Google Analytics Launches New Features

Google Analytics announced today new product features that they will be launching in the next few weeks. Here are a few brief descriptions:

1. Increased goal completions. The days of only being able to implement 4 goals are over. Now you will have the ability to implement 20 goals; and be able to  assign specific number of viewed pages and/or time spent on site as a goal

2. Mobile websites will now be tracked regardless if the device runs Java Script or not. Mobile applications within the iPhone and Android will now be tracked through Google Analytics to understand how users are engaging with the application. Of course there will be additional coding required

3. Added advanced analysis features allows you to apply filters within the reports for easy analysis and drilling down into the data without having to export

4. Multiple custom variables will allow you to track and define visitors by specific attributes, interactions, and/or behaviors

5. The most attractive improvement that Google Analytics is launching is Intelligence. While reviewing your reports, Google Analytics will alert you when there have been substantial changes in metrics or trends within daily, weekly, or monthly reporting periods. You will also be able to customize and define your own alerts that you want Google Analytics to  monitor.

If you’d like to read more about the features in more depth, check out the Google Analytics Blog.

Web Analytics Wednesday in San Diego

What a success!

I’m happy to report that the co-sponsored event by Geary Interactive and Quantivo brought in some great individuals from all over San Diego county. We had a raffle drawing, where we gave away 2 books written by Eric Peterson and 2 $50 gift cards to the Apple store.

If you were unable to attend last night’s event, stay tuned as we plan our next event in the coming months!

What!?! Less Than Half of Marketers Use Analytics?

So I was perusing through marketingcharts.com and came across a stat that just astounds me. Alterian released a survey in January that reported less than half (47%) of marketers use analytics to measure their campaigns. Less than half of marketers surveyed know how their campaigns are performing! I’m still baffled. In fact, I would love to learn more from those who do not measure their campaigns and why. If they’re not measuring the effectiveness of their campaigns or their website then I wonder how they decide what works and what doesn’t. The survey also revealed that 25% of the marketers stated that analyzing the results of the campaigns were the hardest part. If this is the case and you find that analyzing your campaign results to be difficult, here are a few steps that may help:

·         Define your goal. What are you trying to accomplish other than increasing traffic to your website? Once you have defined this goal, make sure that you are able to attribute your goal or conversion to your campaigns.

·         Be sure to tag your URLs with the proper campaign parameters that are available with your web analytics solution. Refer to your vendor’s manual for a detailed description of what this may entail. (Vendor’s URL parameters may differ)

·         Drive traffic to specific landing pages. Preferably landing pages that have content that is pertinent to your campaign and target audience.

·         Metrics that you will want to evaluate for performance include click through rate (CTR), conversion rate (CVR), cost per acquisition (CPA), return on investment (ROI), and landing page bounce rates

·         If you want to gather more insight about your campaigns, segment visitors based on the campaign that they respond to and analyze their behavior with your website. You may learn something new about your visitors or you may not, but until you analyze your site visitors, you will never know

Analyzing your campaigns does not have to be hard if you have the available resources. If you don’t, then the problem should not be that it is hard, but that you need to hire someone who can make sense of the data for you.

Behavioral Targeting: A Web Analytics Approach to Segmentation- Part 2

In my prior post, I discussed using segmentation as a way to better understand key metrics by removing the noise of your non-targeted site audience. For this post I would like to discuss some guidelines for identifying segments and targeting them to help improve key performance indicators.

By using Web Analytics data, you can identify different segments based on specific actions that your site visitors are taking once on your website. Trying to remain broad here as there are many different types of websites; any action a user takes with your website, through a call center, or in-store, defines an opportunity to identify a behavior. That behavior can provide some very valuable information that can benefit marketers with re-targeting strategies.

For example, let’s say that you have a content site with lots of information that is separated into different categories. You could target your returning visitors with ads that are relevant to their interests based on the different sections of the site that they visited.

 Another example would include someone who visits a commerce site repeatedly because they are in the research phase of learning about one of the products that you carry. After the second or third visit to a specific product page, you could serve them a type of incentive to persuade them to purchase at that time. I hope your competitors haven’t thought of that yet.

Here are some guidelines to help with your behavioral targeting strategy:

1.       Clearly define the goals of your website

2.       Identify key segments (Note that additional research aside from web analytics data may be necessary to define)

3.       Understand the goals for each of your segments and the increased value they will provide

4.       Select the appropriate tools that will allow you to target your site visitors

5.       After implementation, analyze your segments and identify improvement opportunities

Behavioral targeting is not a one time initiative; a continuous improvement plan should be performed as segmented behavior may change over time depending on your website goals.

Remove the Noise: A Web Analytics Approach to Segmentation- Part 1

Segmentation can be used to analyze site visitors in a multiple of ways to compare different types of behavior and identify new insights. Another method of segmentation that can be used is to eliminate visitors by removing the noise of the un-targeted traffic that is not intended for your website.

For example, hopefully you currently exclude Internal IP addresses so that your employees’ activity on the website is excluded from reports. However, if your site only sells products or services in the U.S. and you do not provide services in another country; then you might say that your analysis may be a better representation of your site visitors or intended audience if you filter our traffic from other countries.

Some may argue that having that data is valuable as it may provide insight to the demand of your product or service in another region. This is true and thus should be the reason why you always have a profile that collects all web data to your site. It’s a lot easier to segment out the data you need to do an analysis than it is to add it back in (if that is even an option).

So what are some other ways you would find value in segmenting out types of behavior to better understand your target audience?