Google Analytics Tutorial for Bands and Musicians
The one tool you need in your toolbox as a band (which basically makes you a small business owner) is to install and configure Analytics on your website. Do yourself a favor and get off of MySpace. At the very least MySpace should just be used as another avenue to reach fans, not your only or primary point of contact. For this particular tutorial, we use WordPress as our content management system of choice. I recommend WordPress to anyone who asks me simply because of how easy it is, and how easy it is to integrate Google Analytics.
If you’ve already setup Google Analytics you can skip down a ways on the page as I go into the aspects of Google that will mean the most to you. It’s a good idea to look over the initial setup to make sure you’ve done everything properly. The way I setup Google does enable tracking on a few more important items that you don’t get by just copying and pasting the code Google supplies to you.
Get WordPress or a something similar CMS
With WordPress you have two choices to setup your site:
- Download the software and install it to your web host (Recommended)
- Host your website remotely on yourname.wordpress.com (less freedom)
Some hosting providers like Media Temple have a one click install for WordPress. This helps things along considerably. If you can’t afford your own domain name and/or hosting. Signup for an account on WordPress.com. Your name will be YOURNAME.wordpress.com to start, but you won’t be able to have complete freedom over the look and feel of your site.
If you have no other choice, start with option 2. You can always export your data and import it to your own web hosted .com later.
Signup for a Google Analytics account using your Google account name
I’ve had a Gmail account for awhile now so all I had to do was go to Google.com/analytics and sign up for an analytics account.
Setup your profile
Setting up your profile is as simple as putting in your website address for each website you have. If you want to setup e-commerce tracking for your online store you have to enable this option later. For now, just enter in the basic information for your site.
Our site already has a profile so the additional site we just setup appears below that domain name. (assault.it.com) You’ll also notice that the status icon is a little alert. That’s because we need to actually setup the embed code on the site.
Click on the edit link on the right, and then click on the Check Status link over to the right
Now you’ll see what we need to get our hands on which is the Google Tracking code. (On the right) You can just copy and paste this into your site if you’re not using WordPress, but it’s better to integrate it with the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin so you can enable additional features not offered with just copying and pasting the code.
If you just copy/paste the code into your site you won’t get any of the additional benefits setup like goal funnels so don’t do that.
Leave this window open for now, and I’ll explain how to implement this code with the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin in the next step.
Download/Install/Activate The Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress to your blog
You’re better off using the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin for a 3 reasons:
- The plugin will track outbound clicks to see where people are leaving your site and what links they are clicking on when they do leave your site.
- The plugin will automatically put the proper code on all aspects of your site, and when an upgrade is available it’s as easy as clicking upgrade.
- Your downloads will automatically be tagged as /downloads/wp-content/uploads/your-file-name.zip so you can get an idea of how many downloads you are getting.
To download the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin you can either add it through the administration interface by going into your WordPress Admin area: http://www.whateveryourdomainis.com/wp-admin and then click on the arrow next to the Plugins link and click “Add New”.
Then, do a search for “Google Analytics for WordPress” and it should be the first result. Install and move on to the next step or install it manually via the directions for installation on the plugins’ WordPress page which I have pasted below:
Input your Google tracking code
Remember the code we left open in another window from before? This is where we need that code again. You just need the id off of your tracking code which I’ve highlighted below, not the entire copy/paste code that Google gives you.
Copy that part of the code and paste it into the configuration text box like I have below.
Set up your settings similar to how I have to ensure you’re tracking downloads as well as outbound clicks from your site.
Collect the data!
Gather several weeks worth of data before you really go in and analyze where people are coming from and what parts of your site are most popular.
What’s important?
Depending on how you are using your site there are a variety of things that could be of importance to you. (Besides just actual traffic of course)
If you’re using your website as a place where you can push your music to the fans with downloads then that’s going to be one of your most important areas to pay attention to. To view your download statistics go to the content report, and then “Top Content” section.
Then filter your content by downloads by typing “/downloads” into the text box as I have below:
Another thing to pay attention to is your traffic sources. How are users finding you? Google searches? Reverbnation? MySpace? Twitter? Blog posts?
Want to increase/decrease the date range?
Been a few months since you installed the plugin code? How about increasing the date range from the past month to the past few months? Or past few days? Do that on the dashboard where you see the calendar:
Setup Goals (AKA Super Fucking important)
After you’ve ensured your data is being collected you’re going to want to setup goals.
Goals allow you to setup a flow on the site for how they find you up until they actually do something. (For istance, download a file off of a specific page)
There are 3 types of goals you can setup, the most important to us being the URL destination which allows us to set a user path for a visitor coming to our site. Name the goal and select URL destination and you’ll see the rest of the Goal Details options that I have in the screen capture below:
“Goal URL” is the second have the the name of the page the user should end up on, and goal value is something to set up if you’re setting a monetary value for something like a digital download. For instance, if you have a file uploaded to your site as I have above, your goal URL would be downloads/wp-content/uploads/name-of-the-file-you-uploaded.zip
Note: You can take this link from the information in your Top Content section like I showed you how to do above.
If you want to track users from say, your homepage to your downloads page you can enter in the separate steps a user would take to get from your homepage to your actual file download.
If I had 4 pages I could enter them all in each field and name each step to determine how many users are able to make it through the entire goal funnel.
At Assault’s online clothing store, we use goals to track our user’s sticking points in our shopping cart check out process. If we find there are a lot of users abandoning their carts after they get to a specific step in the checkout process, we know there must be some sort of usability issue.
One of the coolest aspects of the goals and e-commerce tracking is that you can determine where your actual converted sales/downloads are coming from most. (Meaning the websites that send you the most downloads and money!)
Google analytics goals are critical when determining what social networks to push your music to the hardest, which blogs to keep pimping your free gear to cause their audience buys digital music, which twitter users are giving you shoutouts, etc. etc.
I say again, setting up Goals and Goal Funnels will give you visual proof of where you are having success with getting your music downloaded. I can’t stress this point enough!
If you find most of your users aren’t getting to your music downloads, then you need to give them a clearer call to action on all your pages.
If you’re users are bouncing after :20 seconds and only visiting one page, then they’re not finding what they came to your site for.
There are HUNDREDS of things you can learn from all the data Google gives you. Are your fans primarily hitting the page on the site with your pictures? Are they coming to the free download of a song you offered them that got plugged by a blog? Are they looking at your bio because you have a hot chick lead singer and they want to see if she’s single? (Assault‘s top viewed page on our store is for our zombie t-shirt. Go figure.)
Analytics is the key to your online strategy. It tells you what you’re doing right, and what you’re doing wrong. It’ll also tell you what your fans want more of, and if you’re getting them to the right place in the fewest amount of clicks.
Want more info? Did you get stuck at a certain point? Want some one on one advice? Send me a message on Twitter or post in the comments. I reply to just about everything that comes my way.
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About the Author
Tim is the co-owner of Assault, and tends to think he can party twice as hard as anyone. Follow him on twitter @assault Email this Author | All posts by tim
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very clean tutorial. thanks.
A pal urged me to check out this page, great post, fanstatic read… keep up the nice work!