Sep
01
Posted | September 01, 2010
More and more people are surfing the Internet from their phones these days. Take a look at the following graph. It shows the number of monthly visits to googlestore.com from Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry devices over the past 2 years. There were 277 visits in Sep, 2008. But in July of 2010, there were over 13,000 visits!
Given this kind of growth, it makes sense for many businesses to set up a mobile device-friendly site. If you’ve been considering whether to create a mobile site, you may want to check out the Mobile Devices report in the Visitors section. You can see how many visits you received from each mobile operating system, how many pages they visit on average, how much time they spend on your site, as well as see conversion and ecommerce information.
In next week’s Back to Basics, I’ll show you how to create your own trend graph like the one in this article, so you can really dig into the numbers for your own site.
Aug
25
Posted | August 25, 2010
Raise your hand if any of this sounds familiar to you:
The Google Analytics team has launched a debugging version of the Analytics Tracking code called ga_debug.js to verify your tracking code setup. To make it even simpler, we also created a Chrome extension which uses the ga_debug.js script, which allows you to use the new ga_debug.js without re-tagagging any of your content. You can also use this extension to verify what information is sent to Analytics with each page.
How does it work? First, the ga_debug.js script provides a testing version of the tracking code which will print common syntax errors and tracking analysis messages to the browser’s JavaScript console. Secondly, the Chrome extension which automatically enables your page to use the debug version of the JavaScript without any need for you to retag or recode your pages.
How do you use it? The most simple thing to do is to download the Tracking Code Debugger extension for your Chrome browser. Next, turn on the extension by clicking on the icon to the right of the address bar on Chrome.
Finally, visit a page that contains the tracking code you want to test and open up the Chrome JavaScript console to see the messages (detailed instructions). That's it!
If you want to go use ga_debug.js without the Chrome extension, read all about how to do this in our newly revised Troubleshooting Guide on Google Code. You can use the script on your testing environment to verify extensive tracking code changes. Make sure, however, that you don't use this version of the tracking code on your production website--the script is meant for debugging and analysis, not speed, so you should always use this as a testing mechanism only. If you want to learn more about the kinds of errors this script can help you find, see Common Tracking Code Errors/Typos in our Troubleshooting Guide. While the ga_debug.js script doesn’t catch all possible errors yet, we think it’s off to a great start and will get even better over time.
Happy testing!
Brian Kuhn on behalf of the Analytics Team
- You just set up your tracking code and you're wondering if it's correct--and you want to know right now.
- You have decided to migrate your tracking to the new asynchronous syntax--but you want to know if your syntax has any errors.
- You finally decided to customize the tracking code for cross-domain tracking--but you're worried that you might break your tracking.
- You want to make sure that your campaign is set up to the correct goal.
The Google Analytics team has launched a debugging version of the Analytics Tracking code called ga_debug.js to verify your tracking code setup. To make it even simpler, we also created a Chrome extension which uses the ga_debug.js script, which allows you to use the new ga_debug.js without re-tagagging any of your content. You can also use this extension to verify what information is sent to Analytics with each page.
How does it work? First, the ga_debug.js script provides a testing version of the tracking code which will print common syntax errors and tracking analysis messages to the browser’s JavaScript console. Secondly, the Chrome extension which automatically enables your page to use the debug version of the JavaScript without any need for you to retag or recode your pages.
How do you use it? The most simple thing to do is to download the Tracking Code Debugger extension for your Chrome browser. Next, turn on the extension by clicking on the icon to the right of the address bar on Chrome.
Finally, visit a page that contains the tracking code you want to test and open up the Chrome JavaScript console to see the messages (detailed instructions). That's it!If you want to go use ga_debug.js without the Chrome extension, read all about how to do this in our newly revised Troubleshooting Guide on Google Code. You can use the script on your testing environment to verify extensive tracking code changes. Make sure, however, that you don't use this version of the tracking code on your production website--the script is meant for debugging and analysis, not speed, so you should always use this as a testing mechanism only. If you want to learn more about the kinds of errors this script can help you find, see Common Tracking Code Errors/Typos in our Troubleshooting Guide. While the ga_debug.js script doesn’t catch all possible errors yet, we think it’s off to a great start and will get even better over time.
Happy testing!
Brian Kuhn on behalf of the Analytics Team
Aug
25
Posted | August 25, 2010
Did you know that there’s a quick way to create advanced segments from automatic alerts? This is one of those “I can’t believe how powerful this is and yet so easy to do” features. Let me illustrate with an example from the Google Store site. A few months ago, on February 5, the Google Store received a surge of traffic from TechCrunch.com. We would not have noticed this extra traffic were it not for Analytics Intelligence. In the following screenshot, you can see that the store ordinarily receives between 0 and 221 visits from TechCrunch, but on this day, it received 1,918 visits. 
What happened was that TechCrunch ran an article about Google scarves that were being sold in the store. But, here’s the tip I want to share with you. First, you can graph just the
relevant traffic simply by clicking the button on the alert.
And, you can create an advanced segment just by clicking the Create Segment link at the far right of the alert.
Now you can compare this traffic side by side with overall site traffic or with traffic from other segments. Check out this video to see how this works and to learn more automatic alert tips.
Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team
Aug
24
Posted | August 24, 2010
Nobody likes to duplicate effort. Unfortunately, sometimes it's a fact of life. If you want to use Google Analytics, you need to add a JavaScript tracking code to your pages. When you're ready to verify ownership of your site in other Google products (such as Webmaster Tools), you have to add a meta tag, HTML file or DNS record to your site. They're very similar tasks, but also completely independent. Until today.
You can now use a Google Analytics JavaScript snippet to verify ownership of your website, which is the start of using the rich information about your organic ranking and organic traffic available in Webmaster Tools. If you already have Google Analytics set up, verifying ownership is as simple as clicking a button.
This only works with the newer asynchronous Analytics JavaScript, so if you haven't migrated yet, now is a great time. If you haven't set up Google Analytics or verified yet, go ahead and set up Google Analytics first, then come verify ownership of your site. It'll save you a little time?—?who doesn't like that? Just as with all of Google Webmaster Tools' other verification methods, the Google Analytics JavaScript needs to stay in place on your site, or your verification will expire. You also need to remain an administrator on the Google Analytics account associated with the JavaScript snippet.
Don't forget that once you've verified ownership, you can add other verified owners in Webmaster Tools (not Google Analytics) quickly and easily through the Verification Details page. There's no need for each owner to manually verify ownership. More effort and time saved!
Aug
24
Posted | August 24, 2010
Have you ever sorted a report by bounce rate and seen nothing but entries with a 100% bounce rate? Have you then noticed that these entries only have 1 visit? Not only is this useless and frustrating, but it obscures the real data points that you care about behind pages of garbage.
Well fret no more! We are pleased to announce a new sorting algorithm called weighted sort. Now when you sort on a computed metric, you can weight that sort by the number of data points, bringing you the most interesting and actionable rows first. For instance, in our example weighted sort will weight the computed value bounce rate by the number of visits. Let's take a look at some screen shots that will make this effect more obvious.
Here we are sorting by descending value on bounce rate. Notice how all these rows have 1 visit each for a bounce rate of 100%. Useless. Now lets turn on weighted sort.
Ah ha! Now this is something you can make sense of. Weighted sort took into consideration the number of visits for each row bringing to the forefront the items you care about. Keep in mind that because weighted sort is no longer a strict sort, there will be values that don't strictly follow the order you would assume.
Posted by Linus Chou, Google Analytics Team
Aug
20
Posted | August 20, 2010
Now that the excitement of the new Management API launch has just passed its zenith, you might have also noticed that there were some interesting changes to the Analytics for Developer pages on Google Code.
Since Nick, Alex, and I were under the hood making docs and sample code for the Management API, it also seemed like a good time to spiff up the site and add some structure to handle this burgeoning developer resource.
New Look and Feel
Nick went to town on our new home page. If you attended his talk at the Google I/O conference this May, you might notice that the Analytics data model diagram has reappeared, but this time as a gateway into the key parts of our documentation on Google Code. We surfaced the most important links to provide deep access to the key parts of each section of the site.
New Landing Pages
Since we now have 3+ major sections on our site, it was time to provide landing pages for all the news and updates relevant to Tracking Code configuration, Management API, and Export API. Here you will always be able to see the latest release news and best practice guides for each API without having to dig down into the site.
We’ve also redesigned our navigation bar to be more visually appealing and consistent across all three APIs.
New Groups Pages
We have three major developer groups to help you out with your Analytics coding--Async tracking, Management API, and Export API. Not only that, but our general Help Forum is great for issues with general tracking topics. Since we have so many different groups, we created a new groups landing page to help you figure out which group will help you best.
Our Management API and Export API groups use the new Google Discussion Forum, which is embedded right in the page--a pretty nifty feature.
We hope that you find the new design makes it clearer and easier for you to find what you need for Analytics development. We’d love to hear your feedback, so please post any comments on one of our developer groups pages and let us know.
Patricia Boswell on behalf of the Analytics API team.
Since Nick, Alex, and I were under the hood making docs and sample code for the Management API, it also seemed like a good time to spiff up the site and add some structure to handle this burgeoning developer resource.
New Look and Feel
Nick went to town on our new home page. If you attended his talk at the Google I/O conference this May, you might notice that the Analytics data model diagram has reappeared, but this time as a gateway into the key parts of our documentation on Google Code. We surfaced the most important links to provide deep access to the key parts of each section of the site.
New Landing PagesSince we now have 3+ major sections on our site, it was time to provide landing pages for all the news and updates relevant to Tracking Code configuration, Management API, and Export API. Here you will always be able to see the latest release news and best practice guides for each API without having to dig down into the site.
We’ve also redesigned our navigation bar to be more visually appealing and consistent across all three APIs.
New Groups Pages
We have three major developer groups to help you out with your Analytics coding--Async tracking, Management API, and Export API. Not only that, but our general Help Forum is great for issues with general tracking topics. Since we have so many different groups, we created a new groups landing page to help you figure out which group will help you best.
Our Management API and Export API groups use the new Google Discussion Forum, which is embedded right in the page--a pretty nifty feature.
We hope that you find the new design makes it clearer and easier for you to find what you need for Analytics development. We’d love to hear your feedback, so please post any comments on one of our developer groups pages and let us know.
Patricia Boswell on behalf of the Analytics API team.
Aug
19
Posted | August 19, 2010
Most every business, including Google's, starts small. These days, technology is giving businesses even more ways to grow bigger, faster.
In a recent series on the Official Google Blog focused on small businesses, a handful of real-life entrepreneurs shared their experiences building companies from scratch and embracing internet tools that have taken their businesses to the next level. The team received fantastic feedback about these posts, and realized that there’s a healthy appetite among small- and medium-sized business owners who want to know all about the latest web tools and tricks. And obviously, Google Analytics is one of the best, in our humble opinion. :-)
That’s why we’re giving an introductory shout out to the new Google Small Business Blog here on our blog. It's a central hub that brings together all the information about Google products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community. Rather than having to sleuth around in many different locations for details about templates for creating video ads on YouTube, tips for your employees using Gmail or how to respond to the business reviews on your Place Page, you can find all of this helpful information right here in one place. And we'll be contributing content on Google Analytics there as well.
They already have a few great posts, with more to come, and we're confident their audience will continue to grow, much like a small successful business.
In a recent series on the Official Google Blog focused on small businesses, a handful of real-life entrepreneurs shared their experiences building companies from scratch and embracing internet tools that have taken their businesses to the next level. The team received fantastic feedback about these posts, and realized that there’s a healthy appetite among small- and medium-sized business owners who want to know all about the latest web tools and tricks. And obviously, Google Analytics is one of the best, in our humble opinion. :-)
That’s why we’re giving an introductory shout out to the new Google Small Business Blog here on our blog. It's a central hub that brings together all the information about Google products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community. Rather than having to sleuth around in many different locations for details about templates for creating video ads on YouTube, tips for your employees using Gmail or how to respond to the business reviews on your Place Page, you can find all of this helpful information right here in one place. And we'll be contributing content on Google Analytics there as well.
They already have a few great posts, with more to come, and we're confident their audience will continue to grow, much like a small successful business.
Aug
18
Posted | August 18, 2010
Many developers have asked for a faster, more powerful way to access Google Analytics account configuration data through the Data Export API. We’ve listened and today we’re releasing a preview of the new Google Analytics Management API.
The Management API provides read-only access to Google Analytics configuration data. It consists of 5 new Google Data Feeds that map directly to the Google Analytics data model.
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Previously, the API returned all the configuration data at once, which in many cases was inefficient if you only needed a subset of data. Now with separate feeds, developers can request only the data they need. For example, it’s now easy to get the Profile IDs for a single account or the Goal configuration data for only a single Profile.
To help you learn more we created a new Management API section in our developer documentation. We also created new reference examples in Java and have a live working demo in JavaScript. Check it out, no coding needed!
The Management API is being launched in Labs as an early preview. The API will change, grow, and get better over time. We recommend developers who aren’t committed to making updates to their applications only experiment with the new API and continue to use the Account Feed as their primary source for configuration data. We will strive to give you at least one month advanced notice of changes to this API.
The Management API represents a significant new piece of the Google Analytics developer platform. We encourage you to come try it out and give us feedback in our new Management API Google Group.
Thanks!
Jeetendra M. Soneja, on behalf of the Google Analytics API team
P.S. - Please make sure to sign-up for our notify list to stay up-to-date on all the latest Google Analytics Developer updates.
Aug
13
Posted | August 13, 2010
Hopefully, by now, you’re making good use of the Intelligence report in Google Analytics. If you’re looking to avoid the feeling that Google Analytics is “puking” too much data at you - a phrase coined by Google’s beloved analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik - you're not alone. We've heard you, and Intelligence is your first stop. As we mentioned in a previous post introducing Intelligence, it’s your dedicated assistant, monitoring your website traffic for significant changes that you should know of. Wondering what’s going on under the hood of your site traffic? Intelligence will tell you.
And it’s improving and getting smarter. Here are two improvements we’re announcing today.
New! AdWords Alerts
If you have linked your Google Analytics account with an AdWords account, Intelligence will now automatically surface important changes in your AdWords campaigns performance right in Google Analytics. So, in addition to the alerts you are used to getting, such as time on site and revenue, you’ll now receive alerts about your AdWords campaigns and the traffic they are bringing to your website.
You might already be familiar with custom alerts in Google AdWords, which alert you when important changes you specify happen in your account. With AdWords alerts in Analytics Intelligence, you benefit from automatic detection of significant changes, with no extra work for you to configure these yourself. For example, you might see an alert if the CTR for one of your campaigns increased unexpectedly. Or you might find that revenue from one of your destination URLs has dropped significantly from the week before. In both cases, you didn’t need to know ahead of time what to look for. These important changes are automatically detected and brought to your attention.
Here's how to use them. AdWords alerts in Analytics Intelligence work just like automatic alerts have in the past. You can learn more about how to use Analytics Intelligence here: http://www.google.com/analytics/analytics-intelligence.html.
In order to use AdWords alerts in Analytics Intelligence, you need to have a linked AdWords account. Additionally, you need to have destination URL auto-tagging turned on. If you already use the AdWords reports in Analytics, you’re all set.
1. Sign into your Analytics account
2. Select Intelligence from the left-hand navigation
3. Choose daily (default), weekly, or monthly alerts
Directly underneath the graph, you’ll see check boxes for Custom Alerts, Web Analytics, and AdWords, which is next to the orange arrow in image above.
If you want to focus solely on your AdWords alerts, you can uncheck Custom Alerts and Web Analytics. Then, you can adjust the sensitivity slider to see just the most significant alerts or create an advanced segment to more closely investigate the change.
New #2! More options in Custom Alerts
It always easy to create a custom alert if there is a metric you’d like Intelligence to specifically monitor. See the orange arrow again, below:
You name the alert, apply it to a profile, designate a time period, and then set conditions for the visitor (such as City matches New York, or Campaign matches Fall Sale), and the metric (such as time on site greater than 5 minutes, or % of new visits is greater than 30%).
And now, we’ve added a ton more options in the Alert Conditions drop downs, including all of the 20 goals you have configured in each profile. They’ve also been dressed up for a night on the town, wearing their actual goal names such as “Goal8 Value: Visited >10 pages.” Only goals that you have configured will show up in the list, keeping the drop-down menu clean and courteous.
Among the other conditions and metrics now available: e-commerce and AdWords metrics, as well as more traffic sources, and more content page metrics. And remember, you can tell Intelligence to email you when an alert is triggered.
Intelligence is getting smarter and smarter, making you more effective. Try it out if you haven’t already.
Aug
11
Posted | August 11, 2010
Let’s say you’re only interested in keywords that brought in visitors who spent at least 2 minutes on your site.
When you enter the condition for Avg Time on Site, you’ll need to use seconds. So, here, we’ve entered 120 seconds (=2 minutes).
Or, perhaps you only want the keywords with a bounce rate of less than 30%. (Make sure you use .3 for 30%. So, for example, .05 is 5%, .25 is 25%, and 1 is 100%.)
You can even enter multiple conditions. In this case, we want to weed out all the low traffic keywords as well.
Advanced Filters are a great way to focus on your most important keywords. To see this example in action, watch this short video.
Aug
10
Posted | August 10, 2010
Yay! It’s another episode of Web Analytics TV!
In this exciting series, with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski, you ask, and vote on your favorite, web analytics questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them.
This episode was particularly awesome since there were some fantastic questions. Tough questions that made us think hard. But also questions that made us proud of how sophisticated Google Analytics users are.
In this action packed episode we discuss:
- Google Website Optimizer and the ga.js async tracking code issue
- What is considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII)?
- Teaching Google Analytics the location of your local __utm.gif image
- Implementing ecommerce tracking with multiple currencies
- Goal names in Google Analytics
- Similarities and differences between Visitors and Unique Visitors metrics
- Lovely opportunities for developers to build products using our API
- Reasons why utm_content values show up as (not set)
- Best practices for applying segments to specific pages (cool answer!)
- Implementing ecommerce tracking if you don’t have an order id
- Using advanced filters in the connection speed report
- Why the value “other” shows up in your reports
- Tracking how a visitor finds a site the first time for attribution
- Correlating business data with Google Analytics data
Here are the links to the topics we discuss:
- Setting the __utm.gif path using _setLocalGifPath
- How Mikael T. built a business using the Google Analytics API
- Troubleshooting the tracking code
As always, if you need help setting up Google Analytics or leveraging the advanced configuration options, we recommend hiring a Google Analytics Certified Partners.
If you found this post or video helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Please share them via the comment form below.
If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question and vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.
Aug
09
Posted | August 09, 2010
Say your website has a check out lead generation process and you want to understand funnel abandonment by new vs. return visitors. You can do this through the Web Interface using many segments, filters and exporting data. But who has time for that?
Enter the free, shiny, new Conversion Tracking Application from PadiTrack. Built on the Google Analytics API, it’s all about insights and action. You simply register with the site, use secure oAuth to access your data, and you’re off, creating useful funnels like this - notice the black box with “415 new” denoting the number of new visitors in the funnel:
According to Claudiu, CoFounder of PadiCode, the company that built PadiTrack, "We wanted to make accessible conversion funnel tracking, one of the most important analytics reports, to any web business out there. It has always amazed us how many websites don't have conversion funnel tracking defined in their web analytics accounts. We were challenged by that reality. Since we've built PadiTrack, we've been using it daily for all of our projects. We love it. It saves time, offers instant insight and helps us focus on what really matters for us: how many people convert."
With PadiTrack you can almost instantly visualize the conversion funnel for any major event. It works for sales, sign-ups, downloads, contact inquiries and anything else you can think of. The setup takes 3 or 4 minutes, conversion funnels can be created on the fly and and you don't need to wait to gather data: it is available retroactively. The product is available to all Google Analytics users and to them only.
“We played with a couple of web analytics APIs so far but the Google Analytics one has been the most powerful. It gave us the power to work with data and pull out reports that we couldn't get otherwise. We spent much more time building the interface than getting the reports out of the Google Analytics. The API is really easy,” says Claudiu.
We’re really excited about what the PadiCode team has built and are featuring it in our App Gallery. Have a look and let the PadiCode team know what you think.
Aug
04
Posted | August 04, 2010
Starting today, we’re reinstating the Back To Basics series. Each Wednesday, we’ll share a Google Analytics tip, usually something that you can try right away with your own data to gain new insights. This week, we’ll illustrate a quick way to see how many visits you get from different keyword/landing page combinations.
A friend of mine recently created several new landing pages that she hoped would attract traffic. She wanted to see at a glance whether people who searched on her top keywords were seeing the new pages. While she knew that she could use the Top Landing Pages report to analyze each individual landing page, she wanted to see keyword/landing page combinations in a single report.
There’s an easy way to do this. Go to the Keywords report under Traffic Sources. Look over to the right above the table and you’ll see Views: followed by a set of buttons. Click the Pivot view (5th button from the left). Now, look to the left, above the table, and you’ll see a Pivot by dropdown menu. Select Landing Page from this menu.
Voilà! The keywords will be listed down the side and landing pages will be listed across the top. You can now see how many visits you received for each keyword/landing page combination.
You can see up to five landing pages listed across the top of the report. You can scroll horizontally (across the landing pages) using the arrow buttons at the top right of the table.
The pivot view is also really useful for seeing at a glance how many visits you get from each keyword and search engine combination. To do this, you’d use the same Keywords report and pivot by Source.
That’s this week’s tip. We’ll be back next Wednesday for another Back to Basics post.
Jul
24
Posted | July 24, 2010
Google Analytics workshops and seminars are happening everywhere this summer! If you've had excuses in the past, there's now no excuse not to take a day of training to become an expert and get a leg up. Chances are there's one happening near you when you're available -- just take a look at the Google Analytics seminars offered on the Seminars For Success portal. These are one day seminars, either beginner or advanced, where you'll ramp up into a high proficiency or fine tune your knowledge with fantastic instructors. Over the next 3 months, they are happening in:
- Berkeley, CA
- Austin, TX
- Washington, DC
- Los Angeles, CA
- San Diego, CA
- Boston, MA
- Dallas, TX
And internationally, you can attend seminars in Glasgow, Manchester, London, Melbourne or Sydney. They're inexpensive, and you'll get a lot of bang for your buck, including hands on instruction, an AdWords credit, educational materials and some more good stuff. Take a look and register!
And then, after the Summer ends, there will be more opportunities to learn about Google Analytics, and here's one we want to highlight. The SMX East conference is a fantastic place to bone up on the latest in the world of SEM, SEO, social media marketing, analytics and more. In partnership with SMX East, Feras Alhlou, Principal Marketing Consultant @ E-Nor (a Google Analytics Certified Partner) will be conducting a full day workshop on Google Analytics at the conference. When registering at this page, you'll see a workshops option, including Google Analytics - that's the one you want.
Whether you are a marketer or a webmaster, this workshop will help you help give you more clarity and help you take the right action. I've attended Feras' workshops before, and they're insightful, practical, inspiring and helpful.
Here's the workshop agenda:
Morning Session – Marketer/Business Focus – Strategy & Planning
- Web Analytics Strategy – approach, opportunities and limitations
- How It Works – overview, accuracy and privacy implications, integrating with other data
- Practical – understanding the user interface
- Advanced Features Overview – clever stuff you can do with Google Analytics
- Accounts & Profiles, Filters & Goals – structure your data properly
- External Campaign Tracking – measure performance of search, email & banner campaigns
- Reporting – dashboards & insights
- Advanced Segmentation & Custom Reports – powerful ways to find insights
Get your analytics expertise in shape and you'll be ahead of the curve in no time, building practical skills in a tool near and dear to our hearts.
Jul
16
Posted | July 16, 2010
A few months ago at the Google I/O conference, we were approached by Zach Steindler, a co-founder at Olark (a way to gain customer insight and sale better through live chat) who was raving about Google Analytics Annotations. He had such a great business case, we decided to let him rave here. Enjoy, and thanks Zach.
Making good business decisions is hard, and making the right one is even harder. At Google I/O I realized many people use Google Analytics but they aren’t familiar with the recent annotations feature that has helped us make smarter business decisions.
When we look at our Google Analytics, we don’t really care if our numbers are up or down; what we really want to know is why. This means asking a lot of questions, particularly questions about what happened when, like:
“How long has that ad trial been running?”
“When did we release that update to the website?”
“What happened after that last blog post?”
To answer these questions I might have to dig through e-mails, commit logs, and probably end up pestering my teammates for an hour while we try to figure out what happened when. But this is serious stuff; if our numbers went up 50% in a week, you better believe we want to know why so we can do more of it!
Annotations are exactly the tool we needed to answer these questions without having to pester teammates and dig through the past. If you don't know, basically, they allow you to add notes of what events happened on a particular day. These notes are then visible for the different views in Google Analytics, so you can see how the events impacted your page views, goals, or whatever else you are tracking.
Making good business decisions is hard, and making the right one is even harder. At Google I/O I realized many people use Google Analytics but they aren’t familiar with the recent annotations feature that has helped us make smarter business decisions.
When we look at our Google Analytics, we don’t really care if our numbers are up or down; what we really want to know is why. This means asking a lot of questions, particularly questions about what happened when, like:
“How long has that ad trial been running?”
“When did we release that update to the website?”
“What happened after that last blog post?”
To answer these questions I might have to dig through e-mails, commit logs, and probably end up pestering my teammates for an hour while we try to figure out what happened when. But this is serious stuff; if our numbers went up 50% in a week, you better believe we want to know why so we can do more of it!
Annotations are exactly the tool we needed to answer these questions without having to pester teammates and dig through the past. If you don't know, basically, they allow you to add notes of what events happened on a particular day. These notes are then visible for the different views in Google Analytics, so you can see how the events impacted your page views, goals, or whatever else you are tracking.
You can annotate whatever you want; we annotate things like external publicity, major updates to our site, blog posts, even service issues, to see how all these events are impacting our business.
We’re big believers in the power of open data; everyone on the team has access to Google Analytics and can contribute events they think are important. This has been incredibly useful for us. Now I can answer many why questions for myself, just by looking at the data other people have contributed. When I do need to interrupt the team, it’s because I have big-picture questions, not because I need them to help me track down dates. Also, you start to notice a rhythm of events, and if that rhythm changes, how it impacts your business. As a bonus, now we have this cool timeline of events the team thought was important, which is useful for retrospectives and end-of-period reports.
We’re far from being able to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge, but annotations have made it much easier to answer the why questions so we can make good business decisions.
We’re big believers in the power of open data; everyone on the team has access to Google Analytics and can contribute events they think are important. This has been incredibly useful for us. Now I can answer many why questions for myself, just by looking at the data other people have contributed. When I do need to interrupt the team, it’s because I have big-picture questions, not because I need them to help me track down dates. Also, you start to notice a rhythm of events, and if that rhythm changes, how it impacts your business. As a bonus, now we have this cool timeline of events the team thought was important, which is useful for retrospectives and end-of-period reports.
We’re far from being able to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge, but annotations have made it much easier to answer the why questions so we can make good business decisions.
Jul
15
Posted | July 15, 2010
Good news from the horse’s mouth. We don’t mean to call Matt Cutts a horse, but, well, if you know him, you know what we mean. Matt heads the webspam team here at Google and also speaks on behalf of Google answering questions about ranking and results on Google’s search engine. When people have questions about things Google-search-related, Matt is the one who answers.
He posts regular video blogs to the Google Webmaster Help channel answering your questions. So we were very pleased when he recently answered the question, “Will using Google Analytics have a negative effect on my ranking?” In short, the answer is no, especially now that we’ve launched the asynch tracking code. Take a look at the short video:
Thanks Matt!
He posts regular video blogs to the Google Webmaster Help channel answering your questions. So we were very pleased when he recently answered the question, “Will using Google Analytics have a negative effect on my ranking?” In short, the answer is no, especially now that we’ve launched the asynch tracking code
Thanks Matt!
Jul
13
Posted | July 13, 2010
This is a guest post from Tom Critchlow who is an excel ninja, data geek, analytics nerd and head of search for Distilled, a London & Seattle based search agency. Tom provides a cautionary tale on the importance of keeping your site up to date.
This blog post title may appear sensational but I assure you that it's not (much...). I recently spotted an issue with a client's e-commerce website which was costing them £100,000 / month in revenue (~$150,000). The fix took 5 minutes. Even more surprisingly, since I've been on the lookout for this issue I've spotted it on quite a significant number of websites. Hence why I got in touch with the Google guys and asked if I could talk about this in front of as many people as possible to try and spread awareness!
1) Graph of Win
Firstly, let's take a quick look at a pretty graph. This is comparing revenue month on month before and after the fix was made:
Note the increased revenue! :-) Everyone loves increased revenue. For those with beady eyes you will have spotted that this isn't total revenue on the site but it's just IE8 users. What's going on here?
2) The Issue
Before I delve into the issue, let me first give you a little background. When you enter private information online, such as your credit card details, you want to be sure that you're transmitting the information over a secure connection. You can usually tell you're on a secure connection to a website if the page URL begins with https:// instead of http://
Making webpages secure, however, is more resource intensive and so most websites only make their most important pages secure (though Gmail now always uses https:// by default). This means that when you browse a website, for example http://www.amazon.com you will browse around product pages which are all located on http:// URLs. When you want to actually purchase something from the site however you transition over to secure URLs such as https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cart/view.html
This is standard practice for e-commerce websites and when you move through the buying funnel you should inevitably transition at some point from a non-secure page (http://) to a secure page (https://).
Now, the issue I'm talking about in this post is with the client's site. The site uses Google Analytics however unfortunately they were using the old version of the code and were using the same piece of code across all pages of their site. The code they were using looked a little like this:
Unfortunately, this means that their secure checkout pages such as https://www.example.com/checkout/payment contained non-secure elements - namely the URL call to "http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js". Browsers like Chrome and Firefox don't display a warning but Internet Explorer 8 produced the following security warning when users transitioned from the non-secure (http://) pages to the secure (https://) pages. This error looks like this:
Pretty scary huh! Unsurprisingly this was causing almost all users browsing in Internet Explorer 8 to abandon the shopping process. Since Internet Explorer 8 is one of the most popular browsers on the web this was a huge amount of revenue they were missing out on!
3) How To Fix It
This issue arose because of a non-secure HTTP call within a very old version of the Google Analytics tracking code. The fix for this is very simple - just install the new code! The new code is more versatile than the old code and works both on http:// pages and https:// pages so you don't need to worry about using a different code on secure and non-secure pages. The new code looks a little like this:
There's a complete run-through here on using this new code here and specific migration advice.
And that's it! It's a simple fix but one that can have significant impact on your bottom line. I repeat what I said at the top of the post - I've seen plenty of sites that suffer from this issue so it's really not as rare as you might think!
I should point out here that the Google Analytics code has been able to handle HTTPS and HTTP pages properly since well before the asynchronous code was released, but plenty of sites are still using very old legacy code, which is why this is still an issue for some sites. Also, it's not just the Google Analytics code which can cause problems! Any non-secure elements on a page can cause a security warning so double check your code carefully.
4) How to Diagnose This Issue (simple)
If you're wondering if your site suffers from this problem there's a quite easy way of checking by looking at your conversion rate segmented by browser:
Setting up these custom segments is really easy, but to make it even easier I've set them up for you and all you need to do is click these links to add both these segments directly into your Google Analytics account:
Then browse to your conversion rate report and select the segments from your custom segments:
5) How to Diagnose This Issue (advanced)
Of course, the issue I'm talking about in this post is only a specific issue and plenty of other issues may well exist like it. The underlying principle is that segmenting your funnel is a useful thing to do so that you can see if a specific visitor type are not converting or there is a specific drop-off point for them. Unfortunately there isn't a way of segmenting your funnel within Google Analytics at the moment but there are a few advanced ways of getting around this. For example:
- ROI Revolution have a method for segmenting on the fly. Unfortunately this method doesn't let you check custom date ranges.
- LunaMetrics have a way of segmenting the funnel using goals. Unfortunately this method won't let you capture historical data.
- Analytics Ninja has a way of segmenting using advanced segments. Unfortunately this method only let's you track up to a maximum of 3 funnel steps at a time.
None of these methods quite does what I want it to so I'm presenting a 4th option here:
Step 1 - Identify your funnel steps
This is fairly straightforward, all you need to do is understand what the URLs look like for your funnel. For example, let's say our funnel looks like this:
- http://www.example.com/cart/availability
- http://www.example.com/cart/details
- http://www.example.com/cart/extras/
- http://www.example.com/book/check/
- https://www.example.com/book/payment/
- https://www.example.com/book/confirm/
Step 2 - Create some regex
This is getting slightly more complex, however, assuming that all your URLs are exact match (rather than head match or something more complicated) the regex to create is this:
^/cart/availability$|^/cart/details$|^/cart/extras/$|^/book/check/$|^/book/payment/$|^/book/confirm/$
Where we generate this string as follows:
- ^/url1/$ - this matches the exact URL contained between ^ and $
- | - separate each URL with a pipe, this OR matches any of the statements in the string
For a more complete (and very pretty) guide to using regex in Google Analytics download this PDF.
Step 3 - Enter this regex in the top content report
In the top content report copy and paste this regex into the filter box:
This will then filter the top content report to only show you visits to one of the above pages in your funnel. Now we can see the drop off between steps like we can in the regular funnel.
Step 4 - Add custom segments & export to Excel
Now, we add whichever custom segments we want (for example IE8 users like above). This gives us each step of the funnel and the visits to each step broken down by segments:
Unfortunately this data is a little bit difficult to analyse as it doesn't give us the drop off percentage. So, to make this data easier to process and analyse export it to Excel. This will allow us to create a nice little table like this (very minimal excel magic required!):
This is an improvement over the simple diagnosis above because it not only shows us that IE8 users are not converting as well as users from other browsers, but it even tells us the exact step where it's a problem (the cell highlighted in red in the image). Looking back at the URLs we've identified we see that this drop off percentage is the same step where a user transitions from HTTP to HTTPS.
Note: The super-observant among you may have noticed that there is a potential discrepancy here. The warning message that IE8 throws up allows the user to select the option to only view secure elements on the HTTPS page. If the user selects this option then theoretically the user could still carry on through the site and complete the purchase. This visit and the revenue from this purchase wouldn't be tracked in Google Analytics since the HTTP Google Analytics call is blocked by the browser. So the extra £100,000 / month could in theory only be a reported increase in revenue. In reality however we found that the true bottom line still increased by over £30,000 per month as a result of this change. This implies that displaying the pop-up still has a drastic effect on conversion rates.
6) Conclusion
So what have we learned? The key lessons here are as follows:
- Keep your GA code up to date
- Use advanced segments to monitor conversion rate between browsers
- Always perform browser testing to ensure your website functions for all browsers
Remember, the HTTP/HTTPS issue applies equally to all URL calls so even if you use the up-to-date Google Analytics tracking code some other non-secure element on the page might be costing you revenue so always make sure that your website is functioning perfectly across all browsers. If you don't, you might end up losing £360,000 ($500,000) a year or more!
Thanks Tom for a thorough look at how to avoid this problem. And to echo Tom's advice, we encourage everyone to move to the newest version of the GA tracking code. You can follow more analytics insights and online marketing tips at the Distilled Blog or follow Tom on Twitter.
Jul
12
Posted | July 12, 2010
Last week, we shared a video on how to get the most out of your automatic alerts. Now that you’re familiar with automatic alerts, you know that Google Analytics has an intelligence engine that monitors your traffic and posts alerts when it sees something unusual. Now we want to tell you about "custom alerts." With custom alerts, you can add on to this capability and tell Google Analytics to also watch out for specific things that you know you’re interested in.
Custom alerts can be used in so many ways that it’s sometimes hard to know where and when to incorporate them into your workflow. This week’s video, also below, shows how to use custom alerts as a campaign management tool. The idea is that, when you set up a new campaign, you set up alerts that help you manage the campaign -- for example, alerts that trigger when revenue from the campaign increases or decreases.
Custom alerts can be used in so many ways that it’s sometimes hard to know where and when to incorporate them into your workflow. This week’s video, also below, shows how to use custom alerts as a campaign management tool. The idea is that, when you set up a new campaign, you set up alerts that help you manage the campaign -- for example, alerts that trigger when revenue from the campaign increases or decreases.
Campaign management is just one of the ways you can use custom alerts. We’d love to hear how you’re using them. Feel free to share your own tips in the comments.
Jul
10
Posted | July 10, 2010
When was the last time you checked the bounce rate for visits from Hong Kong? You may never have needed to, until an “alert” in your Intelligence reports tells you that the bounce rate from Hong Kong has suddenly doubled.
An automatic alert in Intelligence is triggered when the expected performance of a metric, historically, differs from what is happening now. Intelligence monitors the past and current activity of all your metrics and lets you know when something out of the ordinary happens. One reason why these automatic alerts can provide so much insight is that they often bring your attention to traffic segments you might never have thought to examine before.
Now that the alert has caught your attention, you're ready to dive in and learn more. In this 3 1/2 minute video on automatic alerts, also below, you'll learn how. Did you know that you can graph the bounce rate from Hong Kong with a single click? Or that you can quickly create an advanced segment from the alert and start using it throughout your reports? You'll learn these tips and others, including how to use annotations with automatic alerts, and when to use daily, weekly, or monthly alerts.
Enjoy the video and feel free to share your own automatic alerts tips in the comments. Next week, we'll look at custom alerts.
An automatic alert in Intelligence is triggered when the expected performance of a metric, historically, differs from what is happening now. Intelligence monitors the past and current activity of all your metrics and lets you know when something out of the ordinary happens. One reason why these automatic alerts can provide so much insight is that they often bring your attention to traffic segments you might never have thought to examine before.
Now that the alert has caught your attention, you're ready to dive in and learn more. In this 3 1/2 minute video on automatic alerts, also below, you'll learn how. Did you know that you can graph the bounce rate from Hong Kong with a single click? Or that you can quickly create an advanced segment from the alert and start using it throughout your reports? You'll learn these tips and others, including how to use annotations with automatic alerts, and when to use daily, weekly, or monthly alerts.
Enjoy the video and feel free to share your own automatic alerts tips in the comments. Next week, we'll look at custom alerts.
Jul
03
Posted | July 03, 2010
Late last week, we made a change that caused some visits and campaign data to be processed incorrectly. All data was properly collected, but your reports may currently be missing some visits and campaigns information for the dates June 24th through June 29th. We are reprocessing this data and expect to have all report data corrected by early in the week of July 12th.
The impact of the incorrect processing will vary by site. Sites that receive a large number of new visitors and new campaigns have been most affected. Again, we are reprocessing, and all reports will soon be corrected. We will update the blog once reprocessing has completed and data in all accounts is correct.
We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and are taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Jun
30
Posted | June 30, 2010
It’s the 10th Anniversary of Web Analytics TV! Happy Birthday to us!
In this exciting series, with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski, you ask and vote on your favorite web analytics questions via our Google Moderator site for Web Analytics TV and we answer them.
Here is the list of last week’s questions.
In this exciting series, with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski, you ask and vote on your favorite web analytics questions via our Google Moderator site for Web Analytics TV and we answer them.
Here is the list of last week’s questions.
In this action packed episode we discuss:
- Tracking un-subscriptions with negative values
- Best practices tracking social media
- Sources of keywords outside of Paid Search to help site optimization
- Custom reports sorted by date
- Tracking form validation with Google Analytics
- Why Exit Rate is 0% in the Google Analytics navigation summary report
- Tips to avoid sampling on landing pages
- Configuring Google Analytics to track test and production environments
- Comparing Google Analytics and Webmaster tools
- Best practices for tracking PDF downloads
- Getting the full referring URL in Google Analytics
- Sharing custom reports with advanced segments
- Best way to find keywords from mobile traffic
- Tracking dimensions over time in Google Analytics
- Tracking the impact of interactive TV
Here are the links to the topics we discuss:
- Best practices for creating custom alerts
- 4Q/Google Analytics survey integration
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Google Analytics Event Tracking Overview
- Obtaining the full referral url in Google Analytics
- Taking screenshots in OS X and Windows
- Migrating to Async Tracking
- Tracking Online impact of Offline campaigns
If you found this post helpful, we'd love to hear your comments, please share them via the comment form below.
If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question and vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.
Thanks!
Posted By Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team
Jun
29
Posted | June 29, 2010
If you're a business owner of any size, you've at some point considered expanding. And as the web makes the world smaller, one way to expand is to offer your website in different languages and take your business across borders or to different segments. By entering other markets with your website, you can gauge new markets and find ways to grow and generate revenue.
Getting set up to offer your products and services in a different country can have a number of steps including localization and legal processes. Another thing to keep in mind is how you will set up your web analytics for the different languages and countries your site now serves.
We're highlighting a series of posts on the topic, called "Google Analytics reporting for multilingual e-commerce stores" by Gavin Doolan, a Googler based in Dublin specializing on Google Analytics for Europe. The posts are all from our Analytics blog in Europe, the Conversion Room. This is obviously a topic very close to the European businessperson's heart.
We're highlighting a series of posts on the topic, called "Google Analytics reporting for multilingual e-commerce stores" by Gavin Doolan, a Googler based in Dublin specializing on Google Analytics for Europe. The posts are all from our Analytics blog in Europe, the Conversion Room. This is obviously a topic very close to the European businessperson's heart.
The great thing about the posts is that Gavin presents solutions for different structures of sites, since not everyone is doing the same thing when they sell products internationally or in different languages.
Jun
25
Posted | June 25, 2010
Jun
17
Posted | June 17, 2010
A few years ago, Brian Clifton was working at Google in London, leading our team in Europe. Since then, he's left to focus on growing his own Google Analytics Certified Partner called GA Experts From Omega Digital Media and written a fantastic book called Advanced Web Metrics With Google Analytics, which has just released a new edition. According to Brian, here's what's changed in the new edition:
"Since the first edition was published in 2008, a lot has changed - both for Google Analytics and the web as a whole. Remember two years ago hardly anyone had heard of Twitter. In that time Google Analytics has integrated with AdSense and Feedburner, launched event tracking, advanced segments, Intelligence alerts, motion charts, custom reporting, custom variables and the data export API. The new edition covers using all of these in detail from a practitioners point of view and with as many real-world examples as I could muster."It's very well written and readable with screenshots - a great resource for all things Google Analytics. Ways to get the book:
- Order from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or direct from Wiley the publisher, or buy the PDF ebook
Jun
16
Posted | June 16, 2010
We’re excited to hear from users that are able to attribute some incredible growth to Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer, and many of the other tools we offer. Today, we’re taking a quick look at Twiddy & Company, which uses Google Analytics on a daily basis to optimize their website. They are one of our best examples of using marketing tools from Google to generate skyrocket growth. If you run a business, we think you'll enjoy this story and be inspired - it's like a blueprint for using Google Analytics for a successful SMB that relies on their website. Make sure you read to the metaphor they use around bounce rate - we love it!
Also, Twiddy & Company was also recently featured in a CNN Small Business Article, where they shared their success in using Kampyle, which uses the Google Analytics API to analyze web analytics and user feedback.
Meet Doug Twiddy
Doug Twiddy started selling real estate in 1978 in the sleepy village of Duck, North Carolina. After selling a few oceanfront lots, the owners built a few homes and asked the question “can you rent out my home when I’m not using it?” Today, Twiddy & Company manages 860 vacation rental homes on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. These homes range from a 23 bedroom oceanfront on 20 acres to a 3 bedroom soundfront.
Doug Twiddy started selling real estate in 1978 in the sleepy village of Duck, North Carolina. After selling a few oceanfront lots, the owners built a few homes and asked the question “can you rent out my home when I’m not using it?” Today, Twiddy & Company manages 860 vacation rental homes on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. These homes range from a 23 bedroom oceanfront on 20 acres to a 3 bedroom soundfront.
We sat and talked with Doug at length, and here's what's important to him, in his own words.
Favorite Reports
“Before Google Analytics, we only knew half of the working equation. Now that e-commerce tracking is installed, we can see the complete formula and it illuminates the true end result. Before we were following indicative numbers, now we can follow the most fundamental and necessary ingredient in all of business. Top Content is also especially useful at highlighting the exact exposure an individual home receives. This feature has created an all out addiction for home owners. Now their first question in relation to their performance is how many visitors their individual home has received.
Bounce rate is also a must-have for us. It’s the online equivalent of the human senses. We know a higher bounce rate means that something on that page doesn’t smell, look, or taste good.”
We congratulate Twiddy & Company on their success. If you find yourself in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, be sure to stop by their offices and say hello.
Favorite Reports
“Before Google Analytics, we only knew half of the working equation. Now that e-commerce tracking is installed, we can see the complete formula and it illuminates the true end result. Before we were following indicative numbers, now we can follow the most fundamental and necessary ingredient in all of business. Top Content is also especially useful at highlighting the exact exposure an individual home receives. This feature has created an all out addiction for home owners. Now their first question in relation to their performance is how many visitors their individual home has received.
Bounce rate is also a must-have for us. It’s the online equivalent of the human senses. We know a higher bounce rate means that something on that page doesn’t smell, look, or taste good.”
How Analytics has changed their approach in analyzing the website
“Google Analytics is our compass in terms of allocating our resources. It allows an evolution of marketing. The more successful ideas draw more time and capital. Even the non productive ideas yield educational lessons. In many instances, we learn more from a quick failure than a slow success.”
How they tested changes on the website
“We’ve recently started testing with Google Website Optimizer. How did we ever survive without this? Our old testing setup was an elementary A/B test but Google Website Optimizer engaged the hyper drive. David Booth at Webshare helped us get started and the results quickly produced the laughter of humility. The variables are now part of our secret sauce. Not only did it make it easier, it made it more successful in an exponential fashion.”
How Google Analytics has changed their company
“Google Analytics gives Twiddy the tools to outperform the market; the metrics for successful marketing. One of the unforeseen benefits includes the hospitality of the phone calls. By examining what the visitors are looking for online, Twiddy is able to produce more relevant content online that decreases the redundancy of questions for the reservationists. The reservationists now can focus on the more personal side of the vacation experience and guests can fulfill their desire to research the choices and arrive at a very intelligent decision.
Google Analytics has had a very tangible impact on the success of the company. It’s become ingrained into the daily routine and crucial to the marketing strategy. General Patton had the 3rd Army, Twiddy & Company has Google Analytics.”
“Google Analytics is our compass in terms of allocating our resources. It allows an evolution of marketing. The more successful ideas draw more time and capital. Even the non productive ideas yield educational lessons. In many instances, we learn more from a quick failure than a slow success.”
How they tested changes on the website
“We’ve recently started testing with Google Website Optimizer. How did we ever survive without this? Our old testing setup was an elementary A/B test but Google Website Optimizer engaged the hyper drive. David Booth at Webshare helped us get started and the results quickly produced the laughter of humility. The variables are now part of our secret sauce. Not only did it make it easier, it made it more successful in an exponential fashion.”
How Google Analytics has changed their company
“Google Analytics gives Twiddy the tools to outperform the market; the metrics for successful marketing. One of the unforeseen benefits includes the hospitality of the phone calls. By examining what the visitors are looking for online, Twiddy is able to produce more relevant content online that decreases the redundancy of questions for the reservationists. The reservationists now can focus on the more personal side of the vacation experience and guests can fulfill their desire to research the choices and arrive at a very intelligent decision.
Google Analytics has had a very tangible impact on the success of the company. It’s become ingrained into the daily routine and crucial to the marketing strategy. General Patton had the 3rd Army, Twiddy & Company has Google Analytics.”
We congratulate Twiddy & Company on their success. If you find yourself in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, be sure to stop by their offices and say hello.