Come See The Big Three

Faithful Analytics blog readers, I don't want to bore or alienate any of you—a diverse and geographically disperse group of intelligentsia—but today's blog post draws on something close to my heart: a professional basketball team called the Boston Celtics. Stay with me, just for a few more sentences. All will become clear ...

About a week ago, the Celtics won the National Basketball Association championship over their biggest rival, the Lakers (sorry, Lakers fans). As I say when something like this happens, "Whoo-hooot!!!"

Ahem. Anyway, the reason the Celts won is that this season their management united three of the best players in the NBA: Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen. These players strove for years to win the title on separate teams, playing with less talented players, and finally, when they joined forces, everything fell into place.

How does this trifecta relate to web analytics, online marketing, and website management, the topics closest to our heart? Well, we've also got a big three for you, dear reader. And they're taking the stage July 8 in a one-hour webinar, presented by our team, called, "The Google Trifecta."

Who are our big three? You might be able to guess: one of them is Google Analytics, so you can start getting your "Whoo-hooot!" ready. Rounding it out are Webmaster Tools and Website Optimizer, two other free Google tools for website-owners. The first helps you improve your site's visibility in Google search results, and the second helps increase your conversion rate once visitors arrive on your site.

Individually each tool is powerful; combined, they offer you a holistic, detailed understanding of your website: how you're faring on Google, how your visitors land on and navigate to your site, and which combination of content most effectively gets them to convert. If you're already using one tool, you can use your same login for the others. And unlike the Celtics, you don't have to trade any co-workers or pay any money.

In this vein, we posted a couple of months ago about how you can identify your high-value, low-performing pages with Google Analytics, then test and optimize them with Website Optimizer to improve your conversion rates.

Here's the webinar info:

TITLE: The Google Trifecta: Webmaster Tools, Analytics, Website Optimizer
DATE: Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
TIME: 9:00 - 10:00 am PT (Pacific Time)
JOIN US: Register to attend (free)

In the webinar, team members will introduce each product for newcomers, highlight recent product developments, and discuss the benefits of using all three products together. And when you register, we'll also invite you to submit any questions you'd like the presenters to answer.

In case you didn't know about Google Webmaster Central, take a look. It's a one-page resource linking to many of the tools Google offers to help you build and maintain an effective site, including Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, and Webmaster Tools, the trifecta, the big three, the three amigos, the rule of three. Hope to see you at the webinar!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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One year after the redesign

Anyone remember the previous Google Analytics interface? Here's a screenshot of the dashboard:


And another of a report with cross-segmentation clicked on:

Just over a year ago, after extensive user interviews, surveys and live usability studies, we completed a substantial redesign project and released a completely new Google Analytics interface.

And voilà:


The redesign addressed an important shift in the analytics industry's customer base. Not only are more businesses using web analytics than ever before, but an increasingly large number of business generalists (non-web analytics specialists) in these companies are using web analytics to drive decision making. We redesigned Google Analytics to help these legions of new users ask insightful questions of their data and get actionable answers.

Instead of adding reports with specialized information, the new Google Analytics places data in context making it easier to discover information relationships via navigation and data visualizations. We created a custom dashboard and introduced sparklines. We developed new graphing tools and added a new type of date slider that allows you to view spikes and dips in traffic as you set date ranges. And one of the most popular new features is one of the simplest: the ability to e-mail reports and schedule these e-mails so that information can be easily shared with key stakeholders (as well as curious counterparts).

When we announced this new version, we committed to continue adding new features in a steady stream of updates. I believe we've made good on that commitment, but you can be the judge. Below are my highlights from the last 12 months:

1. Internal site search: We've always shown you which keywords people search to find your site. Now, internal site search tracking shows you how people search once they're already on your site. See the keywords and search-refinement keywords people use, and the pages from which they begin and end their searches. And, find out how search on your site affects site usage, conversion rates, and e-commerce activity. Here's a shot of the insights you can get with site search data (click to enlarge):


2. Industry Benchmarking: With Benchmarking, you can compare your site data with site data from a variety of industry verticals. And the accompanying data-sharing settings let you control whether and how Google services interact with your data to enable and disable these features. Here's a screenshot (click to enlarge):


3. New visualizations and analysis features: You can now view many reports by hour or day and graph data by day, week, or month. You can also graph two metrics against each other over time—we call it multi-line graphing. So, for example, you can compare the number of visitors vs. bounce rates for a certain week, or see whether visitors who come to a website through AdWords spend more or less time on your site than visitors overall. In this screenshot, we've chosen to look at visitors trending in weekly units as opposed to daily. This makes it easier to spot trends when looking at longer time periods. And we're looking at visits compared to conversions:


4. New ga.js tracking code: Our new pagetag allows for a more flexibility and customization. Its just as easy to install as the old code, but allows more sophisticated users to track e-commerce transactions in a more readable way and take advantage of advanced tracking features. We've also added the Google Analytics codesite to help developers take advantage of documented customizations.

5. Correlations with offline marketing with Google Audio Ads and TV Ads integrations: Audio Ads and TV Ads customers can now track whether their Google radio and TV campaigns sent additional traffic to their website based on when and where the ads run.

6. Website Optimizer: Google's free multivariate website-testing tool is out of beta and available to everyone. And now you can even log in with your Google Analytics account.

7. Urchin Software: If you have content behind a security firewall or on an intranet or internal network that prevents you from using Google Analytics, you might want to consider Urchin 6. You can also track your website with Urchin and Google Analytics together.

8. Support and Help Centers in eight additional languages: We've added Thai, Filipino, Indonesian, Czech, Hungarian, Portuguese (Portugal), Turkish, and Polish. This brings the number of Google Analytics supported languages to 25.

9. Authorized Consultants (GAACs): This is the year of the Authorized Consultant. We've added six new GAACs in the past few months, bringing our worldwide total to 51. We have also added Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant and Urchin Software Authorized Consultant networks.

10. You: We have a sophisticated, engaged and vibrant user base from whom we're learning daily. We're so excited about the future: it's palpable at Google, and it all comes from you and our ecosystem of users, bloggers, consultants, and developers. We have many more new developments underway that I believe you'll enjoy so I hope you continue to stay engaged with this blog, our Google Group and our codesite.

Posted by Brett Crosby, Group Manager, Google Analytics

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Make Your Content Reports More Useful

Here's another practitioner-focused approach from James Tipton, one of our specialists in New York.

A Web Analyst is on an eternal quest to understand content consumption. When Visitors come to your site, what do they read? What fascinates them? What do they find depressing?

In this quest, the Google Analytics' Top Content report can be powerful and full of insights. But depending on your website platform and use of URL parameters, it can also appear cluttered and, in rare cases, confusing.

For example, dynamically generated query parameters, such as session IDs, can exponentially increase the number of URL's displayed and may even result in the unhelpful "other" listing in your content reports. As a result, the report may no longer be instantly useful when you look at it.

In your Top Content report, “other” shows up when your website data contains more than 50,000 unique URL’s for a given day. It is important to point out that there are no pageview limits, only limits to the number of unique URL's that can be displayed in the report. So no matter how many times your pages are viewed, data is still captured, processed and presented correctly. The "other" category comes into play only when more than 50,000 unique URL's are registered.

You may be thinking that 50,000 unique URL's on a single day seems like a lot. But you may be surprised at how quickly multiple sets of query parameters can cause your site to reach that limit. It goes without saying that trying to evaluate the bounce rate, exit percentage, time on page and other such lovely metrics for that many pages can be a daunting task. Seeing the "other" category can create an even bigger challenge, and take away from your quest for the long tail in your data.

Luckily, Google Analytics has a couple of simple solutions for cleaning up unnecessary URL parameters from your content reports.

Let’s assume that our website is www.example.com and our product pages' URL's look like this:

www.example.com/products/awesomeproductpage.html?sid=ap5829g2k&param=supervalue

In this case both "sid" and "param" in the URL above are URL parameters, and both are being added to the URL by the website platform (and hence they're unnecessary).

So how do you keep your Google Analytics reports clean and useful?

The first way to address unnecessary parameters is to use the Main Profile Settings in your account.

Here are the steps:

1. Click into the "Profile Settings" page and then on "Edit" in the "Main Profile Settings Information" bar.
   
   
2. Enter the query parameters you'd like to exclude in the "Exclude URL Query Parameters" field and click "Save Changes."

Note that in the Exclude URL Query Parameters area we have added sid and param, since we want them filtered out.

Advice: We recommend that you always maintain an unfiltered "master" profile, because you never know when you may need to see those parameters. When you exclude parameters, do so in a duplicate profile. Then you can relax knowing you won't be caught off-guard.

The second way to address non-essential parameters is to use the features within the Internal Site Search set-up and use the Internal Site Search admin panel.

To enable Site Search, click on "Edit" under the "Settings" column next to the name of the profile on your analytics Settings page. Next, Click "Do Track Site Search" and, after you fill in the appropriate query parameter ("query" in the example below) in the Query Parameter field, select "Yes, strip query parameters out of URL."

Then hit Save. Going forward all the URL parameters will be removed, presenting you with a clean list of URL's you can better understand in your Google Analytics report.

Speaking of Site Search: if you haven't activated Site Search yet, do it today. It only takes seconds (OK, maybe a couple of minutes) but it's well worth the small effort needed.

So when do you use each of the above recommended methods?

Use method one, Main Profile Settings, when you want exclude just some of the parameters.

Use method two, Internal Site Search Settings, when you want to exclude all the parameters.

In closing, excluding query parameters from your profile will dramatically reduce the number of unique URL's you have to sift through and make the Top Content report immediately useful. Now, rather than hundreds of distinct URL's all pointing to the same page, you may see a single entry per page. That means you'll spend less time de-duping URL's and more time evaluating them.

Good luck, and happy data hunting!


Posted by James Tipton, Google Analytics Team

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Boot Camp for Google Analytics

Did we say, "Boot Camp for Google Analytics?" How does that work, one might ask? Do I have to get up at 5am to have someone yell at me about goals, funnels and filters, now repeat! Get that bounce rate DOWN mister! Conversion rate UP, lady! Now give me 5 industry benchmarking metrics and hit the showers.

Whoa, whoa...not at all...

It's more like boot camp for your online-marketing brain muscle, highly enjoyable, in an idyllic New England setting, with the coolest folks around. Get into scary good shape (knowledge-wise) with the Online Marketing (OM) Boot Camp, hosted by EpikOne and co-sponsored by Google at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont.

For four days (June 17-20), you'll learn how to use the latest Google marketing and analysis products, get informed about the online advertising industry, and network with Google Analytics experts. Instructors include Google's own analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik, Ben Bullock and Alex Ortiz from the Google Analytics team, and Justin Cutroni, Seminars For Success instructor and author of Google Analytics Short Cut.

Our users often ask us about training opportunities, and this is a great one for both beginners and advanced users, including agencies. The boot camp has various course levels on topics such as Adwords, Google Analytics and Website Optimizer.

Day 1 is a thought-leadership summit where attendees will hear analytics evangelists speak and enjoy a cocktail networking opportunity in the early evening. Days 2-3 will encompass various course levels of Google product training taught by industry experts.

Only 70 seats are offered for this education-only camp, so you'll get lots of discussion and hands-on training. For more information and to register, visit www.OMBootCamp.com.

Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

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The Web Analytics Championship!

There's nothing like a little healthy competition! When you reach a certain level of expertise at some discipline, adding a little competition against others can help you to develop new skills and improve your "game" more than anything else. And it can be a lot of fun!

That's why we're hoping you'll grab your laptop, hook up your favorite mouse, stretch out your fingers, and join:

The Web Analytics Championship!

presented by the WAA

(Cue "Star Wars" theme song) If you choose to join the competition, you'll have a few days to analyze the last month of traffic to the website www.webanalyticsassociation.org using the WAA's Google Analytics account. Then, simply email in an analysis or recommendation for how to change the site or marketing, or even a simple insight about their traffic, keywords, or visitor navigation.

Basically, you are acting as a one-time analyst. What do you think is the most insightful traffic data? What reports and trends should be acted on? (As a starting point for readers of this blog, read what Avinash says about bounce rate - it might be a good place to start, and you can see this metric clearly in almost every Google Analytics report.)

Entries will be judged by a panel of experts (Neil Mason, June Dershewitz, and Avinash Kaushik), and prizes will be given for the most effective and insightful analyses. Here at the Google Analytics team, we might also might send a prize to the finalists, and also, we're hoping to do a blog post here after the championship where we'll name the contest winners and show the recommendations and insights they submitted. We're talking fortune and glory (cue "Indiana Jones" theme song) -- the techniques you use to analyze the data may be immortalized to inspire many a future analyst or marketer.

If you don't have a Google Analytics account, this would a good way to learn about Google Analytics, and since we've made actionable data discovery as intuitive as possible within Google Analytics, finding insight is not a difficult task.

The competition is easy to join: simply sign up to be a Web Analytics Association member, which brings a lot of benefits such as discounts to industry events, informational newsletters and best practice guides, exposure to thought leaders and peers who also work in web analytics, and access to advanced instruction about website analysis techniques. The Championship started on June 1 and there is still plenty of time to do some analysis and submit an entry. You'll definitely come away a better user.

We're rooting for you! For more details, visit the Web Analytics Championship page and FAQs.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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New Analytics Report: TV Campaigns

Hot on the heels of this March’s release of the Audio Campaigns report within Google Analytics, we’ve just added more offline-to-online reporting features: TV Campaigns reporting. This report represents a further integration between Google Analytics and AdWords, and another helpful tool for you to measure the online effects of offline marketing.

AdWords TV Ads is an all-digital system that distributes advertisers' TV ads to participating channels nationwide. You can upload your TV ad—a video file—to your AdWords account and, with a few clicks, start a campaign by choosing from more than 90 nationwide TV stations to air the ad on. You can also specify the time of day and week, audience demographic, and type of program you'd like to target. If you need help creating a TV ad, you can find and connect with production specialists through our Ad Creation Marketplace. It’s a simple and streamlined process for TV advertising.

And the best part: it’s highly trackable. If your AdWords account is linked with your Google Analytics account, you can easily see what happens to your online traffic while a TV spot is running. The current available TV metrics include:

• Impressions delivered
• Number of ad plays
• Cost
• CPM

You can now track these metrics and plot them alongside metrics already within Google Analytics, such as conversions, visits, and time on site. This way, you can see correlations between a TV campaign and your website traffic. Take a look at the below screenshot of TV spots run by a pet company. It shows website visits plotted against the number of TV impressions (how many times your TV ad played). If you've already linked your Analytics account to your AdWords account, this data appears automatically within Analytics when you run a TV ad.

Audio Campaigns and TV Campaigns are especially helpful for marketers taking advantage of the offline advertising options within AdWords. AdWords is running a promotion in which Google will cover the cost of creating your TV ad through our Ad Creation Marketplace, up to $2000.


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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Website Optimizer Contest

We recently blogged about how you can use Google Analytics and Website Optimizer to identify your high value pages and set up experiments that will eliminate the guesswork from their design. Now that you're on the path to increased conversions and more efficient funnels, we thought we'd give you the low down on a new contest that might spark your interest.

Earlier today at the SMX Seattle conference, the Google Website Optimizer team announced the launch of the Google Website Workout contest. The idea behind the contest is simple: they're looking to help four businesses "pump up" their websites so they can get more sales, leads, or signups. Their consultants will work with the four winners to increase site performance by identifying and testing which combinations of page design, copy, and graphics yield the highest conversion rates.

To enter, just visit their contest site and answer a few easy questions about why your site needs a workout. They're only accepting entries through June 17th, so don't wait to enter. Check out the short video below for more details:

Posted by John Stona, Website Optimizer Team

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