Analytics Blog: January 2009

Using _setVar? Here's an update on bounce rate and time on page

January 29, 2009

Higher bounce rates in your reportsMore accurate time on page metrics
Posted by Dai Pham, Google Analytics Team

Mastering Motion Charts - Trend Analysis

January 27, 2009

How the value of a keyword changes over time

How targeting traffic from a channel improves (or decreases) the quality of your visitors over time

How landing page optimization affects visitor behavior

How engagement metrics relate to your conversion rate

How your visitor profile changes over time

When to use a motion chart instead of just a graph
Example: Spotting a trend in the Browser / OS Report

Next, click the "Visualize" button at the top of the report.

We'll select Visits for the X-axis, and % New Visits for the Y-axis. The chart loads a view of the data for the first day of the period. Notice that the bubble for Internet Explorer/Windows starts well on the left side of the chart:

After clicking play, the chart begins to change. Midway through the period, the "Internet Explorer / Windows" bubble has moved and now hovers near the middle of the chart. The other bubbles stay to the left, showing that the increase is not a trend across all the browser/OS combinations.

By the last days of the period being charted, the Internet Explorer / Windows bubble has moved to hover in the far right corner, representing a substantial increase in both Visits and % New Visits.

Thanks to the Motion Chart, this trend was easy to spot. Here's the real question though, what do you do with an observation like this?

The project manager may budget additional time for quality testing in Internet Explorer vs other browsers due to the change.
The marketing manager may use the insight to refine his or her understanding of the audience for the site, adjusting the sales copy to match known preferences of Windows users.
The advertising manager may conclude that the company's new Mac-focused campaign was actually reaching the wrong audience and adjust accordingly.

Useful tips when looking for trends with motion charts

Focus on those bubbles that move more gradually. Often these are the bubbles based on the largest amount of data and are less likely to be thrown off by random, one-time occurrences.
Use the trails feature to visualize a bubble's path across time steps. You can turn on trails by hitting the "Trails" checkbox shown below.

Change your timescale from days to weeks when looking for longer-term trends. To change the time-scale on your motion chart, navigate back to the report you want to visualize, select the middle button next to the “Graph by” label on the upper-right hand corner of the graph and then click "Visualize" to return to the motion chart.

Focus on trends that let you take action. If you're easily able to make adjustments to your advertising mix but not your sales copy, then you may want to start your analysis by looking at keyword trends and campaign performance rather than landing page optimization.
Check out some of the other resources on Motion Charts to sharpen your skills:

What do you use motion charts for?

Have you ever used motion charts to spot a keyword or site usage trend? Add a comment and tell us about it!

Posted by Jessica Hullman of PureVisibility, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant.

Seminars for Success in Atlanta, February 17 & 18

January 26, 2009

Seminar for Successregister

Day 1 - Business Insights

Introduction to web analytics

Website testing with Google Website Optimizer

Google Analytics reporting features

Sharing Google Analytics data

Custom dashboards

Understanding site visitors

Tracking online marketing campaigns

Evaluating site content and user navigation

Understanding goals and conversion funnels

Day 2 - Technical Insights

Google Analytics architecture overview

Learning about regular expressions

Improving your data with filters

Setting up goals and funnels

Implementing e-commerce tracking

Configuring custom segmentation

Introduction to event tracking

Tracking websites with multiple domains/subdomains

Code customization

Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

9 Steps to Becoming an Analytics Emperor

January 23, 2009

benchmarkingInternal site searchGoalse-commerce trackingbounce ratecustom reportssegmentation

Want to hear more on the above? Check out Avinash's post on Deeper Analysis & Insights for the full story. Worth a good weekend read and could be your ticket to Analytics Emperordom!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

New Video: See what people are searching for on your site and act on it!

January 22, 2009

Google Custom Search Enginetracking visitor search activityFive Questions to Ask of Your Site Search Data

Posted by Melissa Hsieh, Google Analytics Team

Tracking Google Sites with Analytics

January 21, 2009

Google SitesOther StuffStatistics

these instructionsPosted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Join the Discussion... with Comments

January 20, 2009

As of today, you can post comments on new features and developments directly in the blog

For support questions or more in-depth conversations, use the help forum

For feature requests, you can use this form

To get hands-on implementation support, speak to an Authorized Consultant

Lastly, to share best practices, key learnings or case studies, email ga-feedback [at] google [dot] com (no support questions please)

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

The short answer is.. you don't have to change your snippet

January 16, 2009

Analytics Training in Las Vegas Next Week

January 15, 2009

Introductory Course- Wednesday, January 21Advanced Course - Thursday, January 22Google Website Optimizer - Friday, January 23http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/awseminars
Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

Announcing the Winners of the Website Workout Contest

January 14, 2009

AprilWebsite OptimizerWebsite Workout contesthereWebsite Optimizer BlogPosted by Andrew Gomez, Business Marketing Team

Eyes on the Prize with Custom Reports

January 8, 2009

A few quick definitions Metric (columns)
The important thing to remember here is that metrics are always numerical. Dimension (rows)
Dimensions are almost always text, such as "new" vs "returning" (visitor type) or "North America" vs "Europe" (region). How to create a custom report
1) Navigate to the custom report page.

2) Build your report

help centerWhen to use custom reports

COMBINE METRICS FROM MULTIPLE REPORTS - Custom Reports let you group together whichever metrics and dimensions you find most relevant. This lets you go beyond standard reports to compare data from multiple areas of GA all in one place. This means less switching from one report to another and more flexibility in how you analyze your data.

Example: An outdoor sporting goods store places a heavy emphasis on paid search to drive e-commerce transactions, and uses the AdWords Campaigns report often. When it comes time to share reports among their internal teams, they currently do multiple exports in order to incorporate metrics from the Site Usage, E-Commerce and Clicks tabs all in one view. With custom reports, however, they can drag and drop the metrics they'd like to see from each tab and perform a single export into Excel in order to share their data with team members.

CREATE RELEVANT DRILLDOWNS - By making use of multiple sub-dimensions in custom reports, you can create a report that drills down up to five levels deep, in whatever order you choose. This lets you easily break visitor behavior into workable segments, with more precision than ever.

Example: Cross Country Inc., a major transportation and logistics company, uses Google Analytics to track advertising campaigns spanning many channels including print ads, banners and pay-per-click ads. For the sake of consistency, Cross Country has chosen to use one universal campaign name, "TruckerRecruitment," that includes six unique acquisition channels (PPC, Print Ads, Banner Ads etc.)

The agency managing the placement and measurement of these recruitment ads needs to report back to Cross Country's management team on their performance, but when they navigate to the "Campaigns" report, they can only drill down one level (done by choosing a value in the "dimension" dropdown).

But wait! By using custom reports, the agency can now arrange drilldowns up to five levels deep, in whatever order they choose. This now makes it easy to show Cross Country how their Spanish-language print ads in Los Angeles did vs their Spanish-language banner ads in Chicago and optimize their spend accordingly.

SIMPLIFY REPORTS TO SHARE WITH COLLEAGUES - If you need to share data with teammates that may not work closely with Google Analytics, you can use the tab feature in custom reports to create specific tabs for individual people or job functions. This lets your colleagues see only the data relevant to their activities and helps cut down on confusion and data-overload.

Example: National Pizza has a wide range of online marketing campaigns that it uses Google Analytics to track and monitor. Several people within the organization regularly log in to Google Analytics in order to check on the performance of different campaigns. Now the webmaster can create a custom report with one tab for each of her colleagues. Each colleague gets a custom view with only the data relevant to his or her activities.

Which metrics can I put in my report?
arethis chart
Share your reports with the world

Send us an emailPosted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team