Reporting Delay Update

Update: 4:24pm Tuesday, 31 July -- Report data has been fully updated and is now current again. We apologize for any inconvenience the temporary delay caused and will have less reporting delays in the future.
_____________

We are starting to update reporting in all Google Analytics accounts affected by the delay. As of 5pm PST this evening, some users will start to see part or all of the data from the period between Saturday and now appear in reports. We expect updates for all accounts to continue through Monday night into tomorrow and will update this blog when reporting is fully restored.

Thank you for your patience.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Read More

Professional Services

One of the great things about giving away Google Analytics for free is that you, our customer, get to select exactly the professional services you want. We don't restrict you with (or ask you to pay for) a pre-determined one-size-fits-all professional services package. Instead, you customize your integration, analysis, and implementation package according to your needs. Some of you already have in-house expertise, some prefer a do-it-yourself model, and others prefer to work directly with one of our Google Analytics partners.

We'll continue to support you with our free resources: the Analytics Online Help , the Analytics Discussion Group, built-in product help, Conversion University, as well as the occasional webinars, events, and blog entries. But if you need sophisticated hands-on professional services, it's nice to know where to find them.

Whichever part of the world you do business in, whatever level of service you need, there's a Google Analytics partner ready to help. We're going to highlight some of our partners in upcoming blog posts, but if you're used to using another enterprise level analytics package, you're probably already familiar (and have perhaps worked with) some of our Google Analytics partners. Stay tuned for more.


Posted by Brett Crosby, Google Analytics Team

Read More

U.S. Cellular reveals true impact of digital media on sales with Google Analytics Premium

With 10.6 million cell phone customers and retail stores in 400+ markets, U.S. Cellular needs to reach a lot of people with marketing messages. That's why U.S. Cellular uses many marketing channels -- online, in-store and telesales -- to drive mobile phone activations.

U.S. Cellular was challenged though. They didn’t know how many of their offline sales were driven by their digital marketing. This made it harder to adjust their media mix accordingly and also to forecast sales. To fix that situation, U.S. Cellular and its digital-analytics firm, Cardinal Path, turned to Google Analytics Premium and its integration with BigQuery. 

Part of Google Cloud Platform, BigQuery allows for highly flexible analysis of large datasets. The U.S. Cellular team used it to integrate and analyze terabytes of data from Google Analytics Premium and other systems. Then they mapped consumer behavior across online and offline marketing channels. Each transaction was attributed to the consumer touchpoints that the buyer had made across various sales channels. 

The result: U.S. Cellular got real insight into digital’s role in their sales. They were surprised to find that they could reclassify nearly half of all their offline activations to online marketing channels.

U.S. Cellular now uses this complete (and fully automatic) analytics framework to really see the consumer journey and forecast sales for each channel. Their team has the data they need to make better business decisions. 

“We’re now in the enviable position of having an accurate view at each stage of our customer journey," says Katie Birmingham, a digital & e-commerce analyst for the company. "The Google Analytics Premium solution not only gives us a business advantage, but helps us shape a great customer experience, and ultimately ties in to our values of industry-leading innovation and world-class customer service.”

Be sure to read the full case study. 

Posted by: Suzanne Mumford, Google Analytics Premium Marketing

Read More

See you at SES in San Jose

Are you planning on coming to the next Search Engine Strategies conference taking place in San Jose, CA from August 7 to August 10th? It's a great event for learning how to grow your business through search engine marketing and website optimization -- and to network with business owners, web developers, experts, and vendors.

SES runs more than four days, packed with informative seminars on a wide range of topics like "Ad Copy & Landing Page Clinic," "Search APIs," "Online Video Advertising" and "Local Search Marketing Tactics" led by well-known leaders and authors in web analytics and search engine marketing. Google CEO Eric Schmidt will even be delivering the keynote on Wednesday, August 9, and on August 10, Google Analytics Senior PMM (and Urchin co-founder) Brett Crosby will be on a panel about measuring the success of websites and online marketing generally.

We're excited to offer a promotional "Priority" code for 20% off when you buy a Conference or day pass to SES San Jose. The Priority code is 20GOO2 (two-zero-gee-oh-oh-two). To redeem the Priority code and purchase a pass to the conference, go here or click the ad below:


We hope to see you there!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Read More

Tip: Measuring the performance of ad text

In pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, understanding keyword performance is essential. But did you know that you can also use Google Analytics to see how different ad copy affects conversion rates? The cross-segmentation feature (click the red arrow to the left of your results) enables you to see not only how a keyword performed, but also which ad copy was most effective.

For example, go to the “AdWords Analysis” report under “Marketing Optimization/Search Engine Marketing.” Drill down from the Campaign to the Ad Group to the Keyword by clicking on the plus sign. To cross-segment a keyword by ad copy, click on the red "Analysis Options" button to the left of your desired keyword.

Select “Cross Segment Performance” and then the “Content” option. (See screenshot below.) Assuming that you have enabled autotagging on your AdWords account, this will display the first line of ad text in the creative.

You can also look at the overall performance of ad copy by looking in the "Overall Ad A/B Testing" report under "Content Optimization/Ad Version Testing." This report actually has a column called "Content" that displays the first line of ad text and the visits generated by that ad.

Posted by Aubrey Sabala, Google Analytics team

Read More

Rooms To Go Improves the Shopper Experience by Integrating Google Analytics Premium with BigQuery

Rooms To Go, a home furnishing retailer, simplifies the shopping experience by offering completely designed room packages. When the company wanted to better understand how its customers purchase its different furniture and decor variations and add-ons to streamline online customization options, it turned to its agency -  LunaMetrics - who integrated Google Analytics Premium and BigQuery. This approach helped to identify which items customers commonly buy together, leading to smarter and easier customization for its users.

The Google Analytics Premium integration allowed Rooms To Go to:

• Better understand what their site visitors were purchasing
• Organize the data and isolate the products that were frequently purchased together in order to discover customer buying patterns
• Expand functionalities of the website to accommodate these customer patterns—for example, making it easier for users to add extra dining chairs when purchasing a dining room set

Overall, this strategy helped Rooms To Go create a better user experience for its customers, and the company expects an increase in sales because of it. Read the full case study on Think with Google, and learn about being a Google Analytics Premium customer here.

Read More

Increased availability of Google Analytics

In response to the continuing strong demand for Google Analytics accounts, we've been steadily increasing capacity and decreasing turnaround time for issuing new accounts. We're now able to offer an invitation code usually within 2 days. In fact, if you're an AdWords customer, you may not need an invitation code at all because we've begun to streamline the signup process for Analytics from AdWords. If Google Analytics within your AdWords account hasn't already been enabled (try signing up from your AdWords account by clicking on the Analytics tab), check back again soon!

Posted by Brett Crosby, Google Analytics Team

Read More

Spotlight on Conversion University

Have you visited Conversion University lately?
It's a great place to learn search marketing and web analytics techniques. Some of our latest articles include:

Sitemaps for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Driving Traffic.
Have you taken every step to optimize your site for natural search? Learn five Google Sitemaps tips that can help drive traffic to your site and improve the visibility of your content.

Qualitative Measurement for Brand Lift Campaigns in Tracking and Testing.
Beyond conversion rates, average visit values, and ROI, it’s sometimes useful to gain a qualitative impression of how well your site and marketing perform. Here are five Google Analytics reports you can use to assess how well your brand lift campaigns engage your visitors.

AdWords Targeting and Tracking Tips in Driving Traffic
Do you know your AdWords ROI for each of your geographic markets? Looking for the optimal mix between Search and Content network delivery? Here are five tips for targeting – and tracking – your ads effectively.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Read More

Analytics Pros helps Avvo Gain New Insights with Data Import

Companies use many systems to run their business. These may include multiple web advertising networks, CRM and content publishing systems, point of sale systems, inventory databases, etc. Integrating the data from these systems with Google Analytics provides a better understanding for how your customers behave on the web. 

At the 2014 Analytics Summit we announced the new Data Import. Data Import helps unify data from your different business systems, allowing you to organize your data the same way your business is organized. This will allow for more accurate analysis and bringing together previously disparate datasets into one complete picture. Using Data Import, you can upload your brand’s existing data into Google Analytics and join it with GA data for reporting, segmentation and remarketing.

By using the Data Import functionality in Google Analytics Premium and with the help of Analytics Pros, consumer legal services brand Avvo created clear, accurate data, which continues to impact decisions across their organization. While Avvo already had a successful and fast-growing business, the lack of visibility into advertising success made it hard to align key revenue opportunities with actual site usage. Read the full case study here.

“We’ve been very pleased with the results that were realized using Data Import in Google Analytics to analyze client behavior on our website. This exercise has given us better insight into valuable data that will ultimately impact how we segment the market for legal services.” 

- Sendi Widjaja, Co-Founder & CTO, Avvo, Inc.

Data Import also now supports a new Query Time mode that allows you to join your data with historical GA data. With this mode you can:

• Enhance existing, already processed GA data with imported dimensions and metrics.
• Upload calculated values after a transaction occurs, like total customer spend, last transaction date, or a loyalty score.
• Correct any errors in data you have uploaded to GA in the past.

Query Time mode is currently in whitelist release for Premium users. For more information, contact your Premium account manager. You can learn more about Premium here.

Illustration of a new Google Analytics report with data from multiple sources 

We are also introducing a new version of Cost Data import that provides more versatile support for importing historical data. Additionally, cost data  can now be uploaded directly  through the Google Analytics web interface (previously, data import  required using the GA API). Note: Users of the original cost data import  must migrate to the new version. Details can be found in the cost data migration guide.

How to get started using Data Import

For more information, read Data Import on the Google Analytics Help Center. Also check our new developer Data Import guides that will get you up and running in no time. Some features are currently not rolled out to all users. If you’d like to join the beta for full-access, sign-up here.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Jieyan Fan, Richard Maher, Rick Elliott and the Google Analytics Team 

Read More