Google Analytics Solutions: 2008

Analytics, AdWords, and Big Spenders

December 19, 2008

In the spirit of the holidays, we would like to offer tips on how to increase visibility into your e-commerce performance and your advertising spend using Google Analytics. For many, seasonality influences purchasing decisions and affects business revenues. Analytics can help keep a close eye on your advertising spend and e-commerce trends to run a cost conscious business.

We recommend 3 simple methods captured in the videos below. You can find these videos and more on the new Google Analytics Youtube Channel.

1. Use Google Analytics to track your e-commerce activity. As an e-commerce site, you likely want to know who is visiting your site and the goods they are purchasing. By enabling E-commerce tracking on your site, Google Analytics will provide vital metrics including overall revenue, revenue per product, average transaction amount, and more.

Coupled with our Motion Charts feature, you can easily see how the the products trend over time by various dimensions including: revenue, quantity, and average price.

2. Identify your high spenders to better target your website promotions and ad spend. With additional information on ROI for keywords and spending trends, you can focus your efforts on the traffic you care about the most.

3. Link your AdWords and Analytics accounts to track ROI, Revenue per Click, campaign and keywords performance. Added benefits include drilling down to the ad campaign, ad group, and keyword levels for goals conversions and e-commerce transactions.

And don't forget, even a few minutes a day with Google Analytics can help your website.

Posted by Melissa Hsieh, Google Analytics Team

L'introduction d'un nouvel ami: the Google Analytics blog in French

December 16, 2008

le blog officiel de Google AnalyticsFrench homepage
Posted by Jeff Gillis, Nat Criou and Serge Descombes, Google Analytics Team

New and improved account management pages

December 15, 2008

(Click to enlarge)

locator

Easily navigate from account to profiles by just clicking on the account name (and back with Overview)

Better understand the hierarchy relationship between accounts and profiles and quickly find their webproperty ID

See key loyalty and success metrics for all your accounts and profiles, and sort by any of these metrics

Use the "Find Profiles" locator box or "starring" functionality to quickly find and navigate to a desired profiles and accounts, regardless of how many there are. No need to sift through pages of irrelevant content.

Posted by Nat Criou, Product Manager, Google Analytics

Google Analytics YouTube Channel

December 11, 2008

additional enterprise class featuresGoogle Analytics Channelinterpreting and acting on your datamotion chartsplacement targeting in 60 secondsmusic videoiGoogle gadgetPosted by Melissa Hsieh, Google Analytics Team

Santa Tracking with NORAD and Google Analytics

December 9, 2008

NORAD Tracks Santa websiteNORADthe Google blogPreparation and PlanningKids Countdown area

Last year's visits to NORAD's Santa Tracking site came from
almost every country on the planet, denoted by areas in green
The countdown to Christmas Eve'Twas the night before ChristmasPosted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team, and Laura Melahn, Geo Team

Google Analytics Seminars for Success December 8 - 9, 2008 in Montreal

December 3, 2008

Seminars for Success have been so popular in the US that we're now expanding to Canada! Come join one of our lead instructors, Justin Cutroni, Director of Analytics at EpikOne for a Google Analytics Seminars for Success in Montreal December 8 - 9. Whether you are an analyst or tasked with configuring Google Analytics this seminar will help improve your overall understanding of Google Analytics.
Perhaps you have questions like, "What reports should I be looking at for my business and what do they mean? How do I configure goals? What is an acceptable bounce rate?" If so, then Seminars for Success Montreal is for you. For only $249 U.S. per day this seminar offers tremendous value.
Day 1 focuses on Google Analytics reports and data. Justin walks through almost every report and shows how you can use Google Analytics to gain meaningful data insights. Day 1 will also cover many of the new Google Analytics analysis tools including Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reports and Motion Charts. Day 1: Introduction & User Training

Introduction to Web Analytics

Google Analytics Reporting Features

Sharing GA Data

Custom Dashboards

Understanding Site Visitors

Tracking online marketing campaigns

Evaluating site content and user navigation

Understanding Goals and Conversion Funnels

Website testing with the Google Website Optimizer

On Day 2 Justin really digs into how Google Analytics works and how to configure it correctly.
Day 2: Advanced Technical Implementation

GA architecture overview

Learning about Regular Expressions

Improving your data with filters

Setting up Goals and Funnels

Implementing E-Commerce Tracking

Configuring Custom Segmentation

Introduction to Event Tracking

Tracking websites with multiple domains/subdomains

Code customization

Ready to learn how you can improve your Google Analytics skills? Register here!

See what some past attendees are saying about the Seminars for Success:

“The course was outstanding. Going through all the functionality in a structured way with such a good presentation style has been incredibly worthwhile. Highly recommended!”
“This course is an unbelievable value. Now I’ve got a scalpel, where I had a hatchet prior. Awesome amount of info here—I’ve used GA for 2 years, and I never knew what I didn’t know. Now I do!”
“Great seminar for geeks AND non-geeks interested in creating actionable website metrics.”
“I learned more in this seminar than I have in all of the time I’ve spent playing in Google Analytics and reading books.” Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

Seminars for Success, Now for Website Optimizer

November 25, 2008

Seminars for SuccessWebsite Optimizer
Website Optimizer Seminars for Success

Washington DC - December 4 - Register
Seattle, WA - December 10 - Register
Las Vegas, NV - January 23 - Register
San Jose, CA - February 11 - Register

Website Optimizer Seminars for Success are led by Google authorized Seminar Leaders. They're experts in the field of website testing and on Website Optimizer. If you want to start increasing your conversion rates, now is the time to sign up.
Course materials will be provided to all that attend. And, if you sign up at least 7 days in advance of a Seminar, you'll receive a $50 AdWords credit. The Washington DC Seminar is coming up next week, so be sure to register your spot.
If you'd like to be notified when Seminars for Success are happening in your area, you can fill out this form. Posted by Dai Pham, Google Analytics Team

Getting Answers -- Fast

November 25, 2008

ForumGoogle HelpAnalytics Help GroupPosted by Melissa Hsieh, Google Analytics Team

Want to track Adobe Flash? Now you can!

November 17, 2008

Image of Analytics Flash Visual Component in Flash CS3

Today, at the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco, in a joint collaboration with our friends at Adobe and a few ace third party developers, we announced a simplified solution for tracking Flash content for everyone, called Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash.

Working at Google over the past couple of years, I've had the opportunity to work with with many of our top clients to implement Google Analytics, who have found the power to identify and analyze trends on their web sites highly useful. But, one of the most common implementation challenges has been tracking Flash content on their pages. In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every implementation had to be customized. Moreover, there was a lack of standards, and new developers who tracked Flash had to create their own processes to get it working. With this launch, tracking your Flash content has never been simpler.

What It's All About
This feature is a translation of the current Google Analytics tracking code into the ActionScript 3 programming language that dramatically simplifies the ability to track Flash, Flex and AS3 content. This new Flash tracking code provides all the rich features of the current JavaScript-based version, including campaign, pageview and event tracking and can be used to track Flash content such as embedded videos, branded microsites and distributed widgets, such as online games.

Now it's simple for Flash content developers to answer questions like:

How many people have watched my video?
Are we developing the right creative that attracts new users?
How effective is my content at getting people to take action?

Recently, we talked with Matthew McNeely, VP of Engineering at Sprout, a company that helps advertisers design rich media content, about how Sprout has used the code to track distributed content across MySpace and iGoogle:

Supported Platforms
We know there are many levels of experience in the Flash/Flex community so we tried to make it easy for both non-technical designers as well as seasoned ActionScript programmers to take full advantage of this Google Analytics Tracking For Flash. We've provided tracking libraries for both Flash and Flex which can be downloaded as a ZIP file here. The libraries include:

Flash visual component
Flash AS3 library
Flex MXML component
Flex AS3 library

And you can learn more about how to use them through this developer documentation.

Open Development
At the same time, we know that things change quickly online, and developers might want to review and improve the code. So we're providing our entire AS3 code base under the Apache 2 License as Open Source, available here.

For me, this is one of the most exciting aspects of this project. If you are a developer and want to improve the code's functionality, you can contribute to the code base. Or, if you are a company that is running a content platform, such as Sprout mentioned above, you can seamlessly integrate the Flash tracking codebase into your existing architecture.

So while many features get launched at the end of their development cycle, we see this as just the beginning.

And A Special Thanks
This feature has been an open collaboration of a number of very talented people across the globe. We'd like to personally thank our amazing third party developers Zwetan Kjukov and Marc Alcaraz who've spent countless hours developing the code base. We'd also like to thank Matt Chotin, Puneet Goel, Rani Kumar and Ajit Gosavi from Adobe who helped us also overcome the obstacles of migrating to an all-AS3 environment.

So please visit the project page to learn more:
http://code.google.com/p/gaforflash/ Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Analytics Specialist

A deeper look at Advanced Segmentation: filtering on the fly

November 14, 2008

Compare segments and key performance metrics side by side in reports
Save the segments you create and apply them whenever you wish to any report
Create new custom segments easily and say goodbye to RegEx

We heard you, and we built all of these features, and we expect that they will make your life a lot easier and more informed. In fact, advanced segmentation is the favorite new feature of Avinash, Analytics Evangelist at Google.

Select from predefined custom segments such as "Paid Traffic", "Visits with Conversions"or "New Visits"

Use an autocomplete function and a drag and drop interface to easily create segments

Apply a segment to all historical traffic

For starters, what is a segment?How do I create an Advanced Segment?

Simply select the segment or segments you want - in this case, we've selected two right off the bat: "New Visitors" and "Returning Visitors" - click "Apply" in the bottom right, and presto! The segments are applied to all of your reports. And you can un-apply them just as easily - by unchecking them in the drop down menu.

Where do I see the segment in my reports?

As you can see, the blue line denotes All Visitors, the orange line denotes New Visitors, and the green line is Returning Visitors. And the same segments are shown in the data below the graph. In addition, if you click on any other reports, such as Content or Goal Conversions, you'll be analyzing the same segments there as well.

Can I create a customized Segment?"

this videoHow do I create an Advanced Segment How does a segment help me?using filtered profiles

One technique for getting the most out of segments is to use them to test potential goals or campaigns. For instance, you can segment traffic to one page or even a funnel of pages leading to a potential goal page, and then look at all the metrics that brought traffic to that page, including new vs. returning visitors, incoming traffic sources, keywords, geographic locations, browser types, and more. Another segment you can create is one for branded keywords - ones that include your company name or core competency - to get a holistic sense of your business's web presence over time.Another technique is to create simple segments and compare them, such as an organic search segment vs. a paid search segment to see what keywords you may want to buy, or which ones are bringing lots of high value organic traffic that you can drop from your pay-per-click keyword list.
Get specific!
But the real magic of Advanced Segments is when you want to look at all your Google Analytics reports and metrics for a very specific subsection of visitors. For instance, you've just released an additional product - a new piece of software for instance - and want to compare traffic and conversions coming from Boston as opposed to San Francisco so you can figure out where to physically stock the product or where to focus your location targeted campaigns. You may want to further segment to see only paid traffic coming from these cities who have converted, so that you can confidently allocate your marketing budget towards campaigns with higher ROI. You can even show two campaigns segments side by side comparison. This is a great way to test experiments before ramping a campaign up to full spend.
Here's another simple, specific segment example. Call it "Engaged Visits" and segment as follows:

users who stayed on the site for longer than 30 seconds
AND
had more than 2 pageviews

Here it is:

It's a simple segment which shows visitors who are engaged with the site, and not just clicking in and leaving. By analyzing these users you're able to see the keywords, traffic sources and geographic locations that bring engaged visits, as well as the content that they're interested in and the site searches they do. These visitors are, or will turn into, loyal, returning visits, an important segment for your business, especially in a down economy. If you are observant about what this segment is doing on your site, you can design for them, and keep them coming back.

simplification

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

The new features are now available in your account! Let's take a deeper look, starting with Motion Charts.

November 10, 2008

new enterprise-class features
You've probably noticed the new

button at the top of many reports. Clicking Visualize activates Motion Charts for the report data. You can click the Play button at the bottom to see an over-time animation of your data, but you'll first probably want to experiment with your X and Y axis settings, and the color and size of the dots. You can revert back to your original report view, so don't worry about messing anything up.

So, what are Motion Charts?

Motion Charts provide a multi-dimensional, over-time analysis of the data in your report. So, if you click Visualize from the Keywords report, each dot will represent one of your keywords. If you click Visualize from the Referrals report, each dot will represent a referral. By selecting metrics to be represented on the X and Y axis and by the size and color of the dots, you plot each dot in four dimensions. Press Play or drag the slider at the bottom of the chart, and you'll see the data change over time, thereby adding Time as the fifth dimension.

(For developers: Motion Charts use the Trendalyzer Flash widget, which is available for you to use as a gadget in Google Spreadsheets or as a visualization API.)

What can Motion Charts add to my analysis?

The basic premise of Motion Charts is that it makes it easier to notice an important trend. Visualizing data across five dimensions can help you to uncover insights and patterns that would be difficult to discover using traditional two dimensional charts. For example, looking at the traditional keyword report, it's difficult to see how performance metrics pertaining to keywords combine, interact, and change over time.

You might want to find out, for example, over the past three months, which of the top keywords you're buying are sending new visitors that are highly engaged with the site. And you might want to compare those keywords to ones which are sending visitors that bounced consistently. And importantly, you want to know when exactly keywords shift into these patterns. With a Motion Chart, you can identify the keywords (or any metric) that perform well across multiple dimensions, such as conversions, repeat visitors, and pageviews. You can plot a few things or hundreds of things at once and watch for patterns or outliers as their performance over time is animated. And you can pause and manually rewind or go forward at any time.

Once you notice a pattern or a break in pattern - such as related to a keyword's performance - and when the pattern happened, that's when the investigation begins. You can look at your reports to analyze the origins of the traffic, and then replicate conditions that caused a beneficial pattern, or instead make needed improvements. In this sense, a Motion Chart shows a richer picture of your data that you may be able to profit from.

How do I use Motion Charts?

Each dimension, or metric, can be selected easily with drop down menus around the chart's graph area. There are four metrics:

x-axis
y-axis
color of bubble
size of bubble

To begin using your Motion Chart, follow these steps - also below:

Click the "Visualize" icon from any report that has a table displaying segmented data (you can always revert to the traditional graphs in your Analytics Reports by selecting a particular report from the lefthand side menu).
Once the Motion Chart loads, you'll see an array of bubbles. Each bubble represents a different keyword from your report.
Now select the four different dimensions to plot your data: X-axis, Y-axis, Color, Size. Click on each control to see a menu of metrics you can select from. The X-axis control is underneath the graph area, the Y-axis is to the left, and the Color and Size controls are to the right of the graph area. Let's look at one of these controls to give you the hang of modifying the chart.

The Y-axis control is noted on the left in the screenshot below.

Once you click on any part of this vertical bar, it will expand to show you the variables you can choose from for the Y-Axis. Here is the expanded area, with the rest of the graph grayed out:

Pageviews is being selected. Now, obviously, the higher up a bubble (denoting a keyword in this case) is in the chart, the more the average pageviews for that bubble. You select the other variables in the same way - just click them and select your choice.
Press "Play" at the bottom of your chart to see how your keywords perform over time. If you click on a bubble and check the "Trails" box underneath the Size control, you can map out the bubble's movement over time.

Take a look at the following video - it examines each component of this feature so that you can learn how to get at-a-glance insights from the data you're seeing.

Let's look at an example: keywords with high or low conversion rates.
(This example and more are also in this help center article.) We'll finish this example with action-oriented insights you can take away from a Motion Chart.

The data is taken from a Google Analytics account that tracks the e-commerce activity for the business called 'Google Store' (www.googlestore.com). We'll look at a Motion Chart on keywords by clicking "Visualize" on the Keywords report under Traffic Sources. In order to find keywords that have the best conversion rates, we would set up our Motion Chart like this:

X axis: select "Pages/Visit
Y axis: select "% New Visits"
Size: select "Revenue"
Color: select "E-commerce Conversion Rate"

As you can see, "Google Store" is the most consistent keyword in terms of revenue and site engagement (i.e. five to eight pages/visit). It gets purchases every day, mostly on first-time visits to the store. However, it has very low conversion rates. In contrast, "google t-shirt" and "google shirts" get good conversion rates, good engagement, and deliver a regular stream of revenue.

With these facts in mind, the website owner comes away with at least three insights after quickly examining the information in this Motion Chart:

Stop buying general keywords like "google merchandise" and "google store." Instead, optimize the site so that it ranks well organically for these keywords.
Buy or spend more heavily on specific keywords like "google t-shirt" and "google shirt."
Create some incentives to get repeat business. Most of these purchases come from first time visits.

And there you go! Your first experience with Motion Charts.

Working with data in five dimensions takes some time to get used to, so please experiment.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

More Enterprise-Class Features Added To Google Analytics

October 22, 2008

this YouTube playlist

Features being added to all accounts in the coming weeks:

Advanced Segmentation enables you to isolate and analyze subsets of your traffic. It is true on-the-fly segmentation of visits so that you can create powerful filters with a few mouse-clicks. Select from predefined custom segments such as "Paid Traffic" and "Visits with Conversions" or create new custom segments with a flexible, easy-to-use segment builder. Then, you can apply one or more of these segments to current or historical data, and even compare segment performance side by side in reports.

Learn how to create an advanced segment in the video below, and in this help center article:

*Also, Avinash has just posted a blog on how to use Advanced Segmentation which is a must-read to quickly learn how to take advantage of this powerful feature.

Custom Reports are reports you create, save, and edit to give you a specific view of your data. You can choose the information and metrics you want to see, organized in the way you want to see it, by using a drag and drop interface to populate an Analytics report. You can also create tabs if you want to see related data - similar to a "Goal Conversions" tab - in effect creating multiple levels of sub-reports.

Once created, each custom report is available for as long as you want it. Take a look at this quick start guide to Custom Reports and to see a demo, play this video:

Motion Charts add sophisticated multi-dimensional analysis to most Analytics reports. Select metrics for the x-axis, y-axis, bubble size, and bubble color and view how they interact over time.

By comparing metrics visually over time you can expose data relationships that would be difficult to see in traditional reports. Motion Charts will be available through a new "Visualize" button at the top of reports.

Take a look at this help center article and watch this video for more information:

(Note: if you're interesting in putting your own data in motion, you can also use a Motion Chart gadget in Google Spreadsheets or a visualization API.)

The New Account Management Dashboard makes it easier for you to manage and monitor your account by providing simpler navigation between accounts and profiles and displaying a dashboard of key performance metrics upfront upon login.

Meaningful data and clear visual cues (green is good, red is bad) help alert you to areas requiring more attention. We hope the new navigation, administrators' ability to rename accounts and profiles, and account/profile locator functionality will boost your efficiency and ease of account management. Learn more in this help center article.

Features currently in private beta, scheduled for a more gradual full release to all accounts:
The Data Export API enables you to create software programs and applications using all read-only report level data from Analytics. The data exported can be used in any number of ways, such as building custom dashboards, creating data visualizations or interfaces, performing offline analysis, and combining/mashing Analytics data with other data sources. The API will be a platform for developers to extend Analytics data in new and practical ways, as far as can be imagined and implemented.

Integrated Reporting with AdSense lets AdSense publishers see their revenue and impression data alongside their site traffic data in Analytics. Take a look at the AdSense blog for more details. This integration will give publishers even more metrics to help them measure visitor activity and the performance of ad units, as well as discover areas of revenue potential on their websites.

Learn how to link your AdSense account with a Google Analytics account, and for a glimpse at the new reports, take a look at this video:

user forumPosted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics

Slight Touch Up

October 22, 2008

(click to enlarge)

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Tips and tools for maximizing holiday sales

October 17, 2008

For many of you the fourth quarter is the busiest and biggest season, and in this economy analytics are more important than ever. With holiday traffic starting in November and peaking in early-December, now is the time to make sure your site is in the best shape to maximize holiday traffic and revenue.
To help you better analyze your campaign performance, optimize your web pages, and drive even more traffic to your e-commerce site during this crucial time, we'd like to share some tip and tools you can use in Analytics and other Google products.
Use the Analytics Funnel Visualization report to improve conversions

Learn how many shoppers drop out during each step of your shopping cart conversion process.
Then, work on the steps that lose the most customers.
Website Optimizer, our free testing tool, is a great way to improve those key pages.

Geo-target your AdWords campaigns through Analytics

Find out where your most profitable customers are coming from, and direct your advertising dollars to target customers in those areas.
Get data for region-specific keyword performance in your Analytics account.
Create more targeted AdWords campaigns by region. Watch this video for a step-by-step demo.

Submit your products to Google Product Search

Google Product Search enables shoppers to search for and find products to buy online, and enables you to submit your products for free and target users shopping on Google. Google Product Search is currently available to merchants in the U.S., U.K., and Germany.
If you've never used Google Product Search, you can start submitting your products using feeds you've already prepared for other shopping engines.

Visit our Google page on holiday success to see a full list of tips. We hope these tips and tools help you make the most of your holiday season!

- Dai Pham, Google Analytics Team

Reminder: Hands-On Google Analytics Training this Monday

October 16, 2008

registerCutroni'sEmetricsGoogle Conversion UniversityWebsite OptimizerAd PlannerInsights for SearchWebmaster ToolsCutroniGoogle Analytics Authorized ConsultantEpikoneGoogle Analytics ShortcutSoxSoxregistermodify your existing registrationPosted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Conversion University at Emetrics DC Next Week

October 14, 2008

Emetrics DCthe launch of Website OptimizerWeb Analytics AssociationWhat's New With Google Analytics

Google Conversion University

presented by Google Analytics and Justin Cutroni

Monday, October 20

Come for a full day of training on intermediate and advanced implementation of Google Analytics delivered by Google Analytics Authorized Consultant Justin Cutroni from Epikone.

Justin will cover all the basics, including the reporting interface, and will get in-depth on campaign tracking, goal, funnel and filter set up, and e-commerce tracking. He'll also discuss using Google Analytics data to take action and optimize your online marketing efforts and your website. Then he'll touch on other Google tools you should try using, such as Website Optimizer, Ad Planner, Insights for Search, and Webmaster Tools.

To attend, simply register or modify your existing registration and pay only $295 for the entire day.

Website Optimizer Author Free Book Signings

Landing page testing is becoming an increasingly popular part of website refinement, helping business owners stop the guesswork over what design elements, copy and calls to action work best. Instead, test two or more versions and see which one works best based on your traffic and conversions. We'll be promoting two excellent books on A/B and multivariate web-page testing:

Always Be Testing, by Bryan Eisenberg from FutureNow
Landing Page Optimization, by Tim Ash from SiteTuners

Both Bryan and Tim are Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants.

Bryan will be signing and giving away copies of his book after his 11am session on testing at the Google Analytics/Website Optimizer booth on Wednesday, October 22. Later in the day both Tim and Bryan will be signing and giving away their books after the 3pm panel on multivariate testing also at our booth, Then on Friday, October 24th, Tim Ash will be signing and giving away his book after his Landing Page Testing workshop.

Hope to see you at Emetrics. It's not too late to register!