Tuesday, 10 June 2008

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:

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.

Wednesday, 4 June 2008

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.


Tuesday, 3 June 2008

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: