Wondering exactly what the answers are to these questions:
“How many visits have we had to the website from social media sites?”
“How many of those visits turned into enquiries?”
“How many of the total enquiries were influenced or helped by social sources?”
“What value has social media sites generated via the website?”
Look no further than the new ‘Social Report’ in Google Analytics. The report can be found under ‘Traffic Sources’ tab and then clicking on ‘Social’.
Where you can find the new ‘Social’ report
The ‘Social’ report under the Audience tab is still there but the data within this section continues to give you more insights into the on-page actions which have occurred (social sharing) on your site and segmenting them into two segments ‘social visitors’ and ‘non-social’visitors.
What percentage of your website visitors actually share your content?
Once you click on the ‘Overview’ section you will be presented with a wonderful visual like this:
An overview of the Social Value report in Google Analytics
So what are we looking at here? Well we can quite easily see that 341 conversions or enquiries occurred on the site generating a value of £341 (for this example, each enquiry is worth £1). 75 of those enquiries had some sort of social site referral be it Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook before the visitor submitted the enquiry. Key thing to remember here is before. 55 enquiries were as a direct result of a visitor being referred to the site via a social media website. These enquiries can be directly attributed to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and the value in £££ generated.
What’s the difference between Assisted and Last Interaction?
Before we go on let’s clarify the difference between ‘assisted’ and ‘last interaction’ conversions. You can also read this post on ‘Assisted conversion in Google Analytics‘ which explains it in more detail.
Assisted Social Conversion: Where a social site was an influencing source in the enquiry process.
Example: Joe visited my website after seeing a tweet on Twitter. 2 days later he Google’s my company name and visits the website and submits an enquiry. Therefore Twitter is classed as an ‘Assisted Conversion’.
Last Interaction Conversion: An enquiry which is submitted upon the last visit to the website where the visitor was referred via a social media source.
Example: Joe visits the site after Googling my company name. 2 days later he visits the website as a result of clicking on a banner ad on another website. The next day he see’s my Tweet on Twitter and clicks on the link where he then goes onto sign up for my newsletter. As you can see, Joe converted after clicking on my Tweet on his final visit therefore Twitter is the last interaction.
Overview of how social influenced conversions
The above number show you how many visits have been generated in a specific time frame and the numbers relating to all social referrals, enquiries or goals actioned on the website and then the goals resulting from social media sources.
Which social sites generate the most traffic?
You can also view which social sites generated the most traffic:
Which social sites generate the most traffic?
Which pages generate the most traffic from social sites?
We can also see which pages generate the most traffic from social sources, with further enhancements you can also view the sources for each page too. Some posts may generate more traffic from LinkedIn than Facebook or LinkedIn depending on the type of audience and which networks they are more involved in.
Which pages or content generate the most visits?
Which social sites generate me the most enquiries?
Finally we can see which social media sources played a part in generating enquiries and which sources generated enquiries.
Which social sites influenced enquiries? Which social sites generated enquiries?
What the above table shows is that Twitter played a part in 24 enquiries but was the source of 38 enquiries. Key thing here is being able to say which sources ‘influenced’ and which sources ‘directly’ generate conversions/enquiries/goals.
So, whilst I go dig deeper into the reports, I shall let you go away and measure your social media performance.
Any questions please do leave a comment.
