Missing Features

Your correspondent recently had to deliver a training session on Google Analytics to savvy but non-technical users for a content driven community site. The audience of the training were the people behind the site and hadn’t used Google Analytics before.

This training outline worked really well:

• About
  • What Google Analytics tracks
  • So much data!
  • Logging in
• Core features
  • Understanding the layout
  • Using date ranges
  • Using the help icon
  • Using the export, email buttons
• Dashboard
• Main metrics
  • Visitors
  • Traffic sources
  • Content
• Key metrics
  • Top content
  • Top exit pages
  • Search keywords
  • Metrics for your site
• Advanced topics
  • Goals, not useful for them
  • Custom reports
• The Help section
• Questions

Tips for training:

1. Occasionally point out how the common page elements appear on various pages (email, export, date range, etc).
2. Occasionally point out how to add content to the dashboard, as you show metrics.
3. Show how easy it is to use the Google help site by searching for a term, and showing the glossary.
4. Just show and briefly explain the advanced topics are, don’t delve into them.
5. Spend two minutes thinking specifically about what the two metrics you would look at if you were responsible for the site, in order to be able to act on them.
6. This training takes about 45 minutes; expect 30 more minutes of questions.

And don’t forget to send an agenda to the team ahead of time:

1. About Google Analytics
2. Logging in
3. Core features
4. Dashboard
5. Main metrics
6. Key metrics
7. Advanced features
8. Questions & wrap-up

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