Google Analytics for Optimizely

The Optimizely Digital Experience Platform contains many features to support you in your daily work. Depending on how your solution is set up, some features described in this documentation may not be available to you. Contact your system administrator to find out more. See Optimizely World for technical information.

Google Analytics for Optimizely is an enterprise-class solution within the Optimizely dashboard that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use features let you see and analyze traffic data. Google Analytics® prepares you to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher converting websites.

After you install the add-on Plug-in or module, developed by Optimizely or its partners, to extend the capabilities of Optimizely. Add-ons are installed by Optimizely developers., you can add Google Analytics for Optimizely as a gadget in edit view.The gadget shows summaries, graphs, and lists of selected statistics over a time period. You can configure the statistics you want to display, and add advanced segmenting and custom filters to it. Configure Google Analytics for Optimizely to track a single website, or multiple websites in an enterprise environment, and apply tracking for all pages and products on a domain or sub-domain.

Setting up Google Analytics for Optimizely

You can add the gadget to the dashboard to monitor statistics for the entire website, and in edit view to monitor statistics for individual pages.

When you add the gadget in edit view, it displays an area divided into five data of the selected page’s analytics: Page views, Unique Marketing Automation: the number of unique IP addresses that visited this page/URL during a specified period. page views, Average time, Bounce rate The percentage of visitors to a website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. A user might leave a site because of poor website design or because he found the information being sought., and Exit rate. When nothing else is defined, the All Sessions built-in appears by default.

Image: Optimizely for Google Analytics dashboard

Select the gadget options and set up the gadget by selecting the following menu options:

Gadget options

  • Account & Profile. Log in with your account to define websites to display the analytics for.
  • Display Settings. Manage appearance of the graphs, and number of items in the list.
  • Graphs & Lists. Select the kind of metrics to display, in graphs or lists.

Graph analytics

  • Segments enable editors to select any built-in or custom segment, the analytics are filtered according to the selected segment. The gadget added to dashboard or edit view uses the same segment filter. Advanced Segments from Google Analytics are segments that you can define under “Advanced Segments” in the Google Analytics interface.
  • Period. Date from and to for displayed data. The date range is saved for the gadget.
  • Graph by. Shows graph data by day, week or month.
  • Summary. A short summary for the selected date range and segment. This panel can be turned off from Graphs & Lists.
  • Graphs. Graphs that are selected from Graphs & Lists.This is managed from Display Settings.
  • Lists. Lists that are selected from Graphs & Lists.This is managed from Display Settings.
  • Acquisition. Shows which pages the visitors go to.

Account & Profile

Control the Google accounts and websites for retrieving the statistics and displaying them in the gadget.

  • In Account, select your personal Google Analytics user account. You can also select a shared user that is configured from the administration interface.
  • In Profile, select any of the websites that you are assigned to from the Google Analytics interface.

Display Settings

Lets you control the appearance of the gadget.

  • In Heading, select Display heading to show the website name from Google Analytics as a heading in the gadget. To customize the heading, enter a Name.
  • In Graphs, you can select any of the following:
    • Layout. 
      • Tabbed displays graphs in a tab panel.
      • Stacked displays graphs in a vertical sequence.
    • Chart type. 
      • Line connects values with a line.
      • Bar displays a bar for each value.
  • In Lists, select the number of items to display in each list.

Graphs & Lists

Lets you control the data display in the gadget.

  • Summary. Select Displays summary at the top of gadget to show the summary of the gadget.
  • Graphs. Select any of the following graphs to show in the gadget:
    • Bounces are users leaving after viewing the first page.
    • New Visits % are the number of first-time visits on the site.
    • Page Views are the number of displayed pages on the site.
    • Time Spent is the average time spent on the site by a visitor on your website.
    • Visits is the number of visits to your website.
    • Goals Completed lists goals that were configured in the Google Analytics interface. Select which completed goals you want the graphs to display.
    • Events lists available events, for example, downloads, form postings and so on. Select which events you want the graphs to display.
    • Visitor Groups lists the defined visitor groups on your website. Select which visitor groups you want to see in the graph.
  • Lists.Select to list the following criteria:
    • Top Browsers are the most frequently used browsers.
    • Top Campaigns are the best performing campaigns as defined in Optimizely Social Reach, if you have this add-on installed on your website.
    • Top Countries are the most common countries for visitors of the site.
    • Top Exit Pages are the most common pages a user visited before leaving the site.
    • Top Form Postings are the most commonly posted forms.
    • Top Landing Pages are the most common landing pages when first entering the website.
    • Top Mediums are sources that Google Analytics analyzed for incoming links or through search.
    • Top Pages are the pages viewed most times.
    • Top Referrers are the top referring domains that link to your website.
    • Top Search Words are the most common search terms revealing the site.
    • Top Visitor Groups shows the most common visitor groups, based on page views and personalized content.

To find out the bounce rate for pages accessed by visitors using mobile devices on your website, and compare it to the average statistics for the website, and also see which pages have the highest exit rate.

  • In the gadget under Graphs, select Page Views, Exit Rate, and Bounces for the graphs you want to display.

    Image: Display graphs

  • Filter by selecting Mobile Traffic.
  • Under Acquisition you can see which pages visitors go to.

Google Analytics for Optimizely Commerce

If you have Optimizely Commerce installed on your website, Google Analytics for Optimizely works with e-commerce related statistics, to better understand customer behavior and the effectiveness of your merchandising efforts.

  • Customizable funnels. These relates to customer behavior within your shopping process (mixing individual product views, behavioral events, and transactions) to gain a true reflection of performance. Merchants can understand how far through the buying process customers are getting allowing definition of your most visited paths, biggest exits, and so on. You can cross these funnels and reports with your existing and new customer segments.
    • Do customers from different regions demonstrate behavioral issues when they experience your delivery options?
    • Do new visitors struggle with registering before making a purchase?
    • Do different products perform better when listed in a different way?
  • Shopping behavior. Provides assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the whole purchase funnel; starting at product views, the whole shopping experience can be mapped. Shows user flow through key elements such as product views, add to cart, and so on.
  • Checkout behavior. Specifically looks to identify the path through the checkout process by sending specific events to Google Analytics, to integrate as key moments of the checkout process. Abandoned checkouts are the most obvious, but you can identify drop-outs at registration or any other stage of the process for renewed marketing efforts.
  • Commerce-specific metrics. With Optimizely Commerce installed, the Google Analytics add-on has these additional options:
    • Graphs & Lists. Displays the graphs Avg order value, Items purchased, and Revenue.
    • Lists. Displays data such as Most Sold Products, Performing Campaigns, Performing Product Categories, and Performing Products.