Analytics Blog: 2011

Web Analytics TV #23 - The Holiday Episode

December 23, 2011

Welcome to the holiday episode of Web Analytics TV! Web Analytics TV, as you well know by now, is powered by your amazing questions. In this merry episode we had questions from France, Australia, Sweden, India, Germany, The Netherlands and the US.

If you’re new to this show, our process is simple.

Step 1: You ask, or vote on, your favorite web analytics questions. Vote on next week’s questions using this Web Analytics TV Google Moderator site.

Step 2: From a secret undisclosed location at the Googleplex Avinash Kaushik & Nick Mihailovski answer them. :-)

In this episode we award the “Ninja of the Episode” and award it to Maggie in Bulgaria, for a great question about the difference between the days and visits to transaction report and the time lag reports in multi channel funnels. Maggie, just email us and we’ll send you a signed copy of Web analytics 2.0.

OK. Here is the list of last episodes questions.

In this action packed episode we discuss:

(0:35) Working with changes in various country’s cookie policies

(1:56) Recommendation for tracking bounces on content sites

(4:32) Tracking exit links from your website

(7:00) Tracking and reporting customer lifetime value

(9:47) Days to purchase vs time lag reports in multi-channel funnels

(11:48) Cross domain and sub-domain tracking using a GACP

(13:01) Funnel visualization via the API

(16:03) Interaction hits and impact on quota

(16:41) Tracking internal referrals / campaings / house ads

(17:51) Why visits and entrances are the same for page level custom vars

(19:54) Comparing mondays, week over week

(20:42) Time between setting profiles filers and seeing data in reports

Here are the links to the topics we discuss:

Funnel visualization using paditrack

Vote on developer issue in our issue tracker

Justin Cutroni explains how to use internal site search to track internal campaigns

Use Excellent Analytics, GA Data Grabber, Next Analytics to extract data into excel

Check out the Google Analytics App Gallery for great tools

As always, if you need help setting up Google Analytics or leveraging the advanced configuration options, we recommend hiring a Google Analytics Certified Partner.

If you found this post or video helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Please share them via the comment form below.

This series would not be possible without your awesome questions. Please submit them on our public Google Moderator site, and while you’re there don’t forget to vote for your favorite questions. Avinash and I will answer them in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Thanks!
Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Advanced Segments for Holiday campaigns

December 20, 2011

up 12% this yearAdvanced Segments

(if you don’t have e-commerce tracking, you may want to create a custom advanced segment like this one:

where the goal# that you select is your most valuable goal). Traffic Sources > Search > Organic(Also try repeating this process for December 26th 2010 through January 1st 2011 to find trends during the post-Christmas week).

Content > Site Content

Posted by Jesse Nichols, Google Analytics team

Sankey Diagrams and Flow: Over A Hundred Years of Innovation

December 20, 2011

Flow VisualizationSankey diagramsCharles Minnard’s

Network flow - structural changes via alluvial diagrams

Flow of Energy - energy management and power plant efficiency

Flow of Traffic - transport analysis and tournament analysis (ex. 2010 FIFA World Cup!)

Flow of Wealth - money flow, social conditions, and stock price modeling

http://www.sankey-diagrams.com/Visitors FlowGoal FlowPosted by Phil Mui, Google Analytics team

Updating the Analytics IQ Course and Exam

December 16, 2011

Today, we updated the Google Analytics IQ course, available at google.com/analytics/iq, to reflect the new version of Google Analytics. An updated exam will appear during the first week of January. If you’re already in the middle of studying and plan to take the exam in December, you may wish to continue using the old version of the course, which will remain available at ConversionUniversity.com for one more week. After that, ConversionUniversity.com will host the new course.So, what’s been updated? If you’ve been practicing with the old version of Google Analytics, you’ll find that most of the knowledge you’ve acquired will be valid and useful for the new exam. But, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the new version and start using it.Specifically, you should

understand accounts, web properties, and profiles in the new Google Analytics,

know the goal types and when to use each type,

understand the concepts of “metric” and “dimension”,

be aware of new Google Analytics capabilities and reports. (Try reviewing recent posts on this blog to make sure you’re up to speed.)

We hope you enjoy the updated online course and best of luck on the exam!Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

The power of visualization with the Google Analytics API and Google Earth

December 15, 2011

Newland communitiesShufflePointGoogle AnalyticsGoogle EarthChief IngredientGoogle Analytics APIKMLGoogle Analytics App GalleryShufflePointGoogle Analytics Developer Program

Greater insights from the Site Speed report - Technical section

December 14, 2011

Site Speed reportSo what’s new?ExplorerPerformanceMap Overlay

Where to access the Site Speed Technical section

Site Speed with Technical section metrics overlayedWhat are the new metrics and what you can do with them?ExplorerMap OverlayPerformanceAvg. Page Load Time

Avg. Redirection Time - the time spent in redirection before fetching this page. If there are no redirects, the value for this metric is expected to be 0.

Avg. Domain Lookup Time - the average amount of time spent in DNS lookup for this page.

Avg. Server Connection Time - the time needed for the user to connect to your server.

Avg. Server Response Time - the time for your server to respond to a user request, including the network time from the user’s location to your server.

Avg. Page Download Time - the time to download your page.

If you notice that some of the metrics are higher than expected, review your site operations and test if changes lead to improvements. For example, if you notice that Avg. Domain Lookup Time is high, you might want to change your DNS provider. A high Server Connection Time, on the other hand, is a metric that you might not be able to reduce.

To most significantly increase your website’s speed, evaluate your Site Speed report for metrics that have the largest values and target those for improvement. Below is a list of actions that you can take to help solve issues with each of these metrics:

High Avg. Redirection Time - analyze whether the redirects are necessary. Also check sources to see if a specific referrer is causing high redirect latency.
High Avg. Domain Lookup Time - consider changing DNS provider that provides consistent and lower response times.
High Avg. Server Response Time - reduce backend processing time or place a server closer to users.
High Avg. Page Download Time - reduce your initial data size.

Looking for additional ways to improve your site speed? Be sure to view your site’s performance by browser type and Geo location. Your pages may need to be optimized to display faster on a specific browser or for a specific country. Visit the Map Overlay tab to gain insights by region and add “browser” as a secondary dimension to see the impact by browser.

Google Analytics Enhancements for Mobile Apps

December 13, 2011

EasyTracking Library - automatic session management, better integration with Google Analytics SDK

Updated Google Analytics SDK - More reliable method for sending hits, Android Market referral issue fixed, available via the Android SDK manager

More samples - new open source application aimed to help reduce the ramp up time for new developers who want to track their apps

EasyTracker Libraryhttp://code.google.com/p/analytics-api-samples/downloadstrunk/src/tracking/mobile/android/EasyTrackertrunk/src/tracking/mobile/ios/EasyTrackerNotepadNew Versions of Google Analytics SDK for Android and iOSiOShttp://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/ios.htmlAndroidhttp://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/android.htmlMobilePlaygroundtrunk/src/tracking/mobileNew Home for the Mobile Tracking Documentationhttp://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/overview.htmlReporting Problems and Feature Requestshttp://code.google.com/p/analytics-issues/issues/list

PrivacyStar scales Android business with AdMob & Google Analytics

December 13, 2011

10 billion on AndroidPrivacyStarAdMob

Google Analyticsfull case study

Introducing the Google Analytics Core Reporting API

December 8, 2011

Google Analytics Core Reporting APIa larger projectVersion 3.0new client librariesVersion 2.4version 3.0Google APIs ConsoleGoogle Analytics Management APIData Export API changelogdeveloper documentationData Export API Google group

Reaching Your Goals with Analytics: Webinar follow-up

December 8, 2011

How do I do data analysis?60-second YouTube videosWhy should I use Goals if I don’t have a product to sell?Flow Visualization toolWhich types of Goals should I use?Event trackingEcommerce in Google AnalyticsWhat are good trends to measure for websites without a shopping cart?How do I set up Google Analytics for my site?Help Centerdifferent implementation scenarioscertified partnersWhat are Goal match types/settings?Help Center articleHow do we determine what goal value to set?How do we test alternate landing pages?Google Website OptimizerWhat are the top 5 metrics to share with the CEO?Multi-Channel FunnelsGoogle Analytics dashboardseasy-to-read formathelp centerPosted by Sara Jablon Moked, Google Analytics team

An invitation to social sites to integrate with Google Analytics

December 7, 2011

Every day, millions of people share and engage with content online. But most sharing doesn’t happen on the site where it was published, it happens throughout the social web. Marketers and publishers are looking for a comprehensive view of all interactions with their content - on and off their site - and so we’re working hard to make this happen.To enable our customers to discover who’s sharing, voting and bookmarking their content on the social web, cross-network measurement needs to become easier. So today we’re inviting social networks and platforms to integrate their activity streams with Google Analytics. Through these integrations, marketers and publishers will be able to discover off-site engagement, optimize their engagement within each social community, and measure the impact of each social channel and its associated digital investment. Any network can integrate their streams - like +1, votes, and comments - into the Google Analytics social reports, which will be fully available next year to the many marketers, publishers, and websites that are using Google Analytics for free.To make integration easy for social networks and platforms we’ve created a social data hub - it’s based on widely deployed, open web standards such as ActivityStreams and PubsubHubbub. A number of partners are already working with us to improve measurement of social actions - including Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Gigya, LiveFyre, ReadItLater, Reddit, TypePad, Vkontakte, and of course, Google+, Blogger and Google Groups.

We’ll have more to share next year, so keep reading the blog or follow us on twitter @googleanalytics for updates. If you’re a social network or platform interested to learn about integrating with Google Analytics you can visit our developer site where you’ll find more information. Phil Mui, Group Product Manager & Ilya Grigorik, Engineering Manager, Google Analytics

3 last-minute Analytics tips for the holiday season

December 6, 2011

If you're a marketing professional, you've probably spent months preparing your holiday campaigns. But have you focused so much on great creative that you've neglected your measurement plan? Don’t despair: there’s still time to make the most of your holiday marketing and measurement. Here’s some food for thought to help you make sure your Analytics is adding value this season and setting you up for success next year.
1. Stuffing your stockings: all the best treats for your marketing funnel
Online shoppers are increasingly taking a considered, comparative approach to making purchases. Consumers are now consulting an average of 10.7 sources when making a buying decision - double the rate of 2010. That means that all steps of the marketing funnel are more important than ever. So make sure to take all the steps to conversion into account when measuring your campaigns this season.
With Multi-Channel Funnels reports in the new version of Google Analytics, you can see not just the last click prior to conversion, but also how earlier interactions influenced the purchase decision. For instance, your customer may have clicked on an organic search link immediately prior to purchasing, but in the weeks before to the purchase, he clicked on a display ad, followed links from a post on a social network, and later visited your site directly. With Multi-Channel Funnels, you can see these earlier assists and take this influence into account when optimizing campaigns throughout the holiday season. You’ll also have a rich set of data to plan next year’s campaigns, as you can plan around those channels that drive awareness and consideration earlier in the purchase process.

2. Jingle bells, mobile’s ringing
It’s hard to overstate the enormity of the mobile opportunity this holiday season as consumers turn to smartphones and tablets for both product research and purchases. Mobile searches have grown dramatically in the last two years, and it’s predicted that 44% of searches for last-minute gifts and store locator terms will be from mobile devices.
Providing a great mobile experience is now expected, or you will lose customers. With mobile reporting in Google Analytics, you can see how users are able (or not able) to make purchase decisions. You can segment visitors based on criteria like device types and operating systems. For instance, you can compare if there are different conversion rate for iOS and Android, and make adjustments accordingly. Google offers resources to help you make your site mobile-ready, so you can take action if you find roadblocks. Finally, when measuring your marketing channels, make sure to take mobile ads into account. You can get deeper insights by segmenting out mobile advertising using the recently updated AdWords reports in Google Analytics.

3. Follow Santa’s sleigh in real time

You may have time-sensitive marketing events planned this quarter - whether it’s a daily deal marketing program, viral content that suddenly takes off, or even press coverage. Data that arrives days or even hours later is too late to make decisions during the fast-paced holiday season. With Real-Time reporting in Google Analytics, you can see the impact of these events within seconds. This can be particularly useful for social media efforts. If you post a tweet linking to your site, for example, you can see the immediate visits resulting from the post, and engage in the conversation with your customers. You can also use Real-Time to monitor the immediate impact of email offers and other campaigns that offer customers deals to purchase quickly.

So, grab those reindeer reins and have a great holiday season with Google Analytics. Best wishes for very merry marketing measurement!Posted by Bill Kee, Google Analytics team

Webinar: Reaching Your Goals with Analytics

November 22, 2011

Webinar: Reaching Your Goals with AnalyticsDate:Time:Sign up here!

Key questions to ask for richer insights from your data

How to define “success” (for websites, visitors, or campaigns)

How to set up and use Goals

How to set up and use Ecommerce (for websites with a shopping cart)

How to link AdWords to your Google Analytics account

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Google Analytics team

Site Speed, now even easier to access

November 18, 2011

Site Speed report

Performance tab

_trackPageLoadTime

Sample rate - Google Analytics samples your page load times to generate this report. For the more technical minded users you can adjust this sampling rate by adding to your Google Analytics code the function - setSiteSpeedSampleRate.

Support for virtual pages - If a virtual path was used in the _trackPageview call, that path will now also be associated with any site speed data collected from that page.

Redirection time - Redirects are now counted as part of the "page load time" metric, so it represents the total time a user perceives of your site loading. Current users of the Site Speed report may notice a small increase in page load times as a result of this update.

Still have questions? Check out the Google code site and Help Center articles on Site Speed. We hope you’ll gain insights from this newly updated report and be able to use it to optimize your pages. Please share with us your thoughts on this report and any suggestions for future updates.

You can now see mobile ad performance in Google Analytics.

November 11, 2011

Simplifying eCommerce reporting across international sites with multiple currencies

November 9, 2011

It’s quite common for organizations to have complex reporting requirements that combine multiple data sources. In these cases, an efficient way to get at Google Analytics data is to use the API. But for those without the development resources needed to access the API there are many Google Analytics Apps available that can offer a solution. The following mini case study is about Analytics Canvas, a 3rd party Google Analytics App. Analytics Canvas helped Fairmont Raffles Hotels International take a complex reporting task and make it easy.Like most global organizations, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International has regionally operated business units. Each unit typically maintains its own reporting profile in Google Analytics. But with individual business unit profiles, how do you analyze the data across all the business units? And, how do you combine external business data with each of these Google Analytics profiles?

For Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, the answers lie in the Analytics Canvas tool from nModal. Analytics Canvas is an easy to use, drag-n-drop interface for creating data queries and transformations needed for advanced reports and dashboards. Analytics Canvas can extract data from multiple Google Analytics accounts, combine it with additional data sources, and then segment and filter the data.

Barbara Pezzi, Director Analytics & Search Optimization, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, uses Analytics Canvas to automate her complex reporting tasks. “We trade in over 10 different currencies on our websites. We needed to have multiple international hotels’ eCommerce data converted to a common currency in various reports, such as ‘All Traffic Sources’ and ‘Campaigns’, to analyze the overall production of each traffic channel and marketing initiative. Traditionally we would have to export data from multiple profiles and do currency conversion by hand in spreadsheets. With almost 100 hotels, the large number of profiles made it a very time consuming and potentially error prone task to get a multi-hotel, single currency report.” With Analytics Canvas, Fairmont automated this task in minutes with a single currency report for all its hotels.

Analytics Canvas was built by nModal Solutions Inc using the Google Analytics API. Here is what James Standen, the founder of nModal, has to say “The Google Analytics API is very easy to use and the full access to data makes it possible to make a very powerful query interface. So far we’ve had a great response to Analytics Canvas. People are very pleased to have greater access to their web traffic data, and we’re thrilled to hear about the interesting new applications and integrations our customers are able to do using our tool.”
The Analytics Canvas application can be found through the Google Analytics App Gallery and can be downloaded from the Analytics Canvas website.
If you’re interested in developing applications for the Google Analytics platform visit Google Analytics for Developers. Posted by Pete Frisella, Google Analytics API team

Web Analytics TV #22 - The Automation episode

November 7, 2011

Step 1Web Analytics TV Google Moderator site

Step 2: From a secret undisclosed location at the Googleplex Avinash Kaushik & Nick Mihailovski answer them. :-)

In this episode we award the “Ninja of the Episode” and award it to Niklas in Sweden, for a great question about the difference between events and custom variables. Niklas, just email us and we’ll send you a signed copy of Web analytics 2.0.

OK. Here is the list of last episodes questions.

In this action packed episode we discuss:

(0:23) Best practices for rollup reporting across multiple sites (See answer below)
(0:53) Reporting secure search in Google Analytics
(3:27) Troubleshooting funnel navigation reports
(4:31) Comparing using event tracking and session level custom variables.
(6:28) Measuring how visitors who interact with a video influence conversions
(7:35) When data in Google Analytics updated
(9:55) Representing multiple date ranges by column
(11:04) Best practices for tracking widgets
(11:40) Exporting greater than 500 rows from Google Analytics
(13:43) Comparing days to purchase by medium
(15:20) Using multiple tracking codes on the same page (see answer below)
(16:25) Best practices using custom variables to track multivariate test information
(18:10) Reporting across multiple currencies in Google Analytics
(19:10) Segmenting 'serious' visitors by loyalty and engagement metrics
(21:32) Measuring click to call buttons in your mobile websites
(22:45) The best and most time efficient way to put Google Analytics data into a powerPoint
(23:47) Tracking cross-sells or up-sells on a product page
(26:05) Tracking multiple ids or paths per page
(26:45) Why single page website show time on site metrics
(28:27) Using the reverse page path report for analysis
(30:21) Do profile filters impact site search reports
(32:39) How to get fast traffic in your reports

Here are the links to the topics we discuss:

A custom report users using secure site search
Use nextAnalytcs to extract custom views of data out of Google Analytics
Tracking users without JavaScript using Mobile tracking snippets
Reporting tools to simplify data access using the Google Analytics API
A custom report comparing days to purchase by medium
Using Analytics Canvas to report in a common currency across Google Analytics profiles
Applying advanced segments to custom reports by Avinash (includes downloadable report)
Google Analytics PowerPoint integration provided by Shufflepoint
Using the new flow visualization (to replace reverse goal path analysis)

There was one question asked which we needed to get more information.

“What is your recommendation to simultaneously track data for a local site & having a roll-up profile to track aggregate data across all sites of a company.”

What we learned was that there are 25+ sites on different domains split across 2 business units. A simple solution is to pull out data using the API to create any rollup reports you need. Another option is to have multiple tracking codes on the same page, and have one code be the same across all the sites. That way all the data is sent into a single report which you can view.

One thing to keep in mind, is that each site will track visitors separately. So visitor numbers will not be accurate across all the sites.

So hopefully this helps you out. As always, if you need help setting up Google Analytics or leveraging the advanced configuration options, we recommend hiring a Google Analytics Certified Partner.

If you found this post or video helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Please share them via the comment form below.

This series would not be possible without your awesome questions. Please submit them on our public Google Moderator site, and while you’re there don’t forget to vote for your favorite questions. Avinash and I will answer them in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics team

Email scheduler, PDF export, and a transition to the new Google Analytics interface

November 1, 2011

report email schedulingnew Google AnalyticsReal Time AnalyticsMulti-Channel FunnelsSocial Plugin AnalyticsFlow Visualization

Optimize Engagement using AddThis and ShareThis with Analytics

October 28, 2011

Increasingly users are discovering great content, products and links through social referrals such as +1 button endorsements, comments, likes, and shares. Earlier this year we introduced Social Plugin Analytics to help you analyze how users engage with any social plugin installed on your site - after all, what can be measured can also be improved and optimized!

MilkADeal started using Google Analytics earlier this year. It is a company in Malaysia that has benefited greatly from using Social Plugin Analytics. By using these new reports, they are able to uncover insights and create significant business process improvements. As reported in the New Straits Times, "In particular, the newly introduced social interaction tracking tool...We've been using it only in the last couple of weeks but we have seen an increase of almost 60% in social interaction visitors to our site," said Wilson Quah, founder of MilkADeal."

By optimizing the instrumentation of a few buttons on their site, MilkADeal is able to achieve better engagement, a big boost in number of high quality referrals, and better outcomes! Today, we are happy to announce that our partners, AddThis and ShareThis, are making this social plugin analysis even easier. Just as the +1 button is automatically instrumented for you by the Google+ team, publishers using AddThis and ShareThis will now have first class integrations with Social Plugin Analytics!

“Providing real-time analytics to 10 million domains each month, we see what big data can do every day. Integrating AddThis social signals into Google Analytics is a big win for publishers. We’re excited to contribute social sharing insight where it can be viewed in context of the GA interface.”

Will Meyer, VP of Publisher Products, Clearspring

“At ShareThis, we work to provide our publisher network of one million+ websites with actionable analytics on their social activity. It's great to see Google paving the way for the entire industry to derive meaningful insights from the social Web and we're incredibly pleased to be a launch partner."

Kurt Abrahamson, CEO, ShareThis

To enable the integration for all of your AddThis buttons, you are now just one line of code away, and ShareThis users don’t have to do a thing. If you have Google Analytics installed, and you are using a ShareThis widget, simply login into Google Analytics and check out your new social reports!

Posted by Ilya Grigorik, Google Analytics team

Update: AddToAny users will also be happy to know that their social buttons are automatically instrumented to work with event tracking and social plugin analytics!

Google Analytics 360 + Salesforce.