Setting up Google Analytics for Envato Authors

There’s a new exciting feature coming very soon that will make a lot of Envato authors extremely happy. Yep – your own Google Analytics profile for your Envato items. Woo!

I got a quick sneak peek at this feature while they were testing it. Here are some hints and tips (I will continue adding as more come along):

Setup:

1. Create a brand new empty analytics account (so you get a new Property ID like UA-1234568-1 )
2. Use a domain name that doesn’t exist or has nothing to do with your envato items (eg: example.com) in order to get the best referral information.
3. Make sure ecommerce is enabled.
4. You will have a new master profile for this analytics account. Leave this as is, no filters or anything. This will collect all raw analytics data from the start.
5. Create additional profiles to clean up the data or make nicer reports.

Getting nice URLs in reports:

1. Create a new profile under this account. Make sure ecommerce is enabled as well.
2. We will add a filter to this profile to transform all URLs in the reports from /item/123/foo to the full URL like themeforest.net/item/123/foo (handy if you are selling on multiple marketplaces)
3. Open this new profile settings and click Filters. Click add new and choose Custom Filter. Fill it outlike this:
   
4. Wait a few hours to see the data come through, it might even show up straight away in the “Live” area of analytics.

Different reports per marketplace:

1. Create another new profile under the main analytics account. Call this profile “CodeCanyon Only” or “ThemeForest Only”.
2. Click on filters (similar to above) and create a new filter that will only put data from the marketplace you are interested into this report, like so:
   
3. From now on this analytics report will only contain information from that hostname

Removing yourself from Analytics:

• if you have a static IP address and would like to remove all your own
• if you’re on a dynamic IP then hopefully envato will release a feature to “hide” your own analytics tracking when you are logged in and viewing your own items. if they do not release this feature then I’m sure someone will come up with a greasemonkey userscript to do this.

Cleaning up URLs:

• In the profile settings (not your default profile – leave that alone!) add these to the ‘exclude URL parameters’ box:
  WT.ac, WT.seg_1, WT.z_author
  

Comparing data between multiple marketplace:

1. Open up your main default analytics profile (or any other profile you have created without marketplace-specific filters) and click on Content > Overview
2. At the top click “Advanced Segments”
3. Click “New Custom Segment” and create a segment for one marketplace (eg: themeforest.net) like so
   
4. Repeat this process and create another segment for your other marketplaces (eg: codecanyon.net)
5. Enable these segments and your analytics reports will magically split up data based on different marketplaces. Amazing. Disable segments to revert back to original “view all” mode.
6. Here’s an example showing the “Content Overview” area split up between themeforest and codecanyon:
   

Setting Goals:

• Coming soon

eCommerce Tracking

• Mind blowing – more details to come