1. Double Check Your Implementation
Nothing sucks worse than spending five hours implementing a new analytics tracking suite, only to have some misplaced javascript tag cause 1,000 clicks to go to a 404 error page. After you have implemented your analytics tracking, double check EVERY page. Also, make sure you are tagging the right pages with the right tags. Eisenburg uses the example of mistakenly tagging transactions like regular pages. Save yourself some time and money later by putting in some extra time up front.

2. Set Some Goals, Dangit!
Analytics does you a limited amount of good if you don’t have goals defined and built into your setup. If you don’t have goals, why are you measuring things in the first place? Think about the purpose for tracking your visitors and knowing information about them. Then define goals that can help you measure what is happening when visitors arrive at your site. Even if you’re not an e-commerce site, you should be setting goals to track things like user signups and downloads, among other things.

3. Get Down To The Gritty Segmentation
Sometimes averages can be very deceptive. One of the chief mistakes you can make when poring over your analytics data is to only look at the means. Different segments of users behave differently, and can throw off your statistics significantly. Visitors referred from StumbleUpon will probably act a lot differently on your site than visitors from shop.yahoo.com. Don’t stop analyzing your reports when you see fair or even good statistics. Dig deep and see what’s going on within each of your segments.

4. Focus On Metrics You Can Control
Remember that rambling old war vet you had for Chemistry in 10th grade? You may have learned a lot of interesting stories in that class, but most of them may not have been relevant to the subject. Analytics can be the same way. Make sure you aren’t getting distracted by the myriad of data that analytics tracks, as interesting as it may be. Focus on the metrics you can do something about and you can trace back to your bottom line.

5. Document Changes
Many webmasters have had occasion to take a look at long term data and make some startlingly wrong conclusions. Make sure you document milestone events that occur in your business, your website, and your marketing so you don’t make false assumptions based on old data. This is especially good advice for teams, but even if you’re a one-man crew, you’d be stupid not to document these big events.

6. “Be Data-driven but Customer-focused”
Quantative data tells you what is happening, and how much of it is happening, but qualitative data can tell you why. Listen to your visitors/customers in addition to analyzing the data you accumulate in analytics. A focus group might be a great way to supplement your analytics reporting once in a while. And it might be a good way to get you out of your cubicle, too.

7. Don’t Just Read The Data – Do Something About It
The other day when I was sitting in church, the preacher said to the audience, “Most people go home on Sunday and yawn and say ‘That was good.’ What you should be doing is going home and changing something in your life because of what you heard.” Whether you’re religious or not, you should be applying this lesson to your analytics. Besides, to some of us web analytics is our second religion anyway!

Take what you learn and actually implement it. Test your theories, and let your website evolve with what you discover over time. If you’re not going to do anything with the data, spend your time doing something else. Like finding a new job.

You can find detailed instructions on exposing your keyword data in this post:

PPC Management: AdWords Keyword Data Exposed With Google Analytics!

I looked into it and it looks like Google fixed their advanced filter problem (at least for these filters) on March 5th.

Yes, I will eat my words and gladly admit that I overreacted in this post.

Host: Tom Leung – Google Website Optimizer

Guest Presenter: Bryan Eisenberg – Future Now (blog is at GrokDotCom)

Slides will be archived and available within a few weeks on the Google Website Optimizer website in the resources section.

Tom Leung’s Presentation:

What is the website Optimizer? (For those not familiar with the product.)

It is part of an entire system of tools that Google provides to website owners that will help improve their website – AdWords and Analytics are a couple of these tools. AdWords brings the traffic in, Analytics monitors that traffic, and the Website Optimizer helps to improve conversion rates from AdWords and results can be measured in Analytics. They can be operated independently but using all three will bring a synergy to the table.

How does the Website Optimizer Work?

It essentially let’s you perform controlled experiments on your website by taking the guess work out of increasing your conversion rate with your website. Website Optimizer basically asks your users to vote with their actions.

Some features are A/B split testing, Multivariate Testing, Follow Up Testing, Works with ALL traffic – not just ppc, Statistical Analysis, Platform Independent, consistent updates, and more. (You do need an AdWords account to access the Website Optimizer…)

Benefits are that it is absolutely FREE, Easy to use, Does NOT impact SEO, Backed by Google, big increases in conversions are not uncommon, there is a variety of support in discussion groups, tutorials, consultant network.

Quick thoughts on Stats and Reporting

Combination reports show the customer’s favorite page combination. Take the debate out of website design and improvement by testing with the Website Optimizer and reviewing the reports/stats.

What To Test

This is a rendition I did a while ago on the graph about which pages to optimize used in this webinar (I think Google designed the original visual?):

Every Page Has an Optimal Recipe

Info Rich vs Short n Sweet

Left Layout vs Right Layout

Fact based vs Aspirations/emotions

Leads vs Sales

There are definitely more combinations and tests to conduct besides those listed above.

There isn’t ever really a set answer for each website. The only way to know which combination will work is to simply conduct tests.

More Ideas for Experimentation

Headline / Image/ Call to action

Layout

Testimonials

Copy

Embedded Widgets

Coupons

RSS button clicks

Colors, Fonts, Sizes

Sales Incentives

Newsletter subscriptions

Form Fields

And many, many more.

Everything depends on your audience, a portion of your audience will react differently to each test. You can find out more about your audience with testing…do they like certain kinds of widgets? Do they like videos? Testimonials? Etc.

At the end of the day, there are an infinite amount of tests you can perform. Focus on the tests that are most likely to give you the results you are looking for.

Best Practices in Marketing Experimentation

Test a small number of variations.

-Rule of thumb is about 100 conversions per combination

Test bold changes

-If you can’t see difference between two combos in 8 seconds, visitors probably won’t either

Consider early indicators if you don’t have enough conversions

-E.g. if you have modest conversion volume, optimize for leading indicators such as request info, view product details, remain on page features page >5 seconds.

Don’t jump to conclusions

-Less than 2 weeks is no good, focus on absolute conversion differences, don’t get too excited by silver or green or red

Bryan Eisenberg Intro

Bryan is co-founder of FutureNow, Charter member of Google Website Optmizer Authorized Consultant network, Blog located at Grokdotcom.com, Pioneer in persuasion architecture.

Bryan Eisenberg’s Presentation:

Case Study of Overstock.com (Multicategory Page)

Overstock was noticing a 90% exit/bounce rate

It’s about understanding people first

Test small variations so you can get the learnings and understand the variables

Secret of Online Conversion…

Dates back to 470 BC when four personality types were written down – the GrokDotCom translation gives us four types/patterns as displayed in this graph (a rendering based on Bryan’s slide/image)

Four types or patterns: Competitive (Fast Logical), Spontaneous (Fast Emotional), Methodical (Slow Logical), Humanistic (Slow Emotional)

*Holy crap Brian talks fast, flips through slides like crazy and bounces around sporadically (probably not Bryan but software/conferencing issues)…very hard to follow while typing so this is going to get choppy…

Eyetracking Slides (summary found on GrokDotCom)

Personality Preferences

Spontaneous people are looking for features

Humanistics care about reviews

Methodicals find by generally sorting

Competitives search by specifics that they have in mind

Went through 4 personality types for Overstock.com – Does it accomplish each type? Found that one single image needed replaced to target Competitives – and that gave them a lift of $25m!

HUGE gain on Overstock website by simply changing one image near a search box and it increased results by 5% or $25 million! The image was excluding competitive types of people due to search functionality/bounce rates on a specific page.

Opportunity Cost

Every day that Overstock did not fill that hole, they were losing $70,000 a day!

Framework & Optimization Process

1. Know your profiles – Personas, Four Perspectives, or simply emotional and logical

2. Define the conversion goals – what action do you want your visitor to take and what is the success page going to be

3. Do the Creative – based on the first two perspectives

Heirarchy of Optimization (detailed blog post can be found here)

Functionality first – Does it work?

Accessibility second – Can everyone access it?

Usability third – Is it “user” friendly?

Intuitive fourth – Does it feel natural and doesn’t “make us think”?

Persuasive final – Do people really want and understand what their buying?

The higher levels take the most time and effort but give you the greatest return.

5 Formulas to Online Success

1. Product Images Tell A Story

2. Test Your Headlines & Copy

-Test fractions vs Percentages

-Test Asking Questions

-Self Focused vs Customer Focused words (I am, we are vs you can)

-Switch Paragraphs (ordering of copy)

-Different words/meanings

-Informal vs formal (Attitude)

-Font sizes

-Wording on call to action

-Wording on images

3. Forms & Point of Action Assurances

-We value your privacy (next to action button)

-Guaranteed Response time

-Return information

-Reviews next to add to cart button

4. Calls to Action – Get Them To Click

-8 variables for cart buttons (wording, shape, size, style, icon, color, legibility, location)

-Emotional vs Logical (learn more vs help me choose)

5. Don’t Make Them Wait

-Fast load speeds

-Optimize image file sizes (58k vs 7k)

Golden rule: he who has the gold, rules. Customers have the pocket books so they rule. Also, another golden rule to online marketing is not like the biblical or religious adage of do unto others as you would have them do unto you…but the golden rule on the web is “Do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.”

Q&A

Q: What if you have a small amount of traffic but you don’t want to wait 6 months for results?

Bryan: Focus on the top half of the hierarchy.

Q: Ecommerce merchants who have long funnels – where do you begin with a multi-step checkout process?

Bryan: First, worry about the point of action assurances. Other things to do would be to add progress indicators and try to reduce the multi-step checkout process as soon as you can. Can you combine one or two pages?

Q: Do you begin at the beginning or the end of the checkout process?

Bryan: It depends on your analytics – target the biggest bottleneck and work from there.

Q: What are some things that you can do after you feel like you have done the basics like Headlines, copy, etc?

Bryan: Start dealing with persuasive and intuitive things like images, words in hyperlinks, words in point of action assurances, and more. Work up the hierarchy if you already have the basics down.

Q: What goes through your head during the first 30 seconds of reviewing a website?

Bryan: If I were a customer and I were spontaneous/methodical/humanistic/competitive, what would I get out of this page? Try to see what questions I have while reviewing the page as a customer.

Summary

-Controlled content experimentation is critical to maximizing your conversion rates

-Google Website Optimizer is a free tool that lets you do unlimited tests on all your traffic on any page

-Personas and scents can dramatically increase the likelihood of improving your conversions

-Almost everything can and should be tested

-More resources at www.Google.com/WebsiteOptimizer

First, log into Google Analytics and view your dashboard. You can close several of those default metrics if you do not want to use them as your KPIs.

Second, find the report you want to display on your Dashboard. For our site, semvironment.com, we added these reports: Reverse Goal Path, All Traffic Sources, Goals Overview for each goal, etc.

Finally, when you are at the report that you want to see in your dashboard, simply click on the “add to dashboard” button underneath the report title. Now you can see the report in your dashboard!

2. Google Analytics KPI Gadget for iGoogle

YouTube Intro:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Analytics KPI for iGoogle – Without having to log into your Google Analytics account, the widget provides a snapshot of your key performance indicators using the red and green indicators you are used to from Google Analytics.

3. SAP Business KPI Community

YouTube Intro:

Click here to view the embedded video.

KPI Wiki – In today’s business world benchmarking has become increasingly important. That means that virtually every company wants to compare its performance to the market leaders. As a result you need a common KPI language.

4. KPI Library

KPI Library – The free KPI Library is a community that provides an extensive library of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

5. Visual Revenue

The difference between a KPI and a Metric – How does one decide if a Metric qualifies as a Key Performance Indicator? and if so, what are the characteristics of an excellent online marketing KPI?

Online Video Analytics – KPIs – These online video metrics affect your KPIs but are not KPIs by themselves.

6. VKI Studios

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for e-commerce websites – Quick list of the most effective and actionable KPIs for an e-commerce website.

7. Wikipedia

Key performance indicators – Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are financial and non-financial metrics used to help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals…

8. Visitask

Using key performance indicators (KPI) for effective project management – Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable measurements that reflect the critical success factors of an organization. Based on beforehand agreed measures, they reveal a high-level snapshot of the organization.

Developing key performance indicators in projects – Key performance indicators should preferably meet the following essential criteria: Be direct (no complex calculations), Be objective, Be adequate, Be quantitative, Be practical, Be reliable.

Bonus PDF from the Web Analytics Association (WAA)

Web Analytics Key Metrics and KPIs (PDF) – In the interests of discussion clarity and Web site reporting standardization, this document defines key metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Web Analytics.

AdWords/Analytics Keyword Data Fix – Thanks Jeff!

If you have any questions, you can find the source that Jeff found and shared with us here – credit rightly belongs to the Unofficial Google Analytics blog at ROI Revolution for authoring the fix. <—Bold was added for emphasis…I already had that sentence written at the bottom of the post. ROI Revolution may credit others in that post…
This fix was found and shared with us by Jeff because he saw that we documented some problems that were caused by the extra wide use of the tip found here. <—- If you read that post you will find out exactly where we found that tip at the bottom of that post…

Jeff James kindly stopped by the blog to tell us that he continues to receive his specific keyword data through a script fix that captures the specific keyword data from the cookie. I was on to that but I was trying to take the data from a different part of the cookie and I suck at writing javascript…I guess I should always leave quick fixes up to the pros – after all, I have to admit that I’m not a programmer but I can fake my way through some of it – clearly not all of it.

Thanks for finding and sharing this fix Jeff!

Here is the fix:

Download/Save this file: ga_keyword.js

Don’t forget to upload the file to the proper directory/location on your website and change the code below accordingly!

Rewrite your analytics code so it looks like this on your landing pages or throughout your entire website if it’s easier:

<script src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/ga_keyword.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-XXXXX-X";
urchinTracker();
sleuth();
</script>

sleuth(); displays the exact keyword data under the cross segment option User-Defined Value.

So, after implementing this fix, you should see most of the exact keyword data under the cross segment menu. I recommend taking this route but you can find the cross segment menu in almost any detailed page of Google Analytics:

Traffic Sources -> Keywords -> Under the text that says “Search Sent * Visits via * Keywords” you will find a drop down that has the word “Segments:” next to it -> At the bottom of that list you will see “User-Defined Value”…click that and there you have it, your newly exposed exact key term data from Analytics!

I hope Google doesn’t poop on this fix too…

Two Reasons Why A High Bounce Rate Can Be Good

1. How long did that person stay on the page before bouncing? Most popular Analytics packages (Google Analytics) have a problem – the average time a user spends on a page, given that it is the only page they land on, is not recorded. I would say that an average of 15 to 20 minutes on a page with detailed instructions that drive somebody to a form of action that is not a click through the site is extremely successful even though the bounce rate would be almost 100%. A good example is our NUDE series posts – we receive 100+ visits to those every day and the bounce rate is around 90%…I haven’t implemented the fix I linked to a couple sentences ago but I do have a live chat program that let’s me view the footprint of a visitor and the time they spent on that particular page. The average time spent on those pages is around 12 minutes and I’m certain that those visitors walked away with something very engaging and valuable. At least I like to think they got something valuable out of it.

2. Advertised landing pages can have a high bounce rate and a high conversion rate. This will require some testing on your part but we have found that taking away some or all of the main navigation on a landing page will give the user two options – convert or leave. In our tests, for some of our clients – not all of them, removing most of the navigation on a landing page tripled or quadrupled conversion rates! We will often start with a 2% conversion rate and end up with an 8% or 10% conversion rate with the other 90% bouncing off the page. Even if you had an extremely high overall conversion rate of 30 – 40%, your bounce rate would still be 60 – 70% for that particular page.

We can conclude that given different circumstances, you might consider a high bounce rate good or bad but it is never truly definitive as a whole…it is definitive for parts of the whole as demonstrated in our post.

It looks like the problem was resolved around January 14 but if you tried implementing the AdWords keyword Data Exposed through Google analytics trick last week and it didn’t work, I recommend giving it another shot because the problem was probably Google Analytics auto-tagging.

(These instructions start after you are logged into your Analytics profile of choice…)

If You DO NOT Use Goals -

1. Click on Content.

2. Then click on Top Content.

3. Find your conversion page and click on it…you will get a bunch of fantastic stats about that page.

(Click the image above to see a bigger picture…)

4. Drop down the Segment menu and choose Keyword (directly underneath and to the right of the bold sentence “This page was viewed **** times“).

If You USE Goals!

1. Click on Traffic Sources.

2. Then click on Keywords.

3. Click on a detailed keyword.

4. Finally, click on Goal Conversion – you can see the keyword conversion rate, number of conversions, and my favorite: the Per Visit Goal Value for that specific keyword!

Now you can review all the specific keywords that converted from AdWords!

secrets ever!

_______________________________________

You CAN expose your specific AdWords Keyword Data beyond the dreaded “other unique queries” in the AdWords Search Query Report with Google Analytics!

Don’t you hate running the AdWords Search Query report because you know the best data is behind the cold words “other unique queries”?

Do you have a sick feeling in your gut because you know you can make more money with your affiliate programs, blogs, and ads if you could only tighten up your AdWords advertising?

If you answered “yes”, then you need to read and implement this Analytics secret immediately.

Here is a detailed, step by step process to take a look at what lies beneath the silky covers of “other unique queries” using Google Analytics:

1. Log into AdWords and click on My Account -> Account Preferences:

2. Find the Tracking section in Account Preferences and make sure Auto-tagging is set to “yes”:

3. Click on Analytics from your AdWords account or sign into your Google Analytics account:

4. You can choose to skip this step if you want to edit your current website Analytics profile – we recommend you create a separate profile. Click on Add Website Profile >>:

5. Choose to add a profile to an existing domain:

6. Pick your domain, label the profile, make sure you have a check mark in the Apply Cost Data section and click finish:

7. You should see your new profile listed with any other profiles you already have:

8. Now you need to edit the settings of your new profile – Click on Edit next to your new profile:

Analytics Filter 1

9. Find the Filters Applied to Profile section and click Add Filter:

10. Choose to Add new Filter for Profile:

11. Give your filter a good name, drop down to the Custom Filter type and choose the Advanced option:

12. In Field A -> Extract A choose the Referral drop down and copy and paste this code into the available field -

(\?|&)(q|p|query|kw|searchfor|wd)=([^&]*)

I’ll update the image later – but the q|p…etc will effectively pull almost all queries from the url at the serp. Each search engine uses a different url parameter for this so if you find one you want to track, simply add it to the regex above using the bar | to separate them. The above regex was copied from the search lab.

13. In Field B -> Extract B choose the Campaign Medium drop down and copy and paste this code into the available field -

cpc|ppc

14. In Output To -> Constructor choose the Custom Field 1 drop down and copy and paste this code into the available field -

$A3

15. Make sure all fields are required and they do not need to be case sensitive, then click Finish:

16. You should be back on the profile settings page where you can see this first filter has been applied to your detailed analytics profile.

Analytics Filter 2

17. Repeat steps 9 through 11 to create a second filter. Remember to give the second filter a different name and give this filter the attributes outlined in steps 18 through 21. ***You NEED both filters for detailed keyword data to work!***

18. In Field A -> Extract A choose the Custom Field 1 drop down and copy and paste this code into the available field -

(.*)

19. In Field B -> Extract B choose the Campaign Term drop down and copy and paste this code into the available field -

(.*)

20. In Output To -> Constructor choose the Campaign Term drop down and copy and paste this code into the available field -

$B1, ($A1)

Some replicated posts detail using $B1, $A1 without parenthesis – and I haven’t seen any difference in results so it appears either way should work fine.

21. Make sure all fields are required and they do not need to be case sensitive, then click Finish:

22. You should be back on the profile settings page where you can see this second filter has been applied to your detailed analytics profile. Make sure they are in the order we described – filter 1 should be listed BEFORE filter 2 under the Filters Applied to Profile section.

You are done setting up the secret that will expose your AdWords Keyword Data!

Now you need to wait a few hours for the data to be captured and reported. When you revisit Analytics you simply need to look at these reports and note the added data next to your AdWords keywords:

Traffic Sources -> Keywords

- or -

Traffic Sources -> AdWords -> Keyword Positions

Or a number of other reports…

The data in your old Analytics profile should look like this:

And the data in your new profile should look like this:

The keywords shown in parentheses (key+word) is the exact term the user searched when they found and clicked on your advertisement.

This particular client is only selling home security systems so I would look at this report and add “car” as a negative keyword and I would research “home security devices” to see if there is a decent volume for that term. Then I would consider optimizing a page for that term and add the keyword to my AdWords campaign to see if I can turn those visitors into the kind of visitor that puts money in my wallet.

One note regarding GOALS

We published a post detailing how to see your keyword data for Goals/conversions. Enjoy!

That’s a wrap! Your AdWords Keyword Data is now EXPOSED!

Our source for learning and applying this secret to our client accounts and our own accounts comes from a November 2007 blog post by the GA-Experts. Thank you, GA-Experts, for sharing this secret with us!