google analytics allows us to create a "funnel visualization."

Setting up a goal

From the Google Analytics overview page, click "Edit" next to your domain.

You can set up to four funnels, but we'll only set up one. Click "edit" next to the top position to start the funnel description.

On the Goal Settings page, fill in the following information

  • Match Type: Head Match
  • Goal URL: your customization URL with the following success path:
    http://[your customization url]/cart/cart-success
    For example
    http://www.joephotographer.com/cart/cart-success
  • Goal name: Whatever you'd like to name the goal
  • Case Sensitive: leave unchecked
  • Goal value: We set it to 0.0, but you might want to affix a price to the goal. See Google Analytics for more information.
For the "Define Funnel" Section:
  • Step 1:
    • URL: /cart
    • Name: Cart Add
  • Step 2:
    • URL: /cart/confirm
    • Name: Cart Confirm
  • Step 3:
    • URL: /cart/shipping
    • Name: Shipping Address
  • Step 4:
    • URL: /cart/ship-method
    • Name: Shipping Methods
  • Step 5:
    • URL: /cart/confirm
    • Name: Final Confirm

Viewing the Funnel

Once you've set up the funnel, you can go back to the "View Reports" section of Google Analytics. Click Goals -> Funnel Visualization.

The funnel visualization will show you how many people are entering the funnel and what percentage is converting at any given point. This data is not prescriptive, as there isn't much you can do to alter these conversion points. However, it is instructive in understanding your conversion rates. If your final conversion is 1% of the people entering the funnel, then you know you need at least 100 people to enter the funnel to complete a sale (Amazon had a conversion rate of 9.5% in 2007 and was a top 10 converting retail site).