I'm Google Analytics Qualified

David — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:40:10 +0000

Intro Text:

If you want to maximise your investment, make sure your web team knows how to measure, track & experiment with what converts visitors to customers

If you know me, you'll know that I love measuring and analysing pretty much anything. That includes websites and visitor behaviours.

These days, when almost anyone can own a website, organisations need a competitive edge to set themselves apart from the pack. Often this competitive edge comes from gorgeous aesthetics and special features, but sometimes all the glamour doesn't convert into paying customers.

Every now and then you'll find a site that combines wonderful aesthetics with analytics to enhance user experiences and optimise online performance. In plain english: you might not notice all the work that has done into refining the site, but it is simple, smooth, useable, and it makes you want to buy.

A few weeks ago I passed the Google Analytics certification test, and am now Google Analytics Qualified. This means I can look at your site's statistics and help you maximise the content and design for higher customer conversions. Wise digital producers don't just invest in the design, but commit to analysing and refining every element of the site with data driven decisions over extended period of time.

This is a valuable skill to have on your team. Many companies hire consultants who do just this sort of web analytics. While some make their bread and butter this way, (and make a lot more for their clients), I believe every web designer, copywriter, and developer should have a solid grasp on how to measure, track & experiment with what converts visitors to customers.

If you're looking to hire someone for your next web project, ask them what sort of Google Analytics experience they've had. Sure they can design, but if you want to maximise your investment, make sure they have a focus on conversions!

PS. For those who have more time, here's the long list of everything I can now do.

Install Google Analytics on custom setups that require tracking of single user sessions across domains.
Advise on best practices for analysing data and trends.
Identify quality traffic sources and keywords that result in the highest goal conversions.
Interpret content reports to rank pages on relevance and effectiveness. Provide content recommendations to lower bounce rates.
Utilise multiple profiles per account to filter traffic, track additional goals, and grant individual access to users/department stake-holders.
Measure and evaluate the effectiveness of AdWords, email newsletters, and other online marketing campaigns.
Track specific AdWords ads to optimise the use of relevant and valuable keywords.
Set up goal conversion tracking in line with business KPIs.
Trace the navigational funnel that lead to a goal, identifying pages with a high dropout.
Integrate transaction-level e-commerce reporting to track trends in sales activity and performance.
Rank and analyse the pages with the most impact on your site's revenue.
Develop custom reports based on business needs.
Implement advanced segmentation to provide a higher level of granularity in reporting.
Create motion charts to demonstrate and visualise data trends in up to 5 dimensions.
Utilise Google's Internal Site Search to follow search trends and identify user's needs/questions.
Advise on tracking advanced visitor actions that don't constitute a pageview (eg. AJAX, Flash etc).
Advise on custom visitor segmentation (eg. integration with a membership site to segment registered users by their roles/permissions).

I'm looking to build up a wider range of Google Analytics experience, so if you have a Google Analytics question, shoot me an email. I'd be happy to help.

Hello World

David — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:26:46 +0000

Intro Text:

Why an effective website takes more than a few lines of code and a pirated version of Photoshop.

A "Hello World" program is a few lines of programming code that outputs "Hello, world!" to the screen. It's the first script that students are taught to write when they learn a programming language.

But the phrase is a also greeting - an announcement that your message has reached other people. It's a herald that you're out there. To a novice programmer, it's a signal that everything is working well, that they are "in business".

So, "Hello world!"

I'm in business.

I'm David Cooper - a web designer from Sydney, Australia. Thankfully I can do more than write a few lines of code. I can also design beautiful interfaces that enhance a user's experience. And I'm results-driven. I want to know how visitors arrive at your site, what draws their attention, and what design elements convert them from a fickle visitor into a relentlessly loyal customer.

On this blog I'll be sharing advice about aesthetics, user experience, and converting visitors to sales / leads. If you own a website, following this blog will help you. You can subscribe to my blog RSS feed here. I hope you enjoy it.

You can also follow me on Twitter here.

Web Wisdom Blog

I'm Google Analytics Qualified

Hello World