Analytics Blog: Business Insights

How to Apply Holiday Shopping Insights to Your Analytics Strategies

October 24, 2016

The Year of the Supershopper
We all have that friend — the one who somehow knows the latest brands, the season’s must-have products, and where to find the best deals at the snap of a finger. In years past, this friend was an enigma, making us wonder how does he or she do it?

Today, we can all be that friend. With the ability to instantly discover, research, and purchase, shoppers around the world are more informed and more efficient than ever before - they’ve transformed into supershoppers seemingly overnight.

But what defines supershoppers? And what does this mean for retailers trying to win them over this holiday season? Let’s find out.

They Keep Their Options Open
Last year, more than 50% of holiday shoppers said they were open to purchasing from new retailers¹. This is especially true online. More than three-quarters of smartphone shoppers who usually go to the same physical stores when they shop for products are very open to new retailers and brands online². Why? Mobile makes it easy to explore all of your options no matter when or where you’re shopping. In fact, after searching on Google, 76% of mobile shoppers have changed their mind about which retailer or brand to purchase³.

Mobile is Their Muse
It used to be that shoppers would thumb through catalogues or stare longingly at the holiday window displays, but mobile is now the super shopper’s go-to source for inspiration. Sixty-four percent of smartphone shoppers turn to mobile search for ideas about what to buy before heading into a store⁴. And 1 in 4 mobile video viewers in the U.S. have visited YouTube for help with a purchase decision while they were at a store or visiting a store's website⁵.

But shoppers aren’t only making purchase decisions, they’re discovering new brands and products along the way: more than half of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their phones⁶.

They Want the Best - Not the Cheapest
In July we learned that shoppers are on the quest for the best — and this still rings true more than ever today. Last holiday, mobile searches related to “best gift” grew 70% year over year while mobile searches related to cheap or inexpensive gifts grew about 35%⁷. They’re also willing to do the research to the make the best decision: on YouTube, mobile watch time for product review videos has grown 60% year over year⁸.

But supershoppers don’t only want the best - they want personalized, unique, cool gifts. Mobile searches related to “unique gifts” grew more than 65% while mobile searches related to “cool gifts” grew a whopping 80%⁹.

Mobile is Their Door to the Store
Although more and more people are willing to buy on mobile, we know that mobile is still used predominantly as a door to the store. In fact, 76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day, and 28% of those searches result in a purchase¹⁰.

Once they’re inside your store, they expect the experience to be a seamless one: more than 40% of smartphone shoppers want retailers to automatically surface relevant information such as the location of the item in the store, a special deal or related products¹¹.

They Shop ‘Til they Drop
Supershoppers live up to their name as the holiday season progresses. From November through mid-December we see online conversion rates increase across devices. Last year, on mobile alone, they jumped 30% on Black Friday and 50% on Cyber Monday when compared to November 1¹².

Tips to Using Analytics to Reach Today’s Shopper
Analytics is a critical marketing tool all year long. But that importance is amplified during the holiday season. Here are five ideas on how you can use analytics to get the most out of the holiday shopping season.

1. Understand which days drive the most sales — be there. In order to develop a successful holiday retail strategy, it’s important to first understand the days that drive the most sales for your business. Once you understand this, you can craft strategy — across mobile, desktop, and tablet — that optimizes your media and promotion not only for these days, but for the entire holiday season.
For example, adjust bids for auction-based media and use the lift in transaction rates over the average transaction rate as your bid multiplier. Use Smart Bidding in AdWords or DoubleClick Search to maximize your performance.

2. Get personal when engaging with window shoppers. The great thing about the holidays is that you can start shopping at any time — and then wait for discounts. Many consumers may already be browsing your site looking for gift ideas. This is an audience that may convert at a higher rate. Use Google Analytics to create remarketing lists including these shoppers, and then customize your marketing campaigns to better suit their needs.

But don’t stop there: Remember, supershoppers crave personalization. Test different variations of your website with this same audience to offer more customized experiences. Try Google Optimize, our free site testing and personalization tool, to get started.

3. Act fast: Create a culture of optimization. Your holiday marketing plans are set long before the holiday season starts. It’s very important to monitor your activities to ensure they’re driving business growth. And if they’re not you need to take action by immediately identifying areas of opportunity and improvement.

Google Analytics offers a number of ways to help simplify reporting, sift through data, and spotlight insights for you. Custom reports, dashboards and shortcuts all let you customize reporting so you spend less time looking for data and more time analyzing important information. Or better yet, try Google Data Studio and create a holiday shopping dashboard for different teams in your organization.

4. Analyze your performance against your competitors. Benchmarking your business against your competitors helps you see the big picture. If you’re a Google Analytics user, you can tailor this analysis and approach, using your own data and the data available in our benchmarking reports. The benefit of using those reports is that they will provide you a comparison between your data and your competitors, using characteristics such as website traffic, country and detailed vertical information.

5. Start developing your New Year marketing strategy. With so many new shoppers entering your stores, sites, and apps, data and analytics are critical to helping you convert first-time shoppers into long-term, loyal customers. Use your website data to create lists of first-time customers during the holidays, and deliver personalized communication across channels to build relationships. With Google Analytics you can create remarketing lists and easily connect with this audience.

Happy analyzing!

Posted by Julie Krueger, Retail Managing Director, Google and Casey Carey, Director of Analytics Marketing, Google

Google/ Ipsos, Post Holiday Shopping Intentions Study - Total Shoppers Report, Jan 2016, Base: US Holiday Shoppers, n=1,500

Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000, Same store shoppers = 801

Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000

Google-commissioned Ipsos Brand Building on Mobile Survey, U.S., December 2015 n=1000, 18-54 year olds

Google/Ipsos, "Consumers in the Micro-Moment," Wave 3, U.S., n=1291 online smartphone users 18+, August 2015

Source: Google Search Data, Apparel, Home & garden, Beauty & personal care, Computers & electronics, Gifts, Toys & games, Photo & video, Nov-Dec 2014 vs Nov-Dec 2015, United States

YouTube data, U.S., Classification as a “Product Review" video was based on public data such as headlines and tags, and may not account for every such video available on YouTube, Nov - Dec 2014 and Nov - Dec 2015

Google Search Data, Apparel, Home & garden, Beauty & personal care, Computers & electronics, Gifts, Toys & games, Photo & video, Nov-Dec 2014 vs Nov-Dec 2015, United States

Google/Purchased Digital Diary: How Consumers Solve Their Needs in the Moment, May 2016, Representative sample of US Smartphone users = 1000. Local searchers = 634, Purchases = 1,140

Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000

Google Analytics Shopping category data, Nov 1, 2015–December 14, 2015, United States

Spotlight on Data Studio: Beautiful Reports and Collaboration Just Got Easier

October 4, 2016

We launched Google Data Studio (beta) in the U.S. earlier this year, and last week, we expanded availability to 21 additional countries.* We’re excited to offer Data Studio to companies across the globe so they can easily create and share reports and dashboards, and ultimately use insights and collaboration to make better business decisions.

Organizations today collect an increasingly large amount of data. In a world of web analytics, CRM systems, and third-party sources, data-driven decisions should be easier than ever before. However, all of this data has presented a significant challenge: making it easily accessible and useful.

Having multiple data sources that live in silos within your organization compromises your ability to spot critical business opportunities and issues when they matter most. This is a widespread challenge, with 84% of marketers saying they don’t believe their data sources are well-integrated, according to a 2016 Forrester study.

Data Studio solves this problem by allowing you to easily connect your data and create beautiful, informative reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable. Create up to five custom reports with unlimited editing and sharing. All for free.

Get started today so you can:

Put all your data to work. Easily access the data sources you need to understand your business and make better decisions.

Transform your data. Quickly transform raw data into easy-to-follow reports and dashboards — no code or queries required.

Build engaging reports and dashboards. Data Studio gives you the ability to create meaningful, shareable charts and graphs that bring your data to life.

Leverage teamwork that works. Work together quickly, from anywhere, by sharing reports via Google Drive.

Not sure where to start? Good news: We’re releasing our first batch of templates today to remove that hurdle. Businesses can use a library of templates to get up and running in a matter of minutes.

Get started for free.

Happy reporting!
The Data Studio team

*Canada, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Indonesia, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam

Posted by Kevin Fields, Product Marketing Manager, Data Studio

Explore important insights from your data — automatically

September 2, 2016

For marketers, business owners, and product designers, it’s important to be connected to data at all times. However, data by itself rarely provides the insight needed to truly drive a business forward. It can take hours of analysis to come up with just one or two key insights and even longer to share and act on that new understanding. In a constantly-connected world, where customers can make purchases anywhere, anytime from their mobile devices, this lag in time-to-insight is costly.

That’s why we’re pleased to announce that we’re providing a new stream of automated insights in the Google Analytics mobile app. Available on the Assistant screen, this addition to Google Analytics lets you see in 5 minutes what might have taken hours to discover previously. Even better: it gets smarter over time as it learns about your business and your needs. It’s available now in our mobile app on Android and iOS, so you can easily grab insights on the go.

To enable this functionality, we use Google machine intelligence to find critical insights among the thousands of metric and dimension combinations that can be reported in Google Analytics. It helps make analytics data universally accessible and useful as it:

Combs through your data to give you meaningful insights and recommendations.
Offers quick tips on how to improve your Google Analytics data.
Gets smarter over time by reacting to your feedback and how you use it.
Helps you share insights so your whole team can take action.

Go beyond simple reporting to view findings and insights automatically, in language you can read: our insight stream enables faster, more informed decision-making that can have real impact on your business.

For example, the holiday season drives a huge portion of annual sales for many retailers. During this busy time of the year, retailers face questions that can be the difference between making their numbers for the year or falling short: Which products are going to be popular this season? Where should we advertise? How are our customers hearing about us and purchasing from us? Answering just one of these questions and acting on that information can take analysts and marketers hours or even days.

Data insights in Google Analytics automate the first steps of answering these questions by instantaneously surfacing opportunities and anomalies hiding in the data. For example, they can tell you which products are experiencing higher than normal sales growth, which advertising channels are driving the most conversions and the best returns, and on which devices customers engage with your brand. This moment-to-moment information gives retailers the power to make nimble, smart decisions that directly impact performance.

You can view your automated insights in the Assistant tab in the official Google Analytics mobile app on Android and iOS for all English-speaking users. We're working to bring this exciting functionality to the web version of Google Analytics and to expand availability to other languages.

We plan on improving with your feedback, so please try the app and then let us know what insights you’d like to see automated.
Posted by Ajay Nainani, Product Manager, Google Analytics

Which TV Ads Made the Podium During the 2016 Olympics Opening Ceremonies?

August 11, 2016

When the 2016 Olympics kicked off last Friday, many TV advertisers were crossing their fingers that their strategy would pay off. Reaching an estimated 26.5 million total viewers in the U.S., they were hoping their ads delivered relevant and compelling creative to the right audiences. To answer the pay-off question, advertisers will predominately look at three specific areas of performance:

Which ads were noticed by the audience?
Which ads drove interest, shifted perception, and increased intent?
And, which ads drove actual consumer response?

To get some insights into these questions, Google evaluated the top 10 brands (based on total ad minutes) that aired ads during the live broadcast of the opening ceremonies. The analysis is based on a combination of consumer surveys and second-screen (mobile, desktop, and tablet) response data. Presented in a live Google Data Studio dashboard, the result is a unique view into the full-funnel performance of the ads evaluated.

Awareness

Commercials during large, live sporting events like the Olympics are often uniquely created to leverage both the scale of the audience and the context of the event. Whether it is telling the personal story of an athlete or playing to our passions like patriotism, they are intended to strike an emotional connection, entertain us, or make us stand up and take notice.

Coca Cola was the big winner with almost 35% of respondents having remembered seeing the ad when prompted—a result that outpaces typical recall rates in the 20%-25% range. Not a surprising result from a top CPG brand. Samsung, Chevy, United, and Visa rounded out the top five with respectable recall rates.

35% of respondents remembered seeing the Coca Cola ad.

Additionally, of those respondents recalling the ad, only 40% could recall the specific product or service featured in the ad. The net is that only about 8% of viewers can recall both the brand and product in a specific advertisement. For many of the ads this was the first airing and it is reasonable to expect these numbers to improve substantially with increased exposure over the next couple of weeks.

Interest

Advertisers also want the ad to shift perceptions and create interest in the product or service featured. By surveying both viewers who saw the ad (exposed) and those who did not (unexposed), we are able to get insights into the impact of each ad’s messaging and creative. Overall, the results were impressive. On average, respondents who saw the ads were 18% more positive about the associated brands than those who did not. Likewise, respondents who saw the ads were 16% more likely to find out more and/or purchase the product being advertised.

Consumers who saw the ads were 18% more positive about the brand and were 16% more likely to find out more or purchase the product in the ad.

Interestingly, the baseline favorability and purchase intentions for both non-sponsors and Olympic sponsors are relatively equal. And for the most part, the ad’s impact on both factors was the same across non-sponsors and sponsors.

Desire

These commercials don’t just make us laugh or make us feel better about the brand—they also make us search and visit websites. Second-screen searching—whether it’s to re-engage with the ad or to learn more about the product—is a powerful indication of desire. By measuring incremental search queries on Google and YouTube during the broadcast that are specific and modeled to be attributable to ads shown, we are now able to include responses in our analysis. During the opening ceremonies, TV ad driven searches were almost exclusively on mobile—94% compared to an average of 56% for those brands when the ads were not airing. For brands, that means a presence on the TV screen isn’t complete without a strategy for small screens, as well.

"94% of searches on Google and YouTube as a result of seeing the ads occurred on mobile devices."

McDonald’s took the top spot on the podium with 42% more searches than the average. BMW and Samsung fought it out for second and third with 14% and 12% respectively. The answer to the question “Do emotional and inspiring ads work?” is, in this instance, “Yes.” But so do product-featured ads. Both inspiring and product ad creatives drove 10% more searches on average. Also, ads by sponsors drove 14% more searches than their non-sponsor counterparts.

Compared to the average of the top 10 ads studied, McDonald’s drove 42% more searches.

Finally, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 ad was the overall winner with strong full-funnel performance placing in the top three across all three funnel stages. Whether people are tuning into the Olympics or their favorite TV show, they use their smartphones to search for information triggered by what they’re seeing. That means if you advertise on TV, you can now get a new view of performance across each stage of the funnel—using a combination of consumer surveys and digital response, all in a matter of days. Armed with these new insights, advertisers are now able to better understand and improve the performance of these investments in concert with their digital media.

Sourcing

Using Google Surveys 360 to provide consumer ad awareness and interest research, an online survey was conducted in the United States during the period 8/6 - 8/9/16 using a validated, representative sample with a minimum of 750 respondents. Response data is based on incremental TV ad-driven search queries (Google and YouTube) during the course of the broadcast that are specific to the ad shown and are modeled by Google Attribution 360 to be attributable to the airings of the commercials. Response data is normalized for total commercial air time during the broadcast for each advertiser and indexed to the average.

Happy Analyzing,

Posted by Casey Carey, Director of Marketing, Google Analytics

Adapting Measurement Strategies for Modern Marketing

May 2, 2016

Last week Forrester Research hosted a Forum for Marketing Leaders in New York City. I had the pleasure of speaking with top enterprise executives about data and analytics strategies to help them harness the exponential increase in data volume — caused by new devices, channels, and fragmented audiences — and turn data into useful insights.

Mobile has changed everything for everyone. For marketers, mobile has presented an opportunity to learn much more about consumer behavior. Marketers can then use those insights to deliver useful brand experiences in intent-rich moments when consumers are looking to buy.

But it’s not easy. Mobile has fractured the customer journey into little pieces (of data) and most legacy systems are ill-suited to organize, process, and make sense of all this data. Businesses could never hire enough people to mine all this data because it is growing and compounding so quickly — it’s just not practical. It’s estimated that 90% of the world’s data was created in the past two years. Think about that.

While conducting a recent research study we discovered the top challenges enterprise marketers are facing in a mobile-dominated world. We studied these challenges, spoke with executives at leading organizations, and brainstormed with our own engineers to develop strategies and products to help marketers win in today’s modern world.

Understand the customer journey. Marketers need complete data to see what’s happening across the entire customer journey. Views of performance based on sessions, devices, and channels are no longer sufficient. The new view of performance means putting customers at the center of marketing strategy, which requires a data toolset that’s integrated across channels, touchpoints, and devices.
Get useful insights, not just more data. The masses of digital information produced each day mean marketers need enormous computing power, data science, and smart algorithms all working together to quickly make sense of data for them. Tools that can perform ongoing automated analysis and spotlight opportunities for marketers are essential to ensure future success.
Share insights with everyone. Putting data into everyone’s hands gets the whole company on the same page, strengthens cross-functional goals, and drives smarter decision-making. Data isn’t just for analysts anymore. For organizations to truly adapt for success, they need more people using insights and more people collaborating to spark great ideas. Tools offering data visualization and instant sharing help foster a truly data-driven culture.
Deliver engaging experiences to the right people. When organizations provide customers with personal and relevant brand interactions — that deliver real value — it naturally leads to better marketing performance. The consumer wins and the marketer wins. Achieving this state depends on seamless data integrations across multiple technologies and platforms — and on executing instantly. Tools that swiftly integrate well with others will lead the way.

These four strategies work together to create a virtuous cycle that drives marketing results and a competitive advantage. We built the Google Analytics 360 Suite to help marketers execute on these strategies and overcome today’s challenges and win in the multi-screen world.

Learn how Progressive is using the Google Analytics 360 Suite to improve their customer experience and turn browsers into buyers.

Posted by Paul Pellman, Director of Data and Measurement at Google

New Study Reveals Why Integrated Marketing Analytics Are Critical to Success in Enterprise Measurement

March 24, 2016

Marketers have an increasingly complicated job, with access to an unprecedented amount of customer insights and analytics tools. A new study from Forrester Consulting uncovers how successful organizations use marketing analytics tools to develop relevant customer experiences.

Consumers expect to find what they want anytime, anywhere from their smartphones, tablets, and laptop. These micro-moments offer marketers more opportunities than ever before to connect and engage. They also enable marketers to learn valuable insights about consumer behavior. With so much customer data to consider, effective marketing measurement is more important than ever before.

To understand the challenges marketers face in measuring performance and creating a well-integrated tool set, Google commissioned Forrester Consulting to perform an in-depth survey of 150 marketing, analytics, and information technology executives. The research revealed how successful marketers are able to leverage analytics tools effectively so they make the most of consumer interactions.

Key findings:

• Marketers must be able to tie performance to business results. Among the survey respondents identified as "sophisticated marketers," 53% stated they adhere to well-established metrics that tie directly to business objectives. These marketers support organizations that are at least 3X more likely to hit their goals than other marketing organizations. 

• The right tools are critical to success. Only 26% of marketers surveyed believed that their marketing analytics tools are well-integrated and work seamlessly together. But, marketers with well-integrated tools were more likely to outperform revenue goals.

  • Marketers that implement complete marketing analytics platforms see an increase in performance. Sophisticated marketers who deploy a complete marketing analytics stack of five or more tools are 39% more likely to see improvement in the overall performance of their marketing programs. 

To learn more about improving marketing performance with analytics, check out the full study, "Discover How Marketing Analytics Increases Business Performance."

Post By, Suzanne Mumford, Head of Marketing, Google Analytics 360 Suite

Start measuring your TV ads with the precision of digital

March 17, 2016

“The challenge with television is that there’s no link to click on,” says Alex Bain, Marketing Analyst for Nest. The company makes products for the thoughtful home, but was having a hard time understanding the effect of its TV ads on digital visits and sales.

That's why the Nest marketing team turned to the Google Analytics 360 Suite while running a set of six TV ads last holiday season. The suite's TV attribution features are designed to measure the impact of ads on search activity and website visits. As a result, Nest could see the channels and times of day where its ads had the most impact. The metrics arrive almost immediately, so the Nest team found itself spending less time trying to get answers and more time taking action on what they learned.

The good results that Nest is getting are available to anyone. Watch the video for more details.

Post by, Suzanne Mumford Head of Marketing, Google Analytics 360 Suite

From Insights to Impact: Driving Value with Analytics

February 25, 2016

At eTail West this week we were thrilled to give a joint presentation with Chris Duncan, VP of Strategic Marketing for Kohl's, a $19B+ retailer making big strides in omni-channel analytics. Casey Carey, Head of Marketing for Google Analytics, kicked off the presentation with highlights from our new report with Harvard Business Review. Following Casey's introduction, Chris gave the audience a glimpse into the Kohl’s Greatness Agenda, launched in 2014 with the goal of becoming “the most engaging retailer in America.”

Kohl’s has seen the growing effect of micro-moments on their business in recent years and has used measurement and analytics to gain key insights:

They had more visits on digital devices last year than in all stores combined.
Most of their sales are driven by people who have engaged with more than one marketing channel.
Customers who engage online are spending more in-store.

Kohl’s has taken action, finding better ways to engage consumers across channels. They combined direct mail with digital display to make their direct mail dollars go further, they blended email marketing with social media to increase app downloads by 180%, and they got hyper-local with digital display and paid search. In other words, they used their insights to drive action.

The Google Analytics team is all about turning insights into action, which is why we commissioned a study with Harvard Business Review—we wanted to understand how great companies are using insights to drive customer value. The findings are compelling: some companies who capture the full customer journey with integrated data are generating up to 8.5x higher shareholder value.

We invite you to read the full report to learn how great companies like Kohl's are analyzing and acting to create value for their customers and for themselves.

Posted by: Jocelyn Whittenburg, Product Marketing Manager

Measuring Super Bowl 50’s Top TV Ads with TV Attribution

February 8, 2016

Each year, hundreds of millions of us gather around TVs to watch America’s big game — the Super Bowl. And for many, the TV commercials are at least or maybe even more interesting than the game itself. Companies annually spend millions of dollars trying to entertain us or tug at our heartstrings. For these advertisers, it is straight up, unabashed brand advertising. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

However, other advertisers are looking to accomplish something much different. The goal of their ads is to pique your interest, get you to find out more about the product, and yes, maybe even make a purchase. In a word, their success is based on creating “intent.” Unfortunately, understanding the impact of TV advertising based on consumer response has historically been difficult at best.

Enter the second screen. According to a recent report by Accenture, 87% of consumers use a second screen device (laptop, tablet, phone) while watching TV. The result is a direct connection between TV commercials and digital activity including search queries, search clicks, and direct website visits. Adometry TV Attribution uses machine-learning techniques to model this minute-by-minute response data and estimate the incremental impact of each unique TV spot at very granular level. In essence, it allows you to measure TV just like digital.

So, how did the TV ads from Super Bowl 50 fare when measured by Adometry TV Attribution? From a response perspective, this year’s top TV commercials are:

1. Audi, “The Commander”

2. Acura, “What He Said”

3. Universal Pictures, “Jason Bourne Trailer”

A much different list than that of AdvertisingAge’s top rated commercials based on creative. For a complete rundown of the TV Attribution results, check out the full article on Think with Google which includes a complete list of the top ten Super Bowl commercials, along with response volume by quarter and device.

The takeaway? For those investing in TV advertising with the goal of creating intent, you also need an effective strategy to capture and engage consumers on their second screens. In doing so, your consumers will have a much better experience and you’ll see even bigger ROI.

Posted by Casey Carey, Google Analytics team

Retailers: Three Insights to Drive Q1 Results

January 26, 2015

Now that we’ve survived the holiday season, it’s time to get the year started with some Q1 insights from Google Analytics! Over the holiday season, retailers are inundated with data about the best shopping days, when to start their sales, and predictions about which items will be popular. But what to do once the furor dies down? How can retailers make the most of Q1?

Here at Google Analytics, we delved into our Q1 data from 2013 and 2014 in the US to provide some insights to guide you in the first quarter of 2015. In particular, the weeks around Valentine’s Day and the Super Bowl provided some notable trends. Our analysis encompasses millions of businesses large and small who are using Google Analytics. See the end of this article for more about our dataset.

The Day of the Big Game: A Low Point for Online Shopping

We took a look at the first big marketing event of Q1: Super Bowl Sunday. The day of the big game, we saw lower numbers across the board. Sessions were down 11% compared to the average for the quarter. Similarly, transactions and conversion rates were down on average 16% and 5% respectively. In both 2013 and 2014, the sessions and transaction numbers for the day of the Super Bowl fall into the bottom quartile for the quarter.

Clearly, on the day of the game, online purchasing is not a priority. However, as we see later on in this post, this period of time serves as the turning point for transactions and conversion rates in the quarter. The brand advertising that is such a big part of Super Bowl Sunday may help businesses capitalize on increased consumer buying behavior later in the quarter.

Best Romantic Shopping Day: The Sunday before Valentine’s Day

We also delved into the second big marketing event of Q1: Valentine’s Day. In particular, we evaluated the week preceding the big day to find any pre-holiday patterns. It turns out that in both 2013 and 2014, the Sunday before Valentine’s Day sees the biggest spike in week-over-week transactions with an average bump of 10%. The same holds true for conversion rates and sessions, with an average increase of 6% and 4% respectively. Besides a week-over-week increase, we also see that transactions are 5% higher on that day than for the average Sunday in the quarter. The bump in transactions could indicate that consumers are using that Sunday to find and purchase their gifts, making it a good opportunity to invest in getting consumers to your site for some Valentine’s Day shopping. If you plan to invest in advertising for this holiday, one way to prepare for Valentine’s Day is to adjust your bids.

Between the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day: The Q1 Turning Point

Unless you’re lucky enough to sell items for diet, exercise, or other big new year’s resolutions, retailers often see sales slow in Q1 as consumers reduce gift-buying. The chart below shows that for most of January, transactions are indeed below the average for the quarter.

When should retailers spend marketing dollars to bounce back from this holiday hangover? We see that transactions in both 2013 and 2014 start to ramp up as the key marketing dates approach: Valentine’s Day and Super Bowl Sunday. In particular, the week of February 5th (also known as the week after the Super Bowl and the week before Valentine’s Day) marks the first time that transactions hit the average or above for the quarter.

The graph below shows that in 2013 the week after the Super Bowl was above the average, whereas in 2014 that week was at the quarterly average. In both years, this week has the highest week over week growth in transactions and conversions rates for Q1 at 6% for both metrics. Sessions, however, display only a 0.4% increase week-over-week, not even close to being the highest for the quarter. Based on this information about sessions, it’s clear that the uptick in buying behavior is not simply a function of consumers spending more time online, it’s an indication of increased intent to purchase during the time they do spend online. If we look at average conversion rates before that week compared to the average conversion rates for that week and the rest of the quarter, we see a 6% increase.

So, as you plan your budgets, promotions, and campaigns in Q1, keep in mind that consumer activity will tend to increase throughout the quarter. In particular, transactions tend to get a big bump during the week between Super Bowl Sunday and Valentine’s Day. We know it’s hard to get back in gear after the holidays, but we hope our insights will help you think clearly and creatively about your marketing plans in the first quarter.

About the Data & Charts

In order to perform this analysis, we looked at billions of sessions from authorized Google Analytics clients who have shared their website data anonymously (read more).

Posted by Jocelyn Whittenburg and Daniel Waisberg

Refreshing “The Customer Journey to Online Purchase” - New Insights into Marketing Channels

December 11, 2014

Last year we introduced “The Customer Journey to Online Purchase” -- a tool that helped marketers visualize the roles played by marketing channels like paid search, email and display ads in their customers' journeys.

The goal was to help marketers learn more about the customer journeys for their industries. If social makes your customers aware, and email makes them convert -- or vice versa -- you can make sure you're in both places with the right kind of message.

Today we're happy to introduce a new improved version of the Customer Journey to Online Purchase, with a few key enhancements. We’ve refreshed the data based on millions of consumer interactions, updated the industry classifications, and we’ve split out paid search so you can see the influence of brand and generic search terms on the purchase decision.

In each industry you can now see journeys for small, medium and large companies, which can often be quite different.

Click to enlarge image

For instance, the above image shows the journey for customers of small businesses in the shopping industry. Note that organic search is very often an "assist" interaction for these customers.

Click to enlarge image

Now here's the same journey for large shopping businesses. Note that display clicks and social are strongly assisting interactions -- while display didn’t even appear for the small businesses above. For both small and large businesses, a direct website visit is most likely to be the last interaction. Across industries, the differences from small to large businesses illustrate how different marketing strategies and customer profiles may lead to different buying behavior.

And there's more! Now you can drill down into each marketing channel for a closer look at the role it plays based on its position in the purchase path. Channels that occur more frequently in the beginning of the path are more likely to help generate awareness for your product, while the end of the path is closer to the customer’s purchase decision.

Click to enlarge image

In these charts, for example, we see the different roles that different channels play in the Shopping industry. One interesting insight is that all channels -- even those traditionally thought of as “upper funnel” or “lower funnel” -- occur throughout the purchase path, but a given channel may be more common at particular stages depending on its role (and depending on the industry).

Each marketing campaign and channel may have a different impact on customers depending on when they interact with it. Using what you learn from this tool, you can help adapt your marketing messaging to be more relevant and useful for your customers.

Try the Customer Journey to Online Purchase today. And for more helpful marketing insights, check out Measure What Matters Most: our new guide chock-full of suggestions on how to measure the impact of your marketing -- across channels -- to complement what you learn from the Customer Journey tool and take action to improve your marketing.

Happy analyzing!

The Customer Journey to Online Purchase »

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Product Marketing Manager, Google Analytics

Ringing in the New Year - Behavior Trends and Insights

December 8, 2014

Last month we published an analysis of how people behave before and during the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. We saw the most important days of the year for retailers, how to take advantage of the top transaction days, and when to take action.

Today we are looking at the patterns of behavior over the holidays and into the new year with the objective of understanding how digital marketers can prepare for 2015.

After looking at data from the previous three years, we found two interesting insights:

User behavior is significantly different from country to country, but very consistent from year to year within a particular country.
The beginning of January can be a great time to offer new deals outside of the US.

Read on to learn more about the analysis we performed and how to take advantage of the trends we found, it will help you get a head start on 2015!

User Behavior Trends

Patterns can tell us a lot about data, they are intuitive and show us a lot of information at a glance. With that in mind, we produced the charts below to show how people behave around Christmas and New Year’s Eve. We wanted to understand the differences between cultures, so we focused on the trends from three large economies: US, UK and France. All the charts show data from December 11 to January 14 for the last three years and the two vertical grey areas represent Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.

United States: the transactions trend clearly shows that users purchase mostly up to a week before Christmas Day and no improvement is seen in early January, although sessions do return to normal quickly after New Year’s Eve. Publishers should take advantage of this rebound in sessions, while retailers may want to wait on providing deals until sales bounce back fully.

United Kingdom: transactions decline sharply until Christmas and then start rising sharply from December 26, and about a week after New Year’s Eve it raises to levels about the same or higher than pre-holiday, so you might consider creating marketing campaigns and promotions to take advantage of January’s rise. Sessions follow a similar pattern.

France: transactions and sessions follow a similar pattern as in the UK, but with a significant decline during New Year’s Eve. As you can see, there is a major spike in the second Wednesday of January every year, that’s the day Winter sales begin in France! Unlike in the US, January is an important month for French retailers, should we say the French Cyber Wednesday?

Get a head start on 2015

So how can you take advantage of those trends to be more successful during the coming year? Here are some ideas for you to act upon right now:

Look at your own data for previous years to understand the patterns for your existing and previous customers.

Check your Benchmarking reports to learn more about how other websites of your size and in your vertical performed.

Use Google Trends to check trends from previous years related to your vertical and country.

Make sure you match your marketing efforts to your local post-holiday trend.

About the Data & Charts

In order to perform this analysis, we looked at billions of sessions from authorized Google Analytics users who have shared their website data anonymously (read more).

Posted by Daniel Waisberg and Jocelyn Whittenburg

Online Retailers: The Secret to Seasonal Success in 2014

October 16, 2014

Plan ahead.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the holiday rush begin earlier and earlier. And we’ve also noticed that the shopping frenzy is extending beyond the traditional season, with transaction rates in 2013 boasting lifts even after Christmas. These trends make for a lot of opportunity for online retailers, but you need to play your cards right. The most important thing you can do to ensure seasonal success is to plan your digital strategy now. We’ve analyzed transaction behavior from a portion of our Google Analytics accounts over the 2013 holiday season to develop a guide for seasonal success.

Which days drive the most transactions?

In order to develop a successful holiday retail strategy, it’s important to first understand the days that drive the most sales for your business. Once you understand this, you can craft a strategy that optimizes your media and promotion not only for these days, but for the entire holiday season.

As digital retailers are well aware, Cyber Monday is THE digital shopping day of the year. It generates the most transactions of any single day and, in 2013, saw a transaction rate lift of 170% over average. In second place is Black Friday, a day that has increased in digital importance over the last three years. By 2013, the transaction rate on Black Friday was 114% higher than average. Beyond these two stars, the table below shows you the top days in 2013 by transaction volume and the lift in transactions rates on each day.

In general, beyond Cyber Monday and Black Friday, the Mondays and Tuesdays before Christmas in December tend to generate the highest volume of transactions. Interestingly, the highest transaction days are not correlated to the days with the most sessions (traffic to your site), so avoid using the top session days as a proxy for the top transaction days.

How can I drive sales on the top transaction days?

The holiday season generates some of the highest transaction rate spikes and the lowest dips for the entire year. In order to drive digital sales successfully, it’s important that you adjust your bids for auction-based media, such as search ads, appropriately to account for higher transaction rates on key dates and throughout the season. As you navigate the holiday season, use the lift in transaction rates over the average transaction rate as your bid multiplier for auction-based media (learn more about bid adjustments). This adjustment schedule reflects the increased value of clicks that are more likely to convert, and helps ensure that you stay ahead of competitors and get in front of the right consumers. The transaction rate lift for the top days are shown in the table above, while the chart below gives you an idea of the lift for the weeks surrounding the holiday season.

As you can see, the top days generate some of the biggest transaction rate lifts, but there’s also plenty of upside in the weeks preceding Thanksgiving as well as right before Christmas. A smart retailer will generate a bid schedule for the entire season, starting 4-5 weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Marketing to consumers is notoriously tricky and often trend-driven, making the holiday season a difficult and uncertain time for retailers. However, with proper pre-season preparation, digital retailers can set themselves up for seasonal success in 2014. If you’re a Google Analytics user, you can tailor this analysis and approach to your business, using your own data and the data available in our benchmarking tool. For more strategies for the holiday season, check out our holiday tips blog post and best practices checklist.

About the Data

In order to perform this analysis, we looked at billions of sessions across millions of Google Analytics accounts. We used session and transaction trends; and we looked at the percentage of sessions that included a transaction to calculate transaction rates. The data includes only accounts that have authorized Google to share website data in an anonymous way (read more). For questions, comments, or praise please contact us at gaqi@google.com

Posted by Daniel Waisberg and Jocelyn Whittenburg from the Google Analytics team.

Richer Insights For B2B Marketing With Google Analytics

January 7, 2014

The following is a guest post from Google Analytics Certified Partner Feras Alhlou, Partner & Principal Consultant at E-Nor Inc.

Marketers and sales professionals want to know who’s visiting their site, what content the target audience is consuming and what converts site visitors to paying customers.

In a B2B environment -- where long sales cycles and multiple stakeholders affect sales decision -- “knowing who’s coming to your site” takes on another dimension.

Say you’re in charge of marketing an eLearning system, and your target market includes telecom, hi-tech/software companies and universities. Your sales cycle could span several months, and there are multiple personas/stakeholders who will evaluate your company and your product.

Some key personas include:

Trainers, professors and teachers evaluating user experience and ease of uploading curricula and content
Management/administrators evaluating your company, pricing, client testimonials, case studies, etc.
IT assessing technical aspects of products, maintainability, your technical support processes, etc.

As a marketer, your job is to ensure your site addresses the needs of each stakeholder, while realizing that the interests/questions each group of stakeholders are likely to be different. It’s critical that the message and content (that you invested so much in creating) “sticks” with the unique personas in each market segment.

Easier said than done; measuring and optimizing all the above isn’t for the faint of heart.

But don’t fret. Integrating Google Analytics with Account-Based Marketing and Firmographic data has come to the rescue.

B2B Measurement Framework

Let’s walk through a typical scenario and highlight key performance indicators (KPIs). The measurement framework our eLearning marketing manager has in mind includes (and yes, they follow GA’s ABC!):

Acquisition

What percent of my traffic comes from industries I target

Telecom
Hi-tech/software companies
.edu’s

Percentage increase or decrease in traffic from industries I’m not targeting
Traffic volume and frequency from organizations our sales team targets offline

Behavior

Landing page stickiness by industry and organization
What content is very popular
What content is most shared
All the above segmented by the three targeted industries

Conversion

Number of whitepaper downloads by industry and company
Number of demo requests
Sales follow-up call requests
All the above segmented by the three targeted industries

If your site visitors aren’t providing you with company and industry data, it’s not possible to report on this data in Google Analytics. Hello Insightera, a marketing personalization platform, enables your to enrich customer’s onsite journey with firmographic data in a seamless integrated fashion (note, another product in the Google Analytics app gallery offering similar functionality is Demandbase).

Rich Firmographic Data in Google Analytics

Insightera’s firmographic data is organized by 1) deriving information from site visitors by identifying their ISP 2) determining that organization’s information, including location, industry (and soon company size and company revenue will also be available).

With easy-to-navigate firmographic readily available, analytics data takes on a new dimension; advertising dollars can be better targeted, and you have the ability to customize a visitor’s experience in several new ways.

Here’s a few examples of the rich and super cool data you have access to with Insightera, nicely integrated in the Google Analytics Reports (in Custom Variables):

1- Traffic Distribution by Industry

Within the GA interface you have a nice presentation your traffic by industry. Telecom seems to be strong (24.1% of traffic) in the report below, while Education could use some love from your marketing team.

2- Engagement By Industry

You can also report on your KPIs by industry (e.g. see how “Education” is the number 2 industry in the report below)

3- Traffic & Engagement By Organization

This report below shows the platform’s ability to take data segmentation a step further, and highlights specific organizations within the industry visiting the website (e.g. Yale University)

With firmographic data integrated into Google Analytics, it is possible to optimize paid campaigns such as Google AdWords, LinkedIn, banner ads, etc., and pinpoint how many companies from a specified list visited your site, which industries and what size companies visited the site. It provides the opportunity to then target paid campaigns to those visitors and channels, or increase efforts to reach untapped segments of a targeted audience.

Technical Considerations

Not a whole lot of considerations. Insightera makes it easy to plug and play. In your ‘Admin’ interface, select your Custom Variables slots for the ‘Industry’ and ‘Organization’ -- and let the rich data flow. Double check that the selected custom variable slots are empty and that you’re not already using them for something else in your Google Analytics implementation.

Content Personalization

Equipped with this new data, you can automate and personalize remarketing efforts and create targeted ads based on any given criteria. In the example above, the education-specific whitepaper can be presented to your higher-ed visitors, while hi-tech/software related content can be presented to your hi-tech/software visitors.

Insightera’s recommendation engine filters visitors by location and industry, content preferences and CRM data and digital behavior patterns. This process then predicts which content or channel works best for each visitor.

Increase the Value of Universal Analytics with more User Centricity

If you’re an early adopter of Universal Analytics or planning to migrate to Universal Analytics, Insightera will soon have you covered. The same method described above can be applied and firmographic data can be integrated into Custom Dimensions.

With some additional customization, and if you are (and you should be) user-centric, you can take up your implementation a notch up and report on visitors, not just visits, across web, mobile and other devices. Examples include where you have premium/gated content behind registration, user logins or when users self-identify. In these examples, a user-id is associated with each authenticated visitor and stored in a Custom Dimension. Measuring user behavior across multiple sessions and across multiple devices will then be available and you’ll be able to stitch data from different data sources including Insightera as well CRM systems such integrating GA with SalesForce.

Conclusion

As advertising and remarketing efforts reach new levels of focus, site owners have the most relevant information to meet their needs thanks to account-based marketing. Combining the power of Google Analytics with the new scope of firmographic data allows a new level of Performance Analytics. This set of tools offers deeper analytic insights into who your potential customers are, what they do, where they come from and what they consume.

Posted by Feras Alhlou, Principal Consultant, E-Nor, a Google Analytics Authorized Premium Reseller

Introducing the Google Databoard: A new way to explore research

July 10, 2013

The following was originally posted to the Inside AdWords blog.

It’s important for businesses to stay up to date about the most recent research and insights related to their industry. Unfortunately -- with so many new studies and with data being updated so often -- it can difficult to keep up. To make life a bit easier, we created the Databoard for Research Insights, which allows people to explore and interact with some of Google’s recent research in a unique and immersive way.

The Databoard is our response to three big challenges facing the vast majority of research released today.

1. Ease of consumption: The databoard introduces a new way of sharing data, with all of the information presented in a simple and beautiful way. Users can explore an entire study or jump straight to the topics or datapoints that they care about. The Databoard is also optimized for all devices so you can comfortably explore the research on your computer, tablet, or smartphone.

2. Shareability: Most people, when they find a compelling piece of data, want to share it! Whether its with a colleague, client, or a community on a blog or social network, compelling insights and data are meant to be shared. The databoard is designed for shareability, allowing users to share individual charts and insights or collections of data with anyone through email or social networks.

3. A cohesive story: Most research studies set out to answer a specific question, like how people use their smartphones in store, or how a specific type of consumer shops. This means that businesses need to look across multiple pieces of research to craft a comprehensive business or marketing strategy. To address this need, the Databoard allows users to curate a customized infographic out of the charts or data points you find important across multiple Google research studies. Creating an infographic is quick and easy, and you can share the finished product with your friends or colleagues.

The databoard is currently home to four research studies including The New Multi-screen World, Mobile In-store shopper research, Mobile search moments, and more. New studies will be added frequently so be sure to check back often. To get started exploring the Databoard and creating your own infographic visit google.com/think/databoard.

Posted by Adam Grunewald, Mobile Marketing Manager

Introducing “The Customer Journey to Online Purchase" — interactive insights on multi-channel marketing

April 25, 2013

Savvy marketers understand that you don’t always seal the deal with a single message, image, or advertisement. A user may see a display ad, click on a link from a friend, or do a search before buying something from your website — and all of these interactions can play a role in the final sale. It’s important to understand the entire customer journey so you can measure all of the elements that contribute to your campaigns, attribute the right value to them, and adjust your marketing budgets where appropriate.

That’s the philosophy behind Google Analytics tools like Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution Modeling. Tens of thousands of our largest advertisers are gaining valuable insights from Multi-Channel Funnels every month, and we’ve collected these insights using aggregate statistics to develop a benchmarking tool — The Customer Journey to Online Purchase. This interactive tool lets you explore typical online buying behavior and see how different marketing interactions affect business success.

The tool draws on Ecommerce and Multi-Channel Funnels data from over 36,000 Google Analytics clients that authorized sharing, including millions of purchases across 11 industries in 7 countries. Purchase paths in this tool are each based on interactions with a single ecommerce advertiser.

You’ll find benchmark data for:

how different marketing channels (such as display, search, email, and your own website) help move users towards purchases. For example, some marketing channels play an “assist” role during the earlier stages of the marketing funnel, whereas some play a “last interaction” role just before a sale.
how long it takes for customers to make a purchase online (from the first time they interact with your marketing to the moment they actually buy something), and how the length of this journey affects average order values.

Channel Roles in the Customer Journey
The data shows that every industry is different — the path to purchase for hotel rooms in Japan is not necessarily the same as the path as for an online supermarket in Canada.

A few findings stand out, in particular:

As you might expect, customers typically click on display ads early in their purchase journeys, but in some industries, such as US travel and auto, display clicks tend to occur closer to the purchase decision.
Across industries and countries, paid search has a fairly even assist-to-last interaction ratio, implying that this channel can act both in the earlier and later stages of the customer journey.

Advanced tip:

Once you’ve explored the benchmarks, look deeper into your own marketing data with the Multi-Channel Funnel reports, and consider defining your channels and campaigns to separate out categories that are specific to your business needs.

Purchase values and the length of the journey
We also see interesting patterns emerge when examining the length of the customer journey. While the majority of purchases take place within a single day or a single step (i.e., a single interaction with one marketing channel), longer paths tend to correlate with higher average order values.

For example,

in US Tech, online purchases that take more than 28 days are worth about 3.5 times more than purchases that occur immediately. And while 61% of tech purchases take place on that first day, only 53% of revenue comes from single-day purchases.
in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), on the other hand, most purchases (82%) are quick, likely because these are smaller and simpler purchases that don’t require much research.
in Edu / Gov, 41% of revenue comes from multi-day purchases, but 60% of revenue comes from multi-step purchases — suggesting that even when customers make decisions in a relatively short time period, they often have multiple marketing interactions before purchasing.

Advanced tip:

In Multi-Channel Funnels or the Attribution Modeling Tool, you can adjust the lookback window to reflect the typical length of the purchase path in your industry. For example, if your business tends to have shorter paths, you can zoom in on paths that take 5 days or less:

Putting the benchmarks to work
For marketers, it’s always a crucial challenge to design campaigns that deliver the right message at the right moment in a customer’s journey to purchase. We hope these benchmarks will provide useful insights about the journey and help you put your business into context. In particular, take a look at the final infographic, the “Benchmarks Dashboard,” to get a quick overview of your industry. Then, when you view your own data in the Multi-Channel Funnels reports in Google Analytics, you’ll gain a better understanding of where different channels impact your conversions and what your typical path looks like, so you can adjust your budgeting and marketing programs accordingly.

Try The Customer Journey to Online Purchase today on Google’s new Think Insights website.

Happy analyzing!

Posted by Paul Muret, Director of Engineering, Google Analytics

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