Analytics Blog: August 2012

How One Online Food Retailer Increased E-commerce Sales By 70% In Key Regions

August 30, 2012

LaTienda is an award-winning, family-owned business supporting artisanal firms in Spain. The firm works with small family-run businesses, many of which are dedicated to centuries-old food-making traditions.
With warehouses in Williamsburg, Virginia and Alicante, Spain, the company ships hundreds of thousands of orders throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.

LaTienda’s brand equity is built on its fundamental commitment to the customer experience. They guarantee a positive experience for its customers – quality products delivered in excellent condition, or they will replace or refund the purchase.
Overall, they had been seeing great success with their online orders, though they wanted to continue looking for opportunities to grow sales. To assist with this, they worked with WebStrategies, located nearby in Virginia.
They knew that a key product category in particular required more expensive shipping methods if it was too far from LaTienda’s Virginia warehouse. Their challenge was to understand the impact on sales of varying shipping rates for this subset of products. LaTienda grouped visitors into two regions: Region A visitors were close enough to the warehouse to always get reasonable shipping costs. Region B visitors were everywhere else, and had to use a more expensive shipping method for the key product category. WebStrategies wanted to measure the impact on sales whenever one of the key products was placed in the cart. To measure this, they installed Event Tracking to the “Add To Cart” buttons on every product page. They then used Advanced Segments Custom Reports to separate visitors in Region A from Region B, and drilled down to view performance by product category. Sure enough, visitors from Region B were found to be 48% less likely to purchase if they placed an item from the key product category in their cart, which raised total shipping costs. To combat this effect, LaTienda.com implemented a less expensive, flat rate shipping model in region B and monitored sales. After the test, the rate at which Region B visitors completed the shopping cart were found to have increased by nearly 70%. Just to be sure, they checked to see if there was a similar increase in conversion rate for Region A visitors, and found that it did not fluctuate more than 3.4% over the same time period. The analysis confirmed that product shipping rates greatly impacted shopping cart behavior, and used data to measure the results of a key business decision. Check out the full case study as a PDF download, and see additional success stories in our analytics case studies and success stories section.

Posted by the Google Analytics Team

Multi-Channel Funnels: Webinar, Checklist, Tips & Tricks

August 29, 2012

Multi-Channel Funnels

Improve keyword coverage to reach customers at all stages of the conversion path.

Identify those channels that directly contribute to the growth of your business.

Learn how metrics like average order value can be influenced by early-stage marketing.

Building Blocks of Digital Attribution QUESTIONSWhat do I need to use Multi-Channel Funnels properly?MCF Implementation Checklist:

Install Google Analytics! Make sure that all of your webpages are tagged, and if you happen to have more than one website (yoursite1.com and yoursite.2com) or multiple domains (red.mysite1.com and blue.mysite1.com) that you are set up to use Multi-Domain tracking. This last step will ensure that you are tracking all interactions across your sites into a single customer path.

Set up E-Commerce Tracking or Goals. MCF needs to know what action represents the very end of the customer path - the conversion. The conversion may be a sale, or it could be another action that’s valuable for your business, like filling out a lead form or downloading a brochure. For businesses selling products online, you can measure conversions (sales) through e-commerce tracking. If you’re measuring visitors that take a specific action, such as completing a form, setting up goals will suffice.

Get your tags in order. For AdWords customers, make sure that your advertising account is linked to your Google Analytics profile and that auto-tagging is enabled. For other channels, such as e-mail or advertising run on other networks, our custom URL builder will help you build the tags necessary for each campaign. If you’re new, be sure to learn more about channels and channel grouping.

Start using the MCF reports. Once you’ve followed the steps above, you can find the Multi-Channel Funnels reports in the Standard Reporting tab of Google Analytics: click on “Conversions” at the left-hand side of the user interface, then click “Multi-Channel Funnels.”

Is it possible to integrate the data from Multi-Channel Funnels directly into our own systems?recent blog postHow do we ensure we are tracking all our channels in a way that is optimal for these reports?

The first option is tag all of your marketing activities in a way that matches the logic of the default channel groupings. You can find the rules behind the groups in this help center article. There is also a simple URL builder so that you can append the proper tags to your other campaigns.

The second option is to create channel groupings that match the way you are currently naming and tagging your campaigns. This approach tends to be favored by those companies that want to utilize all of their historical data in MCF right away, or have technical limitations preventing them from changing the actual campaign tags. Implementation details for this approach can be found on the Analytics Help section, in this article on channel groupings.

Does MCF have to be a true purchase or it will it work for a Business-to-business company looking for qualified leads?Why is (not set) so high for AdWords Keyword?What devices are in place to prevent Spiders and Bots from inflating data and thus causing a possible "bad" business decision?Posted by by Neil Hoyne (@nhoyne), Global Program Manager for Attribution

Get To Your Data Faster: Announcing Shortcuts In Google Analytics

August 29, 2012

We’re pleased to announce the addition of Shortcuts to Google Analytics. Shortcuts help you get to the exact view you want of your data in GA in record time. Rather than having to go through the "find report, add segment, change, sort" process daily, with Shortcuts you can do it once, save it, and come back to it in a single click. How to create a Shortcut
Creating Shortcuts is simple. When viewing a standard or custom report in Google Analytics, click on the “Shortcut” button found on the report’s Utility Bar:

Then, give your new Shortcut a name:

Once named, you'll be taken straight to your report in the new "Shortcuts" section in the "Home" tab. Your report configuration has been stored, and your report shows up on the left side of the screen.
The following information is saved as part of a Shortcut:

Standard or custom report for context

Currently viewed tab on the report

Sort order

Advanced segments

Graphed metric

Notably not saved is the date range and sample size. This is because they are very dependent on the data you are looking at. Using Shortcuts
In the "Home" tab in Google Analytics, there is a new section called "Shortcuts". Here, you can find all of the shortcuts you’ve created, and navigate to each one. Clicking a Shortcut will "reset" the segments that are applied - so you know you'll always see the same customization every time you use a Shortcut.

If you make any changes while viewing a Shortcut and you want to have those changes persist for the next time you view the Shortcut, just click on “Save” from the report’s Utility Bar:

Managing Shortcuts
You can easily manage your Shortcuts from the Overview page, found under the Shortcuts navigation on the “Home” tab. From this page, you can also delete any of your created Shortcuts:

What else should you know?

Shortcuts can be emailed and exported like any other standard report.

Deleting a Shortcut will remove that report from any scheduled emails, as with deleting a custom report.

Shortcuts apply at the profile level, like the rest of reports in Google Analytics.

This is a continued step in making your experience with Google Analytics as efficient as possible. We hope you find Shortcuts a useful feature.
Posted by Andrew Seguin, Google Analytics Team

Combining a User Problem with a Desire to Learn: the Story of Quicklytics

August 24, 2012

This article is part of our Developer Spotlight Series that promotes new tools and applications built using the Google Analytics Developer platform. To see other tools, check out our App Gallery. Interested in having us showcase your story? Let us know what you’re working on!

Eduardo Scoz is a software architect and self-proclaimed, “analytics addict.” In early 2010, he grew frustrated with his daily routine of checking in on his web analytics from several sites and personal blogs. Very quickly he found himself spending an overwhelming amount of time monitoring his key metrics from across his own content kingdom: he yearned for a way to keep an eye on his KPI’s without having it feel like a full-time job.

Eduardo was determined to find an iPhone application that gave him a high-level view of all of his sites in way that was easy to digest. After a few days of searching he realized that the only way for him to get exactly what he wanted was to build it himself. He had never built an iPhone application but his “learn by doing” mentality prevailed: after a few weeks of prototyping, he had come up with something he was proud of. He showed it to a few friends and gauging their reaction, he realized he might be onto something. He incorporated their feedback, finished building it out and decided to release it publicly. In February 2010, Quicklytics was born.

Quicklytics allows users to rapidly check the status of multiple websites in a matter of seconds and visually understand how their site is performing for both current and historical timeframes. It has full support for both iPhone and iPad as well as custom filtering that allows for quick deep dives into areas of interest. While its primary views focus on top-level metrics, Quicklytics also provides detailed reports with most of the data also available through Google Analytics.

“All apps were about either showing as much data as possible, or focusing on less-useful stuff, like browsers and screen sizes, which are only really necessary when you’re doing deep analysis, not when ‘checking the weather’,” says Eduardo.

As soon as Quicklytics hit the App Store, it spread like wildfire. In the 2 ½ years since it was released, Quicklytics has received over 40,000 downloads - most of which were paid. This has translated into a significant source of side revenue for Eduardo’s business that has allowed him to continue building new features for Quicklytics while looking for new projects to learn from. Now, Eduardo finds great joy in using Quicklytics to measure the mobile app analytics on - you guessed it - Quicklytics.

Quicklytics leverages the Analytics Core Reporting APIs Objective-C library and OAuth 2.0 for user authentication. Although this was Eduardo’s first experience with the Analytics APIs and Objective-C, he was able to take full advantage of the Developer Forums for support: “In the few cases I found issues with the tool, Google developers were actually very helpful and fixed some issues from their side. It was a great experience.”

Armed with a clear user problem and a willingness to learn, Eduardo was able to turn one of his biggest pain points into a viable side business and a solution that is enjoyed by many. According to Eduardo, “It’s great to know that a lot of people find it as useful as I do.”

To learn more about Quicklytics, check out his App Store listing.

Posted by John Milinovich, Google Analytics API team

Automate Google Analytics Reporting using Google Apps Script

August 23, 2012

Custom API Dashboards - No Code Required Writing Your Own Script// Get Data. var results = Analytics.Data.Ga.get( tableId, startDate, endDate, 'ga:visitors,ga:visits,ga:pageviews', {‘dimensions’: ‘ga:date’}); // Output to spreadsheet. var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().insertSheet(); sheet.getRange(2, 1, results.getRows().length, headerNames.length) .setValues(results.getRows()); // Make Sandwich. Automated Access to Google Analytics Data in Google Spreadsheets tutorialGoogle Analytics Apps Script reference docs Solving Business ProblemsChrome Web StoreSpreadsheets Script Galleryshare what you’ve built

Posted by Nick Mihailovski profile

Nick is a Senior Developer Programs Engineer working on the Google Analytics API. In his spare time he likes to travel around the world.

Don't Miss What's New In Analytics Each Month: Opt-In For The Product Update

August 21, 2012

Google Analytics is constantly being updated to provide you with powerful analytical tools and the best user experience possible. As a marketer or analyst, keeping up with these regular changes, updates, and tools will help you be more effective. You may already refer to our blog, Google+, and Twitter feed to stay up to date. Do you also know about our monthly product update email that compiles the Analytics highlights for the month?

Opt in to this email and learn each month about: - New features available in Google Analytics - Insights on how to use these latest tools - Case studies & educational content - Links to how to videos & webinars
… all delivered right to your inbox so you can stay in the know.
How do you make sure you’re opted in? It’s easy, if you’re already logged in to Analytics use this link to be taken to the settings page in your account. Or follow these steps:
Step 1. Log in to your Google Analytics account.

Step 2. Click the “Settings” button in the top right corner of your screen.

Step 3. Under ‘Google Analytics Email Communications’ heading, be sure that the ‘Feature Announcements’ checkbox is selected.

Step 4. Hit the “Save User Settings” button at the bottom on the page.

We encourage you to opt-in if you haven’t, and if you are opted in and have ideas on how we can improve our monthly updates, please let us know by adding comments to this post.
Posted by Ian Myszenski, Google Analytics team

Mark Your Calendars For These Upcoming Analytics Events

August 10, 2012

Next week Google Analytics team members will be presenting on several key areas of measurement, both online and in-person. Be sure to mark your calendars and join us as we share ideas and best practices about everything analytics.

Google Developers Live Event (Online)

Make the Web Fast: Measuring performance with Google Analytics Site Speed reports How well does your site perform? Are the slow pages affecting your conversation rates or driving away potential visitors and clients? In this perfcast, we will talk with Justin Cutroni and Ilya Grigorik about the new "real user measurement" (RUM) capabilities available in Google Analytics: we will discuss how the data is collected, what it means, and take a deep dive into some of the advanced use cases of how you can leverage this data within Google Analytics.
Date: Tuesday, August 14 at 2:00pm PST
How to watch: watch live at following GDL link, or add the event to your calendar on Google+.

Search Engine Strategies (San Francisco)

Google has several unmissable sessions at SES. Be sure to attend these two focused on measurement:
Business Optimization in a Digital Age We were promised that Marketing one day would become rocket science. Well, we are almost there! Search continues to become more complicated, and more exciting. Then there's Social and Email and Display and Video and... so many more things. It is hard to understand how to do one thing right, much less try to do all of them right. In his exciting keynote Avinash Kaushik will share his unique perspective on balancing multiple media channels, leveraging super awesome metrics, grounding your digital existence in driving economic value, and leveraging the Clear Line of Sight model to ensure you are optimizing across all four of the most important business drivers.
Date: Tuesday, August 14 from 9:00-10:00am PST
Understanding the Mobile Customer Journey Mobile apps are changing the consumer world and app developers, brands and marketers continue to invest heavily in the development of applications. This session will be an open dialogue about:

How there are currently more than 600,000 mobile apps on Google Play - and why you need to understand how your app is found, why it is critical to stand out and why mobile analytics are key to improve your apps performance in increasingly competitive marketplaces.

Brands increasingly creating mobile applications to reach their customers, and why they need to track and report end-to-end measurements of their results (as well as integrate mobile measurement holistically across digital tactics).

What are some of the best practices to begin mobile campaigns (landing pages, click-to-call, analytics, integrations, etc.).

Examples of brands, SMBs etc. using mobile in an effective way.

The future of mobile - where it is headed and when.

Moderators: Jason Wells, CEO, ContactPoint Adam Singer, Product Marketing Manager, Google Analytics
Date: Wednesday, August 15 from 10:30-11:30am PST
How to attend: SES runs from Tuesday, August 14 through Thursday, August 16. If you’re in San Francisco, check out the agenda page for the full details of our sessions and be sure to come out and say hi.
Posted by Adam Singer, Google Analytics team

Webinar this Thursday: Multi-Channel Funnels

August 7, 2012

series of webinars

Multi-Channel FunnelsDate:Time:Register:http://goo.gl/B49maPosted by Sara Jablon Moked, Product Marketing Manager for Conversion and Attribution

Google Analytics 360 + Salesforce.

How One Online Food Retailer Increased E-commerce Sales By 70% In Key Regions

Multi-Channel Funnels: Webinar, Checklist, Tips & Tricks

Get To Your Data Faster: Announcing Shortcuts In Google Analytics

Combining a User Problem with a Desire to Learn: the Story of Quicklytics

Automate Google Analytics Reporting using Google Apps Script

Don't Miss What's New In Analytics Each Month: Opt-In For The Product Update

Mark Your Calendars For These Upcoming Analytics Events

Webinar this Thursday: Multi-Channel Funnels

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