It is worth mentioning at this stage that this blog does not contain an exhaustive list of all the reports that can be used to do this analysis nor is it an attempt to oversimplify the scrutiny required to make informed commercial decisions.

Please note you can click to enlarge any image in this blog.

Step 1: Create A Custom Segment For Your Campaign(s)

Before you start looking into Google Analytics it can be useful to set up an advanced segment at the outset so that you exclude all irrelevant data that may skew your averages later on in the process. Here is what you need to do:

• Click on advanced segment drop down and then click on +New Custom Segment at the bottom right (not illustrated in the image below).
• Apply the following filters – include, campaign, exactly matching, name of the campaign.
• Repeat if you have more than 1 campaign but ensure you select the ‘or statement’.
• Save Segment

Once you have saved the segment it will automatically apply but you can ensure that this is the case by clicking on the advanced segment and ensuring that your new custom segment is ticked and all other segments (custom or advanced) are un-ticked.

Step 2: High Level Analysis

It’s important to gauge performance at high level to begin with; this allows you to identify any problem areas straight away before you begin to dwell deeper. Here is what you need to do:

• Select advertising report and click on campaigns.
• Select the time range you want to view.
• Ensure you have selected campaigns as the viewing option.

How to analyse this data?

• You should start by looking at the explorer tab at the top which provides you with aggregated data for all of your display campaigns.
• You can compare metrics such as visits, Pages/Visit, Average Time on Site & Bounce Rate with the overall site averages (not visible whilst custom segment is applied) which can give you an insight into the quality of traffic generated by your display campaigns.
• You can also see a breakdown of campaigns below the graph and observe how each campaign is performing against the other(s); this will allow you to easily spot campaigns that may not be performing very well and need further attention.
• You can also look at your site engagement metrics at ad group level by selecting ad group as your viewing option, if you have categorised your products/services at ad group level then you can easily identify how each product/service is performing against the other.

Step 3: Ad Analysis

You may be running ads for several products split into different ad groups or you may only be advertising just one service using different ad formats, whatever the structure, you want to know how people are interacting with your site once they click on a certain type of ad. Here is what you need to do:

• Within the advertising report, click on campaigns.
• You will see all your campaigns listed under the graph, select the one you want to investigate.
• Select the ad content as the viewing option.

How to analyse this data & what to look out for?

• You can analyse the different ads in this report and find out which ads (or ad sizes) are bringing the majority of the traffic and which lead to higher bounce rate.
• Let’s assume that all of your ads contained different promotional messages but took users to the same landing page, you can use this data to understand which ads are likely to lead to higher average time on site, lower bounce rate & more goal completion.
• You can also apply the messaging of your best performing ads to the ones that are not performing so well to find out if it improves your key metrics.
• It’s important to note that goal completion should carry most weight in your decision making process, although, in the absence of this data you can use other site engagement metrics.

Step 4: Landing Page Analysis

This is arguably the most important element of your Display campaign analysis. It is vital that you look at landing pages that receive paid traffic in order to identify hidden gems and problem pages. Here is what you need to do:

• Within the advertising section of the left hand side navigation menu, click on Destination URLs.
• Select Destination URLs as the viewing option.

How to analyse this data & what to look out for?

• Sort by visits and look into your site’s engagement metrics (Pages/Visit, Avg. Time on Site, Bounce Rate).
• Identify which landing pages bring in high volume of traffic but have high bounce rate, look at the these landing pages and investigate how users behave they reach this page through other sources.
• If any page is showing high bounce rate from all sources then it may not be the best page for paid traffic, switch to another landing page or consider optimising.
• Sort by average time on site, look for pages that have very low or very high average time on any particular landing page.
• Identify why people may be spending too long or short on a given page. Its often the case that there is either too much or too little content, Ensure that you provide a consistent structure & prominent call to action to allow a user to progress to the next action you want them to complete.

Step 5: Navigation Analysis

It can be very useful to look into the navigation summary of the landing pages in order to understand how people are navigating to the desired or set goal(s). This can also help you understand where your traffic may be exiting the site and allow you to optimise accordingly. Here is what you need to do:

• Go to the content report and select pages.
• Make sure you’re viewing option is set to ‘pages’.
• Click on the destination URL you want to see the navigation summary of.
• Click navigation summary at the top (next to the explorer tab).

How to analyse this data & what tolok out for?

• Look at the navigation summary of your most visited pages, identify how many pages it takes users before they reach the desired or set goal(s).
• Investigate whether the number of pages visited before goal completion is what you expect, i.e. identify wastage.
• Identify where users are exiting the site - improve the content of that page & sign-post users to pages you want them to click through to.
• Investigate why people are clicking through to a certain page, this will give you an insight into the type of content they are looking for and user’s intent.
• For example: If a lot of your users navigate to delivery information page from the product pages then you may want to provide delivery info on the product page in order to minimise distraction.

Step 6: Placement Analysis

You may be receiving hundreds of clicks from a site but it’s the quality of the traffic that matters. You want to identify which sites are sending quality leads and which ones are just adding to your costs. Here is what you need to do:

• Go to advertising report and select placements.
• Click on placement domain as the viewing option.

How to analyse this data & what to look out for?

• Sort by visits, find out which web sites are bringing you the majority of the traffic. Are the listed sites what you expected to see? Are they relevant?
• Look at the bounce rate of the sites that are bringing you the traffic. Is it too high? If so then the users of the site may not be the right audience for you. If there are no conversions and people aren’t engaging with the site then consider excluding this placement.
• Take some time to get to know the sites that are bringing you traffic, investigate URIs and look for hidden gems – these are pages that are bringing conversions and/or users that engage with your site.
• One particular domain may be bringing conversions but at a high cost/conversion, look for URLs that generate a lot of clicks & not conversions, consider excluding these URLs (not be confused with domain) this will reduce your cost/conversion.

Summary

Click & conversion data from Google AdWords is useful, however, that only presents one part of the puzzle, to get the full picture it’s important to investigate what the paid traffic is doing on your site.

You can use most of the Google Analytics reports to identify trends & investigate key metrics; however, particular attention should be paid to ads, landing pages, user navigation and placements.

You can get some quick wins by sorting the data by visits and ensuring that the element you are investigating (ad, landing pages or placements) is performing at its optimum. If not you should investigate further and identify what changes may be required to rectify the problems.

Once you have dealt with all major issues, you should then focus on identifying smaller (low impact) issues; this will allow you to run your campaign at its optimum.

Finally, you should never lose sight of the fact that this is a dynamic environment and what’s optimum today may not be tomorrow so do regular checks and react swiftly to any changes in order to stay ahead of competition.