Archive for November, 2009
« Older Entries

Episode # 3 – Rapid Fire Web Analytics Q and A with Avinash and Nick

Last Updated on Wednesday, 25 November 2009 03:57 Written by TheAutomator Wednesday, 25 November 2009 03:35

This is the third video in our recent Rapid Fire series where you share your most burning questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them!

Generally we want to focus on your questions about key metrics and analysis techniques, but this week we get a little technical.

In this episode we discuss:
  • How to group referrals from common sources
  • How to setup Google Analytics to track multiple web sites and view all the aggregate data in one profile
  • Strategies to track websites that support different languages
  • The value of using Google Analytics on You Tube partner channels
  • Troubleshooting discrepancies in Google Analytics Data
  • Best practices for implementing E-commerce tracking for E-commerce sites
  • Simplifying customizing the date range in GA
  • How to track segments of users who interact with internal referrals/cross sell campaigns
  • Tracking Social Media campaigns



Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:
If you found this helpful, we'd love to hear your comments.

If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question or 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.

Please add your thoughts about the Q&A via comments below. Thanks!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team
Learn More
Posted under Videos  |  No Comments

Depth and Discovery: Powering Visualizations with the Google Analytics API

Last Updated on Thursday, 19 November 2009 11:00 Written by TheAutomator Thursday, 19 November 2009 11:00

We're always really excited to see what developers are building with Google Analytics. Here's an amazing visualization using the API from our friends at Juice Analytics. Now, this is what we're talking about when we say this stuff is "Off the charts!" (The API team t-shirt slogan). :-)

At Juice, we work with web analytics APIs large and small, from Google, comScore and Omniture. The Google Analytics API is our favorite. It powers the world's best, most widely deployed analytics site. And it powers Juice products like Concentrate (innovative search analytics) and Vasco de Gapi (a tool for exploring the Google Analytics API).

We were approached by the Google Analytics API team to explore new ways of looking at data with the API, and we were excited by the possibilities. We've been working on our own visualization framework, JuiceKit, that integrates the power of the Flare Visualization Library with Adobe Flex.
The result is Analytics Visualizations, two visualizations powered by the Google Analytics API that are free to use. You just need a Google account with access to Google Analytics data to explore your own data. Here are the details about the visualizations, called Referrer Flow and Keyword Tree.

Referrer Flow

Curious about what sites are linking to you and what content is benefitting the most? The Referrer Flow visualization answers those question and shows how results change over time. It's a stream of daily treemaps showing pageviews and bounce rates for various groupings of your website's pages. You can group by combinations of page title, referrer and url.
Here is a brief video introduction:



Clicking on the treemap will filter all the data by the page, referrer or url that you clicked on. Click again to clear your filter.

Keyword Tree

A list of top keywords isn't enough to really understand how people are searching and finding your site. The Keyword Tree visualization displays the most frequently used search keywords and how they are used together. Here's a video overview:



You'll see a frequently used search term at the center and the words and phrases that are most often used in combination with that word. Pick a different starting word by typing into the box in the upper right or selecting from the top word across the bottom of the screen. The words are sized by their frequency of use and colored by bounce rate (or % new visitors or average time on site). Roll over a word to see details about that combination of connected words.

Depth and Discovery

In designing these visualizations we focused on the question: how can we let users uncover the unexpected? That means designing targeted visualizations focused on limited well-defined issues. The Referrer Flow monomaniacally focuses on a single question "What pages are people viewing on your site and where are they coming from?" The Keyword Tree is laser-focused on word ordering and what that means for keyword performance.


The Google Analytics reporting tool is a great general-purpose reporting solution. It gives the advanced users everything they need to answer specific questions. However, its generality means it has limited ability to focus on two issues; depth and discovery.

The Google Analytics API is Google's solution to this problem. It's an opportunity both for businesses like ours that can create new ways of analyzing data, and for large sites that can use the API for integration, custom analytics, and more.


Thanks, Juice! We continue to be impressed by the new solutions developers are bringing to market by leveraging the Google Analytics Platform. If you have developed a useful new tool or integration on top of Google Analytics, drop us an email at analytics-api@google.com. If it's innovative and useful we'll highlight it to our readers on this blog.


Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team
Learn More
Posted under Analytics API  |  No Comments

What Is A Conversion Rate?

Last Updated on Tuesday, 24 November 2009 02:20 Written by TheAutomator Wednesday, 18 November 2009 09:26

conversion rateIn Internet marketing a conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who convert casual content views or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators. The Conversion rate is defined as follows:

Successful conversions are interpreted differently by individual marketers, advertisers, and content creators. To online retailers, for example, a successful conversion may constitute the sale of a product to a consumer whose interest in the item was initially sparked by clicking a banner advertisement. To content creators, however, a successful conversion may refer to a membership registration, newsletter subscription, software download, or other activity that occurs due to a subtle or direct request from the content creator for the visitor to take the action.

Measures

For web sites that seek to generate offline responses, for example telephone calls or foot traffic to a store, measuring conversions can be difficult[citation needed] because a phone call or visitor is not automatically traced to its source, such as the Yellow Pages, website, or referral. Possible solutions include asking each caller or shopper how they heard about the business and using a toll-free number on the website that forwards to the existing line.

Methods to Increase the Conversion in e-Commerce

Among the many methods to increase the Conversion rate, these are the most relevant:

  • clear distinction of the website for a certain Conversion goal (e.g. “increase sign-ins for newsletter”)
  • better content (e.g. text, picture, video) of the website that clearly target versus the conversion goal
  • increase Usability to reduce the barriers towards the Conversion goal and thus reduce the abortion rate

Source – Wikipedia

Learn More
Posted under SEO  |  No Comments
« Older Entries
Copyright © 2009 Afterburner - Free GPL Template. All Rights Reserved.
WordPress is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License.