Congratulations to Avinash Kaushik, voted onto The Web Analytics Association's BOD

Avinash joins many friendly and familiar faces on the board of the Web Analytics Association (WAA) including Robbin Steif of LunaMetrics (a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant). The WAA is the organization that the web analytics community looks to for advocacy, research, education, and teaching the world about web analytics; it's more than just a standards body. Google Analytics was a founding corporate member of the WAA and we have high aspirations for the organization. We know Avinash's involvement will be valuable to the WAA membership and we encourage our users to get involved.

The WAA is having a meeting at the Emetrics Summit in San Francisco with a members-only reception on Sunday night, May 6th. We will be there with both Robbin and Avinash. Please join us at Emetrics from May 6th - 9th and if you do, swing by the Google Analytics booth to say hello. Additionally, if you'd like to join the WAA or serve on a committee, visit the WAA site.

Posted by Brett Crosby, Sr. Manager, Google Analytics

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Temporary Downtime: System Updates

Google Analytics users,

Google Analytics is performing system updates today across our network, and some accounts may see an error page when logging into their account. This is a temporary issue which will be resolved shortly. If you are experiencing log in difficulties, please try logging in at a later time.

We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for your patience.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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Using Google Analytics with Website Optimizer

Often, Google develops a product and then watches as users innovate new uses that are exciting in their creativity and utility. Well, we just came across an excellent example that is close to our hearts.

As you may know, Google Website Optimizer was recently made accessible to all AdWords users. We've mentioned it a few times in this blog: it's a multivariate web page testing tool that can help you understand which web page designs really work. It uses a javascript code snippet very similar to Google Analytics'. For example, you may wonder, do more people buy products when your conversion link is: a.) a white button with "Buy NOW!" in lowercase, black, italicized Arial text to the right of the product name, or b.) the word "Purchase" in blue as a link with a blue underline to the left of the product name. What if you found out that version b. saw 70% more clicks than the version a. Wouldn't you use that version for all your pages? With Website Optimizer, you no longer need to guess. Instead, implement both designs and let your users tell you which works better. And then watch these small experiments affect your bottom line.

However, Website Optimizer reports on only one metric -- conversions on links. What if you'd like to know how different versions of the same web page affect other metrics, such as Exit Rate, Average Time on Page, Navigational Analysis or New vs. Returning visitors. Now there's a way - you can integrate Website Optimizer with Google Analytics by making a few modifications to the javascript and to the tracking on the page. Shawn Purtell of ROI Revolution has documented a way to integrate the two that allows some very powerful analysis and action to be taken. For instance, you know that it takes roughly 45 seconds for a visitor to read a certain blog post on your site, but you've noticed in your Google Analytics reports that the average time on page is less than 10 seconds. Clearly, people are seeing your page and leaving before reading the content. Try a few different designs with Website Optimizer, and look at the results in Google Analytics to see which version works better.

This is an unsupported technique, but the folks over at ROI Revolution, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, would be glad to walk you through it and have fully documented it here. Great job Shawn, for some innovative experimentation.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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Temporary Downtime: Account Maintenance and Unavailability

Google Analytics will experience downtime today, Thursday, 12 April, 2007 at 12:00 AM PDT for a few hours for routine maintenance. Your account will be inaccessible during this time.

During this downtime, Google Analytics data will continue to be collected within your account. Your account will be accessible and fully updated within a few hours after 12:00 AM PDT. We apologize for any inconvenience this downtime has caused.

Thank you for using Google Analytics.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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Update: Temporary Reporting Delay within Some Accounts

Google Analytics users,
There is a temporary reporting delay within some Google Analytics accounts due to system maintenance. You are still able to log in to accounts and please note that no data will be lost - data will continue to be collected and processed during this time.

We expect Google Analytics account data to be fully updated and displayed within your reports within two hours. We apologize for any inconvenience this delay in reporting has caused.

Thank you for using Google Analytics.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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Website Optimizer Now Available To All

Today, we are happy to announce that Website Optimizer is now available to all AdWords advertisers. For those who are unfamiliar with Website Optimizer, it is a free multivariate testing tool, built into AdWords, that helps online marketers increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by enabling them to continually test different combinations of site content.

With Google Analytics, webmasters and marketers are listening to their visitors by evaluating the success of keywords, the sites that send traffic, and the actual location of visitors. And now, Website Optimizer is the latest application from Google designed to help you improve your website and acquire more customers by letting your visitors tell you what works best.

For more details, visit the Website Optimizer site or read the Inside AdWords blog post.

Posted by Peter Harbison, Website Optimizer Team

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