Google Analytics Blog

PBS saves time with automated reports

2012-01-26T10:01:00.000-08:00

For most companies using Google Analytics, reporting on website traffic and performance for a few web properties is a straightforward task. However, if your company manages hundreds of web properties, delivering useful and timely reports can become a significant challenge. For many, the only apparent solution is to manually export analytics data for each web property, then combine and compare that data to answer relevant business questions. It’s a slow and costly process and you spend most of your time creating reports instead of carrying out meaningful analysis.

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) faced precisely this challenge when it made the decision to use GA Data Grabber by AutomateAnalytics.com. GA Data Grabber works within Excel and uses the Google Analytics API. Users create or choose reports and GA Data Grabber automatically retrieves the Google Analytics data from any number of websites. And with multi-login capabilities, users can seamlessly combine data between Google Analytics profiles that reside under different Google Accounts.

Designed for non-technical users, GA Data Grabber generates great-looking visualizations and can automatically highlight important changes in key metrics over a date range. It’s also possible to use Excel’s visualization and data processing features. For example, formulas can be added to calculate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on any set of metrics.

Amy Sample, Director, Web Analytics, Public Broadcasting Service explains the challenges that PBS faced and how GA Data Grabber was able to help. “The PBS.org and PBSKIDS.org web sites are made up of hundreds of individual companion sites to broadcast programs. From a business perspective, there is a need to evaluate performance of individual program sites relative to each other.” As is common for many large organizations, PBS has separate Google Analytics accounts for each program site. “While multiple accounts works well to evaluate the site content and performance, it makes it difficult to look at all of the sites side-by-side without a lot of manual effort. Our previous attempts to create this type of report were time-consuming and often subject to data input errors.”

“Using Google Analytics, combined with GA Data Grabber, we were able to create a benchmark report for our program sites. The monthly report pulls a standard set of KPIs from each of the program accounts and ranks the programs by traffic. The report is used as a management tool by both the PBS.org and PBSKIDS.org teams to monitor monthly performance of programs. The teams have also used it to identify opportunities for programs that are no longer being broadcast but still getting significant online traffic. Our program producers use the report to benchmark their performance against other sites of similar content or size and determine ways to improve audience engagement. As a result of using GA Data Grabber to pull the data, we can produce this report quickly and accurately on monthly basis.”

GA Data Grabber
Mikael Thuneberg, Founder & CEO of AutomateAnalytics.com has been using the Google Analytics API since its launch. “I’ve been very happy with the API. Having developed for several other APIs, I can say that the Google Analytics API is by far the easiest to develop for. It’s logically structured and flexible, the documentation is excellent, and it’s easy to get help through the forum. I’ll certainly continue developing for the Google Analytics API. I’ve expanded to other APIs as well, but Google Analytics is still by far the most important one for my business.”

GA Data Grabber can be found through the Google Analytics App Gallery and can be downloaded from the GA Data Grabber website.

If you’re interested in developing solutions for the Google Analytics platform, visit Google Analytics Developer Program.

Posted by Pete Frisella, Google Analytics API Team

Update to Search Engine Optimization reports

2012-01-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

In October, we made Google Webmaster Tools available to all users in Google Analytics, allowing everyone to surface Google search data in new Search Engine Optimization reports. Starting today, Webmaster Tools will update how they calculate data to make it better match expectations about what a search engine ranking really means.

Based on their research, the answer to the question "What is your rank in search results?" is the first position of a link to your site. Previously we reported the average position of all links to your site. Now your Google Analytics reports will be updated to reflect the first position.

An example calculation

We anticipate that this new method of calculation will more accurately match your expectations about how a link's position in Google Search results should be reported.

How will this affect my Google Analytics data?
This change will affect your Search Engine Optimization reports, when your data in Google Analytics Search Engine Optimization reports will be calculated using the new method. Historical data will not change. Note that the change in calculation means that the Average Position metric will usually stay the same or decrease, corresponding to the same or improved search ranking.

We look forward to providing you a more representative picture of your Google Search data. Please let us know any feedback you have.

Posted by Chris Anderson, Google Analytics team

A new initiative connects analysts with non-profits

2012-01-24T17:17:00.000-08:00

The Google Analytics Team has always supported the promotion of analytics education and professional development. We’d like to share this guest post by Wendy Greco & Eric Peterson from Analysis Exchange - an initiative designed to provide hands-on training opportunities for aspiring web analytics professionals while providing free web data analysis to the entire nonprofit community.

In the right hands, technologies like Google Analytics can do great things, but unfortunately not every organization is able to hire resources to dedicate to web analytics. What’s more, there are thousands of talented individuals out there who would love to work in this field but don’t have the hands-on experience required to get their first web analytics job.

Two years ago Web Analytics Demystified looked at this problem from both angles and decided to create a solution - The Analysis Exchange. The Analysis Exchange pairs a non-profit organization with pair of web analysts --- one a student wanting the experience and the other a mentor with years of direct work in the field. The trio work together to have the student learn to use Google Analytics to “tell a story” with the data about how the non-profit can better meet their business goals.

Thanks to the generosity of all of our sponsors and participants, Analysis Exchange projects are completely free. Google Analytics is the standard analytics tool for Analysis Exchange for a few key reasons:

No cost means it is accessible to all non-profits
Nearly 100% of the non-profits we work with already have it installed
Our students find Google Analytics incredibly easy to learn
Our mentors, even if they don’t use Google Analytics day-to-day, pick it up immediately

Most importantly, Google Analytics attention to ease-of-use dramatically improves our non-profits likelihood to continue to use web analytics after Analysis Exchange projects. Our mentors and students teach them to fish, and Google Analytics becomes the fishing pole.

Most Analysis Exchange projects take less than a few hours for non-profits and mentors. Students spend more time, but students have the most to gain as they develop the types of “Analyst Ninja” skills that are required to get a great job in this field. We’re looking for more partners to sign up to the The Analysis Exchange - who are interested in supporting this initiative.

You can learn more about our effort at www.analysis-exchange.com or write our Executive Director Wendy Greco directly at wendy.greco@analysis-exchange.com.

Posted on behalf of Wendy Greco & Eric Peterson

Google’s updated privacy policy - what it means for Google Analytics users

2012-01-24T13:46:00.000-08:00

You may have already heard that Google is rolling out a new main privacy policy on March 1. With these changes, the privacy policy will be easier to read, and will help us create one beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google products and services. The new privacy policy makes it clear that if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services - helping us treat you as a single user across all our products. (To read more about the new privacy policy, check out the Official Google Blog post here.) We know you may have questions about how this affects you and your Google Analytics data, so want to take this opportunity to explain.

Most importantly, the privacy policies and controls you have over your website data will not change. Just as it was before, your website’s data is governed by the data sharing settings, which you control directly. You can still choose how much, if any, of your website’s data to share with Google to help us improve our products, provide anonymous, aggregate statistics, or make enhanced features like Conversion Optimizer available to you. Your website data will not be used for purposes other than those that you specify in your settings, which you may change at any time. You can find more information about data sharing settings here.

The way that we handle information about your website’s visitors is also unchanged. Their data will continue to be governed by your website’s privacy policies, and their actions will remain anonymous in Google Analytics to both websites and Google. The only change for Google Analytics users under the new privacy policy is that now, information about how you interact with the Google Analytics interface may be shared with our other products.

Helping you understand our privacy controls and giving you meaningful choices to determine how you want to share your data is very important to us, and we encourage you to take the time to read through the new privacy policy changes and our data sharing options.

Posted by Paul Muret, Director of Engineering, Google Analytics

The End of an Era for Urchin Software

2012-01-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

When I started Urchin Software with a few colleagues back in 1998, it was hard to imagine the scale and impact that Urchin and Google Analytics would eventually have. And yet, I remember rolling out the first version of Urchin to our customers and being blown away by the response. It was clear that Urchin was filling a fundamental need to understand customer engagement in a new medium. Suddenly, it made the intangible packets of traffic flying invisibly all over the world very tangible.

Within a few short years, we built a successful business based on Urchin and “Urchin on Demand”, an online version of the product. In early 2005, we were acquired by Google because it saw the potential of data to create a better web. By liberating this tool we could empower companies of all sizes to become smarter and more effective online. We assigned considerable resources to our online solution and released it to the public for free. Google Analytics has since grown beyond anything that we could have expected.

The success of Google Analytics has been incredibly rewarding and humbling, and we are very thankful for the support of our early Urchin customers and investors. The Urchin Software product has now been completely overshadowed by its tremendously popular offspring. And so, it is time that we now complete the cycle by officially retiring the Urchin Software product and focus exclusively on online analytics. On behalf of the original Urchin crew and Google, we thank you and hope that we can continue to serve you with amazing products.

Urchin has only been available during the past several years through Certified Urchin Resellers, and new sales will officially discontinue at the end of March 2012. We are encouraging Urchin users to migrate to Google Analytics, although expect that current installations of the software will continue to work fine on most systems for years to come. You can learn more about the retirement of this product on the Urchin Website.

Posted by Paul Muret, Director of Engineering, Google Analytics

Is 2012 the year to brush up your measurement skills?

2012-01-19T13:11:00.000-08:00

As investment in digital marketing increases, data and insight continue to be critical assets for marketers and content owners. If 2012 is the year to develop your measurement and optimisation skill set, we have a range of resources to help you.

Individual Qualification with Google Analytics
Whilst you’re improving your measurement skills and campaign results using Google Analytics you can also work towards becoming individually qualified with a recognised Google certification. Learn more at www.google.com/analytics/iq.

Live Training & Events
We have a stellar partner network who offer a range of courses and live training to help you through the basic and advanced capabilities of GA. Google certified trainers run regular 101, 201 and 301 seminars - you can find a Seminars For Success calendar here for North America, Australia and the UK.

Another great way to learn about GA and meet the GA team is to attend one of the GAUGE events. This series is hosted by our partner network and is a great way to learn from experts within the network and within other companies likes yours. The next event takes place in San Francisco on March 8-9 where Phil Mui, Group Product Manager and other members of the product team will share some of our newest developments and maybe even hint at what’s in store in 2012.

European events are already planned in Brussels (March 20th), Amsterdam (March 21-22nd), and Stockholm (May 8th). Keep an eye on the blog for the schedule and registration details.

Online Resources & Best Practices
We also have published many articles to help you find your way around GA in our help centre and also have a vibrant forum. If you prefer watching to reading, visit the Google Analytics YouTube channel for a range of educational videos and webinars covering our latest feature releases.

What else do you want to see or learn about in 2012? Let us know, leave a comment and we’ll try to accommodate in our curriculum or within our partner events.

Sophie Chesters, Marketing Manager for Google Analytics

An update on the new version of Google Analytics

2012-01-18T15:50:00.000-08:00

Since May of last year we’ve been working on a new version of Google Analytics and quickly adding new features and functionality to provide you with fast access to the insights you need.

We’re extremely pleased with the new capabilities around multi-channel measurement, real-time analytics, flow visualization and improved device reporting to name a few. Our goal was to create a faster, more intuitive platform for the future and I think we’ve met many of these goals.

Before we fully move to the new version we’re ensuring that you have the key functions you’re used to and which enables GA to be integral to your organization. We’re working hard on some priority features - email scheduling and PDF export as a top priority, alongside profile copying and dashboard sharing - and want to let you know that we’ll only fully be moving over to the new version once these are in place.

We’ve collected a lot of feedback on things you love and things you miss - but if there is still something you just can’t live without let us know by filling in this survey.

We’re excited to bring you more in 2012 - we have a lot on our to do list - so keep reading and I hope to hear from you so we can continue to make GA the most intuitive, useful analytics tool available for marketers and site owners today.

Posted by Phil Mui, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics

A new forum for Google Analytics using Google Product Forums

2012-01-17T08:42:00.000-08:00

The Google Analytics Forum is a community of people like you, who enjoy exploring making full use of the features of Google Analytics and also enjoy sharing their knowledge within the community. It’s a place where you can share expertise or seek out answers. It’s also a great way to escalate bugs and critical issues. Googlers such as myself and many of our Google Analytics Certified Partners are monitoring and can provide speedy help and feedback.

To make the forums even better, we’ve migrated to the new Google Product Forums on January 12, 2012 as they offer increased stability and the potential to add exciting new features in the future - here’s the link to the Google Analytics forum using the new platform. The most popular forum features - including levels and marking a best answer - will continue to be available in the new forum. The old forum will be archived and any links to old forum content will redirect automatically to the corresponding content in the new forum.

Here’s a getting started guide so you can learn about some of the new features.

Top Contributors were given a demo of the new platform at Google’s first ever Global Top Contributor Summit in September and I’d like to give special thanks to Top Contributors Phil Pearce (PPC_Guru) and Bronwyn Vourtis (Whims) for attending the event. Thanks also to Rachaell and Nayan for continued involvement in the community and to all of you who have provided feedback and participated in testing. We’ll continue to listen to your feedback to improve the platform and ensure the migration goes smoothly.

Aruna, Community Manager - Google Analytics

A look ahead at measurement in 2012

2012-01-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

In 2011, we saw marketing follow the consumer to more screens and more platforms - from apps to mobile sites to social networks to tablets. And in response the analytics industry made strides to unify this complex picture for marketers through device and platform specific analytics, and to connect the dots to measure and value the multi-channel customer path.

With the help of mobile devices and the Internet, consumers also flocked online to fill their shopping carts in 2011. According to aggregate numbers from websites opting in to share their data with Google, there was a 63% jump in the monthly volume of online transactions from December 2010 to December 2011, and on average, the number of ecommerce transactions grew about 1.2% every week in 2011. Last year it became more important than ever for businesses to make sure their online presence and digital campaigns were in check, and that they were measuring what matters.

As we turn the page on 2011, here are our thoughts on what’s in store for the industry in 2012:

Mobile shines on the mainstage
It’s been said that 2011 was the year that mobile turned a corner, and consumers armed with their smartphones show no sign of turning back. In fact, aggregate numbers from websites opting to share their data with Google show us that in the last four months of 2011, weekly volume of mobile visits jumped 40%, with mobile traffic growing at an average of 2% every week. And the weekly share of mobile transactions on overall ecommerce grew 60% in the same timeframe.

In 2012, marketers should expect improved tools to measure engagement on mobile-optimized sites and effectiveness of mobile ads that will help them determine what platforms and formats help them catch consumers on the go.

Measuring social media ROI becomes a reality
Social media has changed the way we shop and interact with brands, but marketers still lack a clear way to measure how their social investments lead to more sales. According to MarketingSherpa, only 20% of CMOs think social media marketing produces measurable ROI, while 62% consider it to be a promising tactic that will eventually yield ROI.

In 2012, better measurement tools will help marketers make smarter decisions about their investments in social. Vanity counters, such as friend counts and reshares, will be augmented with bottom line metrics like conversions and purchases, allowing marketers to measure true social ROI of each campaign and compare the effectiveness with other channels. With additional visibility into off-site activity, enhanced campaign tracking and referral analytics, 2012 is the year that social analytics comes to life.

Moving beyond conversions to a cohesive view of the customer
In 2012, the analytics industry will move towards bringing the disparate pieces of customer insight together into one cohesive view of the customer. How are your search, display, mobile and email marketing campaigns working together over time to bring a customer to purchase? And once they make that purchase, what can their continued interactions with your brand - both online and offline - tell you about their lifetime value as a customer? Marketers will move beyond individual conversions to make smarter decisions once they understand the entire picture of their customer over time, and we see that picture coming into focus this year.

Right ad, right time - applying analytics in real time
With real time data feeding into remarketing, ad content optimization, and real time bidding systems, advertisers are closer than ever to finding the right customer with the right ad at the right time. As these real time systems converge, there’s huge potential to integrate analytics to pull in deeper and richer information about user intent.

For example, if people who come into the site for more than 10 minutes and watch at least 3 product videos are the high ROI sweet spot customer segment for an online retailer, any such users browsing then abandoning the shopping cart page are great candidates for remarketing. Knowing the likelihood to convert as well as the potential ROI from a sale, advertisers can program these variables into the bid they are willing to pay for showing this customer their ad.

Data will become more actionable
We’ve always believed that businesses make smarter decisions when they have the right data at their fingertips, but the real impact of analytics will be seen when we make the jump from mere reporting to more actionable tools. While full scale experimentation is still complex, controlled experimentation is something that every marketer should take advantage of, from site optimization to attribution modeling. Marketers are asking for sophisticated yet easy to use tools that help them make sense of the data, and ultimately make more dollars - and I think the industry will respond this year.

We’ve only scratched the surface in helping marketers better measure the effectiveness of their campaigns, and as marketing continues to evolve, so will our efforts to make it more measurable and actionable. This year is sure to be an exciting one, so happy measuring!

Posted by Amy Chang, Director of Product Management

Web Analytics TV #23 - The Holiday Episode

2011-12-23T13:30:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the holiday episode of Web Analytics TV! Web Analytics TV, as you well know by now, is powered by your amazing questions. In this merry episode we had questions from France, Australia, Sweden, India, Germany, The Netherlands and the US.

If you’re new to this show, our process is simple.

Step 1: You ask, or vote on, your favorite web analytics questions. Vote on next week’s questions using this Web Analytics TV Google Moderator site.

Step 2: From a secret undisclosed location at the Googleplex Avinash Kaushik & Nick Mihailovski answer them. :-)

In this episode we award the “Ninja of the Episode” and award it to Maggie in Bulgaria, for a great question about the difference between the days and visits to transaction report and the time lag reports in multi channel funnels. Maggie, just email us and we’ll send you a signed copy of Web analytics 2.0.

OK. Here is the list of last episodes questions.

In this action packed episode we discuss:

(0:35) Working with changes in various country’s cookie policies

(1:56) Recommendation for tracking bounces on content sites

(4:32) Tracking exit links from your website

(7:00) Tracking and reporting customer lifetime value

(9:47) Days to purchase vs time lag reports in multi-channel funnels

(11:48) Cross domain and sub-domain tracking using a GACP

(13:01) Funnel visualization via the API

(16:03) Interaction hits and impact on quota

(16:41) Tracking internal referrals / campaings / house ads

(17:51) Why visits and entrances are the same for page level custom vars

(19:54) Comparing mondays, week over week

(20:42) Time between setting profiles filers and seeing data in reports

Here are the links to the topics we discuss:

Funnel visualization using paditrack

Vote on developer issue in our issue tracker

Justin Cutroni explains how to use internal site search to track internal campaigns

Use Excellent Analytics, GA Data Grabber, Next Analytics to extract data into excel

Check out the Google Analytics App Gallery for great tools

As always, if you need help setting up Google Analytics or leveraging the advanced configuration options, we recommend hiring a Google Analytics Certified Partner.

If you found this post or video helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Please share them via the comment form below.

This series would not be possible without your awesome questions. Please submit them on our public Google Moderator site, and while you’re there don’t forget to vote for your favorite questions. Avinash and I will answer them in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Thanks!
Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Advanced Segments for Holiday campaigns

2011-12-20T16:50:00.000-08:00

With only a week before the holiday gift season is over, it’s time to shut down your online ads and turn off the lights at your e-store, right? Not so fast, not if you want to ride the final shopping wave!

Holiday shoppers are still out in full force, and “dollars per buyer” are up 12% this year, so you’re likely to get even more bang for your advertising buck. Since Christmas is on a Sunday this year, that means last-minute gift-givers could be shopping up until Thursday the 22nd if you offer 2-day shipping. However, you also have visitors looking for physical stores where they can buy your product, and (if you offer it) those willing to “pick up in store”.

With Advanced Segments, you can find these visitors and help them get their gift on time!

The first thing to research is who were these last-minute shoppers last year? If you had goals or e-commerce tracking installed back then, shrink your date range from December 18th, 2010 to December 24th, 2010. Next, select the “Visits with Transactions” default advanced segment:

(if you don’t have e-commerce tracking, you may want to create a custom advanced segment like this one:

where the goal# that you select is your most valuable goal).

Then, go to the organic keywords report by navigating to Traffic Sources > Search > Organic.

What keywords were these buyers searching on? Were there any good generic terms like “last minute gifts” or “gifts before christmas”? Were there any long-tail terms that are still relevant this year? If so, make sure you’re bidding on these terms in your paid search accounts so you get maximum coverage on keywords that brought in revenue last season. Also be sure to check out the paid search report to see if there were any converting paid keywords from last year that you have been missing this time around.

(Also try repeating this process for December 26th 2010 through January 1st 2011 to find trends during the post-Christmas week).

Next, find out if there is any crossover between your online store and physical store. If you have a store locator for your physical stores (or that lists stores who sell your products), then create the following advanced segment:

With this segment applied, shrink your date range to the past seven days and go to the Pages report (under Content > Site Content) to cross-list those products against any that are out of stock (one reason why they could be checking for stores). Then, call around to make sure the physical locations have the items that these visitors are searching for.

If you only sell products online, then create similar advanced segments to the one above for people who visit your most popular holiday promotional pages. Then, go to the Pages report to see what other products those visitors are viewing (and the transactions report to see what people are buying) and feature that content on the landing page to make it easy to find!

One more advanced segment tip for you: It’s estimated that half of online shoppers will use their mobile phone while shopping this year. This could be to locate stores, find better deals, or find coupons. This connection to shopping in the physical world will be critical for these final seven days, when shipping costs are high.

Check your AdWords report, and make sure you try out the new “non-mobile”, “high-end mobile” and “tablet” default segments.

You might be surprised at how your paid traffic behaves differently, so be sure to consider the device when running analysis and set up goals that make sense for them!

Happy analyzing and happy holidays!

Posted by Jesse Nichols, Google Analytics team

Sankey Diagrams and Flow: Over A Hundred Years of Innovation

2011-12-20T10:20:00.000-08:00

From our initial limited release of Flow Visualization in October to our recent release to all customers, we have received a lot of positive feedback from our customers. The idea of using Sankey diagrams and applying them to traffic through a website seems to resonate with you. Thank you! We’ve heard all your suggestions and we’re busy cooking up great stuff in our labs for you. Stay tuned....

But, this post is about the other fellow innovators in graph visualization and the different ways that Sankey diagrams have influenced their research. Since Google has a deep and treasured relationship as part of the research community, we wanted to recognize their work to make it easy to understand vast quantities of data.

Many of us draw our inspiration from Charles Minnard’s 1869 work, epitomized by his diagram of Napolean’s March to Russia. Edward Tufte, who is well-known for his popular visualization books, calls Minnard’s work as “... probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn.”

It is truly amazing that this one visualization can show so many insights. Some of our colleagues even wrote in to tell us about their research:

Network flow - structural changes via alluvial diagrams
Flow of Energy - energy management and power plant efficiency
Flow of Traffic - transport analysis and tournament analysis (ex. 2010 FIFA World Cup!)
Flow of Wealth - money flow, social conditions, and stock price modeling

(Over 170 other examples of Sankey Diagram applications can be found here: http://www.sankey-diagrams.com/)

If you haven’t seen the Flow Visualization reports yet, please login to your GA account and check out the Visitors Flow and Goal Flow reports. We hope you find them elegantly powerful.

Our hats are off to fellow visualizers - let’s make visualizing data easy!

Posted by Phil Mui, Google Analytics team

Updating the Analytics IQ Course and Exam

2011-12-16T09:54:00.000-08:00

Today, we updated the Google Analytics IQ course, available at google.com/analytics/iq, to reflect the new version of Google Analytics. An updated exam will appear during the first week of January. If you’re already in the middle of studying and plan to take the exam in December, you may wish to continue using the old version of the course, which will remain available at ConversionUniversity.com for one more week. After that, ConversionUniversity.com will host the new course.

So, what’s been updated? If you’ve been practicing with the old version of Google Analytics, you’ll find that most of the knowledge you’ve acquired will be valid and useful for the new exam. But, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the new version and start using it.

Specifically, you should

understand accounts, web properties, and profiles in the new Google Analytics,
know the goal types and when to use each type,
understand the concepts of “metric” and “dimension”,
be aware of new Google Analytics capabilities and reports. (Try reviewing recent posts on this blog to make sure you’re up to speed.)

We hope you enjoy the updated online course and best of luck on the exam!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

The power of visualization with the Google Analytics API and Google Earth

2011-12-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

Does your organization have several websites, each serving a particular geographic region? If so you know how challenging it is to analyze the data across these regions in a meaningful way.

Visualizations can help, but they can be difficult to design. Newland communities, a developer of residential and urban home communities, manages numerous web properties for each community and is no stranger to these challenges. To address them, Newland used the query tool from ShufflePoint. The tool enabled the combination of data from Google Analytics and Google Earth, allowing Newland to visualize the data in new ways.

ShufflePoint implemented a pilot project after discussing the idea with Chief Ingredient and their client Newland Communities. Their goal: deal with some of the problems associated with clarifying large amounts of data in a visually appealing manner. The outcome of the project was an integration of Google Analytics data with Google Earth.

Using the Google Analytics API, the ShufflePoint query tool extracts metrics by location from Google Analytics for multiple Newland Communities web properties and creates static and time-animated geographic representations (using KML) viewable in Google Earth. The mashup provides advanced visual reporting on location based campaigns, showing their effect on pageviews, and highlighting any anomalies requiring further investigation. Additionally, the visualization is a great fit for promotional videos, or digital signage needs.

“ShufflePoint uses almost every feature and capability of the Google Analytics API. The API has all of the characteristics that a developer could hope for, including great performance, correct semantics, OAuth for authentication, and good community support. The Google Earth based application has given ShufflePoint recognition for doing innovative and challenging things with Google Analytics. This has been beneficial for promoting ShufflePoint’s offerings.” Chris Harrington, CTO

The ShufflePoint application can be found through the Google Analytics App Gallery and from the ShufflePoint website.

If you’re interested in developing solutions for the Google Analytics platform, visit Google Analytics Developer Program.

Posted by Pete Frisella, Google Analytics API Team

Greater insights from the Site Speed report - Technical section

2011-12-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

Speed is an important part of the users experience of your website and is a key way to understand and improve your site performance. So we’re happy to extend the Site Speed report with more metrics in Google Analytics to help site owners improve performance.

So what’s new?
In the Site Speed report we’re exposing a new set of metrics available in the “Technical” section that can be found in each one of the Site Speed tabs (Explorer, Performance, and Map Overlay).

Where to access the Site Speed Technical section

Site Speed with Technical section metrics overlayed

What are the new metrics and what you can do with them?
The Technical section of the Explorer and Map Overlay tabs provides details on the network and server metrics. Similarly, the additional sections of the Performance tab shows summaries for each of these metrics. These network and server metrics are one component of Avg. Page Load Time; the other component is browser time, i.e., the browser overhead for parsing and executing the JavaScript, rendering the page and other overheads such as fetching additional resources (scripts/stylesheets/images).

In addition to Avg. Page Load Time, the Site Speed report displays the following network and server metrics in the Technical sections:

Avg. Redirection Time - the time spent in redirection before fetching this page. If there are no redirects, the value for this metric is expected to be 0.
Avg. Domain Lookup Time - the average amount of time spent in DNS lookup for this page.
Avg. Server Connection Time - the time needed for the user to connect to your server.
Avg. Server Response Time - the time for your server to respond to a user request, including the network time from the user’s location to your server.
Avg. Page Download Time - the time to download your page.

If you notice that some of the metrics are higher than expected, review your site operations and test if changes lead to improvements. For example, if you notice that Avg. Domain Lookup Time is high, you might want to change your DNS provider. A high Server Connection Time, on the other hand, is a metric that you might not be able to reduce.

To most significantly increase your website’s speed, evaluate your Site Speed report for metrics that have the largest values and target those for improvement. Below is a list of actions that you can take to help solve issues with each of these metrics:

High Avg. Redirection Time - analyze whether the redirects are necessary. Also check sources to see if a specific referrer is causing high redirect latency.
High Avg. Domain Lookup Time - consider changing DNS provider that provides consistent and lower response times.
High Avg. Server Response Time - reduce backend processing time or place a server closer to users.
High Avg. Page Download Time - reduce your initial data size.

Looking for additional ways to improve your site speed? Be sure to view your site’s performance by browser type and Geo location. Your pages may need to be optimized to display faster on a specific browser or for a specific country. Visit the Map Overlay tab to gain insights by region and add “browser” as a secondary dimension to see the impact by browser.

We hope you’ll gain insights into how your site performs for your users from this newly updated report and be able to use it to optimize your pages.

Thanks,
The Google Analytics Site Speed team

Google Analytics Enhancements for Mobile Apps

2011-12-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

November was a busy time in Google Analytics. In particular, the Mobile App Tracking Team has a few things to announce.

EasyTracking Library - automatic session management, better integration with Google Analytics SDK
Updated Google Analytics SDK - More reliable method for sending hits, Android Market referral issue fixed, available via the Android SDK manager
More samples - new open source application aimed to help reduce the ramp up time for new developers who want to track their apps

EasyTracker Library
We’ve created EasyTracker libraries for both iOS and Android. The EasyTracker library will enable tracking of your application down to the Activity (or UIViewController for iOS) level with almost no coding required on your part. See the ReadMe file and source code for details. These Libraries are intended for use with the standard Google Analytics SDKs and should make it very easy to add standard tracking to your applications.

Another advantage to using the EasyTracker library is session management. As many developers know, it’s not always easy to determine whether your application is active and when to start a new session. The EasyTracker library handles this for you. It will determine when your application has been put into the background and will start a new session automatically.

The Android version of the Library not only provides for easy tracking, but also ensures that all calls to GoogleAnalyticsTracker are done off the main UI Thread. Using this library should address responsiveness issues some Android developers have seen using the Google Analytics SDK.

We’ve adapted the Android Notepad sample application to use the EasyTracker library, just to show you how easy it can be.

You can find the libraries and sample applications at
http://code.google.com/p/analytics-api-samples/. Check the downloads section for the libraries. The source for the libraries is available in subversion as well. Drill down into trunk/src/tracking/mobile/android/EasyTracker for Android and trunk/src/tracking/mobile/ios/EasyTracker for iOS. The Notepad sample application is there as well. We’ve released them as open source and contributions to making them better are welcome.

Check the ReadMe files in the libraries themselves for more information on how to use them.

New Versions of Google Analytics SDK for Android and iOS
We’ve released version 1.4 for iOS and version 1.4.2 for Android. The iOS version of the SDK has one new feature. Both versions contain several bug fixes as well. Read on for details.

iOS
We’ve added a new method, dispatchSynchronously, that blocks while it dispatches hits. It won’t return until the hits sent have either been acknowledged by the Google Analytics servers or the specified timeout period has elapsed. This provides a more reliable method for sending hits before your application terminates or goes into the background.

We’ve also addressed several memory leaks and crashes reported against the SDK.

More details on the new version of the SDK can be found at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/ios.html.

Android
The Android SDK will now handle referrals from the Android Market properly. This applies to autotagging as well.

We’ve fixed several other bugs in the Android SDK. Check out the details at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/android.html.

Google Analytics SDK now available via the Android SDK Manager
We’ve added the Google Analytics SDK to the Android SDK Manager. You can download the latest versions using the Android SDK Manager instead of checking the website for updates.

Of course, this only applies to the Android version of the SDK.

MobilePlayground
We’ve released an open source application for both iOS and Android that exercises all the APIs for Google Analytics that are available to Mobile Application developers. You can find them at trunk/src/tracking/mobile.

New Home for the Mobile Tracking Documentation
The Mobile Tracking documentation has moved. It now resides with the rest of the Google Analytics tracking documentation. Check it out at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/overview.html.

Reporting Problems and Feature Requests
We really value your feedback. If you are having problems with the SDKs, let us know by posting them on the Google Analytics issues website at http://code.google.com/p/analytics-issues/issues/list. Use the component MobileTracking when entering an issue or looking through the list for issues already reported against the Mobile App SDKs.

Please stay tuned for more exciting news regarding Mobile Application Tracking with Google Analytics.

Jim Cotugno, Mobile Application Tracking Rockstar

PrivacyStar scales Android business with AdMob & Google Analytics

2011-12-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

With the rapid smartphone growth, it’s no surprise that consumers are downloading a huge number of apps--10 billion on Android alone, as of last week. Many app developers are recognizing the opportunity to develop on Android, including PrivacyStar, a small privacy services company offering smartphone users the ability to block unwanted calls from telemarketers via their mobile app. To help grow their business on Android, PrivacyStar looked to AdMob to drive quality downloads of their app.

PrivacyStar had used a variety of marketing channels to promote their app, including desktop display and television advertising. While successful, this initial acquisition strategy resulted in relatively high cost-per-acquisition (CPA), with downloads costing upwards of $5. Seeing the need to reach their audience while on specific smartphone devices and slash CPA, the PrivacyStar team decided to try in-app advertising across a number of mobile ad networks to drive users to download their app directly to their devices.

AdMob was able to deliver and quickly become their most effective channel of advertising. Other mobile ad networks struggled to maintain a low CPA as they grew on Android inventory. The team then began optimizing their advertising within other mobile apps on the AdMob network—informed by data from Google Analytics. App placements were limited to particular app categories to focus their audience and placements that didn’t meet the aggressive CPM targets were excluded. Within a month of these optimizations, cost per acquisition fell to less than $2, a fraction of their initial acquisition cost. Additionally, the quality of downloads that AdMob drove were far superior, with more users upgrading to a monthly subscription.

The success that PrivacyStar has achieved with AdMob and Google Analytics has them poised for continued growth on Android. For more details on PrivacyStar’s approach, check out the full case study.

- Eduardo Fenili, AdMob Sales Executive

Introducing the Google Analytics Core Reporting API

2011-12-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

Today we are announcing the new Google Analytics Core Reporting API as a replacement for the Data Export API. This is the second phase in a larger project we started a couple months back to upgrade our APIs to new infrastructure.

The Core Reporting API has two versions.

Version 3.0 is a brand new API, with a 10x reduction in output size and support for many new client libraries, like PHP, Ruby, Python, JavaScript and Java. All new features will only be added to this version.

Version 2.4 is backward compatible with the legacy Data Export Version 2.3.

If you are building a new application or maintaining an existing one, we highly recommend migrating to version 3.0.

One of the biggest changes in switching to the Core Reporting API is that you now need to register your applications via the Google APIs Console and use a project ID to access the API.

With this change, we are also announcing the deprecation of the Data Export API version 2.3. This API will continue to work for 6 months, after which all v2.3 XML requests will return a v2.4 response. Also, we plan to terminate the Data Export API Account Feed. All configuration data should be retrieved through the Google Analytics Management API.

See our Data Export API changelog for all the details of the change and read our developer documentation for more details about each API.

If you have any questions feel free to reach out in our Data Export API Google group.

Thanks,
Jeetendra Soneja and Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

Reaching Your Goals with Analytics: Webinar follow-up

2011-12-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

At last Thursday’s webinar on Goals, we we explored one of the most fundamental analytics topics: how to translate your business objectives into measurable actions on your website. You sent in your questions, and we heard from many users that you want more guidance on turning all that data into insights.

Please read on for answers to your top questions, and watch the recording of the webinar here:

How do I do data analysis?

Performing data analysis requires understanding what your company defines as success before you can even start to figure out which reports and metrics to use. The best place to begin is to think about why you have a website, what you’re trying to achieve (lead generation, site engagement, sales, et cetera), and how those objectives map to specific metrics in Google Analytics. For example, if you have an ecommerce website, you might want to track which types of users purchased and which types of users didn’t purchase. If you have a site with lots of content, you might want to understand where users came from before watching a video (e.g., were they referred by a blog post, or did they click on a paid search ad?), or you might be interested in how users moved through your site before getting to a certain page.

Once you’ve figured out your business objectives and defined your questions it’s all about finding those metrics in the reports. We have a lot of great 60-second YouTube videos that walk through different reporting and analysis techniques.

Why should I use Goals if I don’t have a product to sell?
You created your website with the hope that users would come and visit. Even if you aren’t selling anything, you can use Goals to help you dive deeper into your site performance and learn where your users might be having trouble. For example, you might want to ensure that visitors to your site are able to find directions to your physical location, or you might want to be sure that they view a particular piece of content on your site. You could set up a Goal for that page, and then use Goal Flow in the Flow Visualization tool to see how users get there. You might then determine that it's too hard for users to find the information that they need. The specific metrics that you should use will depend on the purpose and goals for your site.

Which types of Goals should I use?
There are four different Goal types to choose from in Google Analytics: URL destination, Time on Site, Pages per Visit, and Event. URL destination goals are best for goals based on a visit to a key page of your site, such as a “thank you” page after a purchase. Time-on-Site or Pages-per-Visit goals are best if you’re more interested in determining site engagement. Event goals should be used if you want to track specific actions such as watching a video, listening to an audio clip, or downloading a PDF. Note that the first three types of goals can be set up with no changes to your tracking code, but if you want to use Event goals, you’ll need to set up Event tracking. And don’t forget that if you’re an online retailer, or if your conversion process pulls in dynamic monetary values, Ecommerce in Google Analytics allows you to track transactions and the order value of every purchase made on your site.

What are good trends to measure for websites without a shopping cart?
A "conversion" isn't just a sale -- it's about all of the reasons why your site exists; it’s any action you want your visitors to take based on your business objectives. Analytics users often want to compare themselves to industry trends or best practices -- but the truth is that in many cases the best benchmark is your own website performance. You should define your own business goals, then develop some key performance indicators, or KPIs, and track them from month to month or quarter to quarter. It may also be helpful to set up simple surveys that ask your visitors if they’ve succeeded in finding the information that they were looking for on your site.

How do I set up Google Analytics for my site?
For some websites, all you need to do is copy and paste the standard JavaScript code to every page of your site -- Google Analytics will automatically generate this standard code for you, so it’s very easy to implement. Read more about this in our Help Center. Other sites, such as those that span multiple domains or subdomains, require additional lines of code. If you have this type of site, you should check out our documentation on all the different implementation scenarios. Use these guidelines with your webmaster to get the code implemented properly. If you need additional help, you should consider contacting one of our certified partners for advice and assistance with all aspects of Google Analytics.

What are Goal match types/settings?
There are three match types for URL destination goals: head match, exact match, and regular expression match. Exact match is used when you have a static URL (a page that does not change based on user actions) -- you can just enter the URL as it appears on your site and Google Analytics will track the goal. Head match is used if you have a URL that has dynamic values at the end, such as session IDs. Head match will record goals for whatever URL you enter into the interface -- plus anything that comes after that. Finally, regular expression match is used for completely dynamic URLs or to capture multiple URLs in one goal. Check out our Help Center article on setting up Goals to get more information about which match type is right for you.

How do we determine what goal value to set?
Goal value is what each action is worth to you. Ask yourself how much it’s worth to have someone sign up for your email newsletters, knowing they'll now get consistent messaging from your business. You may want to start with a larger objective that has a monetary value, like landing a big client, then map out the smaller steps leading up to that sale. For example, it may take an average of 25 lead forms filled out on your site to drive one sale. The value of a filled-out lead form would then be equal to an average sale divided by 25. It may take some time to determine these attribution amounts, and you shouldn’t be afraid to adjust your Goals and Goal values periodically!

How do we test alternate landing pages?
Once you’ve set up Goals, you may discover that certain pieces of your funnel are losing lots of visitors. Small improvements to those pages could have a dramatic impact on your conversion rates. Fortunately, we have a great tool called Google Website Optimizer that allows you to test different variations of the same page so you can improve the effectiveness of your website and your return on investment.

What are the top 5 metrics to share with the CEO?
There aren’t really 5 golden metrics that will work for every single company and every single CEO. You’ll need to do some brainstorming and discovery to understand which metrics in Google Analytics map to your business objectives. Think about your business strategy -- for example, are you looking to reach customers who are on-the-go? Then it’s probably helpful to track the percentage of visits and conversions coming from mobile, so you can tell the CEO about the success of your mobile strategy. Do you want to make sure that you’re getting a good return on your marketing investments? Then you should consider tracking the percentage of conversions coming from advertising vs. other sources (this is a good place to use Multi-Channel Funnels!).

Although it may take some work to determine the relevant metrics, it’s worth the effort to ensure that you are presenting information that tells the right story about your business. Once you’ve defined your metrics, you can use Google Analytics dashboards to pull everything together in an easy-to-read format. So dive into the Google Analytics reports and find your story!

Please also check our help center for further details on all of your questions.

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Google Analytics team

An invitation to social sites to integrate with Google Analytics

2011-12-07T10:30:00.000-08:00

Every day, millions of people share and engage with content online. But most sharing doesn’t happen on the site where it was published, it happens throughout the social web. Marketers and publishers are looking for a comprehensive view of all interactions with their content - on and off their site - and so we’re working hard to make this happen.

To enable our customers to discover who’s sharing, voting and bookmarking their content on the social web, cross-network measurement needs to become easier. So today we’re inviting social networks and platforms to integrate their activity streams with Google Analytics. Through these integrations, marketers and publishers will be able to discover off-site engagement, optimize their engagement within each social community, and measure the impact of each social channel and its associated digital investment.

Any network can integrate their streams - like +1, votes, and comments - into the Google Analytics social reports, which will be fully available next year to the many marketers, publishers, and websites that are using Google Analytics for free.

To make integration easy for social networks and platforms we’ve created a social data hub - it’s based on widely deployed, open web standards such as ActivityStreams and PubsubHubbub. A number of partners are already working with us to improve measurement of social actions - including Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Gigya, LiveFyre, ReadItLater, Reddit, TypePad, Vkontakte, and of course, Google+, Blogger and Google Groups.

We’ll have more to share next year, so keep reading the blog or follow us on twitter @googleanalytics for updates. If you’re a social network or platform interested to learn about integrating with Google Analytics you can visit our developer site where you’ll find more information.

Phil Mui, Group Product Manager & Ilya Grigorik, Engineering Manager, Google Analytics

3 last-minute Analytics tips for the holiday season

2011-12-06T17:53:00.000-08:00

If you're a marketing professional, you've probably spent months preparing your holiday campaigns. But have you focused so much on great creative that you've neglected your measurement plan? Don’t despair: there’s still time to make the most of your holiday marketing and measurement. Here’s some food for thought to help you make sure your Analytics is adding value this season and setting you up for success next year.

1. Stuffing your stockings: all the best treats for your marketing funnel

Online shoppers are increasingly taking a considered, comparative approach to making purchases. Consumers are now consulting an average of 10.7 sources when making a buying decision - double the rate of 2010. That means that all steps of the marketing funnel are more important than ever. So make sure to take all the steps to conversion into account when measuring your campaigns this season.

With Multi-Channel Funnels reports in the new version of Google Analytics, you can see not just the last click prior to conversion, but also how earlier interactions influenced the purchase decision. For instance, your customer may have clicked on an organic search link immediately prior to purchasing, but in the weeks before to the purchase, he clicked on a display ad, followed links from a post on a social network, and later visited your site directly. With Multi-Channel Funnels, you can see these earlier assists and take this influence into account when optimizing campaigns throughout the holiday season. You’ll also have a rich set of data to plan next year’s campaigns, as you can plan around those channels that drive awareness and consideration earlier in the purchase process.

2. Jingle bells, mobile’s ringing

It’s hard to overstate the enormity of the mobile opportunity this holiday season as consumers turn to smartphones and tablets for both product research and purchases. Mobile searches have grown dramatically in the last two years, and it’s predicted that 44% of searches for last-minute gifts and store locator terms will be from mobile devices.

Providing a great mobile experience is now expected, or you will lose customers. With mobile reporting in Google Analytics, you can see how users are able (or not able) to make purchase decisions. You can segment visitors based on criteria like device types and operating systems. For instance, you can compare if there are different conversion rate for iOS and Android, and make adjustments accordingly. Google offers resources to help you make your site mobile-ready, so you can take action if you find roadblocks. Finally, when measuring your marketing channels, make sure to take mobile ads into account. You can get deeper insights by segmenting out mobile advertising using the recently updated AdWords reports in Google Analytics.

3. Follow Santa’s sleigh in real time

You may have time-sensitive marketing events planned this quarter - whether it’s a daily deal marketing program, viral content that suddenly takes off, or even press coverage. Data that arrives days or even hours later is too late to make decisions during the fast-paced holiday season. With Real-Time reporting in Google Analytics, you can see the impact of these events within seconds. This can be particularly useful for social media efforts. If you post a tweet linking to your site, for example, you can see the immediate visits resulting from the post, and engage in the conversation with your customers. You can also use Real-Time to monitor the immediate impact of email offers and other campaigns that offer customers deals to purchase quickly.

So, grab those reindeer reins and have a great holiday season with Google Analytics. Best wishes for very merry marketing measurement!

Posted by Bill Kee, Google Analytics team

Webinar: Reaching Your Goals with Analytics

2011-11-22T06:10:00.000-08:00

Is your website performing as well as it could be? Do you want to get more out of your digital marketing campaigns, including AdWords and other digital media? Do you feel like you have gaps in your current Google Analytics setup?

We’ve heard from many of our users who want to go deeper into their Analytics -- with so much data, it can be hard to know where to look first. If you’d like to move beyond standard “pageview” metrics and visitor statistics, then please join us next Thursday:

Webinar: Reaching Your Goals with Analytics
Date: Thursday, December 1
Time: 11am PST / 2pm EST
Sign up here!

During the webinar, we’ll cover:

Key questions to ask for richer insights from your data
How to define “success” (for websites, visitors, or campaigns)
How to set up and use Goals
How to set up and use Ecommerce (for websites with a shopping cart)
How to link AdWords to your Google Analytics account

Whatever your online business model -- shopping, lead-generation, or pure content -- these tools will deliver actionable insights into your buying cycle.

This webinar will be led by Joe Larkin, a technical specialist on the Google Analytics team, and it’s designed for intermediate users of Google Analytics. If you’re comfortable with the basics, but you’d like to do more with your data, then we hope you’ll join us next week!

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Google Analytics team

Site Speed, now even easier to access

2011-11-18T14:23:00.000-08:00

Speed matters. Faster loading pages mean more visitors land on your site instead of waiting in frustration or leaving. The Google Analytics Site Speed report will help you learn which of your pages are underperforming, so you can address this potential barrier to your conversions.

The Site Speed report was launched a few months ago, but it required site owners to add an additional Google Analytics tracking code to see data in this report. Based on increasing user requests we are now making this feature available to all Google Analytics users and removing the requirement to modify your Google Analytics tracking code. As of today all Google Analytics accounts will automatically have the Site Speed report available with no extra work required from you.

Want to check out Site Speed in your account? It’s easy. Go to the content section and click the Site Speed report. There are three tabs within the Site Speed report for you to review: Explorer, Performance, & Map Overlay. Each provides a slightly different view of your site speed performance. The Explorer tab provides an overview of load time by page. The Performance tab buckets your site speed performance by page load time. The Map Overlay tab provides a view of your site speed experienced by users in different geographical regions (cities, countries, continents). Below are snapshots of the Performance & Map Overlay tabs.

If you have already been using the Site Speed report through the additional tracking script, you can keep using the report as before. Since the tracking code “ _trackPageLoadTime” is no longer required to enable Site Speed report, going forward Google Analytics will simply ignore it.

Interested in understanding the details of the Site Speed report sampling rate, tracking of virtual pageviews, and impact of redirects?

Sample rate - Google Analytics samples your page load times to generate this report. For the more technical minded users you can adjust this sampling rate by adding to your Google Analytics code the function - setSiteSpeedSampleRate.

Support for virtual pages - If a virtual path was used in the _trackPageview call, that path will now also be associated with any site speed data collected from that page.

Redirection time - Redirects are now counted as part of the "page load time" metric, so it represents the total time a user perceives of your site loading. Current users of the Site Speed report may notice a small increase in page load times as a result of this update.

Still have questions? Check out the Google code site and Help Center articles on Site Speed. We hope you’ll gain insights from this newly updated report and be able to use it to optimize your pages. Please share with us your thoughts on this report and any suggestions for future updates.

- Nir Tzemah, Google Analytics Team

You can now see mobile ad performance in Google Analytics.

2011-11-11T11:28:00.000-08:00

Starting this week, some of you will see enhanced Analytics reports with mobile ad performance metrics. All AdWords reports in the new interface will be gaining a new visual toggle as shown below for “All”, “High-end Mobile” and “Tablet” ads. All AdWords metrics available in Google Analytics can be segmented by these new mobile and tablet dimensions.

As more consumers begin to make use of tablets or high-end mobile devices, businesses need to understand this shift towards mobile and adapt your marketing mix. This mobile ads reporting enhancement in Google Analytics is one of many steps that we are taking towards helping you make more sense of how mobile advertising interacts with your business.

Please let us know what you think, and suggest any other mobile measurement options you’d like to see that help make sense of your mobile advertising effectiveness.

- Phil Mui, Google Analytics team

Simplifying eCommerce reporting across international sites with multiple currencies

2011-11-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

It’s quite common for organizations to have complex reporting requirements that combine multiple data sources. In these cases, an efficient way to get at Google Analytics data is to use the API. But for those without the development resources needed to access the API there are many Google Analytics Apps available that can offer a solution. The following mini case study is about Analytics Canvas, a 3rd party Google Analytics App. Analytics Canvas helped Fairmont Raffles Hotels International take a complex reporting task and make it easy.

Like most global organizations, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International has regionally operated business units. Each unit typically maintains its own reporting profile in Google Analytics. But with individual business unit profiles, how do you analyze the data across all the business units? And, how do you combine external business data with each of these Google Analytics profiles?

For Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, the answers lie in the Analytics Canvas tool from nModal. Analytics Canvas is an easy to use, drag-n-drop interface for creating data queries and transformations needed for advanced reports and dashboards. Analytics Canvas can extract data from multiple Google Analytics accounts, combine it with additional data sources, and then segment and filter the data.

Barbara Pezzi, Director Analytics & Search Optimization, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, uses Analytics Canvas to automate her complex reporting tasks. “We trade in over 10 different currencies on our websites. We needed to have multiple international hotels’ eCommerce data converted to a common currency in various reports, such as ‘All Traffic Sources’ and ‘Campaigns’, to analyze the overall production of each traffic channel and marketing initiative. Traditionally we would have to export data from multiple profiles and do currency conversion by hand in spreadsheets. With almost 100 hotels, the large number of profiles made it a very time consuming and potentially error prone task to get a multi-hotel, single currency report.” With Analytics Canvas, Fairmont automated this task in minutes with a single currency report for all its hotels.

Analytics Canvas was built by nModal Solutions Inc using the Google Analytics API. Here is what James Standen, the founder of nModal, has to say “The Google Analytics API is very easy to use and the full access to data makes it possible to make a very powerful query interface. So far we’ve had a great response to Analytics Canvas. People are very pleased to have greater access to their web traffic data, and we’re thrilled to hear about the interesting new applications and integrations our customers are able to do using our tool.”

The Analytics Canvas application can be found through the Google Analytics App Gallery and can be downloaded from the Analytics Canvas website.

If you’re interested in developing applications for the Google Analytics platform visit Google Analytics for Developers.

Posted by Pete Frisella, Google Analytics API team