Analytics Blog: February 2009

Google Analytics Tracking for Flash Applications

February 27, 2009

track Adobe Flash applicationsstep-by-step tutorialCode SitePosted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics Videos From "Vacationland"

February 25, 2009

YouTube Channel

Google Analytics: How People are Behaving on your Site

Where Does Your Traffic Come From?

Using Google Analytics Filters for Better Traffic Reports

The Google Analytics Dashboard

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

How Many of Your Visits are from iPhones?

February 24, 2009

Advanced Segmentation
Enabling the new iPhone segment is easy: click on the drop down menu at the top right of any report next to the text "Advanced Segments", and select "Visits from iPhones" in the list of default segments. You might want to turn off "All Visits" when viewing your iPhone segment; if the percentage of total visits to your site from the iPhone is small, it will be difficult to visualize the two sets on numbers on the same graph.

Like any Advanced Segment, all of Google Analytics' reports are available; this includes AdWords performance, of course. If you use AdWords, you can now use Analytics to better analyze the performance of any campaigns that use our new iPhone and high-end mobile targeting feature. We've added the iPhone segment to get you started, but you can always create a custom Advanced Segment to compare or combine iPhone visits with other mobile operating systems; for instance, if you're targeting ads in AdWords to iPhone & high end mobile devices (which currently includes Android devices), you can create a new segment for iPhone & Android.

From the Advanced Segments drop-down, click on "Create a new advanced segment", and create a segment with 2 criteria. Drag "Operating System" under the "Systems" dimension into the target area with the dotted-line border, and type "iPhone" into the "Value" field. Click "Add 'or' statement" to get a second target area, and do the same for Android. Then, you can name your segment "High-end mobile" and see that traffic in Analytics.

Happy Tuesday, and Happy Segmenting!

Posted by Chrix Finne, Google Mobile Ads Team

Monday Back to Basics: Accounts vs Profiles

February 23, 2009

store a huge fortune solely for catsHelp Center
The Difference Between an Account and a Profilean account contains a collection of profilescreating profiles

Separate out information about specific web properties, like your blog
In this analogy the account is the house and the profiles are the rooms. You want to know everything that's happening in the house, but you also want to do special analysis just on the living room. Maybe you have some people at your company who only care about one room. By creating a profile, you can restrict access for these people to just that room.

Apply different rules and criteria for advanced analysis
Here, you're using profiles like different lenses to look at your data. Maybe you need to do super-specific analysis on just new visitors in California. You can use a profile like a microscope to zero in on just that group of users. This type of advanced analysis can also be done using advanced segments.

Profile Do's and Don'tsDo

Give each profile a different name so that it's easily identifiable (e.g. "Blog Only")

Add the start date to the name of the profile so you'll always know how much data exists in the profile

Give reports-only access to specific users for your profiles

Create different filters for each profile so you can create different sets of data for different types of analysis

Use the search box in the "top content" report to test filters on your profiles

Filter out query parameters from your reports using profiles

Talk to an authorized consultant about profiles if you have a complicated website and you're feeling unsure

Don't

Neglect to create a master profile with all your original data for a website. This is really important!

Give users "administrator" access for specific profiles. "Administrator" access is not profile-specific. This means administrators automatically get access to every profile in the account.

Change settings on your profiles without keeping a log of changes. Otherwise things can get really confusing.

Other Resources

Accounts vs Profiles in Depth (Code Site)

Ten most common filters

In-depth guide to creating profiles

Excluding internal traffic from your reports

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Tracking Olly

February 20, 2009

AloneGoogle productshttp://www.virginglobalrow.comPosted by Brett Crosby, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics helps Experience Project organize the human experience

February 18, 2009

To prepare for the case study on Experience Project, we explored www.experienceproject.com and pored through stories to better understand the user base and intent of the website. What we found was something akin to a directory of human experiences ranging from chronic illnesses to pet ownership. With over two million shared stories on thousands of topics, the website is both informative and addicting.

We sat down with Armen Berjikly of Experience Project to chat about his growing social experience website and usage of Google Analytics. Berjikly recounted a heartfelt story of a close friend diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and how Experience Project was built with the intent to connect people from all walks of life and share stories.
For Experience Project team, Google Analytics has proven to be an effective tool to help decide where and how to spend time, resources, and energy. To help refine the site, the team turned to Google Analytics for a variety of their website goals including:

Learning about Users

Google Analytics has helped Experience Project understand demographic, geographic, and subject matter information about their users. After uncovering search trends, the team created tools for managing personal challenges, goal achievements, and dream interpretations to meet increasing demands of their users.

Optimizing Advertising RevenueAs the site operates as a free service, maximizing advertising revenue is a key focus for Experience Project’s online marketing efforts. Through the Keywords Reports, Experience Project found that a large percentage of its members self-identified as dog and cat owners. Armed with this information, the team not only increased marketing on relevant keywords but also wooed pet-related advertisers with actual traffic and demographic metrics. To the delight of users, new functionality focused on pet ownership was built into the site.

Refining Product Development

Experience Project recently launched a new “Question and Answer” section on the site where users submit questions directly to the community. By using the Content Reports in Google Analytics, management and engineering can easily measure the success of the launch and user engagement. Key performance indicators include metrics on usage, return visits, and time spent on those pages which are all readily available.

By utilizing the growing feature set within Google Analytics, the management and engineering teams are able to make key product decisions and measure success. Simply put by Berjikly, “Google Analytics is easy to use, and it makes us more confident in our decisions.”

To learn more about how Experience Project leveraged Google Analytics, read the full case study.Posted by Melissa Hsieh, Google Analytics Team

Two Cool Integrations: Telephone Leads & Live Chat

February 17, 2009

Disclaimer: While these two integrations make use of Google Analytics, they were created by third parties and are not officially supported by the Google Analytics team. For questions or support please contact Mongoose Metrics or LivePerson. We love seeing developers extend Analytics to make it more useful, so if you've done a cool integration or add-on, let us know with a comment!
Tracking Calls to Unique Sales Phone NumbersMongoose Metrics

(click to enlarge)

Example: Trackable Numbers and AdWordsBest Practices for Tracking Off-line ConversionsTracking Live Chat InteractionsLivePerson

Map Overlay Report which displays volume and quality metrics of live chat interactions by geographic region

Search Engines Report: Reveals the sources and keywords that drive interactive chats (and resulting conversions)

Reverse Goal Path Report: Lists the navigation paths that lead to the most chats

(click to enlarge)
integration pageinstruction PDFPosted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Introducing the Google Conversion Room Blog

February 13, 2009

Google Conversion Room

Using Key Performance Indicators Part I

Using Key Performance Indicators Part II

site feed

French

Japanese

Happy tracking!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Tips and Tools for Expanding Keywords Lists

February 11, 2009

find the best keywordsfree Google tools1)best performing keywords

2)Search-based Keyword Tool

3) Google Insights for Search

Google Insights for Searchrising searches

Posted by Lauren Usui, Insights for Search Team

Mastering Motion Charts - Analyzing Spikes in Traffic

February 10, 2009

Quick Reminder: Tuesdays on the blog we'll be focusing on advanced topics. Today's topic relates to motion charts, one of the new enterprise features on Google Analytics.
Example: Spotting a spike in traffic using the Keywords Report

The number of visits from a certain referrer, such as stumbleupon.com, suddenly jumps when a blog post gets attention

Your conversion rate falls to zero because of an error in your signup form

Your percentage of new visitors suddenly increases from an event sponsorship

Your bounce rate spikes due to a redirect error

Navigate to the Motion Chart

Look for Sudden Movements

Next, press the play button. Here are two shots from Keywords Motion Chart on purevisibility.com, at different points in time:

Find the Cause of the SpikeTake Action

Calculate ROI on the speaking engagement

Allocate more (or less) time and money to speaking engagements

Start developing custom landing pages for each speaking engagement to generate more leads

Set a conference schedule that maximizes ROI

Useful tips for analyzing traffic spikes with Motion Charts

Focus on cases where significant movement is limited to a smaller number of the total bubbles. Sometimes, multiple bubbles in the chart move significantly. You might find yourself asking, are these spikes equally important? A general guideline you can use to assess the relative importance of spikes is to look at how much the other bubbles in the chart move. If all or most of the bubbles change position drastically throughout the time period, then the spikes probably aren't very important. If a single bubble moves drastically while the others stay in roughly the same regions, you might have found something interesting.

Ask questions to find out what marketing and company events might help explain the trend. Related online (and offline) events are often the cause of traffic spikes from a segment. Keep a detailed schedule of the dates when new advertising campaigns are launched, whether paid search, TV, or print advertising. Keep track of corporate events, news, and press releases, and don't forget about events that may have impacted the industry at large.

Look to other reports to confirm the trend. In cases where you observe a spike but aren't yet sure why, dig deeper using additional Google Analytics reports. Often, a spike in traffic from one segment will be reflected by spikes for the same dates in another report. Try comparing Keyword, Geographic Region, Traffic Sources, or Conversion data as you hunt for clues. For example, doing a Date Range comparison of the days directly before and after the spike might show us a similar spike in the traffic from a particular geographic region. Additional information like this might be enough to help explain the cause of the spike.

Other Resources

Using motion charts to spot high-level trends

Motion charts video

Interpreting your motion chart

Posted by Jessica Hullman of Pure Visibility, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Monday Back to Basics Series

February 9, 2009

Since the experts on the economy recommend taking a "back to basics" approach this year, we're going to take their advice literally and apply it to the Analytics blog. Every Monday our posts will focus on basic concepts, terms, tips and common questions. We hope it will help new users learn more about Analytics, while maximizing our long-time users' experience with the product.
For more advanced tutorials and concepts, be sure to check in on Tuesdays, where we'll cover both advanced analysis and advanced configurations. As for the rest of the week, we'll be mixing things up as always.

Monday: Check out the back to basics series for info on core concepts.

Tuesday: Read advanced topics that range from code customizations to case studies to features.

Wednesday/Thursday: We're keeping these days open for whatever's new and exciting.

Friday: Look for links to other great Google Analytics resources on the web, or read posts about business insights and Analytics by surprise guest writers.

New features and launches will always take precedence any day of the week! Looking forward to a busy 2009.
Posted by Sebastian Tonkin & Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Urchin 6.5 is now available

February 6, 2009

How does it work?Anything else new about Urchin 6.5?How do I get it?www.urchin.comSo, what is Urchin, again?What's in Urchin's future?Posted by Scott Crosby, Urchin Team

Event Tracking Best Practices

February 5, 2009

From "Double Call" to "Single Call"_trackEvent()

Setting up the object to track and giving it a name

Tracking actions, labels, and values on that object using myObjectName._trackEvent(action, label, value)

Simply use pageTracker._trackEvent() to create a named category and track actions, labels, and values in one step, not two

The term Objects was changed to Categories to better reflect the concept of tracking a category of page elements, such as "Video Player"

Example: Tracking Interaction with a Video PlayermyVideos Snoopy pageTracker._trackEvent("myVideos", "Pause", "Snoopy");
Snoopy Google Analytics for Adobe FlashAdditional Resources

Event Tracking overview

October 2007, Event Tracking announcement

Google Analytics for Adobe Flash

Posted by Patricia Boswell, Google Analytics Team

Seminars for Success - San Jose & Denver: Get Trained!

February 4, 2009

San Jose, February 11, 12, 13
Are you attending Search Marketing Expo West in Santa Clara, CA? If so, here's a chance to acquire some hard skills as part of your trip to the conference. If not, you can still sign up for one or more days of professional Google Analytics and Website Optimizer training in San Jose.
If you’re a marketing professional, web designer, analyst, business owner or anything in between, these three courses will help you to efficiently measure and improve your online strategy. Landing Page Testing with Google Website Optimizer - Wednesday, February 11
This hands-on course in Google Website Optimizer will take you through the process of testing your site to deliver an experience to your users that will take your conversion rates to new heights. Experts on Website Optimizer will present an overview, testing best practices, and then give you hands-on experience to better understand and run A/B/N and multivariate tests on your website and key landing pages. Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training- Thursday, February 12
Are you new to the world of Google Analytics? Have you been using it for a while but have yet to really get beyond the dashboard? This course starts you off from the beginning with an overview of web analytics and by the end of the day you’ll have learned how to turn the sea of analytics data and reports into actionable information that can help drive your business decisions.

Google Analytics – Advanced Technical Implementation - Friday, February 13
If you already have the basics down and want to see what Google Analytics is really capable of, the advanced and technical implementation course is for you. This training is ideal for the tech-savvy, but equally valuable to those wanting to understand what’s possible. This course covers the inner workings of Google Analytics, configurations, filters and setups as well as advanced installs and implementations, new features and best practices.Seats are limited, so register today!Denver, Feb 24, 25, 26Can't make it to the San Jose session? Try Denver instead.
Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training- Tuesday, February 24
Google Analytics gives you visibility into every aspect of how your website is used to accomplish the goals you had in mind when you designed it. The first of these three Seminars for Success courses will start you off with a high level overview of web analytics. By the time you leave you’ll be ready to take a mountain of data and endless reporting options and transform them into actionable information that can help drive your business decisions.

Google Analytics – Advanced Technical Implementation - Wednesday, February 25
After you have the basics down from day one or if you are already working with Google Analytics but want to know how to take it to the next level, the advanced and technical implementation course is for you. Day two of the Seminars for Success gets into the inner workings of Google Analytics, configurations, filters and setups as well as advanced installs and implementations, new features and best practices.Landing Page Testing with Google Website Optimizer - Thursday, February 26
Your users are the reason you have a website. Google Website Optimizer is the tool you need to deliver an experience to them that will make your conversions take off. Experts on Website Optimizer will present an overview and testing best practices, and then give you hands-on experience to better understand and run A/B/N and multivariate tests on your website and key landing pages. This is invaluable information to see those conversions jump.

Seats are limited, so register today!Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

Advanced Segments & E-Commerce

February 3, 2009

"Sure, I'll have it for you next week," you reply cheerily.

Find out if there is a unique URL identifier that distinguishes men's and women's products

Create two advanced segments based on the unique URL identifier: one for men's products, and one for women's products

Apply these segments to the reports to compare metrics/trends for each product category

Step 1 - Review your website URL structure

For this website, the men's product section and pages have an identifier called "bysex=1" in the URL, whereas the women's product section and pages have "bysex=2". You might want to double-check with your webmaster and/or web developer to identify all identifiers for each category. For this site, there are two additional identifiers, "CatID=1" and "men" as well as "CatID=2" and "women." Jot all this information down and then get ready to create your advanced segments.

Step 2 - Create Advanced Segments in Google Analytics

Within your Google Analytics report, click on one of the "Advanced Segment" links (see images below) and then click on the "Create a new advanced segment" link. If you need more details on the concept of segments and advanced segments, check out this video or read this post on how to create advanced segments.

In the above image, you'll see what information you need to create the advanced segments. You select the "Page" dimension, set the condition to "Contains" and set the value equal to the identifier you jotted down earlier. Since we had two more identifiers, you would want to include other pages that have these two identifiers, namely "CatID=1" and "men." You save this segment, give it a meaningful name such as MenCategory, and then create another segment for the women products category and use its identifiers, "bysex=2," "CatID=2" and "women," and follow the steps we used for the men's advanced segment.

Step 3 - Apply GA Advanced Segments and Analyze

After creating and saving your advanced segment, apply this new segment to your reports (by clicking on the "apply to report" link), and let the fun begin!

A few tips: apply the segments together so that you can compare (use the "Advanced Segments" dropdown in the top-right corner of your reports to apply segments). Here, we're comparing the All Visits segment (which is always selected by default) with the WomenCategory and MenCategory segments. While the results do not indicate if the visitor is a male or a female, the advanced segmentation provides insight into which clothing line category is currently driving more visits. You're now able to start some deep-dive analysis and provide some actionable insights to the CEO.

A few quick notes about your segments:

The visits will never add up because the "all visits" segment includes visits to other categories and bounces off of the homepage.
Similarly, the pageviews will not add up, because you could visit both the men's and women's categories in one visit or even visit neither category.
You can see that the specific categories seem to be of more interest to the visitor. A much higher pages per visit, much lower bounce rate, and a higher average time on site. You could act on this by directing traffic (paid, banner, e-mail) to a specific category instead of dumping them on the home page.
Such a large amount of traffic makes the site an excellent candidate for Google Website Optimizer!

Congratulations! You've proven yourself yet again to your CEO (and you'll still keep your Saturday for yourself :))

Additional Resources

Do you run an e-commerce site? Post a comment and tell us how you use Advanced Segments.

Posted by Feras Alhlou of E-Nor, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Google Analytics 360 + Salesforce.

Google Analytics Tracking for Flash Applications

Google Analytics Videos From "Vacationland"

How Many of Your Visits are from iPhones?

Monday Back to Basics: Accounts vs Profiles

Tracking Olly

Google Analytics helps Experience Project organize the human experience

Two Cool Integrations: Telephone Leads & Live Chat

Introducing the Google Conversion Room Blog

Tips and Tools for Expanding Keywords Lists

Mastering Motion Charts - Analyzing Spikes in Traffic

Monday Back to Basics Series

Urchin 6.5 is now available

Event Tracking Best Practices

Seminars for Success - San Jose & Denver: Get Trained!

Advanced Segments & E-Commerce

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