3 Reasons Why Your Facebook Page Needs Google Analytics
Webdigi posted a blog on Monday about their successful integration of Google Analytics on their Facebook fan page. They even created a tool you can use to generate the Google Analytics code for your fan page on Facebook. This is extremely valuable information because Facebook Insights only provide a limited amount of information to fan page administrators. Here are 3 reasons why you Google Analytics on your fan page:
1) Tracking Non-Fan Activity
Facebook Insights only track the activity of users who have become a fan of your business’ page. With Google Analytics, you can track activity of all visitors (including non-fans). Trackable statistics include: visits, average time on site, visitor location, and more!
2) Analyzing Reliable, User-Friendly Data
Information provided by the Facebook Insights application is not always accurate or available for that matter. Facebook is growing rapidly and sometimes functions of the site are down. Some of the information provided by Google Analytics is the same, but it’s always good to have a backup for your business. Also, the enhanced graphics and charts in Google Analytics reports are much easier to navigate and are more aesthetically pleasing for presentation purposes.
3) Optimizing Your Landing Tab
Facebook does not track the activity on each individual FBML tab your page displays to users. Google Analytics allows you to track the success of each tab individually if you generate a separate code for each tab. This will help you identify which tabs are effective and which are not. Your fan page landing tab should include a call-to-action (i.e. “Become a Fan!”). Google Analytics can help you track the conversion rate and the increased or decreased success rate once you make changes to the tab.
Convinced yet? Here are the steps Webdigi came up with to get started:
1) Setup Google Analytics account. If you already have one, create a new website profile. You can name it facebook.com or facebook.com/your_page_name. You will finally get your tracking code which looks like this UA-3123123-2
2) Create your custom img tag for each of your pages you like to track. EG: contact form, services, products etc. You can use our tool to create the Google Analytics link generator for Facebook pages.
3) Add the entire custom image html tag from step 2 to the bottom of each Facebook fan page that you need to track.
Have you successfully integrated Google Analytics onto your fan page? Share your experience by commenting here!
I am definitely going to give this a try; however, since you can only add code to custom FBML pages, I am assuming this means your wall traffic isn’t analyzed. Is that correct?
Actually, where are you getting the /landing_page /contact_form etc links? Ours display as numbers (?v=app_6009294086 for example). Is there a setting to change this?
I am very excited that we can now integrate our Facebook fan page with Google Analytics. I was successful with the steps you provided until I got to step 3. What do you mean when you say “add the entire custom image html tag from step 2 to the bottom of each Facebook fan page that you need to track”? How do I add the html code to the Facebook fan page? Do we need to go to the backend of Facebook? Any advice you may have would be much appreciated.
Thank you!
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Bit confused here: when you say “each fan page” do you mean the whole fan page, or each individual page (or tab) that makes up the whole fan page? As far as I know the only pages (tabs) that i can add the tracking code to are the ones I’ve created using static fbml. My page is http://www.facebook.com/astrologix
Thanks, Rob
Great post only bit I am struggling with is step two. But I will keep trying.
Andrew Peel
Owner
APeel Solutions
This is an awesome idea. I created the analytics code and generated the code using the tool provided. How do I post this code to the bottom of my facebook fan page?
@Amanda You cannot add Google Analytics to your wall, only to FBML tabs. Also, there is no way to change the URL of your tabs. You can make bit.ly URLs though!
@Liz Just simply copy and paste the image html tag into your FBML coding. This can be done when you are editing your page.
@Rob You are correct. Google Analytics can only be used on FBML tabs at this point.
@Andrew See comment to Liz above. Hope you get it!
@Kelly You can only post the code to an FBML tab. You might need to add that to your fan page first.
Thanks for all of the great comments! Please ReTweet this blog if you haven’t already.
@Devin thanks for the clarification! Please let us know when we can add Google Analytics to our fan pages’ Wall, Info, Photos, etc!
Thank you for the article. I made it through step two. I thought I’d try putting the code in an FBML box that’s in the sidebar of the fan page. Do you think that might work?
Last I checked, Analytics wasn’t picking up any tracking information from the fan page, but I’m not sure if it just needs more time, or if it’s not recognizing it because I didn’t install the code Google provided, or if there’s some other reason. I’d appreciate any more help you can offer. Thanks!
I just added the code generated by the link to GA. How long does it take to show in GA that it is working?
Sorry, another quick question.
Could one just use the code that GA provides and paste it in the FBML app?
Hi,
This is a great article. There is an article posted on the Unilyzer’s blog – http://www.Unilyzer.com, that goes into detail about how to accomplish these steps.
Cheers,
Eman
Images on fan pages tabs are cached by Facebook. This means that the image pixel won’t generate a hit for each request for each page view and therefore the data you’ll gather through Google Analytics won’t be accurate.
I wrote it twice on the Webdigi blog post comments but they deleted my comments. Seems like they don’t want anybody to argue the shortcomings of their proposed solution…
@Pierre, Facebook does not cache fan page images! You have a wrong fact. This might be the reason why they deleted your comment.
Fan page images are loaded by the users browser. There are other areas that are aggressively cached by facebook but not Fan pages!
Thanks for all the great comments! Keep the conversation going!
hello – i understand that it is possible to track visits on each tab, but i’m having trouble understanding how to do that. i’ve coded in fbml, and i understand how that works. i’ve added tracking to our wall with an fbml box following the instructions laid out here. now i’m trying to add tracking to our other tabs, but whenever i try to create a new website profile for another tab, google tells me that the url i’m inputting is invalid. do i not need to create a new website profile? if not, then what UID do i put into the image tag creator? do i just put in a different URL there? a little confused on how this will show up in google analytics. thanks to all who respond!