Author Archive

Well, SES San Jose 2006 is over, and we had a great time meeting all
of you who stopped by the Google Analytics booth and attended the Google
Dance. Yesterday, there was a panel called "Vendor Chat On
Measuring Success" which included our own Brett Crosby, Senior
Product Marketing Manager for Google Analytics and co-founder of
Urchin. Each of the vendors on the panel were asked to discuss the
various approaches to measuring a website's success -- from
conversions to ROI, from customer inclusion to the idea of
"persuasion" in a discussion of marketing success.

Before the Q & A period, each panelist had five minutes to identify
the most important issue in web analytics. According to Brett, "The
most important thing about web analytics is something our product
doesn't do. And none of the other products do it either."

What is that crucial thing? It's analyzing and then taking action on
your web analytics data. Knowing how to do that makes all the
difference. To properly monitor and analyze your data, Brett suggested
doing one of three things (or some combination of them): analyze
and act on the data yourself; hire a professional services firm; or
hire an in-house analyst.

Regardless of which you choose, you have incredible flexibility with
Google Analytics. If you hire an in-house analyst or if you analyze
the data yourself, you've got many resources including this blog, the
Conversion University, the Help Center, built-in product Help,
and the Google Group. For those who want to hire a professional
services firm, we've got a world class international network of Google
Analytics Authorized Consultants.

We really enjoyed meeting you and look forward to connecting with
even more people using Analytics in the future. Please let us know if
there's anything else you'd like to see from support or marketing or
even from this blog by shooting us an email.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics

I'm happy to tell you that we've just removed the wait to receive a Google Analytics account. Now anyone with a website can instantly create one for free by simply by visiting google.com/analytics or by clicking on the "Analytics" tab within AdWords. After you create an account, we suggest reading the Installation Guide to get it set up quickly and correctly.

When we founded Urchin we actually had an ad-based business model where we were able to give the product away for free. It didn't last and we eventually went with a paid model. But when our company was acquired in April 2005 we worked with Google to determine a way to give it away for free again, this time with no ads. By doing this, we're able to give all websites -- large and small -- the tools you need to better serve your customers, make more money, and improve the web experience for everyone.

Regardless of how you use Google Analytics, what's important to me is that you're using it at all. In other words, the more you take action based on web analytics data, the better the Internet becomes. That's the underlying philosophy our team shares.

Finally, this represents a very large effort by our engineers and many others at Google, so I'd like to thank them publicly.

On behalf of everyone on our team, thank you for your ongoing commitment, enthusiasm and hard work.

Posted by Brett Crosby, Sr. Manager, Google Analytics

You've signed up for Google Analytics. And, you have an AdWords account. So why not link your AdWords account to your new Google Analytics account to get the most out of both services? If you already use AdWords to drive traffic, Google Analytics is the perfect instrument panel. ROI, Revenue per Click, and conversion rates correlated by search result position -- all right in front of you. Plus there are a few reports that have been created specifically for AdWords users: the AdWords Analysis report and the AdWords Keyword Positions report.

When you link your accounts, everything is done for you: Analytics will automatically tag your AdWords links so you can see detailed campaign tracking data, and Analytics will begin importing cost data from your AdWords campaigns for ROI calculations. By simply linking the two accounts, you'll be able to easily identify which campaigns and keywords are working and which aren't.

Here's how you do it. First, make sure that you have used the same Google Account for both your Analytics and AdWords accounts. If not, don't worry - just add your AdWords username to your Analytics account as an Account Admin.

Then just follow these 5 steps:
1. Log in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com
2. Click the Analytics tab
3. In the "Steps to get Google Analytics" box, click "I already have a Google Analytics account" (at the bottom of the page)
4. From the Existing Google Analytics Account drop-down list, select your Analytics account number
5. Click "Link Account"

That's it! Your two accounts are now linked. If you want to learn more about using AdWords with Google Analytics, you might find this article from Conversion University helpful: Optimizing your AdWords ROI with Google Analytics.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Many people use Google Analytics to improve their online marketing campaigns and keyword buying, but Google Analytics also offers powerful ways to identify visitor navigation trends on your site. Without the right data, optimizing a website is no easy feat. For beginners to the web analytics world, though, all the data provided around content optimization can be a bit daunting -- so here are four steps to help you optimize your site using the data available in Google Analytics:

1. Create a funnel path and goal that mimics the expected navigation
You designed your site, so you know how you expect your users to navigate through it. Create a funnel and goal that mimics the expected path that your site is designed for. Note: if your site is not using the e-commerce tracking code, give your goal a value and take a look at this post about setting goals on a non-e-commerce site.

2. Give it a few days
Give your site a little while to perform, and let Analytics collect at least 3 or 4 weeks of data. Weekends, special events, and holidays may lead to skewed results so giving your site some time to perform enables you to get more reliable, indicative metrics.

3. Pull up a few key reports and re-evaluate your funnels
Open up your Analytics account and visit Content Optimization > Content Performance > Top Content report. Sort the list of pages by the $ Index column. The $ Index value tells you how much each page on your site is worth (as opposed to how much each site visit is worth. The $ Index is based on how often a transaction is completed or goal is reached when a specific page is also accessed during a visit. The $ Index will give a value to that page calculated based on the value of the goal reached.

Use this metric to evaluate the pages in the report. Remember, this column won't be populated with data unless you have a goal, and that goal has a value (see step #1). When you sort by $ Index, ask yourself what are the pages at the top of that column? Are they in your funnel process? If not, why are they worth more than pages in your funnel? Also, review the exit paths in Content Optimization > Goals & Funnel Process > Defined Funnel Navigation. Where are these visitors going? Do these pages have a high $ Index value? If so, you may want to reconsider the navigation path that you've set up, or maybe there are some design flaws that are making the certain pages difficult to navigate through.

4. Optimize that site!
Armed with this information, your next task is to make some changes. Burn the midnight oil and redesign your site. Then continue using Analytics to evaluate your site changes, because keeping visitors and turning them into customers -- or goal converters -- should always drive your site changes.

Posted by Alex Ortiz, Google Analytics Team

Besides telling you from which sources your site traffic originates, Google Analytics also tracks just about any activity that occurs on your site, including popular navigation paths, plus track downloads, outbound links, and activities on cross-domain properties. But one shortcoming is the lack of reporting on 404 pages, which appear when there's no file or page that corresponds to the visitor's request. For example, sometimes visitors will type in a filename that they think is available on your site, or sometimes your site might have a obsolete link which routes to a deleted or non-existent file or directory. In both cases, a 404 or "Not Found" error page will appear on the browser.

It's valuable to see these requests so you can learn what visitors are looking for, and consider adding new content or fixing the broken link.

Reporting on missing or error pages requires a few steps:
1. Add the Google Analytics tracking code to a custom 404 error page

2. Modify the tracking code on the 404 page as follows (see the urchinTracker modification in red below):

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "xxxxx-x";
urchinTracker("/404.html?page=" + _udl.pathname + _udl.search);
</script>

This code sends a virtual pageview of "/404.html?page=[pagename.html?queryparameter]" to your account, where [pagename.html?queryparameters] is the missing page name.

3. Look for /404.html in your Top Content report. Or to make it easier open the Dynamic Content report and expand the list for "/404.html."

Posted by Alex Ortiz, Google Analytics Team

One of the nice things about Google Analytics is how easy it is to see ROI for each of the keywords you buy on AdWords. But what do those ROI numbers in your reports really mean?

ROI is (Revenue - Cost)/Cost, expressed as a percentage.
-Revenue is taken from either the value you set as your goal value(s), or from e-commerce revenue values if you have set up e-commerce tracking.
-Cost is currently only derived from your AdWords CPC (cost-per-click) values imported from your AdWords account when you link your Analytics and AdWords accounts with auto-tagging turned on.

An ROI of 0% means that you earned in revenue the same amount of money you spent. An ROI of 100% means that you spent, say, $5, and made $10. In other words, you spent X and received 2X in revenue. A minus sign (-100%) indicates that you lost all of the money you spent. (If your numbers are all -100%, it's probably because you haven't configured e-commerce or defined values for your goals and therefore Google Analytics isn't registering any revenue.)

It's not uncommon to get an ROI percentage of several hundred or even several thousand. These kinds of ROIs simply indicate that your Revenue is many times greater than your Cost. Depending upon your business, you might need an ROI of 1000% just to break even. Let's say that you sell golf clubs online for $500 per set. You spend $100 on the keyword [beginner golf clubs], which results in 5 sales for a total of $2,500.

In this case, the AdWords Analysis Report will show that you've made a 2,400% ROI. But you need to factor in your operating expenses and your production costs to understand how much money you've actually made. For example, if your cost of purchasing or manufacturing the clubs is $350, you've really only made $150 per set x 5 = $750. That gives you an ROI of ($750 - $100)/$100 = 650%.

It's best to use ROI as a guide to your keyword spending instead of as the final answer on how much you've made. Those of you who want to learn more about keyword buying metrics might be interested in this post: what's a visit worth?.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team