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Today's post covers a more advanced topic, two low cost integrations with Google Analytics. The first is offline phone tracking, and the second is tracking live chat with your customers. Both integrations protect your account privacy - neither one involves submitting your login and password to these other services.


Tracking Calls to Unique Sales Phone Numbers

Mongoose Metrics supplies toll free numbers in bulk for extremely cheap in case you'd like to use unique phone numbers to track campaigns or even different product orders. Even better though, Mongoose has created a way to track these offline phone calls within Google Analytics. You can see the phone number called, as well as the duration and date of the call. You can also integrate this with an email alerts system for sales management.

The service works by provisioning a trackable number and assigning that number to a hidden web page on your site containing your Google Analytics tracking code. When a phone call to the tracking number is connected, the technology will place a web browser visit to your hidden tracking web page and in this way insert the phone call event back into your Google Analytics account. Each phone call generates a unique visit which is clearly labeled inside of Analytics, as you can see in this screenshot:
Example: Trackable Numbers and AdWords

Here's a practical example provided by Jeff Tirey, a VP at Mongoose Metrics. Imagine you manage the PPC campaigns for a mortgage broker. Your company purchases trackable numbers for use on Google AdWords campaign landing pages. The primary funnel for that campaign is the completion of a web form, which is tracked in Google Analytics. Currently, if a customer takes a secondary path by calling a phone number or browsing the rest of the site and then making a phone call, the data on that conversion is lost.

With Mongoose Metrics, the phone call conversion is preserved throughout the site via a cookie containing the unique trackable phone number. Mongoose Metrics provides the ability to correlate a PPC campaign to phone calls at a level of granularity determined by the campaign manager. It is possible to drill down, through Google Analytics, into campaign comparisons as well as keyword comparisons by mapping unique trackable numbers.

For more ideas on how to track offline conversions and the full impact of your website you can checkout this article by Avinash: Best Practices for Tracking Off-line Conversions.

Tracking Live Chat Interactions

LivePerson allows you to interact with your customers live via chat to offer real-time assistance and advice while a user is engaged with your website, a highly valuable service for helping customers, and also for learning about what their intention is. They created a robust integration with Google Analytics that is definitely worth a look. The integration shows you conversions after chat, and populates chat analytics data into a number of other reports, including

• Map Overlay Report which displays volume and quality metrics of live chat interactions by geographic region
• Search Engines Report: Reveals the sources and keywords that drive interactive chats (and resulting conversions)
• Reverse Goal Path Report: Lists the navigation paths that lead to the most chats

Take a look at a screenshot which shows a "Live Chat" column:

Regarding the integration, Philippe Lang, a VP at LivePerson, said, "Small and medium businesses want easy-to-use tools that demonstrate ROI so they can measure the success of their investments and maximize the efficiency of their marketing spend." For more information on LivePerson's integration with Google Analytics, please visit their integration page and check out this instruction PDF which shows info on set up and what reports will look like.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

• New Aberdeen report, Google Analytics wins enterprise: http://bit.ly/HK3RY
  9:13 AM Jun 22nd from web
  
  
• New Google Analytics website launched, what do you think? http://www.google.com/analytics (retweet all you want)
  about 15 hours ago from web

• Want to improve conversion rates? Consider following Seth Godin's specific advice for ecommerce: http://tr.im/p4SL
  about 3 hours ago from web
  
  
• Hurray! Auto-tagged Google paid search campaigns move back fm Direct 2 the Search report: http://tr.im/p4vp Thanks Phil!
  about 3 hours ago from web
  
  
• [And this is in NYC!] What is a Browser? Video, 3 mins http://tr.im/oYTe
  about 14 hours ago from web
  
  
• "Simplicity good. But simple it is not." - Yoda.
  about 21 hours ago from web
  
  
• @links4legends You could set them up as separate sources http://tr.im/oYPH and then segment them as normal. Pls try it.
  about 22 hours ago from web in reply to links4legends
  
  
• Just look at it... http://tr.im/oYc0 Its the most perfect gorgeous day in San Francisco. I love this city!
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• The best free e-book on Web Analytics+Testing+Usability, 30 pages: http://tr.im/oT6x So simple ur grandma will love it!
  9:18 AM Jun 18th from web
  
  
• This is cool web analytics: The 50 most frequently looked-up words on nytimes.com in 2009: http://tr.im/oSQf
  11:38 PM Jun 17th from web
  
  

• Free new AdWords interface webinar today at 11 AM PDT. Register here: http://bit.ly/1kePS
  about 6 hours ago from web
  
  
• Holy crap - RT @MotivityCMS: Google Website Optimizer Increases Conversion 591% http://ow.ly/eH8e. I love #gwo
  10:02 PM Jun 17th from TweetDeck
  
  
• @oggy Sure it can. Are you doing an A/B or an MVT test? Happy to walk you through it if you DM an email address.
  4:15 PM Jun 16th from web in reply to oggy
  
  
• @waynepelletier What issue are you seeing? And have you read this: http://bit.ly/VBYWL? GA and GWO should play nicely together.
  10:06 AM Jun 11th from web in reply to waynepelletier
  
  
• RT @josh_baker Interpreting Google Website Optimizer’s Page Sections Report http://tinyurl.com/quasvf #GWO #optimization - Nice post!
  10:17 AM Jun 4th from web
  
  
• In Seattle for #SMX. Come to my session Deep Dive into the New AdWords Interface tomorrow at 11.Also at the Google booth for #GWO
  1:11 PM Jun 1st from web
  
  

• Are you an @avinashkaushik fan? Are you a Timbuk2 fan? Check out their new bag: http://tr.im/nTO8 How about a discount Avinash? :)
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• @BrainsOnFire Try creating an INCLUDE filter to only include traffic from your home country.
  1:49 PM Jun 3rd from TweetDeck in reply to BrainsOnFire
  
  
• What it's like to be the Comcast's Twitter guru. Could you handle 6,000 email a month + 30,000 tweets? http://tr.im/njlb
  11:17 AM Jun 3rd from tr.im

• Ok, I'm a fan of using new media (Utube) 2 drive innovative marketing ideas.But I think this might be going a bit too far! http://tr.im/niXp
  10:01 AM Jun 3rd from tr.im
  
  
• RT @jonathanpb: Podcast catchup #1: my interview with @justincutroni is now posted online #btv http://bit.ly/3iSL Thanks Jonathan!
  5:43 AM Jun 3rd from TweetDeck
  
  
• #GA ToTD:Advanced Segment data sampling sucks.To avoid create different profiles for the segments that you need to measure accurately.
  5:42 AM Jun 3rd from TweetDeck
  
  
• Has anyone used SeeWhy abandonment tracking? Looks like a simple way to follow up on abandoned carts. http://tr.im/ncly
  11:56 AM Jun 2nd from web
  
  
• Went a whole week without any social media. Quiet, but very refreshing. Surprisingly the world has not changed that much :)
  11:33 AM Jun 2nd from web
  
  

• Web Analytics and Yellow Lobsters http://tinyurl.com/mr5lt2
  about 8 hours ago from twitterfeed
  
  
• Conversion Rate Exercise: Why Should I Do Business With You? http://tinyurl.com/m6rok7
  4:25 AM Jun 18th from twitterfeed
  
  
• Import web analytics data from Google Analytics in to an Excel spreadsheet http://tr.im/oTQi #wa
  2:15 AM Jun 18th from TweetDeck
  
  
• Bagging the Conversion Elephant: Google Analytics Blog http://tr.im/oQZC
  3:36 PM Jun 17th from TweetDeck
  
  
• Are Your Analytics Causing You to Lose 30% of Your Sales? http://tinyurl.com/lha4sq
  12:24 PM Jun 17th from twitterfeed
  
  
• RT @minethatdata: #IRCE Top 500 Internet Retailers represent 65pct of e-commerce sales. Mercy.
  6:45 AM Jun 17th from TweetDeck
  
  
• RT @Mike_Stelzner: Interesting stats on how much video people watch online: http://bit.ly/srS6L
  6:16 AM Jun 17th from TweetDeck
  
  
• Do you think Twitter will become obsolete?- iMedia connection's Jason Clark does - http://tr.im/owWI
  5:37 AM Jun 15th from TweetDeck
  
  
• The Day the Media Died http://bit.ly/12Le0c
  4:17 AM Jun 14th from TweetDeck
  

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

It's said that you can sum up a friend in three words. Me = tall, nice, good dancer :-) Sounds a little boring I know. I think Avinash and Nick could be summed up by the following: energy, intelligence and bluntness. I also find both of them inspiring and hilarious. I sit right near these guys and listen to them bicker about, I mean, discuss everything related to using data in online marketing; from best traffic metrics to monitor for certain industries, to new analysis tools or features that Google should roll out, to how to track rich internet applications, to what's going on in the online marketing industry. It may sound like standard geeky analytics stuff, but the intensity and level of expertise of their discussions is great to be exposed to. And in addition, they're easily understandable regular guys who are just passionate about changing the way marketing is done - and their belief in the power of using data is infectious.

So, we decided to bottle these discussions and share them in short YouTube videos. We recorded a series of unrehearsed, unscripted sessions where I posit a question to Nick and Avinash and then get out of the way as they answer and sometimes bicker, I mean, discuss. We didn't have a name for the series when we recorded (the marketing irony is hopefully not lost on you) and later decided to call the videos "Data Driven Discussions". They're hopefully fun, high energy, and informative. And we're going to record more, so we'd love to talk about topics you'd like to hear about. You can submit a question or vote on an already existing one for a future episode of Data Driven Discussions at google.com/analytics/ddd.

As you know, a few months ago Google Analytics released a feature called Advanced Segmentation, a staple of web analytics which was championed internally by Avinash. In this first episode above, Avinash and Nick offer their favorite ways to segment data.

All future episodes will be posted on this blog, as well as on the Google Analytics Youtube Channel.


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Avinash, our Analytics Evangelist, and Nick, our Developer Relations Manager, both come from a long history of working with web analytics and both enjoy a good debate. In fact, I often hear them bickering in a good-natured way - or not good-natured at all with much name calling - about the topic of this episode: what do you disagree about in terms of each other's approach to web analytics?

Web analytics is a highly collaborative practice, more of which we'll cover in future episodes of DDD, and with just a little work, it can be a fascinatingly useful moving target. It's a struggle to balance what can be done with what data is valuable, and as a discipline it should always be approached with a spirit of pragmatism, which both our practitioners touch on in this video while clearly having fun.

It's a lively topic where we learn what's important to Avinash and Nick. Hopefully it also shows that no matter the approach, the most important thing is that the dialogue is actually happening and analysis is getting started. And near the end, you'll hear about one issue they both agree is a big challenge in terms of measurement, and what they think about it's usefulness.

There are more of these videos to come where you can enjoy more fireworks between Avinash and Nick and be inspired. And, please continue to contribute questions for future episodes to google.com/analytics/ddd. We'll get to them over the next few months.


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

1. If you are pulling large amounts of historical data, we've increased the the total amount of data you can request from the API from 1,000 rows to a new the new maximum of 10,000 rows. This is a great feature to reduce the amount of work needed to pull large amounts of data from the API.
   
   
2. The Data Export API uses dimensions and metrics and we've relaxed the restrictions on what combinations of these you can request. For example, you can now request (D1. Visitor) and (D3. Content) level dimensions in the same request. This update allows you to answer questions like:
   
   
   • For page, what keywords had the highest bounce rate (ga:bounces/ga:entrances)?
   • For a group of pages, what large companies (ga:NetworkLocation) were viewing my content and how enagaged (ga:TimeOnPage) was one company vs. another?
   
   
3. Finally, for each profile listed in the Account Feed, we've added the profile's configured timezone and currency settings. Here is an example in XML of the updated account feed.

Documentation:
The Export API exposes data through feeds, and we've updated our API reference section making it easier for developers to understand how they work. Each feed now has it's own section and you can click on each feed's parameters to learn how it works. Here's where the feed documentation section appears:

Every now and then we like to give a shout out to another Google product and today, as avid bloggers, we wanted to mention Google Reader which allows you to subscribe to and follow any blog or website, and then read them all in one place via a table of contents on the left. It's my first stop when I open my browser in the morning, and probably where I spend the most time online. You are your own publishing house and your own news aggregator. There's also some other handy features, such as a task and notes list, as well as a way to browse other users' subscriptions, share certain content with different groups, see a trends graph on what you've been reading the most, and more.

But what we wanted to share is the translate feature. We recently posted about Google Analytics and conversion-related blogs in other languages, including Spanish, German, French, Japanese and even one focused on the UK market. A colleague brought the following to our attention: with Google Reader, you can read all of these blogs by using a translate feature to read them in your own language with the click of a button. So, if you're reading these words right now, and your first language is not English, go into Google Reader and subscribe to this blog and then translate. Here's how you do it: 1. Click and read a subscription. 2. Click the "Feed Settings" drop down. 3. Choose "Translate into my language."

Then Reader will translate the content into the language you have specified under your Google Account "Settings" page. For example, if Spanish was the language in my Settings and I chose to translate the blog, here's how it would look:


Cool, huh? Hope this was helpful for all you avid readers out there who can't get enough of analytics in just one language.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Are you ready to get serious about Google Analytics and/or Website Optimizer and looking for some hands on training to take you to new levels? Have you seen a Google Analytics educational video and thought, "I'd love to talk about this stuff in person?" Do you find yourself logging into your Google Analytics or Website Optimizer account more often and having specific questions? Are you itching to improve your marketing and web design ROI?

Yes? Well then, check out Seminars for Success, going back to Los Angeles and Chicago due to popular demand and the fact that you can never visit these 2 cities often enough!

Seminars for Success are day-long seminars designed to help you improve your online marketing and get the most out of Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer. We've selected industry professionals from our Authorized Consultant network to teach these seminars in cities around the U.S. There are both beginner and advanced seminars. Here are the dates of the upcoming seminars:

• Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training:
  Wednesday, July 29 - Los Angeles
  Wednesday, September 16 - Chicago
  
  
• Google Analytics – Advanced Technical Implementation:
  Thursday, July 30 - Los Angeles
  Thursday, September 17 - Chicago
  
  
• Landing Page Testing with Google Website Optimizer:
  Friday, July 31 Los Angeles only!

For more information on the content of the seminars and to register, visit the Los Angeles seminars site or the Chicago seminars site.


In your spare time, do you think about new advanced segments to create? Do you know who said, "Do Something Surprising: Don’t Puke Data Out"? Have you ever attempted multi-campaign attribution or social media marketing?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then you might be a web analytics power user, and should attend the X Change conference at the St. Regis in San Francisco this September. Now in its third year, the conference bills itself as a gathering for "experts and those practitioners who are serious about digital measurement." With sessions like "Measuring the New Retail Model: Social Commerce" and "Segmenting and Targeting Visitors: Advanced Tips and Tricks" we think it will be fun and educational - a worthwhile three days. You'll leave with some new techniques and honed skills to be sure. For the first time this year, they're offering "Think Tank" breakout sessions where you'll get hands on training in some of the latest and most practical techniques.

Use the discount code "WAD15" for 15% off when you register and make sure to say hi to our own Brett Crosby after he participates in the "Four Founders" keynote to open the conference. Brett and a few other founders of web analytics companies will be discussing the evolution of the digital measurement industry.


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

One of the coolest new features in Google AdWords is the ability to target different demographics using demographic bidding. This allows you to adjust your bidding strategy based on your target audience and how each demographic group converts on your website.

The AdWords demographic bidding interface can tell us the cost per conversion and conversion rate of each demographic.

(Please note: The advanced reporting information presented in this post may require some additional help from your Webmaster to implement. We have included links in this article to relevant help center topics to assist you or your webmaster.)

Demographic bidding interface:

The screenshot below shows you the interface for demographic bidding within your AdWords account. Once you have activated this option you will begin to see data for each of the demographics listed.

Once your Webmaster or IT team has managed to make these changes to your website, the appropriate info will be accessible from your Google Analytics account. We can now move onto the next step of interpreting the information.

Reading Google Analytics User Defined Reports, in 4 steps:

Step 1.

In your Google Analytics account go to Visitors - User Defined report.

Step 2.

Click on the tab E-commerce (if you have an E-commerce website), alternatively you could also use the Goal Conversion Tab.

Don't have Goals or E-commerce setup? Read our previous post and learn how to set up goals and e-commerce.

Step 3.

Change the view type to percentage. You should then see a drop down menu? Choose Per Visit Value from the list (If using goals, try per visit goal value instead). This will then populate the report with visitor types that have the 'highest value per visit'.

Step 4.

Use the above report to identify your highest value per visit demographic. You can then adjust your bid strategy in AdWords.

Example above shows that the 'Male 35-44' group have the highest per visit value. So using Demographic bidding we would increase our bidding for this demographic.

We could also take this a step further and consider using an AdWords creative that specifically targets this demographic.

Next Steps...

Knowing the visitor demographic that provides the 'highest value per visit' is an important factor to take into account when using the advanced Demographic bidding option provided in Google AdWords.

As a further exercise try creating a custom report with the dimension User Defined Value. You may discover new and exciting details about visitor demographics on your website.

Let us know how you have used demographic data to improve your marketing effectiveness.


Posted by Gavin Doolan, Google Analytics Team

A few weeks ago, we mentioned some Google Analytics and Website Optimizer focused tweets that you can follow. Well now, as you can see if you glance over to the "Subscribe" section on the right, we've got an official Google Analytics Twitter account. Follow us at twitter.com/googleanalytics.