 Merci beaucoup. Bonjour, comment ça va? Ça va bien, à très bien, très bien. Well, I don't really speak French, so I'll just... Okay, thank you. Thank you for the applause. Thanks for the introduction. And my name is Annelika, and I work for Yoast. And for those of you who don't know what Yoast is, we do SEO. And that stands for Search Engine Optimization. And we want to bring SEO to everyone. So if you have a website and you want to optimize it for search engines, please feel free to visit our website. Now, I have a very long history at Yoast. The company is about eight and a half years old now. And I'm working there for almost five years. And I started out as an intern with having no knowledge of SEO at all. And then I started as an SEO consultant. I have experiences in marketing as a CMO. And I'm currently the lead of the research department at Yoast. Now, in all these roles I had, one thing kept coming back. And that was Google Analytics. And I studied sociology. And as a sociologist, I learned how to deal with data and with data tools. So learning Google Analytics was actually a very logical step for me. And I have a manager who's a sociologist as well. And she thought Google Analytics was a very logical step for me, too. And so I have a manager who thinks she can deal with Google Analytics. And that is sort of the moment my fear of Google Analytics sort of began. And in all those years, I tried to learn Google Analytics, but I didn't actually learn Google Analytics. I've looked at it a number of times, read about it, read articles about it every now and then. I watched beginner's tutorials online and did the official Google Analytics qualification exam. But it never really stuck. It never really got me anywhere. And I never really dove into it, into the subject. And I picked it up because I had some time left, but I just as easily dropped it when I was a bit more busy. And the cool thing of working at Yoast is that they really want you to develop your skills, your soft skills, but also your hard skills. And I knew I would like and I would love Google Analytics because I love doing research. It's the thing I loved most when doing my studies, when doing sociology. But what was, you know, I was thinking, I know I like Google Analytics, but what is holding me back? And I kept saying to people that I like Google Analytics. When we talked about it, they say, oh, yeah, you know, you like Google Analytics. And knowing of having them, knowing that I like Google Analytics, but without showing them I actually like Google Analytics, well, that was weighing down on me. So why wasn't I proving my colleagues and above all myself that I could do Google Analytics? That I wanted to learn the tool and that I wanted to have a role in the company as an analyst. And then it just hit me. It was fear. I was afraid of Google Analytics. And it's not the same fear as I have for spiders. I mean, I really don't like spiders. I think, ugh, I get the chills when I think of them. No, that was a different kind of fear. This was actually the fear of failure. And as I became aware of this fear, and that's the first step, becoming aware of something you're afraid of, you know, I kept, I started to notice when I was acting out of fear. And one of those things is procrastination. You know, I kept finding other things to do than Google Analytics. I had a pretty busy job back then with a lot of meetings. So, you know, I could spend my time with the meetings and spend my time with helping my colleagues. I could spend, you know, when someone asked, I need some help. I was like, yeah, I can do it. I kept keeping myself busy, not just to do, not just to learn Google Analytics. So, I was feeling my time with everything, but, well, Google Analytics. And I kept having this voice in my head that I needed to be perfect. That I must be perfect. If I want to have a role at JOS, as a Google Analytics analyst, I need it to be perfect, and I should know all the aspects it has. I should know how to do code. I should know how to do JavaScript. I should learn Google Tech Manager, know how to deal with that. But I was thinking, I'm not really a technical person, but I kept finding these things online, saying, as a good digital analyst, you must have these skills. So, I set this really high goal for myself. Because these goals were so high, I never started. Because, well, if you don't start, you can't feel right. Well, we all know that's not true. We all know that not starting to learn doesn't feel right. That it gets under your skin, and that you keep beating yourself up for it. Keep beating yourself up for the fact that you're not doing anything about it. And in the meantime, there was a major shift for me at Yoast. I became the lead of the research department. Well, now, nothing was holding me back from mastering Google Analytics. Now, the time had come to perform. And, oh, my God, that was so scary. There was no turning back. So, I felt the pressure. I felt that now is the time to get over myself and to properly start learning Google Analytics. So, how to conquer this fear? How to conquer the fear of failure? And, of course, that's easily said and done. It's something you carry with you your whole life. It's something I've recognized while preparing this talk. Because talking in front of a lot of people, that's pretty scary. So, I'm not a psychologist, but these are the things that help me get over my fear of failure, of failing Google Analytics. And I know, I knew, I needed to be honest. Not only to myself, but to my manager as well. So, I opened up to her. I explained her what I was dealing with. And I asked for her help. And that's scary, asking for help. That's showing vulnerability. Admitting that you're not good at something. And, oh, my heart was racing when I was sitting there talking to her. And what happened? What she did was actually lower my expectations and my own goals. Because my manager didn't have these high expectations of me. She was far more realistic than I was. So, she was far more down-to-earth, more realistic. Wow, that was such a relief. So, what my manager did was giving me time and space, which resulted in me feeling less pressure. And she also came with the idea that I should write blog posts about it, about Google Analytics. And that's awesome, because not only is it a way of learning the theory behind Google Analytics, having a deadline really helped me with my procrastination. So, since I was feeling less pressure, I felt more room to do Google Analytics, to properly learn it, to sit myself down and like, I have all the room to really properly learn this. And allowing me to actually give myself the time, piece by piece, bit by bit, and piece by piece, I started to have fun with Google Analytics. And it took some time that I got there. And I want to share with you how I overcame my fear of Google Analytics. And I want to share with you how I found fun with Google Analytics. And having fun is so much better than having fear. You know, if you have fun, you have enthusiasm, you feel more secure about yourself, and you find more love in the job you're doing. And Google Analytics had become a playing field for me. And Google Analytics had become a game. So, how did I get there? Here's what I did. Now, for Yoast, Google is a best friend, but it was for me as well. So I just Googled my way. Googled everything that was unclear for me. But in my head, there are no stupid reasons, no stupid questions, I'm sorry. And I soon found out that, you know, there's a large Google Analytics support base, support knowledge base, but it was sometimes too technical or sometimes too straightforward for me. So I was, you know, it's fine to start with, but I needed more context. I needed more information. So I found a couple of sources that really helped me, that appealed to me. I like watching videos, so I Googled on YouTube as well. And I found this guy named Julian. He's from measure school. And he has a lot of, lot of videos on his YouTube channel about Google Analytics, but also about Google Tech Manager. And so I started learning from this guy, Julian. And I also found some other sources. There's a site called Lunametrics. They explain Google Analytics really, really well. And also knowing what it is, is really nice. But knowing what you can do with it, in terms of analyzing, is even better. So that's where kauzik.net comes in. It's a site from Avinash Kauzik. He is the Google Analytics evangelist. And he explains how you can go from just seeing, looking at the data to actually analyzing it and drawing conclusions from it. So here I have a couple of sources that really appeal to me and which I use all the time. But still, every time I opened up Google Analytics, I was afraid of doing something wrong, of doing something to harm the data, of doing something that's just awful because there's no turning back if you do something with it. You know, it's damaged forever. But luckily I soon found out that everything you do in the reporting section is without any danger, as long as you stay away from the admin section. If you stay away from the admin section and keep staying in the reporting section, nothing can go wrong. So in fact the reporting section is a one big giant play zone for me, but also for you. So since I knew I could really set high goals for myself, I also knew that the most logical thing was to lower my goals and to start with one simple goal. So my first goal was get to know Google Analytics. And I just got into the tool and expanded everything I could expand. I just thought, oh, this is something to expand. I expanded it. I just went all over the place, all over the tool and just clicked on everything I could click on. Clicked my way around when the crazy clicker almost got pain in my finger of clicking. And I just looked at what happened, but not only look at what happened, but also try to understand what happened. And yes, that wasn't all fun. I got lost hundreds and hundreds of times, still feeling overwhelmed by this giant tool Google Analytics is, of which I knew it has lots to offer, but I could still not find the magic, the magic moment in which everything just made sense to me. But hey, that might just be setting a high goal for myself at the time. And as I clicked my way through the tool, I also discovered that Google Analytics really wants to help you getting to know it. So there are question marks in the reports near all dimensions and metrics. And I must agree, you know, if you hover over the question mark, you get an explanation. All are easily to understand. Not all are very clear. And sometimes they even make things more unclear. But that's what search engines like Google are for. I just Googled it. And while looking at the standard reports, hovering over all these question marks and trying to understand, and what I did not understand, I just Googled it, or I wrote a blog post about it, really forcing me to dive into it. And while using it, I began to find some logic behind it. The different sections in there make sense. Like real-time, what is happening right now, the audience section, what are the characteristics of your audience? What country are they from? Do they use a mobile or do they use desktop? And the acquisition sections, where are they coming from? Are they coming from a search engine? Are they coming from Facebook and so on? The behavior, what are they looking at? What are the pages they are viewing? And conversions are about, are they meeting the goals you set for your website? So, where was I now? I knew the basics, and I could definitely find my way in Google Analytics. And I understood the logic behind it. But still, I felt lost and overwhelmed. I still didn't completely knew what I was looking at, and still thinking I'm missing the connection between all the knowledge I had gained and had built. And above all, I couldn't find things that are actionable, things that I could communicate to my marketing team. Things I could say, hey, we should do that, and then we get a lot of money. No, I couldn't find these things. And I learned from reading blog posts on Causic.net that aggregated data just sucks. It's like one data on one big pile. It doesn't say that much. And that you might, if you look at aggregated data, that you might draw the wrong conclusions because you don't have any context. You need to customize your reports and you need to specify your data in order to really draw conclusions. So, that became my next goal. How learn how to customize reports. And I began simple without taking any detools. I began playing with the search bar. So, what happened if I searched for organic? Oh, wow. I get a nice overview of all search engines people use to get to my website. So, you can see the search bar as a filter option. You can use this filter to only view sources or only view a page. And it will filter the things you see in the very first column. And that is nice. That is something you can use and something you can get creative with. And while reading more about this filter option, I also found out that I could use a pipeline to add more pages or sources or whatever and giving me information about just the pages I want or just the sources I want or just the countries I want. So, in this example, I've added organic pipeline email and I just could see in a nice overview all the traffic I've gained from organic and email. Well, once I was done playing with the search bar and the filter options, I began adding secondary dimensions. You can look at dimensions as things that are text, where metrics are numbers, dimensions are, you know, the metrics are the data, dimensions are the variables data is about. So, sources are dimensions, countries are dimensions, pages are dimensions. So, I began adding secondary dimensions and just seeing what it does. What kind of results do I get? And since I didn't know all the variables back then, I clicked on display in alphabetical order or as alphabetical list. So, I just could scroll my way through all the dimensions and actually getting to know all possible dimensions Google Analytics has to offer. And I was trying different things. Sometimes I got reports that made sense, but a lot of times I got reports that didn't make any sense at all. But hey, that's okay. And I mentioned that Google Analytics is trying to help you and they're trying to help you with adding secondary, with properly adding secondary dimensions as well. There's this recommended section, when you want to add a secondary dimension, so you know what other dimensions are commonly used and that these are secondary dimensions that actually make sense and that they can help you to get more specified data. So, for example, you can add landing pages as a secondary dimension to the source medium report and that will show you what kind of pages people land on who come from Facebook, for instance. And then I caught my eye on something that's called segments. And at first I was like, ooh, what's this? This looks interesting. But is this something I can do myself because it kind of looks scary. I counted to 10, not just kidding, I just clicked on it and see what happened. And I quickly found out that there were predefined segments that Google Analytics was offering me, segments that were interesting and I didn't have to do anything. And then it hit me. This is the place for me. This place could be fun. And there was this segment called Organic. So I could use this segment to find out how my SEO was doing. You know, now we're talking Google Analytics. And finally, while using this segment, I knew what I was looking at. I saw traffic from search engines and I could find out from which countries they came, how many of them used desktop or mobile, the pages they landed on, the other pages they were viewing. And if they bought anything, now this was awesome stuff because I finally didn't feel lost. And finding out about segments gave me so much fun. Google Analytics was fun. And I sort of became a Google Analytics segment addict. I created segments for everything. When colleagues were asking me something they wished I could find in Google Analytics, my first reply always was, I'll create a segment. Segment became sort of my middle name and it still is my middle name. So you can go completely crazy with segments and you can really use your creativity. And the cool thing is, is that you can check if it works with the real-time segment checker here at the right. So for instance, you can create a segment of users that viewed more than three pages. So users that are really engaged with the content on your website. Think of all the opportunities segments can give you. So I was learning Google Analytics without learning how to code a goal I had for myself. You know, I must be technical. I must know JavaScript. I must know all these things without learning how to code. I was customizing reports without having to learn anything technical. And of course, if you want to know more, there's more advanced stuff like events and custom dimensions. And these are the things you need to have some technical background for. And if you understand Google Tech Manager for instance, this is awesome. And luckily at Joost who is an analytics wizard, he knows all these things. But I understand that not everyone has the luxury of doing this. And that's okay. If you don't want to do the technical, stay away from it. You can do so much with Google Analytics without the technical. But if you do want to, if you are interested, I suppose that you start learning Google Tech Manager just like you'd like to learn Google Analytics. So where was I now? I've reached my two goals. I could definitely find my way in Google Analytics. And I learned how to customize the standard reports in Google Analytics. And I wrote blog posts about subjects. And about subjects I wanted to learn more about. But more importantly, I found fun. And a lot of my fear of Google Analytics was gone. And I felt confident to help colleagues with their Google Analytics questions. And help the blog team with finding out how their blog was performing, what the performance is. I felt useful and I felt good. Still, I'm faced with challenges. With finding actionable insights. With asking the right questions. With creating hypotheses. With drawing conclusions. And that's the face I'm currently in. Asking the right questions. Getting insights that can help us optimize our website or our business even further. And I once read a blog post that said that a lot of analysts aren't really analysts. They're just reporting or monitoring data. And of course that's very important. Looking at trends, seeing if it all goes according to plan. According to the targets you set per KPI, per key performance indicator. And they show the standard reports the same that are the same week after week. And of course it's important to keep track on how you're doing. But taking the step from monitoring to analyzing is important if you want to be a proper analyst. As you might have guessed, I wanted to be a proper analyst. Now going from monitoring to analyzing is actually the hard part. Because you can literally track everything that's happening on your site. Leaving you with tons and tons of data. And there's a lot, a lot of data in Google analytics already. And reporting just page views and bounce rates and knowing how long they stayed on your website it doesn't really say anything. What does it mean? It's 200 page views for a blog post. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? You shouldn't be satisfied with just the standard reports with just the general numbers you see. That's not very actionable. What if you have a sudden drop in traffic? Do you know what it had caused? Do you know how to find out what could have happened? So my current goal is to find actionable insights to actually analyze data. And Google analytics is trying to help you with that. It's something called insights. You can find it at the right sidebar in Google analytics. They show you questions you can ask yourself and they even show you the reports you can find it. And they show you possible insights that might be interesting and spot issues or things that are going wrong in the data. And this is the perfect place to begin if you want to do more analyzing. And for me I start with asking questions I want answered. Based on what's going on at our company looking for things to optimize even further. And then I write down the hypotheses and start analyzing. And because I have the hypotheses I can easily draw conclusions and feel confident enough to share it with my colleagues, to share it with the rest of the company. But also a lot of times I just need an extra pair of eyes or an extra pair of brains. And that's also where the awesomeness comes in. And that's what I do with my colleagues because they have context. They also have knowledge. It's so fun to, you know, gather all around and start talking about the data you're seeing and how it can be explained and what we can do with it. So it's not... I find this a hard part because it's like I don't want them to think I don't know anything but it's actually just, you know learning something new is always hard especially when you're a bit older. And it's far more than just learning the theory but I did it. I found the fun in Google Analytics and I'm still having fun with it and it challenges me a lot, a lot of times forcing me to step over my own fear and it's actually helping me with my skills as well. And sometimes I hit a wall and that's okay as long as you're honest about it to yourself but also to others. So that's it. That's the story about how I found fun in Google Analytics how I overcame my fear in Google Analytics and I want to invite you to play with it as well like see what it has to offer click on everything you can click on or get to know it familiarize yourself with it and probably you come across a lot of things that are interesting things that are interesting to know but then what? When working with Google Analytics it's important to have a question in mind and sometimes you just want to know before because that's good, having a question in mind that's good to know before opening up the tool because you get lost so damn easily. And if you get lost you spend a lot of time with it and that's a shame. So after playing around I'm daring you to answer a question like do my SEO efforts pay off and how can I optimize my website for SEO even further? Well, that's it. I want to thank you for it for your attention and I'm open for questions from all of you. Hi, thanks for that. Regarding the first step, the learning step you didn't talk about Google Academy to learn Google Analytics can you explain why? Yeah, of course I did Google Analytics has a whole academy and you can they have a lot of videos explaining you Google Analytics but I've watched them but it never really stuck I didn't feel like I didn't find enthusiasm for analytics and I was watching those videos so I just looked at other videos. Thank you. Any other questions? Over there. Hi, thank you. I get that you're still in the process of learning how to properly analyze the reports but could you give us like two or three tools like tips that you learned so far to help us analyze quickly our reports? Thank you. Well the most important thing is to have that question in mind and also think about what you expect. So that's the hypothesis where the hypothesis comes in and for me I base my questions on things that are happening at our company so for instance we have well let's say at the end of November there's a Black Friday sale and we do I'm not sure but what if you're doing a sale and then you have a campaign and you think about all the things you're doing things you were doing on Facebook things you were doing on Twitter maybe on e-mail and you want to analyze how all these three things are doing in analytics because then you can see what is a good source for me what's the source that brings us in the most money what's the source that can give us an effort to get even more money so the source slash medium section in Google analytics is where I often look to find sources that are helping us optimize or you know that help us with achieving our goals and also the landing pages is also very important so that gives a lot of information you know I'm like hi I'm a user and I'm visiting your website and this is the first page I'm entering and I've entered your website with from Google so these landing pages have a lot of information about also how your SEO is doing and you must look at them and see do these pages make sense are these pages pages I have optimized for SEO are these pages appealing for my visitors and if they're not you should do something about it yeah and there are yeah there are so many things and it's also really helpful to just Google your way just Google the subject you want to learn more about so that's also what I'm doing and also the thecosic.net website it shares so much information Avin Nash also has his own segments you can just download yourself so you can add them to Google analytics yourself and you don't have to do anything else and they are there showing okay this is a segment for engaged users or this is a section for people that entered the site and immediately left so you can use the segments to really explore how people are using your website and you can also compare people you have the people who bought something and the people who didn't buy anything you can make segments of these things and you can just how you call it I've lost the word oh you can compare these two and see okay in which aspects do they differ from each other and learn from that yeah there's so much in there any other questions alright thank you thank you and Linke