'Net Features : google analytics

Klipfolio Gets Connected with Google Analytics

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:15:00 GMT

Klipfolio, a provider of an operational dashboard for real-time business information and key performance indicators, has added the Google Analytics data connector.

The data connector is used to provde non-technical users with the ability to retrieve data from their Google analytics account. In this case, it essentially ports all your custom analytics data directly to the Klipfolio app (which works for desktops, mobiles, tablets).

In its "simple mode," users are now able to select metrics, dimensions, and a time period to retrieve from the account, and in the "advanced mode" users with some familiarity with the Google Analytics API can craft more detailed queries.

"We've noticed a remarkable increase in the number of marketing agencies using Klipfolio Dashboard. This is because we are focused on operational and real-time data - this synergizes extremely well with marketing departments measuring campaign performance, web analytics, and SEO."

Experimenting with Google ACE

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 20:30:00 GMT

Google revamped its Website Optimizer product (and renamed it to Google Analytics Content Experiments) several weeks ago but is now rolling out several new and noteworthy features to its platform.

The site testing feature within Google Analytics now includes support for relative URLs (which provides some flexibility when defining the location of variations), and offers testers the ability to copy experiments (so they can run additional experiments immediately after the original finishes).

Google has also made several improvements to the experiments report, adding familiar analytics report capabilities including site usage, goal set, and ecommerce tabs, as well as the option to choose which variations should be plotted in the report graph.

Measure Website Performance with User Timings

Michael Garrity — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:30:00 GMT

When it comes to a website’s productivity, every little detail is important. For some time now, Google Analytics has provided its users with Site Speed reports to study their site’s page load times, and now the company has developed User Timings, so users can measure and diagnose page speeds with more refined accuracy.

User Timings will allow Web workers to track and visualize user-defined custom timings about websites, which will show the execution speed or load time of a discrete hit, or even user interaction, depending on what the Google Analytics user decides to track. Included in these metrics are the load speeds of specific images and resources, the response times of select button clicks, AJAX actions timings both before and after onLoad events and more.

Plus, these User Timings are the preferred method for tracking various action timing metrics, as they won’t alter page view counts.

Google Analytics users wanting to collect and take advantage of User Timings data will have to add a JavaScript timing code to the interactions they want to track by using the trackTiming API included in ga.js (version 5.2.6+), which lets site owners track visitor action timings related to events that don’t directly correspond to page views. To enhance organization, these can be defined using categories, variables and optional labels.

User Timings reports can be accessed by going to the Content tab of a Google Analytics dashboard and clicking on the “User Timings” section, where there are three tabs to review. Explorer, Performance and Map Overlay each provide different views of user timings.

Explorer shows information about average user timing and user timing sample by Timing Category, Timing Variable or Timing Label. The Performance tab tells site owners which timings are the most common for user timings. And Map Overlay gives owners a view of how users in different geographical regions experience site speed.

Analyzing Google's "Unsung Hero"

Michael Garrity — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:00:00 GMT

Last week, the news came out that the popular Google Analytics platform is currently installed on over 10 million websites worldwide, and according to BuiltWith, that number is actually a lot closer to 15 million.

Maybe this doesn’t come as a huge shock to most of you (in fact, some had estimated that the number was much higher), but that doesn’t change the fact that Google is on top in the world of Web analytics.

The product was referred to as Google’s “unsung hero” by the company’s CBO, Nikesh Arora, which makes sense, since some of the ‘Net’s biggest, and smallest, websites leverage the solution. Ultimately, some 56 percent of all sites are using Google Analytics for at least some of their needs.

But does that mean it’s actually the best?

Hey, it's free!
Some sources online (of varying degrees of credibility) will gladly tell you that Google Analytics is, at best, a lackluster solution, while others go so far as to proclaim that it will usher in the death of your Web business (uh, not quite). Are these criticisms really justified, though? After all, millions of websites utilize the solution and most of them don’t seem to complain too much. Then again, maybe that’s because they don’t know they should be complaining.

When it comes down to it, there are really two major issues with Google Analytics. The first is that it’s free. (Wait, did I just say that?) Of course, everyone likes to pay literally nothing for a tool as competent as Google Analytics, but that also means that a lot of people are going to leverage the solution. With a paid service, users are often going to be more serious, and they’re also going to have more influence with regard to petitioning for changes and improvements to the solution.

Think of it like the equivalent of a sports team's training camp: Paid solutions help to weed out the less committed players, leaving a user base that is (mostly) serious about its analytics.

The other, and more detrimental issue with Google Analytics is basically that it’s too robust. Okay, I know it probably sounds like I’m just complaining about all of the great things about Google Analytics, but hear me out.

But does it cause inefficiency?
There are, generally speaking, two types of people who use Google Analytics to track website statistics: those who run an entire website by themselves (small business owners) and those who work for a larger organization and are in charge of a specific area of interest. And in a lot of ways, neither of these groups really benefits all that much from using Google Analytics.

See, problems arise because Google Analytics seems to want to be entirely comprehensive, measuring almost everything and reporting on all of it. In theory, this is great, but what usually ends up happening is users are bombarded with scores of statistics and data, many of which aren’t directly actionable and, in some cases, are entirely useless.

For some individual website owners, they’ll find that most of the measurements provided by the solution will have little to no direct impact on how they can improve their website’s performance and user experience, and all of that superfluous information just makes it harder to parse out valuable data. And it’s a similar issue for employees of larger enterprises.

When users are segmented into different divisions, each with specific objectives and goals, they’re obviously going to be looking for statistics and information that is pertinent to them. For example, someone in charge of a business’ social media will probably be interested in looking at referral traffic, but stats like unique visitors or bounce rates will probably have little use for them.

And while on the surface it may not seem like that big of a deal (after all, better too much information than not enough, right?), it can certainly be overwhelming for those tasked with making sense of all that data. An overflow of statistical information can often have an effect that is the opposite of productivity, because when people have too much data to properly manage, and when much if it isn’t directly related to the task at hand, it can lead to performance paralysis, leaving Web workers with fields of information and no idea how to even begin making sense of it all.

We all have choices
Now, this doesn’t necessarily make Google Analytics a bad solution, because it can provide a plethora of useful information and actionable insights that can help a Web business get ahead, and stay there. And it really can’t be beat for the price. The real issue with Google Analytics is that the majority of sites that use it to track their performance simply aren’t able to utilize it to its fullest potential, certainly not the way they’d be able to if it were scaled back a bit.

At present, the large amount of data generated by the service could easily lead to an inordinate and inefficient use of time and resources, and that usually doesn’t help anyone in the long run. Google Analytics is a very popular service, and for a good reason, but there’s a good chance that there’s a better solution out there for your Web business.

Google Analytics Adds Events to Flow Visualization

Michael Garrity — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Google enhanced its analytics solution last October by adding Flow Visualization to help users picture the way visitors interact with their websites. Now, the company is upgrading Flow Visualization to better meet the demands of Google Analytics users.

The biggest change to the solution is the addition of Events Flow, which aids event-driven websites in analyzing the impact of their visitors. These are sites that land users on one URL, and on that page are multiple elements with which users can interact.

It can be difficult for many site owners to visualize how their visitors interact with various aspects of their sites. Events Flow displays the order of events in which a visitor has engaged.

This new feature will look and feel like the familiar Visitors Flow option, including displaying the same interactions of clicking, hovering, etc. Site owners will be able to analyze events flows by grouping nodes into Category, Category/Action or Category/Action/Label.

In addition, Google is adding Date Comparison into its Flow Visualization offering, which allows users to compare two date ranges for a whole family of reports, including Visitors Flow, Goal Flow or the new Events Flow, to help provide insights on how visitor engagements change over different periods of time. This allows site owners to see how any changes to pages or goal steps can directly affect visitor behaviors.

Adding date comparisons optimizes workflow by removing the need to perform manual calculations or use two browsers to compare two flow visualizations. It also makes it easy to highlight connections and instantly update comparison numbers for particular traffic, allowing owners to isolate specific traffic to see exactly how it reacts to certain changes on the website.

Ultimately, date comparison options will help owners gain insights on how to optimize site experience and conversions.

Finally, Google is including additional goal types in its Goal Flow offering, specifically letting users see how visitors convert on non-URL goals. Among the new types are the inclusion of time-on-site and engagement in the Goal Flow report.

Google Analytics Visualizes Visitor Flow

Michael Garrity — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:00:00 GMT

Google has announced a new feature for its Google Analytics product called Flow Visualization, which, not suprisingly, is a tool for visualizing visitor flow.

On its blog, the company says that many users have expressed interest in a product that will provide "better ways to visualize and quickly find those insights about how visitors flow through your sites." The Google Analytics design team opted not to build individual path analysis, but rather came up with Flow Visualization to make it easier for marketers and analysts to better optimize their visitor experience "by presenting the ways that visitors flow through their sites in an intuitive and useful way."

The tool works by showing users site insights in a graphic, which allows them to instantly understand how visitors are "flowing" across pages on the site.

Flow Visualization is split up into two different services. The first is Visitors Flow, in which the graphics in question can be viewed by traffic source, or any other dimensions, and allow site owners to track a visitor's journey, including where they drop off. The graphics will provide instant insights into how many visitors are on and interacting with the page.

Google Analytics provides high levels of interaction with these visualizations, allowing users to do things like highlight different pathways or see information about specific nodes and connections. This helps owners to address crucial, specific questions, "such as 'How successful is my new promo page?'"

The feature even allows users to focus more precisely on one node by "exploring the traffic." Owners will be provided data on all of the visits that lead to that node, as opposed to just those that come from "top sources in the Visitors Flow." Paths can also be traversed forwards or backwards.

Goal Flow is the other part of Flow Visualization, and it provides users with graphical representation of the ways in which visitors flow through specific "goal steps" (and where they dropped off). Goal steps are defined by site owners to represent important pages and page groups that are of highest interest to the site. This allows users to see exactly how visitors arrive at pages of interest by selecting that page and visualizing backwards; these "reverse paths" should help owners find the best choices for suboptimal placement of content.

Forward paths can be visualized as well, which helps users see which pages are most visited from goal steps or "to see visitor flow leakage that a site owner might be unaware of."

"These two views are our first step in tackling flow visualization for visitors through a site," says the Google Analytics team on their blog.

Flow Visualization was announced yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit. Google Analytics hopes to release other types of visualizers in the coming months.

Find Real-Time Data in Google Analytics

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:45:00 GMT

Google is launching a real-time data feature in its Analytics offering.

With Google Analytics Real-Time, users will have the ability to see active visitors on the sites they measure, providing very powerful insights into the social media response they are generating. Google's instant statistics, for example, could indicate how well an individual tweet performed in relation to its ability to drive site traffic or conversions. Another suggestion is to use the Real-Time reports to make sure that campaign tracking is correctly implemented.

While the Real-Time reports are not yet currently available to everyone (request early access here), the reports are presently available in the Dashboards tab and will be moving to the Home tab in the new interface release next week.

The response so far from Google Analytics users? Very, very positive.

Site Speed Update in Google Analytics

Administrator — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:15:00 GMT

Google introduced its Site Speed report back in May 2011 and webmasters (and all other sorts of Web professionals) dove right into the details about their page load times.

What the feature, which is available in the new version of Google analytics, was missing was some actual details on site performance (not just averages). Today, Google introduced a "performance" tab in the Site Speed report today which shows a breakdown of the data helping website analysts of all types understand how page load times impact page-level performance and conversions.

The data shows a breakdown of the page load times by second (as seen in the image below). Users that have deployed the necessary code can also apply advanced segments to monitor the relationship between pages with long load times and engagement with content or conversion.

Related Content from Website Magazine:

- Optimizing for Speed
- Google Serrvice to Increase Page Speeds by 60 Percent
- Compuware, Gomez Introduce New APM Solution
- Test Performance (Fast) with Page Speed Online

Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:05:00 GMT

Last week Google released a rather significant improvement to how it helps Internet merchants and web publishers track conversions.

Until now, most responsible for tracking conversion (at least in Google Analytics) were forced to give credit to the most recent click (or click on an advertisement). This is commonly referred to as last click attribution. What marketer’s value in this model is that it provides insights into the last channel responsible for driving users to an actual sale.

The problem with last click attribution however is that consumers/customers spend a lot of time on the Web before actually making a purchase or completing a conversion (however that might be defined). They ask their friends on social networks, they read reviews on affiliate marketing sites, they are “branded” through display advertising, etc - it's enough to make even the most seasoned Web analysts throw up their arms as the challenges to find out what’s working are immense. Until now.

Google has introduced "multi-channel funnels" - a set of five new reports in Google analytics that shows marketers some important insight into the "full path to conversion over a 30 day period." That's pretty exciting if you spend any time within your analytics account. Finally, users will be able to determine the role that prior website referrals, searches and advertisements had on conversion and how much time passed between a visitors initial interest and the eventual purchase.

Raven Tools Turn Web Analytics into Action

Linc Wonham — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 19:00:00 GMT

Raven has added two new tools to its platform that aim to help Web marketers uncover SEO keywords and website pages that are performing well even if they’re not getting much attention.

The new Keyword Opportunities tool and Content Opportunities tool can simplify decision-making about keywords and content to promote for bloggers, SEOs, social media marketers, community and brand managers, content marketers — just about any Web professional.

Raven combined website analytics data from Google Analytics with a formula that gives preference to keywords and content that have little traffic but high engagement and/or conversion rates. The tools then sort the keywords and content accordingly, based on the formula’s perceived level of opportunity.

The new tools are part of a rapid expansion of the Raven platform and team. The company also recently released the free Schema Creator and announced that it had doubled its staff in less than one year.

Visit Raven Internet Marketing Tools to learn more.

Deep Customer Analysis with iPerceptions' 4Q

Mike Phillips — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:51:00 GMT

Web analytics are critical to every Web enterprise. They can tell you about certain segments of your audience - where the visits originated and what actions were taken from those visits, for example. What they lack, however, is a certain "human" element. Analytics cannot tell you if it was the color of the page that turned them off, rather than the messaging on the page, for example.

That's where Voice of Customer (VoC) analytics comes in.

The latest release of 4Q from iPerceptions takes your standard Google Analytics and adds a little human touch. In short, exit surveys are sent to users based on your own analytics data. So, you can target particular groups or even individuals themselves, based on site visits and actions taken, with a detailed survey that asks to provide particular information about their visit.

As an example: Google Analytics might tell you that a particular landing page is not performing up to par. So, you might see that the bounce rate is extremely high. But you might not know why that is the case. Tying in with your analytics, you can send a detailed survey to a visitor or group of visitors to that page to find out why, exactly, the page was abandoned.

Another feature of 4Q is the ability to view industry benchmark data. The 4Q database contains representative data from more than 6,500 websites around the world -- including 30 different industries, using data collected from more than 500,000 completed surveys per month. Access to this data allows real-time, evolving analysis of how users are responding to particular issues throughout your industry -- to which you can compare with your own survey respondents.

The 4Q product is on a tiered payment system that includes options to customize certain elements of surveys, social media links and sharing, CRM options and more. There is, however, a free option that is certainly worth investigating.

To learn more about Voice of Customer analysis and iPerceptions' 4Q product, visit iPerceptions.com.

Weighted Sort in Google Analytics - Hooray!

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:53:00 GMT

Google released a new sorting algorithm called weighted sort this week which aims to clear up a lot of the confusion that results from massive sets of data.

When GA users now sort on a computed metric (e.g. bounce rate), the number of data points can be sorted by weight, bringing the most actionable and interesting items to the first few visible rows.

If you’ve ever sorted a report by bounce rate it is not uncommon to see several entries with 100% and with only one visit. What Google is essentially enabling GA users to do is to weight that sorted list by the number of data points, bringing the most actionable and interesting items to the first few visible rows.

Since weighted sort is not a “strict sort”, there will be values that do not follow the order you would assume. The feature is available on popular computed metrics (not just bounce rate), including goal conversion rate and percentage of new visits.

Asynchronous Tracking in Google Analytics

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:00:00 GMT

The February edition of Website Magazine (distributed just after the new year) will feature a cover story on performance analysis. As you can imagine, we're totally focused on anything related to analytics and Google's announcement last night of Asynchronous tracking for Google Analytics users certainly fits the bill.

The new Google Analytics Asynchronous tracking code provides an alternative way to track websites and offers faster load times, enhanced data collection (and accuracy) and the elimination of errors, because it's not dependent on JavaScript loading fully.

The new tracking code is now in Beta and available as an option to all Google Analytics users, but all existing Google Analytics code will continue to work as-is, should you decide not to adopt the new tracking method.

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Five Jaw Dropping Google Analytics Improvements

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:41:00 GMT

Google last week unveiled a stunning number of improvements to its Analytics service. I've been a hardcore GA user for a few years now, but I firmly believe that the many new features released make the platform much more enterprise-ready. Let's take a closer look at the enhancements now:

- Engagement Goals: GA users can now set thresholds for Time on Site and Pages per Visit, and define up to 20 goals per profile.

- Expanded Mobile Reporting: Now tracks traffic to mobile websites from all web-enabled devices (whether or not the device runs Javascript). Users will need to add a code snippet to their mobile websites (coming soon).

- Advanced Table Filtering: Filter rows in a table based on different metric conditions. For example, you will now be able to sort thousands of keywords to identify those with a high bounce rate.

- Multiple Custom Variables: GA users can now define and track visitors according to visitor attributes (member vs. non-member), session attributes (logged-in or not), and by page-level attributes.

- Analytics Intelligence: GA is providing automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods.

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Phone Call Tracking in Google Analytics

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:09:00 GMT

UK Internet marketing company ClickThrough Marketing today introduced a module add-on for Google Analytics that allows advertisers to track phone call conversions from any source/advertising channel.

The system displays phone calls within Google Analytics as a conversion alongside other conversions (sales, leads, and subscriptions). The call tracking module has a number of features including showing the geographical location of callers, free call queuing, missed call alerts via Email/SMS, free voice mail and customised messaging.

Phil Robinson, Founder of ClickThrough, “We’ve been tracking phone call conversions for years, however, this new service allows us to seamlessly track phone call data in real time alongside other key conversion points. Key benefits are that we are able to improve the efficiency & effectiveness of our clients PPC and other online marketing activities.”

Stay up to date on the latest Internet trends:
Request a professional subscription to Website Magazine,
the most popular print publication on Web success.