Free Google Analytics webinar – How to manage your business online through web analytics
This September 2011 webinar I created for Small Biz Technology shows how Google Analytics (and any web analytics, for that matter) should work in your business. You can make choices that help you manage the business effectively. Ramon Ray, editor of Small Biz Technology, made the introduction.
This video will show the importance of setting a goal, how to use paid search, and how referral traffic should be monitored. This can aid your business’ effort to make timely decisions based on the data presented.
Note: Due to processing, the audio was somewhat damaged.
When Custom Variables Are Consistently Useful: Customer segmentation by membership
Ah, the New York Times. A paper with global stature. No paper made more significant headlines of its own in the online world when the New York Times announced its digital subscription program (details here). The skinny is that visitors who are not subscribers can view up to 20 post in a month, while subscribers of one of three digital news packages have unlimited access. When non-subscribers click on their 21st article, they can purchase a subscription. The plan was implement in March 2011, and the jury is still out on how well the paywall plan is working. New York Times is noted to be the largest newspaper publisher who has implementing a paywall.
Many online blogs operate like a newspaper, and while many still are not at the scope of New York Times, a financial model for making a profit can be a challenge. So what would a small business do to emulate a paywall, or even figure how to better serve its audience? One analytics feature that would be helpful is developing a custom variable to distinguish subscribers online.
A few words on custom variables. Custom variables are a javascript call out that measure page actions for specific activity, In the case of visitor, measurement can include such as the number of pageviews from members who log in on a members-only site. The variable is typically activated by modifying the analytics code, inserting the following Javascript call out with parameters.
Google Analytics requires that index, name, and value are identified. They are determined as followed method accepts four parameters:
- index—This is a slot number, with a single value from 1 – 5, inclusive. This is meant as a key for one custom variable, so you can have index 1, and index 2, an index 3, and so on.
- name— This is a string that identifies the custom variable.
- value—This ia a value that is paired with a name. You can pair a number of values with a custom variable name, such as a custom variable name gender and supply male and female as two possible values.
- opt_scope—The scope for the custom variable, usually for an additiona description
Most web analytics solutions have some variation of the callout. Piwik, for example, uses the Javascript callout setCustomVariable( index, name, value, scope ) where scope is named “visit” or “pages” depending on whether your variable is tracking based on visits or pages.
When you decide to implement custom variables, you need to consider your site needs carefully against your budget, since most paid solutions offer more flexibility with variables. Piwik and Google Analytics, both free solutions, limit the number of custom variables, while paid solutions Yahoo Web Analytics and Omniture Site Catalyst permit more variables and offering even more customization.
But custom variables can help track visitors to distinguish traffic patterns between members and non-members. Such an arrangement would help your blog develop what effort would convert non-subscribers to subscribers, as well as may other ideas to maintain traffic onsite and provide unique, nuanced treatment for two separate sets of visitors.
There are plenty of other ways a custom variable can be used. Justin Cutroni offers a unique way of using custom variables for coupons – you can read about his process here.
What other ways can custom variables be useful?
How Google Instant Pages, Voice Search, and Image Search Affects Your Website and Analytics Strategy
Google Voice Recognition, seen in the Google webinar introduction of Instant Pages, Voice Search, and Image Search
Google has been on a tear lately to better position its bread-and-butter service, search, with social media. It has done so by making improvements that eases how search results are shared.
The first introduction was Panda, the new algorithm which involves a new calculation to develop relevant search results. Some web site owners claim that their ranking in search engine results were adversely affected. Google has stated that as many as 12% would be affected by the change. You can read about those details on this CNN post on Panda – the post mentions an IP verification in which prior-Panda rankings can be shown.
Next came Google +1, a new share button similar to Facebook like button, to let internet users share newly discovered posts and sites.
Now comes new search features, Image Search, Voice Search, and Instant Pages. Google details the the new search features here. I listened to the web introduction in June and developed the thoughts below on the impact to your analytics and website code usage.
Images Search
Introduced in response to the pinch and expand behavior made popular iPad and smartphones like the Droid Charge, Google improved the interaction for image results. The search works by clicking on the camera icon in the Google images search text window. The interesting fact is that photos can also be uploaded as well as the URL of a photo location.
What does this mean?
Descriptions of photos have become an important way to discover your site, and thus your business. This point has been raised in many a blog or magazine, but now Google’s new feature makes the search capability more real.
In the HTML code for your photos, review the description for the image and use keywords relevant to your business and products when possible. Make sure photo file descriptions match up to keyword terms that related to your site.
Voice Search
Mobile users are conducting more searching online, at a growth rate faster than laptop. But they are also on the go, which limits the pause they can take while walking down the street.
Voice search introduces a microphone appears in the search window. Clicking on it will permit
In its presentation, Google mentioned that its voice search will improve recognition of accents as more people use the feature.
What does this mean?
Start thinking and paying attention to how your customer describe your products and services, even your business. You can use the keyword report in Google Analytics to have an idea of how and what brought visitors to your site in the past. These can give ideas for modifying content in the site and any associated blog.
But don’t worry too much about this tip yet – this feature is being introduced in Chrome 11 for US English only.
Instant Pages
Google Search includes a prerendering of webpages in the search results, which cuts load time by “can start interacting with your site almost immediately without having to wait for text and images to load “ (from the Google site). Easy load of webpages is becoming essential, especially with smaller devices that have nuances such as no Flash capability.
What does this mean?
Consider checking load times of your site, and determine if your website needs adjustment. Yottaa offers a free inspection tool for webpage loading. Powered by MongoDB, Yottaa verifies your site’s load time on servers around the world. You can learn more at the Yottaa site.
Also, an analytics code can interfere with a page load if incorporated installed — this is not typical, but analytics functionality should be verified. Epik created a great Google Analytics verification tool called Site Scan. You can verify your site here.
Some of the features will be rolled out slowly, so there is still time to update. But mostly the best lesson is to not sit still with your website in terms of updates.
5 web analytics mistakes to avoid when starting to use web analytics
- Consider who within your company sees your site. If you do not filter internal traffic out, you will overcount the number of visits to your site, as well as inflate other metrics. Use an IP filter to eliminate repeated visits from remote employees, contractors, and others whose homepage in a browser opens to the company website.
- Using a stat counter for measurement. Select a tool that measures only hits means you can’t take advantage of segmentation (explained here) or other advanced features that really inform on website performance. If not Google Analytics, consider other analytic tools such as Piwik and Going Up!
- View one’s site separate from the business. More and more, people are using social media and search engines to make a schedule to review data periodically, and see how the data infers to your business objectives. According to Experian in its 2011 Digital Report, 73% of people use search engines to compare prices, while 17% are using social media to search before making a purchase. So online is becoming just as essential to people as your business offline.
- Fail to verify that the website is working properly. Verifying code function is essential for assuring that the analytics is measuring properly. There are great tools available – Use Site Scan , developed by analytics consulting firm Epik, to gain an idea if there are function issues with the code installation. Yottaa , which is powered by MongoDB database, verifies the loading speed of a website — vital for ensuring that performance has not declined due to adding a script or function.
- Limiting the usage of analytics for just search engine optimization (SEO) — analytics is meant for marketing optimization, determining which marketing effort is leading to desired results. Remember a marketing budget and effort is needed, whether it is for pay per click, banner ads, or a social media community manager. Make sure your analytics solution provides a pathway to measuring results.
Google Analytics v5 will provide enhanced marketing and business intelligence to small businesses
On March 17th Google announced a new version of Google Analytics is being released over the next few months (You can read the Google Analytics blog announcement here ). Version 5, previewed at the annual Google Analytic User Conference in San Francisco as well as at the Google Analytics blog, introduces significant improvements. It may have been the cause of earlier rumors of Google rolling out a paid analytic solution to compete with Webtrends and Omniture Site Catalyst. But GA is ubiquitous, with numerous social media, email, and marketing measurement tools that enhance its features, so in my opinion, a new product change of that magnitude would have required a number of steps on Googles part coupled with negating some of Google’s claims about the current benefits of GA. But I digress. 
I looked at a related post from Justin Cutroni, Director at Webshare (which had an announcement itself — merging with VKI Studios to form Cardinal Path). Justin is author of Google Analytics: Understanding Visitor Behavior (You can see a review of Google Analytics: Understanding Visitor Behavior at Small Business Trends) and Performance Marketing with Google Analytics (with Caleb Whitmore and Sebastian Tonkin). He gave a brief walk through of version five that captures the key differences, which you can see in the above video.
The user interface receives the most notable share of revisions, in an attempt to increase usability and report accessibility. Google revised the flexibility of creating a unique dashboard, as well as the navigation bar. It’s now a two-tier bar, placing reports selections above the graph. Metrics are also above the graph, so there’s less of a need to scroll down unless a deep dive is necessary (which makes sense). The kinds of available reports has been revised, with some eliminated based on user input. The dashboard is more closer to a wiki, with better flexibility for metrics shown and how there are displayed — a gauge is available, as well as pie charts and tabular graphs. Multiple dashboards can be created. Naming conventions are changes in some cases, such as Sources becoming Incoming sources.
A termcloud feature displays the traffic and page data, so search terms are displayed in a manner similar to a word cloud. Like Justin, I am excited about this feature because it should give casual users a new way to visualize what is working for their site. Blogger should benefit to figure out what words brought visitors to the site.
In the meantime, expect a follow up from me on the features and what I personally like about it soon, as the new version is rolled out.