Mobile Analytics - Quick measurement tricks using Google Analytics
Over the weekend I was somewhat surprised that no one brought up mobile analytics at the AnalyticsCamp. As mobile users keep expanding and the functionality of mobile devices continually improves, measurement will come to the forefront.
This post takes a quick look at some easy ways to measure mobile users that come to your web site. Future posts in this series will look at success criteria, tracking mobile apps, and some of the interesting location-services like Foursquare. For now, let's just focus on mobile users coming to your existing website.
First, some business questions we are trying to answer:
- • Do we need to build a mobile version of our site?
- • Are there certain activities that mobile users do?
- • What kind of devices are accessing our website?
- • How are mobile visitors getting to your site?
To answer these questions, you can configure your Google Analytics setup to isolate your mobile visitors. To do so, start by creating an Advanced Segment.
I've posted a real basic way to do it below:
After creating your segment, you can filter Google Analytics to only view behavior from mobile visitors. Quickly you can determine how much traffic to your site is coming from mobile users.
By using the segment, you can determine the volume of traffic by these visitors as well as what they are looking at by checking out the Content Report. One of the things I've noticed recently is mobile visitors often view contact/employee directory information and career sections of websites. Armed with this knowledge your company can determine whether or not you have a big enough audience to build a dedicated mobile-friendly website and decide what kinds of things should be there.
Again by using that mobile segment you can see the kinds of devices visitors are using to access your site. This helps you make design and usability decisions.
How do mobile users get to your site? Are they coming from search or are they typing in your address or using a bookmark? What kinds of keywords are they using? What sites are referring traffic? Using the segment and doing a Traffic Source Report yields how this audience is finding you. All of this information helps you build a better experience.
So there you have it. A real quick and free way to look at mobile visitors behavior on your site. The next step is determining what it is you want these visitors to do once they are there, but that is for another post!
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