What do businesses need to do to gain more insights and value from Google Analytics?
You know the way it is with using Google Analytics... nearly all businesses have it installed, but far fewer have customised it correctly for their business AND have a structured approach for using it to improve their online marketing. I think many business owners and marketers know that because of this and the lack of skills to interpret the data, the obvious potential of using Google Analytics to review and improve online marketing is missed by many organisations. The reason for this missed opportunity is not a technology problem. As Avinash Kaushik has pointed out, in his 10/90 rule of managing analytics, that's because this is largely a People issue, i.e. how to provide People with the right processes, tools and KPIs to drive performance.
Those most aware…
Tips on using Google Analytics to improve traffic building and conversion
Google Analytics provides a wealth of insight, so much more than the basic visits, page views and bounce rates which are are the limit of what some marketers consider. So we believe that Google Analytics deserves more focus to use the insight to drive improvement.
We like this infographic from Quicksprout since it goes further than stating the obvious metrics. Instead, it shares practical steps to take to use Google Analytics to increase your traffic particularly through keyword analysis when you link Google Analytics with Googles' Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools), conversion rates and 'how tos' (such as where to place your keywords, how to analyse top referring sites and more..). So use this infographic as a prompt to get started with practical steps to optimise your website using the insight available in Google Analytics.
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Brian Clifton and Avinash Kaushik on Customising Google Analytics to improve Digital Marketing
Successful Analytics is the title of a new book by Brian Clifton who you may know as the author of the Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. Brian wrote this after his time as the first Head of Web Analytics at Google EMEA.
I'm keen to help businesses better manage their use of analytics to improve Digital Marketing. since I have found when training and consulting that many are missing the opportunity make the most of the insights available from their analytics. Although most businesses now use Google Analytics, or an equivalent to tag their sites to measure their online marketing, it's often not the customised for their business to get the most from reviewing the analytics. Brian's books focus on how to customise Google Analytics for a business, from a technical point-of-view (in the first book) and from a process and team standpoint (in…
Compare your traffic sources and mobile vs desktop audience split to others in your sector to make the business case for investment in digital marketing
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Google Analytics Benchmarking announcement
Do you remember Google Analytics Benchmarking? You’ll need quite a good memory since Google withdrew it in late 2011 I recall - we lamented its passing in this post on using Google Analytics to Benchmark engagement with a site recommending how to use measures like bounce rate, pages per visit and visit duration to compare engagement with your site.
Well, now it’s back with a bang including a new interface and new types of reports. Here’s how to check it out:
How do I set up Benchmarking?
This is easy and you may well have it set up before. Head to Admin and check the second box shown.
Data is shared anonymously,…
A review of the in-page Chrome extension for Google Analytics
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Google Analytics InPage Extension for Chrome
This tool came out at the end of June, so it’s not brand new, but we think it’s still worth an alert since although it has been released for a month, it’s had fewer than 60,000 downloads - not many considering the number of people that use Google Analytics… Maybe this is because it doesn’t add much to the existing Google Analytics In-Page Analytics feature which you access from the bottom of the “Behaviour” menu in Google Analytics.
How to setup the Page Analytics Chrome extension
To setup the tool simply:
Download the Chrome extension and enable the extension by clicking on the button in your toolbar.
Make sure you are signed-in with the relevant Google Analytics account with a profile for the site you want to review.
Load up the page you want…
A tutorial showing you the options to set up this new GA feature
When Google Analytics launched in 2005 it democratised web analytics with its feature rich offering, since then Google has worked hard to add new features to a product that is now considered a viable alternative to most enterprise level web analytics tools. But until recently GA lacked a key feature that many of it’s competitors have had since the first half of the last decade, that is the ability to group content at the session level.
Grouping content has lot's of applications, for retail sites grouping categories and products is important, for media sites, different types of stories and today all businesses need to know which types and formats of content are supporting their content marketing.
Other tools around the time of Google Analytics’ launch, such as HBX, dealt with this very well but Google, with its URL based content reports…
3 Steps to make the case for better call-tracking
I get it. You’re an online marketer. Equipped with the best there is to offer in web analytics, you save the day for client after client, letting them know what drives visitors to their websites. Clients want to know if visitors actually read the content on their websites? Done. Businesses enquiring on what sites visitors go to after leaving their website? You got it covered.
But what happens when these visitors you thought you knew so well visit your clients website then decide to pick up the phone? Even with a powerful tool like Google Analytics, you still need to be tracking phone calls.
I know… I know, this isn’t 1876, and you aren’t Alexander Graham Bell. You’re a digital savvy marketing pro, why should you worry your clients with something as old school as telephone calls?
Why you should be tracking phone calls
A recent…
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June 4, 2014
Your Google Analytics Post-launch checklist
In my last post on using Google Webmaster Tools to audit a site post-launch I showed how after the creation of a new or redesigned website, there are many other issues to consider before a new website can be considered to be fully functional. Another key post-launch activity is to check that the effectiveness of the site will be measurable using Google Analytics. Here it’s important to make sure to have a Google Analytics checklist in place to review how to best customise Google Analytics to report on your business success.
[Editor's note: we agree that setting Google Analytics up is often missed on new sites. In particular we see that many don't have goals setup, so thanks to Vagelis for his detailed review and recommendations in this post. In fact we'd advise considering goal setup and tracking at an early stage in site development rather than post launch. Smart Insights Expert members can…
Should we start using Universal Analytics now it's out of Beta?
This post was prompted by a question in our from from an agency advising a publishing company asking whether they should use Classic Google Analytics or the new Universal Analytics in future.
April 2nd 2014 update - Universal Analytics now out of public beta
It’s a timely question since Google's Universal Analytics is now out of Beta. We're alerting you to this since this now means there is feature parity between Google Analytics and Universal Analytics. According to Google:
"Bringing Universal Analytics out of beta means that all the features, reports, and tools of Classic Analytics are now available in the product, including Remarketing and Audience reporting".
When will update to Universal Analytics become mandatory
Google's update doesn't mention if and when classic Google Analytics will be required although they have said that the intent is that all users will eventually have to upgrade to…
Google introduces 3 options to review content effectiveness in Google Analytics
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Google Analytics announcement
The lack of options for content grouping in Google Analytics has been surprising given that it has been a core feature of established analytics systems like Webtrends and Site Catalyst since as long as I can remember.
It’s true that you can use the Content Drilldown to review the effectiveness of different content types in driving visits leads and sales as we recommend in our guide to Google Analytics, but this only works if you have a site structured with a clear hierarchy of folders.
In the real-world, many sites particularly Ecommerce sites, or other sites pulling products from a database don’t have this. In these cases your best option was to create a custom filter for grouping content as Peter O’Neill outlines.
Google has introduced 3 options for setting up content grouping and reporting.…
