A roundup of key new features for you to apply in 2013
In October 2012 Google officially retired the old version of Google Analytics meaning that everyone will now use the new version 5 which has been in beta test for around a year. This coincided with a flurry of activity with new features introduced. So it’s a good to time to think about how you’re using Google Analytics to improve the results from your digital marketing.
Most businesses will have been using the new version, but users will likely need education or training to understand how to use the new features. It’s also a prompt to check that Google Analytics is set up to tailor analysis and reports specific for your business, more on the details of this in my article next month.
In this post, I will summarise the main changes introduced over the last year, so you can check you’re…
How Googles's new Universal Analytics and other planned features add to the tools available to improve business insight
The relentless pace of change at Google
I joined Google in 2005 - just after the acquisition of Urchin, the forerunner of Google Analytics. A big factor for me coming on board with Google (it was not a "no-brainer" as I had my own business and staff to consider), was the promise of the continued development of the product.
At the time, many an industry "luminary" predicted that once acquired, Urchin would just be another product/tool on Google's shelf. Many mergers and acquisitions are like that - once acquired the interest of the acquiring company moves on to the next thing - but not Google. In fact, what still amazes me is that after 7 years since the launch of Google Analytics, the pace of change is even more rapid than during the first 3 years...
Take…
Google provides a new interface for integrating customer data into Google Analytics to enable more customer-centred analysis
Value/Importance: Most businesses [rating=1] Large and tech-savvy businesses [rating=4]
Recommended link: Google’s announcement of Universal Analytics
I must admit I found the explanation from Google short on details of the options for businesses to apply the features of its new “Measurement Protocol” data integration feature announced at this weeks Google Analytics Summit. With headings in the announcement post such as “the world is mobile” and “your business is unique” it wasn’t as clear as I’ve come to expect.
So, I’ve been talking about the implications for digital marketers of Universal Analytics (UA) to analytics specialist Dan Barker who helps many businesses on Google Analytics (GA) setup and using it for sales optimisation and who is better at reading between the lines…
A way to save time (and money) for companies and agencies managing more complex media tracking
Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Google’s announcement of the Tag Manager
Our advice on whether the Tag Manager is relevant for you
Although it's a significant new feature for marketers from Google, this tool isn't relevant for all businesses. I'd advise that you don't need to worry about this tool if you're not investing heavily in display advertising or affiliate marketing. If most of your visits are currently referred by direct visits plus paid or natural search, social or email marketing it's likely overkill and the basic Google Analytics tag setup is sufficient to track and report these through Google Analytics.
However, for larger companies and their agencies managing complex sites using a range of media investments to drive visits it could save a LOT of time (and expense from using paid tag management solutions). With this new tool, Google…
A tutorial to building a content marketing dashboard in Google Analytics
This post is the third in the series Measuring your content marketing efforts. The first two posts are: The Geek Guide to Measuring your Content Marketing Efforts and Introducing Profit Index: Revolutionary Way to Measure your Content Marketing Efforts.
In the first post I outlined the definition of great content and how this greatness can be measured in monetary terms. In the second post I have talked about a new type of index called ‘profit index’, why you need one and how it can be optimized to increase the conversion volumes and sales on your website.
In this post I am going to explain how to create what I believe are two "top notch" dashboards (in Google Analytics) to quickly measure the performance of your content. Let us start with measuring the performance of a piece of content you have…
Shortcuts give you quick access to your favourite reports and customisations
Importance: [rating=1]
Value for user: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Google Analytics Support Page
I’ve just been taking a look at this new Google feature. Although it doesn't involve a new report or big change to the interface, I think it’s worth sharing as a mini-tutorial since it could save you hours of time across the year if you know about it. I’ll certainly be flagging it up prominently on training courses.
What are Shortcuts?
Shortcuts simply remember your settings for an individual report. They’re like Favourites or Bookmarks for reports. Any Standard or Custom report can be added to your shortcuts but Goal reports, Real-time and Intelligence reports are excluded.
How do you set them up?
This is easy, for the report your currently viewing, just select the “Shortcut (Beta)” option from the options at the top of the report you want saving.
Here I've set one up…
An introduction to the 6 new Social Reports in Google Analytics
In my previous post I wrote about the increasing importance of social media with SEO. In this follow-up I'll show how Google Analytics can be used to assess how effective you are in generating social signals through an engaged audience.
Using Google Analytics social reports to measure impact
Google Analytics introduced a new Social report suite in March 2012. This makes it much easier to evaluate the contribution of traffic from social media domains and sharing of content from your site on social networks.
When it was first announced it was known as "Social Analytics" (see Dave Chaffey's introduction to 10 features) and had its own menu option. Now the Social report is integrated in the Traffic Sources report, available by selecting "Social". There are 6 reports available which I will explain. If you haven't used them, I recommend it, it certainly…
A summary of recent changes relevant to marketers
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Google often announce developments in Google Analytics in bursts. In July we've seen several changes notified via the Google Analytics blog that it’s worth being aware of if your company uses Google Analytics. Some are just name changes, others are more significant. Here’s our summary:
1. New Google Analytics version now standard. From 18th July the original version of Google Analytics was retired. Most businesses will now be using the new version, but this is a prompt that users may need training to be aware of the new features such as multichannel funnels and social analytics.
It is also a prompt to check that Google Analytics is set up to tailor reports to improve marketing for their business (see our Google Analytics setup checklist for details of 15 setup options).
2. Google Website Optimizer now integrated as Content Experiments. GWO was originally…
10 goals you should be measuring on your B2B website using Google Analytics
Having a good method for quickly reviewing the effectiveness of your B2B website is really important as the majority of your time and effort will be spent trying to get people onto your website as early on as possible in their purchasing cycle. Once prospects are on your site it’s then up to various factors around the quality of your content that must work together to get the visitor to convert into a lead.
How important is your website as part of the overall marketing strategy?
“Our website gets over 10,000 visits a month which is really good” or similar is a comment I often hear from marketers, but probably have no idea about how many actually convert into leads or data capture for further opt-in marketing. Whilst traffic is easy to measure and most of the holds no value, it…
An introduction to setting Goal Value in Google Analytics
Goals in Google Analytics (GA) open a multitude of interesting and thought provoking questions when analysed properly.
In this post I'll show how to select the right goals, showing why it's so important to apply a value to those goals to help with data-driven decision making.
What is a Goal?
Within Google Analytics you have the ability to setup a specific action or interaction that can be used to calculate the flow of users within the site. You can setup funnels or just a single step funnel which Google Analytics can use to create a goal. Key to the principle behind goals is to understand what the users having been doing, in what order and trying to get an understanding on the the value generated to the business of their visit.
Which Goals do I need?
The…
