Deliverables [100 marks]. This assignment in essence is a 'condensed' research and data analysis project. So, we will create the report based on a simplified research report template. Your report should include a:

• Problem Overview [20 marks]: What substantive questions are you trying to address? Include aproblem statement, business and researchobjectives and questions andhypotheses.
  • One example objective: "The purpose of this study is to perform a website analytics audit of the [site] for the period [dates] using Google Analytics [method] to understand [client name] current website traffic and to provide insights and recommendations to [].
  • Some example research questions can be seen below (questions 1 to 14). Create some of your own questions that should be answered to provide better insights.
  • Create 3 to 4 objectives, 2 to 4 questions to align with the objective and a hypothesis to match EACH objective.

[You may read a simple description of each section here http://media.acc.qcc.cuny.edu/faculty/volchok/researchreport/ResearchReport_print.html]

Some useful links:

• https://ocreative.com/interpreting-google-analytics/
• https://wpbuffs.com/how-to-read-google-analytics-reports/
• https://www.optimizesmart.com/analyze-interpret-report-data-trends-google-analytics/
• http://media.acc.qcc.cuny.edu/faculty/volchok/researchreport/ResearchReport_print.html
• https://gradcoach.com/what-is-research-methodology/

GOOGLE MERCHANDIZE STORE CASE STUDYand Workshop

Google maintains an official merchandise e-commerce store. The store was established to support customer sales of Google-branded products worldwide. In the Google store, customers can order a variety of braded Google, YouTube and Android products organized by categories, including apparel, lifestyle, and stationery. Google also offers ecofriendly products.

The Business Problem

As of September 2021, the Google store had over $11.6 million in revenue. These sales represented a total of 80,526 transactions, an average order value of $144.61, and an overall conversation rate of 1.46%. Even though the number of users stayed relatively constant [see Figure 2], from 2019 to early 2021 the revenue on the Google Merchandise store dropped significantly [see Figure 1]. Although sales have increased over the last while, one of the key objectives is thatGoogle wants to know why the revenue dropped so significantly in the period [October 2018 to 2020] and how they can keep this from happening again.

Figure 1: Revenue since 2015

Figure 2: Users since 2015

Understanding the data

Remember that the customer journey is a process of several stages:

1. Previous experience the customer might possess
2. The prepurchase stage when the customers become aware of or searches for the product or service
3. The purchase stage when the customer selects a product or service and buys its, and
4. The post purchase stage where the customer uses the product or service and shares information with the company AND others.

Throughout the purchase journey, customers search for information and interact with companies through various digital touchpoints. Company websites help in building awareness to acquire customers, engage customers, and capture their behaviors, and hopefully convert them to customers. The advantage of an online store over a physical store is that every interaction through every touchpoint is recorded. The result of tracking is that trends are developed over time and can therefore be analyzed. For example, results indicate where customers come from (i.e. social media, paid ads, etc.) the demographics of visitors and customers, and even the technology the use.

Getting STARTED

The purpose of this assignment is to guide you through the use of Google Analytics, using Google Merchandise Store data set, and to help you understand and make recommendations to your client [Google] on how to answer the much larger question of how to solve the significant drop in revenue.

The first step is to understand the users coming to the Google store. To do that the next few sections will 'walk' your group through some Google Analytics reports. This along with the certification videos [https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/course/6] will aid you in your understanding of the customers journey on the Merchandise store website.

Analyzing Web Traffic

We'll use Google Analytics to learn to analyze web traffic coming to a website. While you're doing this, I want you to be thinking about how this information can provide actionable insights that you can recommend to your client.

Getting Started

You should have completed the Google Analytics beginner course before starting.

To access the Google Merchandise Store Analytics data, you will need to have access to the Google store analytics demo account. Follow the steps seenhere [https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6367342?hl=en#zippy=%2Cin-this-article ] to log in. Then, select the filtered data that has been set up to filter out the client's website and known bots. It is called "Master View". For the purposes of this assignment, we will be using the Google Merchandise Store.

Below are a series of questions (likely as part of your objectives) that will need to be answered (at a minimum) for this assignment. You can use the results of these questions as part of your finding section of your report.

Part 1: Audience

Question 1: What has the overall web traffic been like for thelast 6, 12, 36 and 48 months?

TIP: For the remainder of the questions you may want to also choose a specific [i.e. All of 2020], or even a longer time frame to help compare and explain what has happened to Google Store sales, before and after the 2019-2020 sales decrease.

To start off, produce a general report of user activity to the website. We want to know for these given timeframes some aggregate audience metrics. We want to know:

1. total number of users
2. new users
3. pageviews
4. pages per session (pages / session)
5. average session duration
6. bounce rate
7. The percent of users that are new visitors versus returning visitors.
8. And the number of users and their percentages for the top 3 languages.

To answer this, go to the "Overview" section of Google Analytics and select the correct time frame.

Figure 3

Question 2: Are more U.S.-based English-speaking people coming to the website from a desktop, a tablet, or a mobile device for a 6, 12, 36 and 48 month period?

Hint: The information from Google Analytics Beginner training, video 2.3 "Understanding Full Reports" may help you answer this question.

Make sure the date range is properly selected.

On the same overview page, scroll down and select "full reports." Then, select "location." Then, drill down into cities.

Figure 4

Figure 5

In answering this question, a) provide the numbers and percentages of users for desktop, tablet, and mobile, and b) provide a pie chart showing ONLY English U.S. It should look something like this, but with a legend for each color:

Figure 6

Tip: To create the pie chart so that it only shows the U.S. English speaking people, you will need to type in a search filter English-US persons only.

Think about what this might say about the types of users who go to this site, what they might be doing when they are using this site, and other factors that may contribute to their decision to go to this site from a desktop or mobile device. Are they working at their desk? Shopping on their phone? etc.

Question 3: How do the mobile and desktop sites compare in terms of bounce rate, pages / session, and average session duration?

Return to the table view to answer this question. Or, you could use the 'mobile' -> 'overview' report.

Think about what this might say for the speed of the mobile versus desktop sites, the navigation of the mobile site.

Question 4: For the top three cities the traffic is coming from, what are the total number of users, total number of new users, number of sessions, bounce rate, and average session duration?

Hint: The information from Google Analytics Beginner training, video 2.3 "Understanding Full Reports" may help you answer this question.

Make sure the date range is properly selected to be able to compare your different results.

Go to the "location" subtab of "Geo" on the left hand menu.

Figure 7

Then, use your knowledge of Google Analytics, to select the 'cities' option so you can answer the question.

Question 5: What countries does the client have a growing audience in and may want to consider advertising in outside of the United States?

Make sure the date range is properly selected to be able to compare your different results.

Hint: The information from Google Analytics Beginner training, video 3.1 "Audience Reports" may help you answer this question.

Looking over the data, identify any noteworthy patterns. What marketing strategies could these paterns suggest? What countries do you believe the client should do more advertising in. Provide written and visual evidence to support your reasoning.

Question 6: How is the client performing in terms of driving returning visitors to its website?

Make sure the date range is properly selected to be able to compare your different results.

This question is now asking you not to just read the data but make an interpretation. That's 'analytics.'

Hint: The information from Google Analytics Beginner training, video 3.1 "Audience Reports" may help you answer this question.

You'll want to go to the behavior, 'new vs returning' reports.

Figure 8

You can see the new versus returning visitors. For a visual, you can click the checkboxes next to 'new visitor' and 'returning visitor' to plot new versus returning for a visual. It might look like this:

Figure 9

Think about what this says about the client's ability to get people coming back to its website. Think about what some reasons are that might contribute to why people aren't returning to this site.

Part 2: Acquisition

Hint: The information from Google Analytics Beginner training, video 3.2 "Acquisition Reports" may help you answer the questions in this section.

Question 7: In order of most to least, how are the different channels performing in terms of driving users to the website? How have these numbers changed before, during and after the 2019-2020 revenue DECREASE?

Use the "Acquisition" -> "All Traffic" -> "Channels" report to answer this question. Use the 'pie chart' to visualize this' [see Figure 10].

Question 8: Which sources/mediums are producing the lowest bounce rate for our site?

Make sure the date range is properly selected to be able to compare your different results.

Use the "Acquisition" -> "All Traffic" -> "Source/Medium" report to answer this question. Use the 'comparison' chart and filter for 'bounce rate.' See below:

Figure 11

Question 9: What are the best performing and worst performing social networks in terms of website sessions?

Use the "Acquisition" -> "Social" -> "Network Referrals" report to answer this question. Use the 'performance' chart and filter for 'sessions.' See below:

Figure 12

Think about what this might mean. Is our client active on this site and doing a great job driving traffic to their website? Is there a lot of interest (talk about) our client on that platform? What are the sites that the client could do a better job on?

Question 10: What website page (URL from the website) received the highest number of sessions from what social network with the highest average session duration?

Note that this question isn't asking you for JUST the most sessions, but among the highest sessions, which one also had the highest average session duration. For example, if the top sessions were 4, 4, 3, and 2, and the URL with 3 sessions had the highest average duration at 2 minutes, then the answer would be this URL and its associated source.

Use "Acquisition" -> "Social" -> "Landing Pages."

Figure 13

Then, you'll need to add a secondary filter for 'source.'

Think about what this says about what posts (website URLs) are resonated with what audiences on what social networks.

Part 3: Behavior

Here, we're diving deeper into the popularity of different pages on a website.

Hint: The information from Google Analytics Beginner training, video 3.3 "Behavior Reports" may help you answer the questions in this section.

Question 11: What pages get the highest page views?

Go to "Behavior" -> "Site Content" -> "All Pages."

Think about what this says about what posts (website URLs) are the most popular.

Question 12: What search terms are driving the top 25% of traffic to the website?

Go to "Acquisition" -> "Search Console" -> "Queries."

TIP: As always, be sure the date range is the one you want. Try to be consistent with the time frame you are using so you can compare your analysis across the different reports.

This shows you the top performing search terms (i.e., search keywords) that drove traffic to the website. You can see the number of clicks in each row in the 2nd column followed by the percent of traffic to the website that that search term drove. You want to look at the percentages in the 'clicks' column to get up to 25% of the traffic. So, if the first 2 are "17.95%" and "14.10%" (as shown below), that surpasses our 25% of traffic. Thus, you need to report the first 2 search queries.

Figure 14

PArt 4: CONVERSION REPORTS

Using the conversions report, you can track the website goals and compare this to the business objectives. Is the goal to maximize sales, maximize brand exposure, increase the number of loyal customers, maximize the conversion rate? - or a combination of several of these.

Click on Conversions > Goals > Funnel Visualization. This report shows the funnel in the checkout process. Locate where the users are leaving the site at the checkout process. This information might suggest website layout issues or even slow processing or page load times that may need addressing.

Question 13 - What can be done to improve Cart to the Billing and Shipping Process? Ex: Should Google add a guest checkout feature?

Question 14 - What can be done to improve the 'Payment to order Review process'? Ex: Different payment methods.

Figure 15 : Google Merchandise Store Conversions

In the conversion funnel image above, you can see that approximately 18% of users proceed from the cart to billing and shipping, and then only 48.27% proceed to payment. From the payment information to review order there is a drastic loss of users. Each of the 'checkout' pages require a deeper examination to better understand why users are leaving the checkout process (a very common issue and some secondary research will be required).

As part of your research, you may want to examine and review the checkout process yourself.Compare the process to the funnel discussed in class and provide some ideas, improvements or suggestions based on your observations.

Applying the concepts.

After reviewing the key GA reports and answering the questions above, you may need to ask further questions to better understand what is occurring on the website? Here are just a few suggestions.

1. What are the top 10 products being bought?
2. What are the customer profiles?
3. What is the customer reach, or how many users started at least one session on the website during a certain time period?
4. Where should Google advertise?
5. What are the touchpoints driving the highest sales conversions?
6. When and why are customers churning?

FINAL insights

A wealth of information is available for business decision makers when using GA. The answers to the questions asked above will provide you an understanding of search and shopping patterns on the Google store which in tourn will help guide you to some conclusions and recommendations for your client [Google].

As you can see many marketing problems can be solved with digital marketing analytics.

Remember to answer the key objective to this assignment 'why the revenue has dropped and how can Google fix it.'

This activity is based on a lab created by Matt Kushin, 2016.

Methodology

Where did you get the data? How was it collected? What are some of the limitations of the data? Was it primary or secondary, quantitative, or qualitative data

Our data is gathered from the Google Analytics platform for the e-commerce Google shop at shop.googlemerchandisestore.com, which is the main merchandise store for Google, Android and Youtube brands worldwide. The data comes from the UA Google Merchandise Store Master View within Google Analytics.

The data was collected using Google Analytics's platform, which measures metrics from session durations and activity to the source of the traffic, identifying landing pages and conversions as well as many other metrics to identify and categorize users, location, behaviours and cross linking with Google Ads. These metrics are collected from the use of JavaScript tracking code which are present in every page as well as the use of cookies to collect a variety of information that gets stored in the Google Analytics platform.

Some limitations of the platform and data is that the tracking is limited to a few methods and technologies, some of which can be blocked from being active, such as cookie or JavaScript blockers or privacy addons for web browsers. Another limitation is the audience at campus physical store locations as certain demographics or psychographics will not be part of the Google Analytics platform due to shopping in physical stores. Google will only be able to track those that use the online platform where cookies or tracking codes work.

The data from Google Analytics is primary data, collected directly from the consumer's interactions online. The data is both quantitative and qualitative based on the data gathered and the variables available in the analytics dashboard.