Analytics Blog: June 2013

Website Satisfaction By Google Consumer Surveys -- For Free

June 28, 2013

If you are like most business owners, you know how important a healthy online community is to your business’s success. Traditionally, collecting user feedback has been an expensive and time-consuming process, but now you can hear from your site visitors for free using Google Consumer Surveys.

Website satisfaction surveys allow you to easily create customer satisfaction surveys in order to stay in tune with what your customers think. All you have to do is paste a small snippet of code in the HTML for your website. This will load a discreet satisfaction survey in the lower right hand corner of your website so you can get immediate feedback from your users.

Users will be asked to complete a four-question satisfaction survey. Surveys will run until they have received 500 responses and will start again after 30 days so you can track responses over time. This is currently limited to US English visitors on non-mobile devices.

The default questions are free and you can customize questions for just $0.01 per response or $5.00 for 500 responses. By using Google Consumer Surveys to measure website satisfaction you automatically get aggregated and analyzed responses, provided to you through a simple online interface.

Creating a website satisfaction survey is simple. Give it a try now!

Posted by Marisa Currie-Rose, Product Marketing Manager, Google Consumer Surveys

4 Ways To Win In Retail This 4th Of July With DoubleClick Search

June 27, 2013

The following post originally appeared on the DoubleClick Search blog.

Ah, the 4th of July: a time for day-long picnics at the park, fishing trips by the lake, night skies filled with fireworks -- and of course, shopping. If you’re a search marketer focused on retail, you know that holidays like the upcoming 4th of July can be an enormous opportunity to capture additional traffic from shoppers looking for the best deals online. So while you’re planning your annual hot dog eating contest, we want to help you start a new tradition this year to win in retail, using integrated solutions from DoubleClick Search. Today, we’re offering up a few retail-ready features to make sure you kick off your holiday search campaigns with a bang:

Manage your product inventory, along with your barbecuing.

There’s no need to step away from the grill: with inventory-aware campaigns, create and update your search ads, keywords, and bids automatically, based on your product inventory. And seamless integration with Google Merchant Center means you can leverage your existing feeds, with no extra work, at no extra cost. Set up rules in the UI that let you:

Expand your reach by automatically creating new ad groups, ads, and keywords based on product availability. And with deep coverage across your product catalogues, we’ll generate those highly relevant long-tail keywords that can be a chore to manage manually. In fact, we’ve seen that inventory-managed keywords more than doubled return on ad spend for heavy users(1) (cite: Google Internal Data).
Cut out the repetition in managing existing campaigns, by tying the behavior of ads and keywords to your inventory levels. For example, you can pause keywords when a related product is out of stock, and reactivate them when it’s back in stock, or update ad copy to align with promotions and style changes. You can also change landing page URLs when the links in the feed change.
Express rich customization with ad templates that enable granular product-level messaging at scale. We’ve seen that this rich customization delivers higher conversion rates by attracting only the most qualified clicks.

Plan a PLA picnic: you bring the fruit salad, we’ll bring the richer search ads.

With our fully integrated solution, DoubleClick Search makes creating and managing Google Shopping Product Listing Ads (PLA) campaigns as easy as apple pie. Incorporate product-rich information and measure, optimize, and report on PLA performance using the same familiar workflow you use with the rest of your ads:

Integrate with Google Merchant Center to easily view Merchant Center feeds in the DoubleClick Search UI, and to preview exactly what products fall under a product target.
Save time and upload product targets in bulk, using our standard upload sheet workflow to quickly create product targets for your highest revenue-generating products.
Analyze PLA campaign success with existing reporting features from Doubleclick Search. For example, track budget and key KPIs for PLA campaigns using our budget pacing reports. And with full PLA integration, your reports reflect the same Floodlight or Google Analytics conversion data you use for the rest of your campaigns, to give you a more accurate view of attribution.

Light up your most fiery landing pages through A/B testing. Which landing page is worthy of a fireworks show? With DoubleClick Search landing page testing, identify and drive traffic to the highest ROI landing pages; then, calculate the exact impact of your landing page optimizations and update your ads immediately to boost results:

Easily split your search ads traffic across multiple landing pages to get just the insights you’re looking for. In addition to evenly splitting traffic across your search ads, you can define custom traffic splits (for example, a 90-10 split).
Analyze and compare through historical reporting from previously completed tests to help you determine the exact impact of your landing page changes.

Host a cross-channel block party, get search and display talking. It’s the perfect opportunity to mingle with the neighbors. With display remarketing from search ads -- a cross-channel feature from the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform -- use paid search clicks from DoubleClick Search to show consumers display ads across major ad exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager, or across the Google Display Network, all with an easy and tagless workflow. With this feature, you can:

Take advantage of new opportunities immediately with a turn-key setup on one integrated platform. Set up your remarketing lists in 4 easy steps, and begin remarketing to users to quickly deliver the right message to the right consumer, soon after they’ve left your site. And with instant conversions, immediately report on the impact of your remarketing efforts, and fine-tune your approach to improve performance.
Convert browsers to buyers. Re-engage consumers who visited your website, but left without making a purchase. For example, you can reach consumers who placed a pair of sparklers in their shopping cart, but did not complete the checkout process.
Increase loyalty or reinforce brand messages. Re-engage consumers by introducing new product categories from the same brand. For example, show a display ad for Brand X lawn chair to someone who previously purchased Brand X outdoor umbrella after clicking on the brand’s search ads.
Up-sell to converted audiences. For example, after a consumer purchases tickets to an amusement park in Anaheim, CA, show him/her display ads for hotel deals in Anaheim.

Don’t miss a beat this year. With solutions from DoubleClick Search, stay connected to in-market audiences with the right message at the right time, and report on it all in real-time to capture even more seasonal opportunities. Now that’s certainly something to celebrate!

Posted by the DoubleClick Team

Webinar Video: Combined Power of AdWords and Analytics

June 26, 2013

Last Tuesday, Rachel Witalec and Simon Rosen, Global Sales Strategy Leads, shared tips for getting more out of your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts by using them together. During the webinar, they showed why it’s important to link your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts (which is now even easier to do) and how to see Google Analytics data in AdWords as well as AdWords data in Google Analytics. They also presented a live demo of the reports and how to use them.

If you missed the webinar, you can check it out here:

Read on below for answers to some of the top questions we received during the webinar:

Why should I link my AdWords and Google Analytics accounts?
Linking your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts is an important practice to ensure the two measurement tools can work together to help you get the most from your advertising. The bottom line is that linking Analytics and AdWords gives you powerful information that can tell you where you should be spending more or less based on real ROI data. When you link accounts, the data can flow both ways - from Google Analytics to AdWords (for example, engagement metrics or remarketing lists), and from AdWords to Google Analytics (for example your AdWords cost data). In particular, you can take advantage of powerful features such as:

The ability to dig into campaign/keyword performance by real revenue and cost in Google Analytics
Importing goals and e-commerce transactions from Google Analytics into AdWords
Importing Google Analytics metrics like bounce rate, time-on-site, and % new visits into AdWords
Using Remarketing with Google Analytics to more effectively reach your customers
Seeing AdWords data in rich reports such as Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels

We covered this topic in detail during the webinar, so watch the video above to learn more.

Could you share the list of resources that were provided during the webinar?
Of course! Here are the links and resources we shared:

How to Link AdWords & Google Analytics
How to import Google Analytics data into AdWords
Optimizing AdWords data in Google Analytics
Setting up Google Analytics Goals/Ecommerce
End-to-End Google Analytics Custom Report (requires a Google Analytics account)

What are the best practices around importing Google Analytics Goals? If i’m using AdWords Conversion Tracking should I also import goals?
If you’re currently using AdWords Conversion Tracking, there are still benefits to also importing some of your goals from Google Analytics. In particular, some goals (such as engagement goals) can’t be tracked with AdWords Conversion Tracking, so importing these into AdWords can complement your Conversion Tracking data. However, it’s important not to import any goals that you are already tracking through AdWords Conversion Tracking as this can create double-counting and duplication, which would make your conversion data hard to interpret.

Is it possible to link a My Client Center (MCC) account to Google Analytics?
At this time it’s not possible to link an MCC to Google Analytics. Each individual AdWords account within an MCC needs to be linked to the appropriate Google Analytics property. Learn more here.

How do I import Google Analytics engagement metrics into AdWords?
The process for importing the metrics is straightforward, but it’s important to note that there are a couple of additional steps needed beyond linking the AdWords and Analytics account. The full set of instructions can be found here.

I have noticed discrepancies between the data in my AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, do you know why?
AdWords and Google Analytics differ in some very important ways regarding how they measure and report on data. It’s important to understand these key differences, which are outlined here. Additionally, there are key differences between AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics, which are covered in detail here.

Can someone help me get more support with AdWords and Google Analytics?
Yes, Google partners with a global network of certified partners to help. For AdWords, you can get support directly from Google or you can work with a Google Certified Partner to help with your AdWords management. You can learn more about both of those options here. If you’re looking for help with Google Analytics, you can tap into our global network of Google Analytics Certified Partners, who offer paid services for anything from Google Analytics tag implementation to product training to more strategic support. Learn more here.

What is a tag?
Tags are tiny bits of website code that let you measure traffic and visitor behavior, understand the impact of online advertising and social channels, use remarketing and audience-based marketing, test and improve your site, and more. The tags we mentioned in the webinar are AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics. These both help you understand the performance of your digital campaigns. While AdWords tracks the performance of your Google AdWords campaigns, Google Analytics tracks the performance of any traffic to your website -- such as from email marketing campaigns or social media. You can learn more about how they’re different here and through some of the content in the webinar.

What is a conversion?
A conversion is an action that a customer takes on your website that has value to your business, such as a purchase, a sign-up, or a view of a key page. These actions are called conversions because a customer's click translated -- or converted -- to business. Think of it as the cha-ching! from your cash register. A conversion happens when someone clicks your ad and then does something that’s valuable to your business, such as an online purchase or a call to your business from a mobile phone. Conversions help you understand how much value your ads bring to your business. You can read more here.

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

Improving Analytics & AdWords Account Linking

June 25, 2013

Many businesses advertise to find new customers, and optimizing advertising campaigns to reach the right people will increase marketing effectiveness and ROI. Google Analytics helps marketers achieve this by offering insights into customer behavior on an advertiser’s websites, apps, and other properties. By linking AdWords and Analytics accounts together, these rich insights from Analytics can flow into AdWords.

Today, we’re happy to announce some useful improvements making it easier for Google Analytics and AdWords account owners to link their accounts.

Here are a few specific benefits of combining AdWords and Analytics data:

Importing Analytics goals and transactions into AdWords allows marketers to define success in powerful ways, often without having to retag your site
Site engagement stats help marketers better understand marketing performance and how to optimize
Remarketing with Google Analytics allows marketers to reach new audiences
Importing AdWords data into Analytics lets marketers see data across many accounts in aggregate and combined with rich site metrics

All of these features depend on linking AdWords and Analytics accounts, and this process is now easier than ever before. Previously, linking accounts involved multiple steps on many pages spread out between two products, and this process has now been consolidated into just a couple steps all in one linking wizard.

Once the new linking process launches to all Analytics accounts in the coming weeks, you’ll be able to create additional links from the Admin section of your Analytics account. (If you’re logged in to your AdWords account, you can also link accounts by going to Tools and Analysis > Google Analytics and following these same instructions.) Just click AdWords Linking in the Account column, and then click the New link button to start the linking wizard.

To take advantage of simplified account linking, benefit from combining data in both products, and get more out of your marketing campaigns, follow the steps above to link your accounts or learn more in our help center.

Posted by Chris Morgan and Matt Matyas, Google Analytics Team

Evaluate Marketing Spend Efficiency with our Conversion and Attribution Tools

June 24, 2013

You invest a lot to create your marketing campaigns, and it’s important to see how your spend impacts results. In addition to comparing the conversion performance of your marketing activities, you can now view your imported AdWords cost data directly in the Google Analytics Attribution Model Comparison Tool. By evaluating your AdWords cost data under various lenses offered through Attribution, you’ll get further insight into the effectiveness of your marketing spend. We will gradually roll out this feature out to all of Google Analytics.

Extended Set of conversion data
As previously announced, to make the analysis of your conversion path data even more meaningful, we extended the lookback window within Multi-Channel Funnels to 90 days. This functionality is now available through the standard lookback window selector. Please see our help center for more details.

Explore different attribution models to see revised performance figures
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is one of the strongest indicators for marketers. Our Model Comparison Tool now makes this important metric available to advertisers in Google Analytics. In addition to CPA, we also allow users to look at the Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) figure, which compares the value or revenue driven by conversions under different attribution models.

As described in the Customer Journey to Online Purchase, marketing channels influence the customer at multiple touchpoints on the path to conversion. Display touchpoints, in aggregate, appear 3.1 times more often in the upper funnel (awareness, consideration, intent phase) than in the lower part of the funnel (decision phase).*

Selecting Conversion Value & ROAS from the selector in the Attribution Model Comparison Tool allows you to contrast the value driven by your spend. Comparing the performance of a channel by looking at two different attribution models can uncover hidden performance of this channel. In the above example, the Display channel drives 20% more value under a First Interaction model.

Interpret your analysis
The direction of the arrow in the % change column indicates the orientation of the shift. Please note that it matters which model is the reference model, and which model is the comparison model. A positive shift away from the valuation of the reference model will be visualized with an upwards arrow, a negative shift with a downwards arrow. The color of the arrows is used to indicate whether the alternative valuation of the comparison model has caused a favorable shift. Green indicates a significant shift in favor of the comparison model, and red indicates a significant shift in favor of the reference model. A gray dot symbol indicates that there is no relevant change between the reference and comparison model.

Get started today by linking your account to an AdWords cost data source. The more complete your cost data is for a given profile, the more stable and accurate are the insights you can gain from the analysis. Consider using the Cost Data Import service provided through the GA API to add cost data beyond AdWords.

*Source: Google Analytics, Q4 2012. N = US: 130M conversions (12K profiles)

Posted by Stefan F. Schnabl, Product Manager, Google Analytics

How Rasmussen College Uses Analytics To Better Understand Prospective Students

June 21, 2013

Rasmussen College, founded in 1900, is a private, regionally accredited, career-focused college with 24 campuses in MN, ND, IL, WI, KS, and FL, and online throughout the nation. Rasmussen.edu provides prospective students with information about degrees and other credential programs offered at Rasmussen College, as well as associated tuition costs.

Goals: Understand the importance of tuition in higher education marketing

Rasmussen College wanted to know the importance of tuition costs to prospective students, and if that information was a factor in their higher education selection process. Although Rasmussen College had created a tuition cost estimator for prospective students to use on the site, there was no way to track engagement. This lack of knowledge regarding a prospective student’s use of the tuition estimator tool limited the ability of Rasmussen College to accurately position the value of an investment in a college education.

Approach: Events and offline analysis unlock significant insights

Rasmussen College integrated Google Analytics events and custom variables with the tuition estimator to capture geographic and programmatic information as prospective students interacted with the widget. Specific business questions Rasmussen College sought to answer included:

Business Question	GA Solution
What schools of study had the most price-interested students?	Custom events, custom reports, custom segments
Which regions of the U.S. contained the most price-interested students?	Map overlay with custom segments to show cities where tuition estimations occur
What is the relationship between tuition estimation and lead generation?	Custom events, custom variables to track tuition estimations over multiple visits, custom segments to show differences in lead generation rates for tuition estimators, and tracking days from tuition estimation to conversion
Are students able to find the information they want regarding tuition?	Third-party task completion software was used to assess usability of tuition estimator

Results: Price and ROI key drivers to new student inquiry conversion

Rasmussen College exported custom event and variable information from Google Analytics and analyzed the data. They developed price interest metrics across program and geography using the Google Analytics data. For example, they determined students interested in some schools of study were more than twice as interested in price as students interested in other schools.

In addition, tuition estimator users were four times more likely to complete the website inquiry form. Those who went on to perform a separate ROI calculator were 7.3 times more likely to complete the website inquiry form.

As a result, Rasmussen College found a correlation between tuition information and a prospective student’s readiness to take the next steps.

Check out the whole case study as a PDF here.

Posted by the Google Analytics Team

Full Credit Measurement: Attribution with Google Analytics

June 20, 2013

As we’ve discussed in many previous posts, the customer journey is evolving — most consumers will interact with many different marketing channels before a sale or conversion. And marketers are recognizing this shift in consumer behavior. Instead of “last click” measurement, a strategy that only gives credit to the final interaction, they’re turning to full credit measurement. To help you make sense of the full customer journey, we’ve been focused on bringing you the very best full credit measurement tools in Google Analytics.

Nearly two years ago, we announced our first Google Analytics attribution product, Multi-Channel Funnels. With its ability to measure customers’ different paths to conversion, it quickly became one of our most popular reports for advertisers and publishers alike. We’ve seen great results from our users, including online travel agency On the Beach, who used data from the Multi-Channel Funnels reports and AdWords Search Funnels to explore and adjust their strategy for generic keywords. These attribution adjustments helped On the Beach to drive a 25% uplift in ROI — see the full case study here.

Beyond Multi-Channel Funnels, we also wanted to provide our users with an advanced platform for testing entirely new, more robust attribution strategies, including the ability to test alternative models or understand how metrics, such as site engagement, could impact their existing investments. So last year we released our Attribution Modeling feature — the Model Comparison Tool.

After several months of testing on a public whitelist, we're now in the process of rolling out the Attribution Model Comparison Tool to make it generally available to Google Analytics users without whitelist. To reflect the importance of attribution, we also created a new “Attribution” section under the “Conversions” reports, so the tool will be found there.

Be sure to check out a previously recorded webinar with Product Manager Bill Kee for a complete walkthrough of the Attribution Model Comparison Tool, or view our multi-part attribution webinar series covering our entire selection of full-credit measurement tools.

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

See the full Impact of Unclicked Display and Video Ad Impressions using Google Analytics

June 19, 2013

Every customer journey is different — a customer may see your display or video ads, receive an email, and then click through to your site from a search ad or organic search listing. Often, viewing display ads can attract your clients’ interest in your product and brand even if no click occurs. Traditionally, measurement technology separated out impressions or “view throughs” from clicks, but this separation missed out on valuable data on the impact of display advertising.

Thanks to our integration with the Google Display Network (GDN), Google Analytics can now break down the separation between clicks and impressions and give a more complete view of the customer journey. When a user views display ads on the GDN, or video ads on YouTube, and later visits your website and converts, these interactions with your brand can now be captured in Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels reporting.

GDN Impression Reporting is now available through limited whitelist. Reach out to your Google Analytics Premium point of contact to request feature activation. Please note that we cannot guarantee access, but we will do our best to provide this feature to as many users as possible. Please also note that this data will only surface in the Multi-channel Funnels reports in Google Analytics. For more information on how to enable the feature in GA please see our help center article.

Read on below for more tips on how to make the most of this new feature.

How does Display fit on the conversion path?
By enabling GDN Impression Reporting in Google Analytics, you can learn how your display impressions assist your conversions.

In the Multi-Channel Funnels Overview Report you will see two additional conversion metrics. Impression Assisted Conversions shows how many of your conversion paths were touched by a display impression. Rich Media Assisted Conversions shows how many of your conversions had a rich media interaction on the path to conversion. Rich media interactions are user interaction with YouTube or rich media ad formats, such as ad expansion, video control (such as play, pause, and resume), or switching a video ad to full screen.

With the new Interaction Type selector you can now immediately filter your reports based how your users interacted with your marketing.

Select Impression to see conversion paths from customers who saw your GDN display ads but did not click on them.
Add Direct to the mix, to see who saw an ad and then visited your site directly to convert on a relevant transaction or Goal.
If you want to focus on Rich Media interactions, you can select this interaction type to see how your users convert after interacting with your rich media and YouTube ads.

How do I quantify the impact of display on the conversion path?
In the Multi-Channel Funnels Top Conversion Path report you can see two new path elements, which indicate the presence of a display interaction. The “eye” symbol indicates a pure display impression from a non-interactive display image. This means a user has been exposed to your display ad on the journey to conversion, without clicking on it. The “movie” symbol indicates a user has interacted with one of your Rich Media ads, such as a YouTube video ad.

Now you can see how many conversion paths, and how much associated value, has been driven through paths which benefited from a display impression or rich media interactions. To better quantify your brand targeted display efforts, consider breaking out these campaigns using custom channel grouping.

Assigning partial credit to valuable display interaction touchpoints
You can use the custom model builder from the Attribution Modeling tool to assign partial credit to these display events. Consider giving these events on the user’s conversion path more credit, and compare this against your baseline model.

We also added a new set of dimensions to help you define valuable custom segments for your analysis. Want to see how many users are watching your TrueView video ads fully? Just create a custom segment using one of our new dimensions, TrueView. The full list of new dimensions is:

Above the Fold: This dimension uses the Google Above the Fold measurement solution. The value is “Yes” if the ad was in the visible area of the screen when the page was loaded.
Video Played Percent: The value can be “>=25%”, “>=50%”, “>=75%”, and “100%”, allowing you to see how much of a video ad was watched.
TrueView: If a user has watched more than 30 seconds of an ad, or watched the ad completely, this will have a value of “Yes.” This is a payable event.

Enabling GDN Impression Reporting in Google Analytics
Once we have whitelisted your account, please ensure you have successfully linked your AdWords account to your Google Analytics account. Linking accounts takes just a few moments. Under ‘Data Sources’ > ‘AdWords’ you can then see an entry for each linked AdWords account. In the row there is a toggle switch named ‘GDN Impression Reports’, which turns the display impression data from the Google Display Network On and Off. Data is recorded from the time the switch is turned On.

We hope these new tools will help you understand the full impact of your display campaigns through Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution. Please reach out to your Google Analytics Premium point of contact to request feature activation.

Posted by Stefan F. Schnabl, Product Manager, Google Analytics

Streamlining Google Analytics Administration Experience

June 12, 2013

We’re proud to announce the launch of a dramatically streamlined user experience for managing Google Analytics administrative settings! When visiting the Analytics Admin tab, you will now find all major settings readily accessible from this new landing page. As we launch over the coming weeks, here’s what you’ll see:

Google Store admin shown as a sample (click above image for full-size)

Settings are organized into columns corresponding to the most prominent objects in Analytics: accounts, properties, and views (formerly called profiles). A single account, property, and view will be selected, and you may change these via the drop downs atop each column. We are also renaming profiles to views to most closely match the present and future meaning of what this object represents: a view of the data Analytics collected for your property.

We’ve made a number of additional enhancements. To create a new account, property, or view, click the appropriate menu in the column heading and you’ll see an option to create a new object. You can load any settings page by clicking the appropriate name or icon. You'll notice animations that simplify the display of information, and you'll see new headers along with new navigational links on the left.

Help content has moved to the “Help” tab near the top right corner of the page. We’ve also refreshed the help content to make account administration easy to understand.

This is a large change over the old administrative user experience. For example, getting to property settings now takes just one click but used to take three. Simply compare the new look and feel above to the old:

Experience simplified navigation, faster account configuration, and the power of having all settings at your fingertips.

Posted by Scott Bailey and Matt Matyas, Google Analytics Team

Webinar Next Tuesday 6/18: Unleashing the Combined Power of Google Analytics and AdWords

June 11, 2013

Register for next week’s webinar: Register here

In many ways, Google Analytics and AdWords were made for each other. AdWords helps advertisers reach an audience and reports on advertising performance, and Google Analytics can tell you what actions your users take when they actually get to your site. You may have a high clickthrough rate (CTR) in AdWords, but what if you could see that 70% of those users left immediately after arriving on your landing page? While understanding the conversion rate of AdWords ads is critical, it’s also important to understand what happened to the users that did not convert or complete the action you wanted them to. For example, did users ‘bounce’ after landing on your site or did they view a few other pages and then leave? How much time did they spend on your site? Which keywords drive the majority of your Ecommerce revenue?

Thanks to built-in Google product integrations that provide unique insights into your data, you can view reporting and data in Google Analytics that directly relates back to your advertising in AdWords. Understanding how to use both of them together will help you refine your AdWords campaigns and improve the performance of your business.

Next Tuesday, join Rachel Witalec and Simon Rosen, Global Sales Strategy Leads, for a detailed look at how to use Google Analytics and AdWords together. In this webinar, we'll show you why it's important to link your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, how to see both Google Analytics data in AdWords and AdWords data in Google Analytics, and walk through a live demo of the reports and how to use them. You'll learn how to make your marketing more effective by analyzing Google Analytics data, such as bounce rate, pages per visit, conversion rate, and Ecommerce revenue in conjunction with AdWords factors, such as keyword performance, ad copy, ad groups, and more. The webinar will also include a live Q&A section.

Date: Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Time: 10am PDT / 1pm EDT/ 6pm GMT
Duration: 1 hr
Level: 101 / Beginner
Register: Register here

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Google Analytics team

Webinar Video & Recap: Measuring Success in a Multi-Device World

June 7, 2013

Last Thursday, we held a webinar discussing how to effectively measure the customer’s journey in a multi-device world. We focused on high-level best practices and strategies, as well as how Google Analytics and other Google tools can help you measure and respond to the evolving customer journey.

Watch the webinar video here to learn more about:

Holistic, full-credit, and active measurement
Everyday strategies to improve your measurement and marketing performance
Basic techniques for marketing attribution
Google Analytics features and tools for measuring the full customer journey

During the webinar, we received dozens of great questions from viewers. Read on below for responses to some of the most common questions we received.

Questions and Answers

What other blogs would you recommend for advice on measurement best practices?

Avinash Kaushik is the author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An hour a day. On his blog, he discusses how to use digital marketing and measurement to focus on the customer while maintaining your ROI.

Justin Cutroni is the author of Google Analytics, Performancing Remarketing with Google Analytics, and Google Analytics Shortcut. He uses his experience as a consultant to guide his blog topics. His blog provides readers with techniques for using Google Analytics to maximize their marketing strategies.

Where can I find the “Think Insights” website referenced during the webinar?

Visit www.google.com/think for access to all sorts of statistics and articles about the latest trends in customer behavior. To learn more about the customer journey to online purchase, view the interactive benchmarking tool here.

How does marketing attribution help with intra-channel optimization?

Marketing attribution can help you to optimize intra-channel campaigns by allowing you to see value for each of the specific moments in the customer journey that you may be addressing within that single channel. For example, if you are running a search campaign, you may think about the role that different types of keywords play at different moments to help generate awareness for your brand, move the customer to consider your product, or to help close the deal. Using tools such as AdWords Search Funnels, you can determine where in the customer path those keywords had an impact, and this can help you optimize your keyword mix.

What are first-click and last-click attribution models?

The first and last clicks are important parts of two commonly used attribution models, the “first interaction” attribution model and the “last interaction” attribution model. Depending on which model you use, all credit for the sale (or conversion) is attributed to either the first or last click. In the “first interaction” model, the first touch point would receive 100% of the credit for the sale. In the “last interaction” model, the last touch point receives 100% of the credit. Historically, many businesses have relied on the last-click model alone, but since this model (like the first-click model) only addresses a single touch-point along the customer journey, it may miss other important marketing interactions.

There is no one specific model that will work for every business or every program within your business. Rather, you should explore different models and experiment to see which model or combination of models best fits your needs. Check out Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution Modeling to get started.

What are some tips for measuring the customer journey with Universal Analytics?

Consider integrating Universal Analytics with all of your digital touchpoints (see some examples in this post). Here are a few use cases that our Certified Partners are already implementing to measure the customer journey beyond web:

Integrated measurement and analysis of in-store POS systems along with desktop and mobile e-commerce platforms.
Measuring offline macro and micro conversions through physical buttons or integration with CRMs.
Measuring physical interactions -- for example at display booths at conventions or artworks at major exhibitions -- through to online engagement with associated websites.

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked & Adam Singer, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics Becomes A Robust Testing Platform With Content Experiments API

June 4, 2013

Our Analytics API enables marketers and developers to experiment and build new tools powered by Google Analytics. Over the past year, we’ve listened to your feedback and made improvements to the API such as expanding data points available and integrating with Apps Script. Our goal is to provide the most flexible and useful Analytics API on the web enabling you to do everything from build great apps to automate / expedite busywork.

Today, we’re excited to share the launch of an API for Content Experiments — our tool for easily testing site content with programmatic optimization to achieve Analytics objectives. This API makes Google Analytics a full-blown A/B testing platform where developers of all types can leverage the power of Google Analytics to run their experiments. By utilizing our multi-armed bandit approach, you can maximize results by efficiently determining which assets on your site perform best to offer an improved experience for users. Multi-armed bandit experiments are powerful and efficient tools and with the new Content Experiments API, you can get even more from them.

The Content Experiments API allows you to pick and choose from all the testing functionality Google Analytics has to offer and to combine it into powerful solutions that best fit your particular needs:

Testing changes to content without redirects.

The original Content Experiments JavaScript snippet made testing a breeze. To keep things simple and consistent for all publishers, the snippet causes a page redirect which may take away from the end user experience in certain cases. Now, with the new Content Experiments API, testing changes to content without redirects is both possible and easy to implement.

Testing items server-side such as the result set of a database query.

Major testing platforms typically offer changes on the client-side but not server side. With Content Experiments API you can now run tests on the server side and try things like implementing different recommendation or search algorithms to determine what works best for your site.

Testing with your own variation selection logic and use Google Analytics for reporting.

While the multi-armed bandit approach to experimentation is one of Content Experiments most powerful features, there are times where publishers and developers would prefer to decide for themselves how to serve variations - be it evenly or using proprietary logic. The Content Experiments API makes it possible for you to bypass our programmatic optimization while allowing you to continue to enjoy the powerful experiment reporting Google Analytics provides.

Testing in non-web environments using measurement protocol.

For example, if you have a kiosk in your physical location (such as airline terminal or retail store) you can test different layout variations of content and features and determine what users can complete quickest or at highest value.

Developers are already putting the Content Experiments API to work and we’ve been hearing great feedback. Paras Chopra, Founder & CEO of Visual Website Optimizer reports:

"We're thrilled about the possibilities opening up with the new Content Experiments API. This new API is specially designed to infuse the powers of Google Analytics into testing and experimentation domain. We're very proud to be one of the beta-testers with Google and soon we will start rolling out the integration of Visual Website Optimizer with Google Content Experiments across our joint customer base. When Google releases an API, it's a big move for the A/B testing industry and we're excited to be their launch partners."

Learn how to get started with our Content Experiments API on our developer site or if you’re still new to the platform, get an overview of Content Experiments in our help center.

Happy testing & experimentation!

Posted by Russell Ketchum, Google Analytics Team

Improving Google Analytics Dashboard Sharing

June 3, 2013

We’re happy to announce you can soon share and collaborate on Google Analytics dashboards!

Dashboards give an overview on how your properties are performing, and are even more powerful as you can create dashboards that you and your teammates can see and edit. Dashboard sharing is a nice complement to dashboard template creation: templates enable creating copies of dashboard configurations, and dashboard sharing enables you to collaborate with your team on a single shared dashboard.

You’ll be able to use this new feature as we roll this out in the coming weeks. At that time, start by creating a dashboard or viewing an existing one and then clicking on the “Share” menu. Look for the new “Share Dashboard” option:

This will make a copy of your dashboard that is available to everyone on the profile. Private dashboards will be grouped together, and shared dashboards will be as can be seen in the report navigation on the left side of Google Analytics:

Learn more about dashboard sharing.

Asset Sharing

This marks another enhancement in Google Analytics asset sharing, complementing the sharing capabilities of assets like annotations, advanced segments and custom reports. Google Analytics offers two forms of asset sharing today: creating asset templates, and collaborating on a single asset like we’re launching soon with dashboards. We are listening closely to user feedback on sharing, and planning more sharing features that you will see in the future.

Use dashboard sharing today to work more effectively with your team, and to enable richer reporting and data analysis.

Posted by Shailen Pandya and Matt Matyas, Google Analytics Team

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