Analytics Results Blog by Loves Data

Flow Visualization in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 04:14:00 +0000

Google Analytics has a new feature called ‘Flow Visualization’ to help you understand how people navigate your website. You can see Flow Visualization within the Visitors and Conversion reports. It allows you to see navigation paths on a dynamic chart.

Here is an example of the Flow Visualization report and its components:

What are nodes? Nodes can represent two things:

1. The first column is a dimension that allows you to analyze how particular types of visitors navigate through your website e.g. selecting ‘Country’ shows you navigation paths for your visitors by country, selecting ‘Source’ show navigation paths for how visitors found your website.

2. To the right of the first column are the nodes which show single pages or groups of pages users have viewed within your website.

What are connections?

The connections (between the nodes) represent the navigation paths users have followed. The size of these connections is relative which means you can compare traffic volume for particular navigation paths at a glance.

Visitors Flow

The Visitors Flow report shows the different paths visitors take to navigate your website. If you have used the Navigation Summary Feature in Google Analytics and didn’t have the level of detail you required, you will like Flow Visualization because it shows all your visitor flow paths beyond the individual page.

The Flow Visualization chart is interactive; allowing you to highlight different navigation paths to see flow for those sections without losing sight of the overall navigation picture.

The Flow Visualization chart also displays percentages of traffic traveling between pages as well as raw numbers. This was not possible in the Navigation Summary report. Now you can see the actual number of visitors dropping off at particular points!

Goal Flow

Goal Flow is fantastic! You can apply Advanced Segments to visitor conversion paths. This was not possible with the standard Funnel Visualization report. Goal Flow allows you to apply the default Advanced Segments and your own Custom Segments to understand how particular segments of traffic navigate through your Conversion steps.

The one thing missing from the Goal Flow report is the ability to scroll horizontally. This means if you are looking at the report on a smaller screen for example, you have to use the arrows to navigate left and right which makes it difficult to see the entire flow chart.

Watch our video on using the Flow Visualization reports:

Enjoyed the video? Checkout more Google Analytics videos on our YouTube channel.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Reports in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:13:00 +0000

You can now integrate Google Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics to access Search Engine Optimization (SEO) reports. These reports give you additional insights to improve your search engine rankings in Google.

Google Webmaster Tools provides you with information about how your website is performing in organic (free) search results on Google. This is important for SEO because you can see the number of times your website shows in results (impressions) along with clicks, giving you an indication of how relevant your website is in relation to what people are searching for.

Follow our steps for setting up Google Webmaster Tools (if you haven't already done this) and then you can link your accounts by following these steps;

1. Navigate to the 'Search Engine Optimization' reports under 'Traffic Sources'

2. Click on any of the report options ('Queries', 'Landing Pages' or 'Geographical Summary')

You will see the following message if you are linking the tools for the first time (please note you need to be an administrator in order to link the tools);

3. Click on the 'Set up Webmaster Tools data sharing' button

4. You will now be taken to the 'Edit Web Property Settings' page

5. Click 'Edit' under 'Webmaster Tools Settings'

6. Select the website (within Google Webmaster Tools) that you want to link to Google Analytics and click 'Save'.

7. You will be taken back to the 'Web Property Settings' tab in Google Analytics. If you would like to apply the data to additional profiles you can select them here and click the 'Apply' button.

You will now be able to access your SEO reports inside Google Analytics.

Real-Time Reports in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 02:32:00 +0000

Google Analytics has added live reporting with Real-Time reports. The new reports provide a real-time view of visitors accessing your website. The data is available within 2 seconds of a visitor accessing your site.

If there is an increase in active visitors on site the ‘Right now’ number goes up and is highlighted in green. If there is a decrease the ‘Right now’ number goes down and is highlighted in pink.

Understanding the Real-Time Graph

The right hand side of the graph above (highlighted by orange border) shows the current 60 seconds of pageview activity on your website in real-time. As time passes the historical pageview activity slides left in the graph.

Pageview activity for the current 60 seconds is also shown cumulatively like a fuel tank gauge in the area of the graph above (highlighted by red border). The bar in this area of the graph moves up or down with the pageview activity as the seconds tick by. As each minute is completed the bar slides to the left and the process is repeated.

Real-Time Traffic Sources

The Real-Time Traffic Sources report gives you a snapshot of how your active visitors have found your site. This gives you an immediate picture of your paid and organic search. It also shows you which campaigns have driven visitors enabling you to act on emerging and trending channels such as Twitter, other social networks and news sites.

Real-Time Content

The Real-Time Content report shows you which pages are currently being viewed by your active visitors. You can drill down into a particular page to see traffic Medium and Source showing you how people found your website in order to access your content.

Using Real-Time Reports in Google Analytics

Now that we have access to live visitor data inside Google Analytics, what can we use this for?

For most of us Real-Time reports are going to be a great way to kill some time. The reports are definitely addictive but it is going to be extremely hard to act on this data to make meaningful changes to the majority of websites.

However there are definitely important opportunities for you to act on these reports. If for example you are generating news or topical content you can use the Real-Time data to modify the timing of the placement of content to ensure it is viewed by visitors.

Another huge plus of these reports (that we can all enjoy) is the ability to check your tracking code is correctly installed on your website. You no longer have to wait hours for the data to process before you can check your reports to see if a particular page is being tracked correctly.

The reports also provide a great real-time reality check. You can see immediately if visitors are only staying on your website for a short time. This really highlights the need to ensure content on your website is relevant and engaging.

Watch our video on Google Analytics Real Time reports:

Enjoyed the video? Checkout more Google Analytics videos on our YouTube channel.

Tracking Social Engagement in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 06:30:00 +0000

Google recently announced the introduction of Social Engagement reports in Google Analytics. The new reports allow you to see Google +1 metrics along with other types of social sharing actions that are occurring on your website.

Google +1 social engagement interactions are automatically tracked by default in Google Analytics. However, as you might know most websites use social button actions from other suppliers such as Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and LinkedIn. That's why Google has provided a social plugin that allows us to track these additional social interactions.

By tracking social interactions in Google Analytics and using the Social Engagement reports you can gain more insights into your visitors' behaviour.

The Social Engagement reports enable you to:

1. Compare visitor engagement metrics such as visits per page, time on site and bounce rate between your socially engage visitors and your regular (not socially engaged) website visitors.

2. Analyse goal conversion rate and percentage of e-commerce transactions generated by socially engaged visits.

3. Determine which social sources are preferred by your visitors. For example, most of your users might share your content via Twitter, rather than Facebook.

4. Compare which actions are the most common for a particular source. For example, users that are social engaged using Facebook; do they use the 'like' or 'send' option more often.

5. Calculate the percentage of socially engaged visits that reached the site through a social media link and then converted.

6. Identify which content on your site is the most shared using the social actions and in which part (page) of your website these actions took place.

Most of you have been using event tracking to track social engagement interactions such as 'like', 'tweet' and 'send', among others. The method to track social interactions has a similar syntax to event tracking. The following is an example of the event method and how it should be changed using the track social method.

Before (using Event Tracking):

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'facebook', 'like', document.location.href]);

After (using Social Interaction Tracking):

_gaq.push(['_trackSocial', 'facebook', 'like', document.location.href]);

This tracking should occur once the social interaction is completed. It is important to differentiate between social engagement actions and clicks on links that drive people to your social media sites. A link to your Twitter profile from your website should continue being measured as an outbound link while a piece of your content being Tweeted should be tracked as a social engagement action.

Watch our video on tracking Social Media in Google Analytics:

Enjoyed the video? Checkout more Google Analytics videos on our YouTube channel.

How Much Should I Spend On AdWords?

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 06:07:00 +0000

This is one of the most common questions we get asked and also one of the hardest to answer. There are a lot of factors in determining how much you should be spending on your Google AdWords and I'm going to discuss a few of them here.

Setting Your Daily Budget

If you have absolutely no idea where to begin the Google traffic estimator is a good place to start. Once you have your keywords you can plug them in to the traffic estimator and Google will give you an estimate for position, volume of clicks and total daily ad spend for a bid that you provide (you can play around with a few different bids here to get an idea of how much difference the bids will make).

Disclaimer: The traffic estimator is definitely not 100% accurate and should only be used as a rough outline for where to set your daily budget limit for your campaigns.

How Much Should I Bid?

It is extremely easy to lose money on AdWords if your bidding isn't well thought through. The most important thing to figure out is how much you are making from your different keywords and use this to guide your bids. To find out the maximum bid that is still profitable you will need to know the conversion rate of the keywords and the profit per sale.

If you're running a brand new campaign then you will need to use an estimate for your conversion rate and come back to the calculation when you have some data.

Taking the example of a shop owner selling goods online, there are some very important metrics to know before we can answer the question on how much to bid:

Conversion rate = sales / clicks (How many of your clicks turn into actual sales?)
Profit per sale = average order size x profit margin

Armed with this information we can now figure out the maximum price we can pay per click and not be losing money:

Max bid = conversion rate x profit per sale

Time for an example....

Looking at the conversion tracking data from my campaigns I can see that 4% of my clicks are becoming sales. My average order value is $150 and there's a 25% margin on my products.

Max CPC = 4% (conversion rate) x $150 (average order value) x 25% (margin)
Max CPC = $1.50

The most I can spend per click and not be losing money is $1.50.

Total Profit

In the example above, if I pay $1.50 per click I will break even on my AdWords campaign. This is not exactly ideal and the only one you'll be making happy would be Google!

The less you pay per click the higher your profit per click will be but profit per click is not what we want to maximise - we want to maximise the total profit of the account.

If I pay $0.05 per click I will receive a huge profit per click but the chances are I'm not going to be getting many clicks. To find the highest total profit we need to be balancing the profit per click with the volume of clicks the campaigns are generating.

Given the number of factors involved in this balance (quality score, bid price, cpc, conversion rate, position, Google's algorithm) it is not possible to give a perfect answer.

This problem becomes more complicated when we start to factor in the fact that my conversion rate is different across different keywords. What if my shop sells a wide variety of different products all with different profit margins?

Here it starts to get complex and unfortunately there is no simple way to manage accounts like this. Time is needed to set this up but that doesn't mean it should be ignored! Setting AdWords campaigns with the ability to measure the total profit at keyword/product level means that you will be increasing your ROI and you'll be able to blow your competition out of the water!

Tweak Your Bids

The answer is tweaking your bids and ensure you bid below $1.50. I would suggest starting with a bid at 50% of your maximum and measure the results. So if we were to bid $0.75 we know we are not going to be breaking even, but we are likely to receive a steady amount of traffic to the website.

From here we can begin to look at conversions for individual keywords and even start to modify bids based on the conversion rate of individual keywords. The best way to get started it to setup AdWords conversion tracking or import your Google Analytics goals.

Multi-Channel Funnels Part 2: Reports

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Fri, 20 May 2011 06:10:00 +0000

What is a Channel?

A Channel is a particular Source and Medium combination in Google Analytics. You need to understand this before you can use Multi-Channel Funnels correctly.

Examples of Channels include:

Google / CPC: your traffic coming from paid searches on Google
Bing / Organic: your traffic coming from free searches on Bing
Newsletter / Email: your traffic coming from your email newsletter campaign
Advertising / Offline: your traffic coming from your print ads
Website / Referral: your traffic coming from links on other websites

You can navigate to your All Traffic Sources report (under 'Traffic Sources'). Each row will represent a channel that will potentially be displayed in your Multi-Channel Funnels reports.

Think of a Channel as a defined marketing initiative that you can use to drive leads, sales or brand awareness.

Types of Attribution

Attribution = Who or What Gets Credit for a Conversion

There are different ways to attribute conversions to your individual marketing initiatives. There are three forms of attribution:

The most common form of attribution is last click attribution where the last method of accessing your website is attributed the credit for the conversion.
First click attribution where the first method of accessing your site is attributed the credit for the conversion.
Multi-touch (or multi-attribution) where we look at the different ways people access your site before converting.

A scale or attribution model can also be applied in order to give more credit to the last method and sometimes first method of accessing your site.

Multi-Channel Funnels: The Reports

Overview Report

This report provides a summary of total conversions for each Channel and the number of Assisted Conversions. Assisted Conversions are conversions where a visitor did not convert the first time they accessed your site but came back to your site via another source/medium and then converted.

By default you will be viewing all your goal conversions but you can also select individual goals.

Multi-Channel Mix

Multi-Channel Mix in the overview report allows you to select different Channels to see which Channels work in combination with one another. You can select particular Channels to see the overlap to see which combinations achieve the most conversions.

Assisted Conversions

By default the Assisted Conversions report shows you the number of Assisted Conversions compared to last interaction conversions. By comparing Assisted to Last Interaction you can see if a particular Channel performed better by influencing or closing conversions.

Google has also introduced a new metric called Assisted / Last Interaction Conversions (the last column on the right) which is a ratio comparing Assisted to Last Interaction conversions. A figure above 1.5 indicates the channel is better at Assisting and a figure approaching 0 indicates the Channel is better at closing conversions.

You can also use the same report to compare First Interaction Conversions to Last Interaction Conversions. Just click 'First Interaction Analysis' at the top of the report. You will now see which Channels are converting the first time somebody visits your site – the number of visitors converting immediately after accessing your site via a particular Channel.

You will notice the ratio is now called First / Last Interaction Conversions. A figure above 1.5 indicates the Channel is better at converting on the first visit to your site. A figure approaching 0 indicates the Channel will require visitors to come back again before they are likely to convert.

Ways to View Channels

So far we have looked at Source/Medium as a Channel, but you also have the option of just viewing the Source or the Medium. So rather than seeing different rows for organic traffic from Google, Bing and Yahoo, you can select ‘Medium’ and they will be aggregated together as one row called organic.

Another option is to view Channels by keywords, campaign names and AdWords metrics, including matched search query, campaign, ad group and placement URL.

There is also the option to group Channels. This allows you to combine Channels to simplify your reports. Selecting ‘Default Traffic Groups’ will give you aggregated groups such as: organic search, email, paid advertising, direct, referral, social network, etc.

Default Traffic Groups allows you to quickly see and assess methods of accessing your site overall. You can also define your own Custom Channel Groups for example if you wanted to compare your offline and online campaigns or compare your search advertising to your display advertising.

Define your own Custom Channel Groups:

View your Custom Channel Groups in reports:

Top Conversion Paths

This report shows you the different ways people access your site that lead to conversions and provides insights into the Channel Paths (sequence of interactions) visitors use prior to converting. You can see the total conversions for each path and the dollar value associated with the conversion.

There are also other ways to view the Channels, you can for example select ‘Source Path’ and 'Medium Path' or you can use your own Channel Groups as noted previously.

Time Lag

This report shows you how long it took people to convert, for example;

0 Days = they came to your site and converted on the same day
1 Day = they came to your site and the next day they converted
2 Days = they came to your site and converted 2 days later
etc.

The Time Lag report also provides a comparison of conversions to Conversion Value. You might for example see some Time Frames where more visitors convert but for a lower value or vice versa.

Multi-Channel Funnels including the Time Lag report work on data for the last 30 days leading to a visitor’s conversion. This means if someone visits your site in January, then comes back in March and converts, the original channel from January will not be shown in the report. In this case only the Channel for March will be counted.

Path Length

This report allows you to quickly see how many conversions resulted from one or more Channel Interactions. So you can see whether visitors require Multiple Channels to convert or if they convert after accessing your site via a single Channel.

You can also see the conversion value and the difference between the two, just like in the Time Lag report.

In Conclusion

Multi-Channel Funnels are a major advance in understanding the effect and interactions of your different marketing initiatives.

It is important to be aware that these reports only provide insights for conversions. You must have goals or e-commerce tracking set up in order to take advantage of the reports. You will not be able to use Multi-Channel Funnels for interactions when people do not convert.

The reports do not include View-Through Conversions that is available within AdWords. If a someone sees your Ad but does not click on it they will not be included in these reports.

It is also important to remember that the data you see is only for the last 30 days prior to the conversion. Hopefully this will increase in the future.

Watch our video on Multi-Channel Funnels:

Enjoyed the video? Checkout more Google Analytics videos on our YouTube channel.

Multi-Channel Funnels Part 1: Overview

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Fri, 06 May 2011 05:22:00 +0000

The Google Analytics team recently announced Multi-Channel Funnels which has been released as a limited pilot to a small number of Google Analytics accounts. As Google Analytics Certified Partners we have been testing the new reports but Google has asked us to point out they do not have any plans and have not given us a timeline for a full launch of the reports.

Once you are tracking conversions or e-commerce transactions in Google Analytics, one of the main problems is understanding how to attribute a conversions or sale to more than one source and medium.

Google Analytics has used last click attribution, which means that actions and conversions are credited to the last method of accessing your site.

For example;

Somebody performs a search on Google and clicks on your organic (free) search result. A few days later they access your site again, but this time they came via another website (partner.com) and then they convert.

The credit for the conversion goes to the last method of accessing your site, in this example the credit goes to the website and not the original search on Google.

A report presenting last click attribution;

Multi-Channel = Multi-Attribution = Greater Insights

Multi-Attribution Funnels in Google Analytics aim to solve this problem by presenting us with the complete view of the ways people are finding our site before they convert.

Example continued;

Taking our previous example, if we were to look at the same scenario using Multi-Channel Funnels we will see that the visitor did convert after coming via the other website (partner.com), but we will also be able to look back and also see that the original search on Google did in-fact contribute to the conversion.

This means we now have multi-attribution and can begin to see the impacts and cross-effects of our different marketing campaigns (or channels) on our conversions.

One of the new multi-attribution reports (called 'Top Conversion Paths');

Want to know more about Multi-Channel Funnels?

Read our next post Multi-Channel Funnels Part 2: Reports that goes into more detail about interpreting data and advanced setup options.

Watch our video on Multi-Channel Funnels:

Enjoyed the video? Checkout more Google Analytics videos on our YouTube channel.

Measure Page and Website Loading Speed in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Thu, 05 May 2011 00:28:00 +0000

You can now measure the loading time of your pages and overall website inside Google Analytics. The time your pages take to load and the overall responsiveness of your site are critical in terms of usability, conversions, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and CPC (Cost Per Click). So it is great to be able to measure this.

Loading speed is also an important factor in how your website ranks in Google organic (free) search results and landing pages that are slow to load impacts your Google AdWords Quality Score.

Using these new reports you will be able to quickly identify slow loading pages and differences in loading speed for your various marketing campaigns, geographic areas and even website browsers. Moving forward you can work with your web developers to ensure visitors have an enhanced experience.

You can also look for a correlation between conversions (or conversion rate) and loading speed. If loading time is impacting heavily on your objectives then it is definitely worth knowing about!

Setting up Site Speed in Google Analytics

If you have logged into Google Analytics you will notice your Site Speed report is full of zeros, this is because you will need to make a change to your Google Analytics tracking code in order to get data into the reports.

You will need to add the following line to your Google Analytics tracking code;

_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);

So the following default code;

<script type="text/javascript">
 var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
  
 (function() {
   var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
   ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
   var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
 })();
</script>

Would become;

<script type="text/javascript">
 var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);
  
 (function() {
   var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
   ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
   var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
 })();
</script>

This code is for the latest version of the Google Analytics tracking code, known as 'asynchronous' or 'async'. If you are using the traditional or legacy tracking code you can find details in the Google Analytics support article.

If you have customized your tracking code then make sure those customizations are reflected in the change (for example if you are tracking into multiple accounts).

Extra Google Analytics Site Speed Resources:

Diagnosing Keywords in Google AdWords

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 23:25:00 +0000

You can now run a diagnostic report within the ‘Campaigns’ tab of Google AdWords to quickly check if your ads are being displayed for your keywords.

You can do this for your keywords at the account level, for individual campaigns or ad groups.

Follow these steps to ensure your keywords are triggering your ads;

1. Click on the "Keywords" tab.

2. Click on the "More actions..." tab.

3. Click on "Diagnose keywords".

4. Select a Google domain, language, geographic location and devices to check your keywords against those preference.

5. Click the "Run test" button.

Once the diagnosis is complete look at the "Status" column for details about which keywords are triggering (or not triggering) your ads to display.

Here are some of the alerts you will see in the status column:

"Ad showing now" means your ads are being displayed.
"Not scheduled to run" means you are checking your keywords outside the time(s) your ads are scheduled to display. Check your ad scheduling under the "Settings" tab.
"Low search volume" means the keyword is not searched very often.
"Low bid or quality score" means you should consider increasing your bid or improving quality score.
"Rarely shown due to poor quality score" means your keyword does not relate well to your ads and landing page, you will need to optimize your account and landing page.
"Restricted by targeting" means your ads are being displayed outside of the geographic location you have set for the diagnosis. Check your location preferences under the "Settings" tab.
"Budget limited or exhausted" means your ads are not displaying because of budget settings.
"Campaign Paused" means the campaign is currently paused.
"Paused" means the keyword is currently paused.
"Not showing (other)" means your ads are only being shown on the display network for that particular keyword.

Based on these details you can adjust your settings, bids and begin to optimize your account to ensure your ads display for the keywords in your account.

Watch our video on Keyword Match Types in Google AdWords:

Enjoyed the video? Checkout more Google AdWords videos on our YouTube channel.

New Version of Google Analytics Released

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:27:00 +0000

Google has announced a new version of Google Analytics that will begin rolling out to accounts over the next month. The new version improves the usability and functionality with a redesigned interface based on user feedback.

As a Google Analytics Certified Partner we have been testing out the new version and there are clear improvements in the flexibility, speed and simplicity of the new version.

Watch our walk through of key new features and reports on YouTube;

New Features Include;

New type of custom report called 'Flat Table'
Simplified creation of custom reports
Sticky filters applied to custom reports
Trigger goal conversions based on events
Term Cloud report for keywords and referrals
Sticky reports as you switch accounts
Simplified creation of advanced segments
Improved account, profile and settings management

Overall Benefits Include;

Quicker navigation
Improved usability
Faster interface

To access the new version of Google Analytics look for 'New Version' next to your email and settings link. If you don't have access you can also register for access.

Link Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics for Quick SEO Insights

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 06:36:00 +0000

It is now possible to link your site in Google Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics. By linking the two products you are able to see which sites are linking to your site.

You might be saying 'So what, I can already see that in Google Analytics!', but it does give you some very quick insights for improving your organic optimization (SEO).

Firstly, you need to get Google Webmaster Tools linked to Google Analytics, if you have already done this then feel free to skip to the end of this post.

Step 1: Select the site in Google Webmaster Tools

Login into Google Webmaster Tools, click 'manage' for the site you would like to link to Google Analytics and then click 'Google Analytics profile'.

Step 2: Select the appropriate Google Analytics profile

Make sure you select your primary Google Analytics profile for the particular website you have selected. Then click 'save'.

Your Google Webmaster Tools site profile should now be linked to Google Analytics.

Get quick SEO insights from within Google Webmaster Tools

You will now be able to see which sites are linking to your site and even which pages within your site that they are linking to. All of this data is also available within your Google Analytics reports, but the data is quicker to browse through.

The data that you can't get inside your Google Analytics reports is that you can actually see the keywords used within the links that are directing people to your site. This is really valuable information, the example below shows you what you don't want to see;

I am not sure about you, but I am not interested in ranking for 'disclaimer privacy policy & legal'.

If you do see something like this, don't panic, it means you have room for improvement. You will need to develop a list of keywords that you want to optimize for and start getting those keywords in the links to your website.

If you have been doing SEO then you can also browse the full list by clicking on 'more' and you can start to compare this to the individual sites that link to you and identify any sites that aren't using your keywords.

Improve your AdWords Campaigns with Negative Keyword Lists

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:25:00 +0000

Have you used negative keywords in Google AdWords? Negative keywords help you to increase your click-through-rate (CTR), reduce your cost-per-click (CPC) and as a result increase your ROI. However, it can be quite exhausting to go through each one of your campaigns and ad groups reviewing and adding negative keywords while in most cases the same negative keywords apply to different ad groups and/or campaigns.

Fortunately Google AdWords has recently announced positive news for Negative Keywords. The new feature is called Negative Keyword List and it makes the management of negative keywords a lot easier, especially when they are related.

Here’s a simple scenario of where you can use a Negative Keyword List. Let’s say that you sell books online and in store, but you also offer a small number of free audio-books as part of your strategy to increase traffic to your site. Therefore, you have created 4 campaigns in AdWords;

Campaign 1: Digital Books
Campaign 2: Bookstore
Campaign 3: Brand Terms
Campaign 4: Audio-books

Now you want to add some negative keywords for the first three campaigns, e.g. words like: Free, Demo, Trial, download, etc. With the new feature, you can create a negative keyword list and apply it to one or more campaigns without having to add each keyword to the separate campaigns and/or ad groups.

In this example, you could create a negative keyword list called “Free Terms” and add it to the first three campaigns. These are the steps for creating and adding a negative keyword list:

1. Go to the 'Control Panel & Library' found on the left hand side of your AdWords screen.

2. Click on 'Negative keyword lists'.

3. Click the button '+ New negative keyword list'.

4. Give a name to the list and add all the negative keywords you want to associate with it. For example;

Free
Demo
Trial
Sample

5. After saving it, go to your Online Campaigns, click on the ‘Keywords’ tab, scroll down until you find the link “Negative Keywords” and click on it.

6. Then click 'Keyword Lists'.

7. Start adding the list to the specific campaigns it applies to.

You can create more than one negative keyword list and add it to one or more campaigns.

There are two main things you need to be aware of;

First of all, when adding a keyword list make sure the terms within this list don’t conflict with keywords under some of the ad groups. For example, in our scenario, let’s say that instead of the 4 campaigns you have a single campaign with four ad groups (within that campaign).

If you add the negative keyword list to the campaign, this would conflict with the ad group Audio-books. Basically, you are offering a free product with ads that include terms like Free Audio-books, Free Book Audio, etc. but you are stopping impressions for searches that contain the keyword Free. In this case, you should add individual negative keywords to each ad group instead of a keyword list to the entire campaign.

Secondly, do not add too many negative keywords because the result could be a very small audience and lost potential customers. It’s all about balance.

Watch our video on Keyword Match Types in Google AdWords:

Enjoyed the video? Checkout more Google AdWords videos on our YouTube channel.

Using Custom Variables in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 05:09:00 +0000

I've been using Custom Variables in Google Analytics since they were released. Custom Variables have solved many problems and put an end to most of the excuses people give me for not using Google Analytics. Most importantly, when trying Custom Variables as a solution, they are really happy with the results!

I would usually write about the coding and the implementation in detail but this time I just want to share some ideas with you of how you can use Custom Variables. Here we go...

1. First and Last Click Attribution

By default, Google Analytics presents the source and medium of the conversion based on the last click that generated the conversion. However, many people want to know which initial touch point actually generated the purchase, sign-up, download, etc. You can get this kind of information by using Custom Variables at a visitor level.

Imagine you have different campaigns (not only AdWords campaigns) for a specific product. If visitors come to your site for the first time as a result of an email campaign, you could set two Custom Variables; CVSource and CVMedium. To make this work you will need to add a piece of code to check if the Custom Variable is set or not. If the CVSource and CVMedium are not yet set (i.e. undefined), you will need to set them. Otherwise don't do anything.

Now suppose a visitor spends some time on your site but he/she doesn't complete the goal e.g buy the product. Then a few days later, the same visitor comes to your site from a link posted on Twitter and this time he/she completes the purchase. In a normal scenario you would see the purchase came from Twitter which is true but you want to know which campaign generated his/her first visit and maybe analyse why the first one didn't work whereas the second source did.

Using Custom Variables and the technique I outlined above (remember no excuses) you can determine which initial touchpoint started the momentum toward the final conversion. You don't have to give 100% of the credit for the conversion to the last source, you can split it between the first and last source to see which is better and how the campaigns work together.

2. Tracking Website Sections and Categories

Sometimes you have different content to present to visitors and different goals classified by categories in your website. These categories could be presented as part of the menu, lists, sub-menu, etc. You could then set Custom Variables for a session level or in some cases for a visitor level. As a result you can identify the most visited category much more easily than if you filtered by content in your content report in Google Analytics. This also allows you to check which categories are driving more visitors to complete a particular goal and which ones are the most effective categories for converting or completing goals.

3. Segmentation by Type of Information

Tracking Demographics

Many sites use forms to collect information required for purchasing products or services. Awareness of trends in the market and understanding customer/client needs are important to targeting the right audience at the right time with a campaign to promote a product or service.

Imagine your marketing team has created two new ads; one targeting young females and the other targeting families. If the customer already has a login and has previously entered information such as age, gender, income and occupation this makes it easy to segment them and target the ads.

Tracking Location

Not all the classifications defined for a location are available by default in Google Analytics because they are not standard for each country. You can see your reports segmented by Continent, Country/Territory, Sub Continent Region and City but what if you would like to see that information classified by State/Province or by smaller locations inside the City e.g. by suburb. Use Custom Variables! It's up to you to find creative ways of capturing the specific locations your visitors are coming from but if you can access that data you can assign that value to your Custom Variable in a visitor or session scope.

4. Comments and Rating

Some of you might have implemented a plugin or tool to add comments to your articles for example in a blog or to let visitors rate a product or service. You could use Custom Variables to see how many commentators rate your product, service or blog post 'good' or 'bad'.

Let's say you set a Custom Variable called Ratings_Feedback with two values 'Good' or 'Bad'. Then, each time someone rates a particular element in your website the value will be stored in the Custom Variable. You can then look at your reports and find out: how many ratings you have; how many visitors out of the total are using the plugin tool; and how many rate a specific product or service as 'good' or 'bad' etc.

Effectively Using Google Analytics Custom Variables

I have found using Custom Variables very interesting and effective for all sorts of challenges, and great for insights into using the ecommerce tracking code and/or event tracking. My final suggestion before you start implementing Custom Variables across your site is to analyse your needs very carefully. Try to find out first if you can get the data you want to see with the default dimensions and metrics provided by the default Google Analytics reports.

If it is not possible to do it with the standard tracking code, ecommerce tracking code, virtual pageviews and/or event tracking, then take time to define and design the use of Custom Variables. By following my advice (remember no excuses) you are sure to get the right information you need to segment and analyse your data for great results!

I hope you find this blog post motivating. Custom Variables are an excellent feature of Google Analytics, provide many benefits, and will make your reports easier to prepare and more effective!

Posted by Daniela Fernandez, Analytics Specialist, Mangold Sengers

AdWords Display URLs Now Lowercase

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 01:34:00 +0000

Get ready for changes to how your display URLs will be capitalized.

If you are used to changing the display URL in your AdWords ad variations to get the attention of people searching for a specific term, you might be interested to know that the AdWords team has decided to display the domain portion of the display URL in lowercase letters for all ad variations. If you have ads with a display URL containing capital letters, these will soon automatically be changed to lowercase letters.

So what will this look like?

The example on the left show what you have previously been allowed to do in AdWords and on the right you can see how the ad will start appearing in the coming week or so.

Does this change also apply to sub-domains in the display URL?

Yes, the change will also apply to display URLs that contain sub-domains. For example, if we have Canon.CameraShopSite.com, soon it will be displayed as canon.camerashopsite.com

The good news is that the portion corresponding to sub-directories can still be capitalized and use dynamic keyword insertion. For instance, the link Canon.CameraShopSite.com/Digital-Camera will now appear as canon.camerashopsite.com/Digital-Camera

Do I have to change my display URLs?

No, you don’t have to make any changes to your ad variations because they will automatically be changed for you.

The bad news is that if you don't have additional information in your display URL, different to the domain (e.g www.site.com) your destination URL will look plain compared to other ads that use additional keywords within the destination URL (e.g www.site.com/KeywordSearched).

Why has capitalization of display URLs changed?

The AdWords team has said they "...found that consistent display URL casing leads to better ad interaction rates".

The official blog post announcing the change also indicates that Google is keen for people to start testing variations of their landing pages and driving general website improvement. In other words, it's time to start using Google Website Optimizer to improve your post-click conversions and visitor experience.

Our advice on the new AdWords display URL capitalization:

Keep an eye on the performance of your ad variations during the next few weeks, if Google says it leads to "better ad interaction rates" we could all see an increase in clicks and CTRs (Click Through Rates) for our ads.

If you see a negative impact on your campaigns, create new ad variations, keeping in mind the restrictions for capitalization under the destination URL. Remember you can still add keywords after your domain name in the display URLs and of course use Google Website Optimizer to improve the performance of your landing pages.

Mirrored and Forwarded Domains in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 03:15:00 +0000

Do you have mirrored or forwarded domains and wondered how this might affect your Google Analytics data? In this post we will explore what might be occurring in your reports.

What is a Mirrored Domain?

A mirrored domain is any additional domain name that a visitor can use to access your website. It is called 'mirrored' because the website and it's content is identical even through it is a different domain name.

Mirrored Domains and Google Analytics

For example, you visit your website, then click 'about us' and then 'contact us' and the URLs you see in your browser are;

http://www.yoursite.com
http://www.yoursite.com/about-us
http://www.yoursite.com/contact-us

Then you have another domain, in this example we will use www.yoursite.com.au and you browse the same page;

http://www.yoursite.com.au
http://www.yoursite.com.au/about-us
http://www.yoursite.com.au/contact-us

When you browse this mirrored site all the content is the same, which means that your Google Analytics tracking code will also be the same because the whole site is an identical copy (or mirror).

This example used .com.au as the mirrored domain (for the Australian version of our site), but your site might be mirrored under a totally different domain. For example www.myproduct.com could have the exact same content as www.yoursite.com if it is mirrored.

If you are not sure if your site is mirrored talk to your web developer, they will be able to let you know if your site is mirrored or not.

If you do have a mirrored domain (or domains) then this generally isn't a problem for Google Analytics reports, people will simply access one site or the other, data is collected and then reported.

However, you should consider the following scenario; lets say a new visitor clicks a link on another website and comes to www.yoursite.com, this will be reported as a referral in Google Analytics. Then if they do a search on Google and visit www.yoursite.com.au they will be seen as an organic visitor (i.e. coming from a free search). As these are two separate domains, Google Analytics will use two sets of cookies, so the visitor will be seen as two different visitors within the reports.

If you wanted to see the organic search that resulted in the visit to www.yoursite.com.au as a returning visit, rather than a new visit you will have to remove the mirrored domain. You can do this by redirecting one website to the other (check with your web developer so this is done properly). Then you will only have one cookie for the site and remove the additional cookie.

When Mirrored Domains Cause Problems

Mirrored domains will cause Google Analytics data issues when someone can navigate between the domains within a visit to the site.

For example, if someone comes to www.yoursite.com and then there is a link within www.yoursite.com that goes to www.yoursite.com.au. If this occurs then www.yoursite.com will become a referral to www.yoursite.com.au because each domain has its own set of cookies.

This will also mean that if someone accessed www.yoursite.com via a search (or referral or any other method) and then ended up converting (i.e. goals or ecommerce) on www.yoursite.com.au the credit would go to the www.yoursite.com referral and you will loose the ability to see the actual source and medium that got you the visitor in the first place.

This is a major issue and the way to correct it is by setting up cross-domain (or multiple domain) tracking. This will be further complicated if people can then travel back to the original site, for example they land on www.yoursite.com, then navigate to www.yoursite.com.au and then back to www.yoursite.com. This problem can also be solved by correctly implementing cross-domain tracking on both the domains.

Our team at Mangold Sengers have developed a script that will automatically ensure that cookies are correctly synchronized to provide accurate data. Interested in using the script (rather than setting up cross-domain tracking)? Please get in touch.

Forwarded Domains and Google Analytics
A forwarded domain is a domain that redirects you to your primary website. For example, lets say your primary website is www.mysite.com and you navigate to 'about us' and then 'contact us', the URLs will look something like this;

http://www.mysite.com
http://www.mysite.com/about-us
http://www.mysite.com/contact-us

Then you have another domain, in this example we will use www.forwardsite.com that forwards to www.mysite.com. When you access www.forwardsite.com you will instantly be redirected to www.mysite.com and you will continue to navigate as normal;

http://www.forwardsite.com (instantly redirects to www.mysite.com)
http://www.mysite.com
http://www.mysite.com/about-us
http://www.mysite.com/contact-us

In this case Google Analytics will never report on www.forwardsite.com if you are using this domain in particular marketing or promotions you may want to setup Google Analytics campaign tags on the URL that is set as the redirect (this is something your web developer will have to help you with).

The forward settings for the example above would have http://www.mysite.com as the domain to forward visitors to. You could then use campaign tags to attribute the visitor to the www.forwardsite.com domain that they originally used, for example the forward domain could become something like;

http://www.mysite.com?utm_campaign=www.forwardsite.com&utm_source=www.forwardsite.com&utm_medium=referral

This would allow you to see how many people are using the www.forwardsite.com URL to get to your primary website.

Summary

If you have mirrored domains you may have data inaccuracies due to the different sets of cookies, so consider the options and make sure you have accurate data to base your decisions.

If you have forwarded domains then you probably don't have anything to worry about, but you might want to get insight if you are using the domains for marketing and promotions.

If you have any questions then please contact us or post a comment.

Default Page Setting: Back to Basics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:16:00 +0000

Have you noticed multiple index pages showing up in your content reports?

By default your website's homepage will be reported by Google Analytics as / in the top content and drill-down reports. But depending on how your website is coded you may also see /index.html, /home.html, /index.php, /index.aspx, /default.aspx or similar showing up in your content reports.

The straight forward slash will likely have the most number of pageviews, this is because most people will go directly to your website domain (or link directly to your website domain). For example http://www.yoursite.com/ and this will be reported at / in the content reports.

Then sometimes the physical page (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/index.html) is found by a visitor. This might be because your menu or a page links directly to the /index.html page.

So what you will find is / and /index.html (or .php, .aspx, etc.) showing up in your content reports. This is duplicating the same page, so what you need to do is to set this within Google Analytics so that the duplication is removed.

This can be done by finding your physical page for your website's homepage. Start by navigating to 'Content' and then 'Top Content' and in the filter field at the bottom of the report enter ^(/(index|default|home)?\.?(html|htm|php|asp|aspx|jsp)?)$ (this will check for the most common default pages). If you don't find the physical page, you might be lucky and your website has been setup to keep this hidden, but check with your web developer to be sure.

Once you have found the physical page you can enter it into the settings for your profile. From the account overview page click on 'edit' in the row for the profile you would like to setup. Then click 'edit' to set your website's default page and enter the name of the appropriate physical page and you are done. From setup moving forward Google Analytics will aggregate the pages together and stop the duplication showing up in your content reports.

What if you have two default pages? For example, if you see /, /index.aspx and /default.aspx in the top content pages you can also merge these into one using a search and replace filter.

Click on 'edit' for the particular profile on the account overview page and then on the filter panel click on 'add filter'. Name the filter, select 'custom filter' as the filter type and select 'search and replace'. Select 'request URI' as the filter field and enter ^(/|/default.aspx)$ in the search string (this will look for / and /default.aspx). Then in the replace string enter /index.aspx and save the filter. Moving forward you will just see /index.aspx as your homepage in the top content reports.

Getting Accurate: Google Analytics 'Async' Tracking

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:30:00 +0000

Google Analytics has now released the new Google Analytics asynchronous (or 'async') tracking code which provides improved tracking accuracy without impacting the loading speed of our web pages.

What improvement can I expect?

We have seen a 4% improvement in number of visitors being tracked when comparing the new async tracking code to the previous tracking code.

We have also seen a dramatic improvement in AdWords accuracty by having the tracking code at the top of pages; close to 100% accuracy.

What do I need to do?

You do not need to change to the new tracking code straight away, your existing tracking code will continue to work.

If you have a standard Google Analytics implementation (and have not modified the tracking code) you can simply replace your existing code with the new code on all the pages of your site.

If you have modified the tracking code (e.g. for ecommerce, events, file downloads, outbound links, multi-domain, sub-domain, custom variables, etc.) then you will need to update the async code to continue tracking those elements.

Okay, where can I get the new tracking code?

Login to Google Analytics
Click 'edit' for the particular profile
Click 'check status' on the top right (above profile information)

Where do I install the new tracking code?

Place the new tracking code just before the closing <head> tag (and ensure you remove the previous tracking code).

UPDATE: The Google Analytics team previously recommended that the tracking code be placed after the opening <body> due to an Internet Explorer issue, but it is now safe to use the code just before the closing <head> tag.

How do I know what tracking code I am currently using?

To check what tracking code you are currently using, browse to your website and view the source code of one of your pages. Then search for 'trackPageview' in the source code.

If you see something along the following lines you are using the previous tracking code;

pageTracker._trackPageview();

If you see something that includes 'gaq.push' you are already using the new asynchronous tracking code;

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

What is 'Required Step' for Google Analytics Goals?

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:10:00 +0000

Have you ever wondered what 'Required Step' means when you are setting up a goal in Google Analytics?

Personally, I think it is the most confusing configuration option within Google Analytics, so now I am going to attempt a simple explanation.

Turning on 'Required Step' means that in order for a conversion to be reported a visitor MUST view that page (or step) before they view the conversion page.

Looking at a simple example...

Let's say you have a website where one objective is to get visitors to signup for an email newsletter. You have a dedicated page with the email newsletter signup form that you link to from other pages on your site. Plus you also have a news page that has the signup form on the right.

Both forms (on the dedicated signup page and the news page) go to the same conversion page after a visitor has signed up to receive your email newsletter.

You have setup a goal within Google Analytics to report and measure conversions (people signing up for your newsletter). This reports on conversions no matter how someone signs up (including the dedicated form page and the news section).

You then decide that you want to focus on driving people through to the dedicated signup page, so if you create a new goal where you enter the URL of the dedicated signup page and click 'Required Step'.

You will then be able to look at the funnel report to see the funnel ONLY for visitors who convert after viewing the dedicated signup page.

Setting 'Required Step' ONLY Affects Funnel Visualization Report

Firstly, selecting 'Required Step' on the goal settings page only modifies what you see in the funnel visualization report.

So if you were to create the goal in the above scenario and selected 'Required Step' you would still see a total number of conversions for visitors. This would include those who did and didn't convert through the dedicated signup page. If you just want to see those who did view the dedicated signup page you would need to view the funnel visualization report.

Example funnel report (with 1st step required):

Then for the same goal you will still see total conversions:

Getting Technical...

If you are still with me – great work! Now for some technical things about 'Required Step' and goals, so if you are not technical don't worry if it doesn't make sense straight away.

If you have multiple steps on the goal settings page and you have selected 'Required Step' it simply means that a visitor must view that page at some point before viewing the conversion page. (Just like all goals the order of the steps is not critical to how Google Analytics reports.)

Also, like all other goals a visitor can only convert once within a single visit (or session) to your website. So if they view the 'Required Step' page, come back to you site in a week and view the 2nd step and the conversion page they will have converted, but not be displayed in the funnel visualization report (due to the required step and the fact they did not view the required step page within that visit to your site).

Done!

Fingers crossed, I just explained what I consider to be the most confusing setting option within Google Analytics.

Tracking PayPal with Google Analytics and Google AdWords

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:10:00 +0000

Setting up ecommerce tracking is essential if you are selling online (if you don't sell online check out Monetizing Non-Ecommerce Sites). But not all ecommerce systems integrate with Google Analytics. And if you are selling online chances are you accept PayPal® as a method of payment. So how do track visitors who have purchased via PayPal?

First step, create a thank you page for successful PayPal transactions and set that URL within PayPal so visitors are returned to your site.

The problem is that when the visitor returns to your site after payment has been received (or cancelled) PayPal gets the credit for the conversion and not the original way the visitor found your site.

Steps For Tracking PayPal With Google Analytics:

1. Log into PayPal.

2. Under the 'My Account' tab click on the 'Profile' link.

3. Click on 'Website Payment Preferences' (under 'Selling Preferences' in the right column).

4. Turn 'Auto Return' on and enter the URL of your PayPal thank you page.

Then add ?utm_nooverride=1 to the end of your URL (highlighted in blue below), this will ensure that transactions (i.e. conversions) are credited to the original traffic source, rather than PayPal.

For example, if a visitor came from a Google search for 'gardening book' the conversion will be credited to Google, organic, gardening book (and not PayPal, referral).

At this point if you simply want to track the conversions using goals you can setup a new goal for the thank you page within Google Analytics. However, if you want to also get Google Analytics ecommerce tracking up and running you will need to get a little more technical.

PayPal's payment data transfer allows you to receive transaction details once a visitor is back on your site (visit the PayPal technical overview article for details).

Getting Advanced With Ecommerce Tracking:

6. Turn 'Payment Data Transfer' on.

Please note that once you turn on 'Payment Data Transfer' it will be applied to all Auto Return payments unless otherwise specified within the button or link for that Website Payment.

7. You will now either have to create your 'Buy Now' buttons or modify your existing buttons.

If you are creating new 'Buy Now' buttons leave the return URL blank (or if you specify a different URL ensure it has ?utm_nooverride=1 at the end).

If you already have buttons on your site you will need to look for the following code:

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">

And add the following before the </form> element (with your correct thank you page URL):

<input name="return" type="hidden" value="http://www.site.com/paypal-thanks.php?utm_nooverride=1" />

8. Finally you will need to modify your thank you page to grab the PayPal data being transfered using either the POST of GET methods (you will have to talk to your web developer or IT person if you are not familiar with the coding of your site).

Basically, you will need the Google Analytics ecommerce tracking code to automatically (or dynamically) grab the correct values and place them in the code. You will be able to get total price, tax, shipping, transaction id, item name, quantity, etc.

Example Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking Code:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXX-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
pageTracker._addTrans(
"6NB836968U296223E", // Order ID
"", // Affiliation
"20.00", // Total
"2.00", // Tax
"0.0", // Shipping
"", // City
"", // State
"" // Country
);
pageTracker._addItem(
"6NB836968U296223E", // Order ID
"ProductId123", // SKU
"Green T-shirt", // Product Name 
"T-Shirts", // Category
"20.0", // Price
"1" // Quantity
);
pageTracker._trackTrans();
} catch(err) {}
</script>

For Google AdWords conversion tracking you simply need to grab the total value and pass that into the conversion script as the value.

Example Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Code:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
var google_conversion_id = 12345678;
var google_conversion_language = "en";
var google_conversion_format = "2";
var google_conversion_color = "ffffff";
var google_conversion_label = "U10bCNfstvhghO6gM";
var google_conversion_value = 0;
if (20) {
  google_conversion_value = 20;
}
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<div style="display:inline;">
<img height="1" width="1" style="border-style:none;" alt="" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/12345678/?value=20&label=U10bCNfstvhghO6gM&guid=ON&script=0"/>
</div>
</noscript>

Read about Google Analytics ecommerce tracking

Read about Google AdWords conversion tracking

Finally, we strongly recommend that you test everything out using the PayPal Sandbox.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us directly and if you are located in Australia check out our Google Seminars for Success for the best Google Analytics training available!

Thanks to ROI Revolution for inspiring this post who originally discussed Google Analytics and PayPal back in 2007.

Google Analytics Goals and Funnels: Back to Basics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:49:00 +0000

Goals are great and it is amazing how many people don't have them setup! Goals allow you to track visitors who convert on your site, so they can provide you with really quick insights with only a few minutes of setup time.

And if you already have goals setup within Google Analytics, then I would encourage you to take a few minutes to double check you have everything setup correctly. Also, checkout the new engagement goals that are available.

Uses For Google Analytics Goals And Funnels:

Ecommerce transactions
Email newsletter subscriptions
Contact form leads
Whitepaper and PDF downloads
Views of critical pages

Getting Started:

To start out I would suggest setting up a traditional goal, which is simply based on the view of a key page on your site, a thank you page is best.

Start by navigating and completing the steps you expect people to take to get to the thank you page. As you go record the URLs of the pages you visit, all the way to the thank you page.

Here is an email newsletter subscription example;

1. http://www.site.com/index.html
2. http://www.site.com/news/
3. http://www.site.com/news/subscribe.html
4. http://www.site.com/news/thank-you.html

In this example I have gone from the homepage, to the news section, to the subscription form to the thank you page.

I would suggest that you just use the subscription form and the thank you page as the goal steps in this case, because people might come from other sections or pages on your site to the subscription form and so the first two steps are considered optional.

Setting Up Your Goal:

1. Click 'Edit' for the profile you are setting up a goal for on the Google Analytics account overview page.

2. Click 'Add Goal' next to a goal set.

3. Give the goal a suitable name (e.g. Newsletter Subscription).

4. Ensure 'Active Goal' is set to 'On'.

5. Set 'Goal Type' as 'URL Destination'.

6. By default match type is set to 'Head Match', leaving this default setting works in most cases.

Head Match: matches part of the URL (e.g. entering /page.html will match for /page.html?id=18 and /page.html?id=204)
Exact Match: matches the exact URL (check the top content report to ensure the URL is being tracked by Google Analytics)
Regular Expression Match: matches the URL based on regular expressions.

7. Enter the final conversion page as the goal URL. This is generally the thank you or receipt page. You generally want to set a goal URL that is not accessible unless a visitor has completed your desired process.

8. Optional: If your goal has a particular value you can set the dollar value for the 'goal value' input. (If you have an ecommerce site, you should setup ecommerce reporting and not set a goal value.)

9. Enter the URLs of the steps required to complete the process and give each step a suitable name. (Click 'Add Goal Funnel Step' and repeat for all the steps you have defined as critical to completing the goal.)

10. Click 'Save Changes'.

Q+A: Grouping Pages in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:19:00 +0000

Question: How can I group pages together for reporting within Google Analytics?

In this post we will look at how we can use; Advanced Table Filters, Profile Filters and Multiple Custom Variables to group pages together for reporting within Google Analytics.

We are going to use an online toy shop as an example for this post. Let's say the website has toys in the following categories:

Bicycles
Dolls
Games
Learning

Basic: Content Drilldown

If the site already has a logical folder structure then there are very simple ways to group content.

Firstly, browse your website and look at the URLs for the individual pages you want to group.

If you see URLs such as the following:

www.toys.com/bicycles/
www.toys.com/bicycles/bmx-bikes
www.toys.com/bicycles/product.php?id=3012

Where all the pages you want to group have a common element in the URL (in the example above you can see /bicycles/ is in all the URLs we want to group), then you can navigate to Content > Content Drilldown to see all the pages rolled-up into /bicycles/.

If you have pages that don't have a common element in the URL then you will have to be a little more advanced!

Intermediate: Advanced Table Filters and Profile Filters

If you see URLs such as the following:

www.toys.com/product/index.php?id=3829 for a boys bicycle
www.toys.com/product/index.php?id=1258 for a teens bicycle
www.toys.com/product/index.php?id=7248 for a doll
www.toys.com/product/index.php?id=3457 for a preschool board game
www.toys.com/product/index.php?id=1263 for a brain game

And you only want to group the boys bicycles and teens bicycles, then you have two options.

Firstly, you can navigate to Content > Top Content within Google Analytics and then apply an Advanced Table Filter that only matches those two pages.

Click 'Advanced Filter' and enter 3029|1258 (this will match 3029 OR 1258 within the report using | which is the pipe symbol):

Once you click 'Apply Filter' the Top Content report will only include data for the two bicycle pages. You will have to add the ID numbers for any other pages you want to include in the report (e.g. 3029|1258|9620|3892 etc.)

Once you have done this you you can consider setting up a filtered profile that will only report on the pages you have identified. Create a new profile and apply a filter like the following:

The above is an include filter with the following as the filter pattern: ^/product/index\.php\?id\=(3829|1258) this will match /product/indexphp?id=3829 AND /product/indexphp?id=1258.

Advanced: Multiple Custom Variables

Advanced Table Filters and Profile Filters are fantastic but if you change your site you also have to update your filters which could be a pain. You might also have a LOT of pages, and filters might be restrictive and take a lot of time to setup. If you fall into this area then Multiple Custom Variables are going to be the best solution.

Multiple Custom Variables are going to be more involved to setup because they need to be placed within your site's code but with the help of yourweb developer or IT support it shouldn't be too hard to get it setup correctly.

Once you have defined which pages should be grouped (e.g. all the bicycle pages) then you will need to dynamically create Multiple Custom Variables within the code of your pages.

So for all the bicycle pages you will need the following to be within your tracking code:

pageTracker._setCustomVar(
   1, // Multiple Custom Variable is set to slot 1
   "Product Section", // Overarching name (or category)
   "Bicycles", // This value of the custom variable
   3 // Sets the scope to pageview-level
);

Then for your games pages you might need:

pageTracker._setCustomVar(
   1, // Multiple Custom Variable is set to slot 1
   "Product Section", // Overarching name (or category)
   "Games", // This value of the custom variable
   3 // Sets the scope to pageview-level
);

And so on for each section you want to track. Once your pages are dynamically tracking into the Multiple Custom Variables, you will be able to access the Custom Variables report within Google Analytics.

Make Notes in Google Analytics with Annotations

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:51:00 +0000

Until the release of Annotations within Google Analytics you were probably referring to a calendar or spreadsheet to find out what caused certain spikes in traffic. Annotations solves this by allowing Google Analytics users to add notes to dates within Google Analytics reports.

Creating Annotations Within Google Analytics

1. Click the annotation toggle link below the graph within your Google Analytics profile.

2. Select the date for the annotation and click '+ create new annotation'.

3. Enter your note (up to 160 characters), select if you would like the note to be shared or private and click 'save'.

A shared annotation will be visible to all users who have access to the particular Google Analytics profile. A private annotation will only be visible to you.

Top 5 Events To Track Using Annotations:

Email newsletters and email marketing campaigns
Offline advertising launches (e.g. print, radio, TV)
Marketing events or milestones (e.g. product launches)
Website changes (e.g. interface design or promotional banner)
Key calendar events (e.g. public holidays, Valentine's day)

How Much is 'Google Analytics' Costing You?

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:46:00 +0000

Omniture recently presented a webinar and published a white paper titled "How Much is 'Free' Costing You?" where they engaged research company Forrester and an Omniture client to discredit free web analytics tools.

What did you just call Google Analytics?

John Lovett of Forrester tries to convince us that free tools are like free puppies. Two things come to mind, the first being that I don't think anybody would ever assume that a puppy is entirely free (much like a free webinar from Omniture would give us something more than a sales pitch).

Here is how John describes free web analytics tools:

"Thinking about free tools you also have to consider how much work they are. What's going to go into taking that free puppy home? Did you think about the fact that you are going to have to take it home for walks?"

Google Analytics is like a free puppy? You have got to be kidding me!

John almost completely skips the most critical piece of information in his presentation – that you need to dedicate resources to analysis in order to turn web analytics data into actions.

Now we are talking, if we invest resources and dollars into getting Google Analytics set up correctly or we invest (considerably more) in Omniture and we don't get any value or return from that investment, then yes, we fail.

Google Analytics vs. Omniture SiteCatalyst

Tony Bradshaw and Tim Munsell of DaveRamsey.com follow on from John's presentation and they take direct aim at Google Analytics.

They refer to the features (left column below) that in their opinion Google Analytics does not provide. I have taken the liberty of filling in the blanks (right column below):

Omniture SiteCatalyst	Google Analytics
Highly customizable reports	Google Analytics has over 90 standard reports, plus Custom Reports and Advanced Segments
Visitor paths	Site Overlay, Navigation Summary and Entrance Paths reports
Robust dashboards	Customizable dashboard
Sharing of custom reports	Sharing of custom reports and advanced segments and apply these to multiple profiles and account
Upload offline data	No data upload, but you can create your own mashups with data from the Google Analytics Data Export API
Access to support	Google support articles, Google support forum, Google Analytics Authorized Consultants
40 custom event metrics	Track up to 500 events per visitor session
80 custom event variables	Define custom event variables (with categories, actions, labels and values)
'Large' number of custom variables	Track up to 50,000 custom variables (with up to 5 with any given request)
Custom variable attribution	Only last click attribution by default, but can be customized with scripting and use of Multiple Custom Variables
Custom variable persistance	Set scope to pageview, session or visitor
Create custom metrics inside the tool	No mashup of metrics by default, but can be acheived with the Google Analytics API
Site sectioning and hirarcy	Content Drilldown reports, create hirarcy with account and profile structure and use Multiple Custom Variables for advanced requirements
Change funnels on the fly	Funnels do not apply to historical data, but historical conversions can be viewed with Advanced Segments and Content Reports
Funnels for pages, groups of pages, variables and events	Funnels for pages, groups of pages and engagement metrics
Unlimited dashboards	Only one dashboard, but many 3rd party dashboard solutions available
Export 50,000 rows of data to Excel	Export 50,000 rows of data with slight modification to report URL

(Multiple Custom Variables, engagement base goals and report sharing became available shortly after Omniture's webinar.)

Tony and Tim also take aim at the support available to Google Analytics users. They suggest that the consulting and professional services offered around Google Analytics are lacking and questionable at best. As one of over 100 Google Analytics Authorized Consultants around the world we provide enterprise level services and training specifically for Google Analytics addressing individual and shared client needs.

I won't go through all the available support options available because Feras Alhlou of e-nore (a US based Google Analytics Authorized Consultant) has already highlighted them in his post about Omniture's webinar. But in summary there are support articles, forums, professional services (from Google Analytics Authorized Consultants like us), Google Analytics Training (Google sponsored Seminars for Success) and many other related support and training offerings available.

Consider Your Web Analytics Investment

Tony and Tim also included the following graph to highlight the Return On Investment (ROI) they received from implementing Omniture SiteCatalyst. I have highlighted the inclusion of the cost of web analytics staff as a percent of the investment. Without somebody driving action from a web analytics tool you are never going to see ROI.

I have created the following graph to propose a question. What if they had invested the cost of Omniture SiteCatalyst 100% towards real people to drive action?

Really what you should be asking yourself; is how much is 'not acting on my data' costing me? And maybe you should think about allocating that budget you have saved by not buying Omniture's SiteCatalyst to engage leading consultants and hiring dedicated staff.

Apparently Google Analytics is a free puppy. But what does that make Omniture's SiteCatalyst if we are spending $50,000 or more on it a year? A really freaking expensive dog!

A big thank you to Cameron for provoking this post!

New Google Analytics Features Unveiled

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:12:00 +0000

Powerful. Flexible. Intelligent.

Google has officially announced the release of new Google Analytics features which strongly position the product as an enterprise-level web analytics platform. Much anticipated additions to the tool include the ability to define up to 20 goals per profile (previously limited to 4), Intelligence reports that provide automated and custom alerts to changes in metrics and dimensions, and the ability to track visitors into Multiple Custom Variables (previously known as Custom Segments).

New Google Analytics features include:

Intelligence Reports
Automatic and Custom Alerts
Expanded Goals
Site Engagement Goals
Advanced Table Filtering
Expanded Mobile Reporting
Share Advanced Segments
Share Custom Reports
Multiple Custom Variables

Google Analytics Gets Smart With Intelligence Reports

The new Intelligence reports allow you to see if significant changes are occurring within your Google Analytics data. For example; you received more visitors than expected, your bounce rate is increasing or you have experienced a spike in revenue from new visitors to your site. The Automatic Alerts within Google Analytics Intelligence provide you with this level of detail automatically and it is provided for historical data (back to mid 2008) in your profiles.

Automatic Alerts also let you know when things aren't going well:

Taking Intelligence reports to the next level with Custom Alerts allows you to define your own alert triggers and receive an email alert. For example you can create a Custom Alert to notify you (within Google Analytics and via email) when your Google AdWords campaign traffic meets a revenue target or when your organic (or free) keyword term from your SEO efforts has resulted in a certain number of visitors to your site.

Now Google Analytics really is smart!

Want More Goals In Google Analytics?

Google Analytics: Now With 20 Goals Per Profile

One feature that we have all wanted for a while now is the ability to set more than 4 goals per profile. Each Google Analytics profile can now be setup with 20 goals. These are also conveniently arranged in 4 groups containing 5 goals each.

Site Engagement Goals In Google Analytics

Evaluating the effectiveness of content based sites just got easier with site engagement goals in Google Analytics. Standard goals are great for reporting on particular actions you want your visitors to take (buying online, filling out a contact form or registering for your email newsletter) but what if your primary objective is providing quality content and an engaging experience for your visitors? Site engagement goals are your answer, now you can set a goal conversion for time on site or pages per visit allowing you to access the power of goal reports within Google Analytics.

If you are a SMB (Small to Medium Business), non-profit, government or any organization with a content or branding focused site you should definitely begin using site engagement goals.

Filtering Within Google Analytics Reports

Google Analytics Table Filtering allows you to filter the data presented within particular table reports. This allows you to quickly refine the data to your particular parameters, for example removing particular dimensions (like pages) based on metrics (like time on page) that are skewing your analysis.

Exploring the example further, you could take your Top Content report and then use Table Filtering to only include pages where visitors spend more than 0 seconds and less than 30 seconds.

This gives you direct access to under performing pages based on time on page. Then you can drill-down further by applying advanced segments (All Visitors, Search Traffic, Direct Traffic and Referral Traffic) to the report to establish if Traffic Sources relate to the under performance of the pages.

Expanded Mobile Reporting In Google Analytics

Google Analytics now allows for improved tracking of mobile devices, so you can now track interactions within your iPhone and Android apps to measure usage and engagement.

A new tracking code for mobile sites built using PHP, Perl, JSP and ASPX will also become available, allowing you to track all web-enabled mobile devices (not just mobile devices that run JavaScript).

Share Your Advanced Segments And Custom Reports

Advanced Segments and Custom Reports are powerful tools to drill deeper into your data. Now you can quickly share your Advanced Segments and Custom Reports with your colleagues making it easier to collaborate on the analysis of your site.

Multiple Custom Variables

This advanced feature opens up more opportunities for custom tracking using Google Analytics. Our team will be updating our custom Google Website Optimizer tracking solution to make use of Multiple Custom Variables, as well as looking at how we can make use it to attribute first and last click to conversions.

Previously Custom Variables (also known as custom segments or _setVar) allowed you to assign a visitor with one User Defined value, now with Multiple Custom Variables you will be able to set each visitor with numbers User Defined values.

Measuring Social Networks with Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Benjamin Mangold) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:32:00 +0000

Lets Start with a Quick Overview

Social networking can be used to increase traffic to your website, generate more sales and leads, and enhance your visibility to potential and existing customers. In order to achieve these objectives you need to assign value to each initiative you undertake and align social networking with your business objectives.

If you want to increase the number of visits or improve your visibility in the marketplace, you should focus on listening to clients and competitors (Google Alerts, Twitter), share content (Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, RSS, MySpace), build good relationships (Facebook, LinkedIn), dialogue with customers (Twitter), generate buzz (Digg, Twitter) and participate in a wider community (Twitter, Facebook).

Once you are active within social networks you need to determine how you are performing and calculate your ROI (Return On Investment).

Measuring Social Networks in Google Analytics

By default Google Analytics allows us to track visitors from social network via referral source (or which social networking site linked to your site). You can view visits from social networks within the All Traffic Sources report (located under Traffic Sources).

Begin by searching for the top social networking site, this can be acheived by using the filter (or search) at the very bottom of the report.

Once you have established your primary social networking referrals you can input multiple social media domain names into the filter option. Then you can begin to compare the true value of your social networking efforts.

Do basic engagement metrics differ between networks?
Are social network visitors converting for your goals?
And more importantly; how do conversion rates compare?

The following image highlights the ecommerce conversion rates between 4 social networking sites. We can now see that Twitter is driving the highest conversion rate, therefore if we focus our efforts on driving more traffic from Twitter we should see even more revenue being generated.

In this example we could aim to increase Twitter visitors by 50% or 100% which would result in additional revenue of $37,886.85 to $75,773.69 - more than enough to cover a member of your team Tweeting an hour a day!

Google Analytics allows you to measure metrics for visitors accessing your site from social networks in quantitative terms, but it is also important to understand the qualitative value of your efforts.

Drilling Deeper into Social Networking Visitors using Google Analytics

Okay, now that you have the basics down you can start to get deeper into your Google Analytics social networking data.

Creating a social networking advanced segment will allow you to see this level of detail throughout the majority of Google Analytics reports.

Creating an Advanced Segment for Social Networks:

Navigate to Advanced Segments
Click 'Create new custom segment'
Search or browse for 'Source' within the Dimensions options
Click and drag 'Source' over to the custom segment builder
Select 'Matches regular expression' as the condition
Enter your social networks (we have used twitter\.com|flickr\.com|youtube\.com|digg\.com)
Name your segment
Test your segment to ensure it works
And finally, click 'Create Segment'

You should end up with the following:

Now when you apply your custom advanced segment your Google Analytics reports will only include visitors coming from the social networking sites you have defined.

Posted by Daniela Fernandez and Benjamin Mangold, Analytics Team