Google Data » Alan Wrafter https://googledata.org Everything Google: News, Products, Services, Content, Culture Wed, 01 Apr 2015 14:00:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1 ITV – UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, transforms its workplace with Google Apps https://googledata.org/google-apps/itv-uk%e2%80%99s-biggest-commercial-broadcaster-transforms-its-workplace-with-google-apps/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/itv-uk%e2%80%99s-biggest-commercial-broadcaster-transforms-its-workplace-with-google-apps/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:01:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=50cdb68221d017ccab7f72497948a27d Posted by Malgosia Rigoli, Google Apps team


ITV, the largest commercial television network in the UK is moving from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps as part of its broader strategy and five year Transformation Plan to change the ways the company works. The move will improve communication, fuel collaboration and stimulate creativity throughout the organization.

The media industry thrives on change and is constantly reinventing itself. Add to it its mobile, often freelance or contracting workforce, and you will find that old ways to communicate and collaborate simply won’t cut it any longer. With a suite of applications that are designed for teams and built for the web, ITV decided that Google Apps was the perfect match for their transformational requirements.

Google Apps will give ITV employees (up to 7,000 permanent staff and contractors) more flexibility in how they communicate and share information across the business. Gmail with the integrated instant messaging tool will make communication easier; Google Calendar will boost efficiency by helping to schedule meetings and events with shared calendars; Google Docs will allow staff to create, edit and share documents, presentations and spreadsheets in real time; and Google Sites and Google Video for Business will also facilitate collaboration.

ITV employees will also use Google Chrome as its standard browser. The company will begin to roll out the new technology over the next 18 months.

Paul Dale, ITV’s Chief Technology Officer, said, “When I arrived at ITV, one of my tasks was to implement a company-wide plan for workplace technology in order to enable our staff to deliver ITV’s Transformation Plan. The move to Google Apps will offer us the depth and scope of service we need to transform our internal ways of working across the business.”

ITV is the latest UK media company to make the move to Google Apps, following The Telegraph and The Guardian.
]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/itv-uk%e2%80%99s-biggest-commercial-broadcaster-transforms-its-workplace-with-google-apps/feed/ 0 Live Webinar: Collaborating with Clients and Partners in the Cloud – Imagination’s story https://googledata.org/google-apps/live-webinar-collaborating-with-clients-and-partners-in-the-cloud-imagination%e2%80%99s-story/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/live-webinar-collaborating-with-clients-and-partners-in-the-cloud-imagination%e2%80%99s-story/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:09:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=bf259743dbce5b5f3b42a2db254554c0 Posted by Seth Engler, EMEA Product Marketing Manager, Google Apps

Imagination is a global communications agency whose roots lie in non-traditional, live, experience marketing. Headquartered in London, Imagination has fourteen offices in nine countries, employing around 550 permanent staff worldwide and a further 450 freelance or contract-based staff.

Imagination has grown into a globally distributed organisation and existing messaging and calendar systems were unable to support its needs, in terms of scale, and collaborative and mobile working.

In November 2009, Imagination selected Google Apps to provide not just a replacement for its existing on-premise email and calendaring solution, but also additional tools to support collaboration across the organisation. The agency is now in the second phase of this deployment, rolling out Google Docs to provide real-time collaboration on documents. To date, approximately 400 of its employees are actively using Google Docs.

On 13 July, Simon King, EMEA Operations Director at Imagination will be joining us for a live webinar to provide insight into how Imagination is using Google Apps to collaborate more effectively across global teams.

Simon comments, “Google Apps for Business has helped Imagination improve the accessibility of information distributed globally between team members to maximise its effectiveness, enabling it to: strengthen relationships with current and future clients, deepen engagement amongst employees and bring more value for clients and partners.”

This live webinar will be hosted by Angela Ashenden, who is a Principal Analyst at MWD Advisors and leads their collaboration practice.

What: Live customer webinar with Imagination
When: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 14:00 BST (GMT+1)
Who: Angela Ashenden, Principal Analyst, MWD Advisors; Simon King, EMEA Operations Director, Imagination; Matt McNeill, Google Enterprise.

Register Now!
]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/live-webinar-collaborating-with-clients-and-partners-in-the-cloud-imagination%e2%80%99s-story/feed/ 0 Consumers prefer to provide personal details at the end of the booking process on TUIfly.com https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/consumers-prefer-to-provide-personal-details-at-the-end-of-the-booking-process-on-tuifly-com/ https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/consumers-prefer-to-provide-personal-details-at-the-end-of-the-booking-process-on-tuifly-com/#comments Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:00:00 +0000

This post was first published in German on the the German Conversionroom blog

The air travel portal TUIfly.com is part of TUI, the world's largest tourism group. On TUIfly.com travellers can book flights to around 170 destinations in 42 countries. These include popular holiday destinations around the Mediterranean sea as well as city destinations. TUIfly.com offers flights from more than 10 airlines, including their own fleet. Conceptually and technically the TUIfly.com website is being taken care of by GCP SinnerSchrader.

In the beginning of 2009, a newly designed site was launched which is now continuously being optimized based on the wishes and behavior of visitors. The basis for this optimization is Web Analytics data and extensive A / B and multivariate testing on the site. The Web Analytics Team of SinnerSchrader leads this process of continuous improvement.

Requiring Personal details at the beginning of a booking process leads to higher exit rates
In the flight booking process, TUIfly.com offers the consumer the option to reserve seats and book extras such a specific menu or additional luggage. The selection of seats and extras and assigning these to the person(s) traveling should be as easy as possible, so the names of the passengers are required at the beginning of the booking. The visitor can then assign the seats and extras to each passenger.

An analysis of the booking process based on Web Analytics data showed that a considerable percentage of consumers abandoned the booking process early in the process when they were asked to provide passenger details. Based on this data driven insight, an A/B test was designed to reduce the percentage of consumers abandoning the checkout at this point and increase the conversion rate of TUIfly.com

A / B test
To find a better way of combining the entry of personal details with the selection of seats and booking extras the following A/B test was set up:
  • In variation A (the original) the names of passengers were required before selecting seats and booking extras
  • In variation B, representative names (first passenger, second passenger, ...) were used - personal details including the names of the persons traveling were not required until the end of the booking process.


During a four week testing period, visitors to the site saw one or other of these variations when going into the booking process.

Variation A


Variation B



Variation B reduces the exit rate by 25%
After four weeks, the test had delivered a conclusive result: Variation B showed a 25% lower exit rate than variation A (the original). The conversion rate (the percentage of consumers booking a flight) increased by a factor 1.01 (i.e 1%) Based on these results, variation B was implemented and is now live on TUIfly.com. Although variation A, where seats and extras are assigned to named travelers, seems to make more sense from a usability perspective the test result shows that consumers are more likely to complete a booking when personal details are not required until the end of the booking process.

What should you do next?
Important in optimizing a website (in addition to qualitative usability improvements) is carrying out a quantitative test. By simply making changes based on usability considerations, you might overlook implications that your changes have for other parts of your website as well as for the main goal(s) of your site. Run A/B or Multivariate tests with a tool like Google Website Optimizer to verify that your site improvement hypotheses really work.

SinnerSchrader is part of the Google Conversion Professional (GCP) network in Germany. If you are based in Germany, you can learn more about this program and find an expert that can help your online presence to maximize profitability. If you are based outside of Germany, there is a network of Google Analytics Certified Partners and Website Optimizer Certified Partners that can support your efforts to maximise the ROI of your website

Posted by Jos Meijerhof, Google Conversion Team and Alexander Czernay, Head of Web Analytics at SinnerSchrader
]]> https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/consumers-prefer-to-provide-personal-details-at-the-end-of-the-booking-process-on-tuifly-com/feed/ 0 Consumers prefer to provide personal details at the end of the booking process on TUIfly.com https://googledata.org/uncategorized/consumers-prefer-to-provide-personal-details-at-the-end-of-the-booking-process-on-tuifly-com-2/ https://googledata.org/uncategorized/consumers-prefer-to-provide-personal-details-at-the-end-of-the-booking-process-on-tuifly-com-2/#comments Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:00:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=21d70e14076bbac0dda740cf92131927

This post was first published in German on the the German Conversionroom blog

The air travel portal TUIfly.com is part of TUI, the world's largest tourism group. On TUIfly.com travellers can book flights to around 170 destinations in 42 countries. These include popular holiday destinations around the Mediterranean sea as well as city destinations. TUIfly.com offers flights from more than 10 airlines, including their own fleet. Conceptually and technically the TUIfly.com website is being taken care of by GCP SinnerSchrader.

In the beginning of 2009, a newly designed site was launched which is now continuously being optimized based on the wishes and behavior of visitors. The basis for this optimization is Web Analytics data and extensive A / B and multivariate testing on the site. The Web Analytics Team of SinnerSchrader leads this process of continuous improvement.

Requiring Personal details at the beginning of a booking process leads to higher exit rates
In the flight booking process, TUIfly.com offers the consumer the option to reserve seats and book extras such a specific menu or additional luggage. The selection of seats and extras and assigning these to the person(s) traveling should be as easy as possible, so the names of the passengers are required at the beginning of the booking. The visitor can then assign the seats and extras to each passenger.

An analysis of the booking process based on Web Analytics data showed that a considerable percentage of consumers abandoned the booking process early in the process when they were asked to provide passenger details. Based on this data driven insight, an A/B test was designed to reduce the percentage of consumers abandoning the checkout at this point and increase the conversion rate of TUIfly.com

A / B test
To find a better way of combining the entry of personal details with the selection of seats and booking extras the following A/B test was set up:
  • In variation A (the original) the names of passengers were required before selecting seats and booking extras
  • In variation B, representative names (first passenger, second passenger, ...) were used - personal details including the names of the persons traveling were not required until the end of the booking process.


During a four week testing period, visitors to the site saw one or other of these variations when going into the booking process.

Variation A


Variation B



Variation B reduces the exit rate by 25%
After four weeks, the test had delivered a conclusive result: Variation B showed a 25% lower exit rate than variation A (the original). The conversion rate (the percentage of consumers booking a flight) increased by a factor 1.01 (i.e 1%) Based on these results, variation B was implemented and is now live on TUIfly.com. Although variation A, where seats and extras are assigned to named travelers, seems to make more sense from a usability perspective the test result shows that consumers are more likely to complete a booking when personal details are not required until the end of the booking process.

What should you do next?
Important in optimizing a website (in addition to qualitative usability improvements) is carrying out a quantitative test. By simply making changes based on usability considerations, you might overlook implications that your changes have for other parts of your website as well as for the main goal(s) of your site. Run A/B or Multivariate tests with a tool like Google Website Optimizer to verify that your site improvement hypotheses really work.

SinnerSchrader is part of the Google Conversion Professional (GCP) network in Germany. If you are based in Germany, you can learn more about this program and find an expert that can help your online presence to maximize profitability. If you are based outside of Germany, there is a network of Google Analytics Certified Partners and Website Optimizer Certified Partners that can support your efforts to maximise the ROI of your website

Posted by Jos Meijerhof, Google Conversion Team and Alexander Czernay, Head of Web Analytics at SinnerSchrader
]]> https://googledata.org/uncategorized/consumers-prefer-to-provide-personal-details-at-the-end-of-the-booking-process-on-tuifly-com-2/feed/ 0 Shoes of Prey – Using Custom Reports to identify influential pages https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/shoes-of-prey-using-custom-reports-to-identify-influential-pages/ https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/shoes-of-prey-using-custom-reports-to-identify-influential-pages/#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:48:00 +0000 This post was first published on the Asia-Pacific Conversionroom blog

Michael Fox is a co-founder of Shoes of Prey, an online retail store that allows you to design women's shoes online, which are then handmade and shipped to you. Michael blogs about running Shoes of Prey at the business blog www.22michaels.com. - Ed.

Like most online retailers, we’re always looking for ways to turn our website visitors into customers. We use Google Analytics to monitor the performance of our website and our online marketing and to understand how to make our website even more appealing to potential customers.

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve our website, we recently asked ourselves: which pages on our site are most influential to our customers’ purchase decisions? For example, if someone visits our testimonials page, does that make them more likely to make a purchase? How about watching the videos on our leather page, visiting our gallery, or arriving on our small shoes or wedding shoes landing pages? We knew the answers to these questions would help us maximise the number of purchases from our website.

Custom reports
To start answering these questions, we created a Custom Report in Google Analytics to review the “Highest Converting Pages” on our website. You can make a copy of our custom report setup here and use it with your own site data.



This report shows us three key data points:
  1. Pages that people visited (Page column)
  2. The number of views each page received (Pageviews column)
  3. How many sales (ie goal completions) were generated in that same visit session after visiting one or more of those pages (Total Goal Completions column)
Analysing the data
We then divided Total Goal Completions by Pageviews (on a separate spreadsheet) to discover what percentage of people who visit a particular page end up making a purchase. We assumed that the higher the percentage, the more valuable that page for turning visitors into customers. We could then promote the content on those pages more across our website.


We kept in mind a few circumstances that could impact this data. For example, people visiting our shopping cart or logging into our members area will have a high conversion rate, so we filter those pages out. Customers looking to purchase may be more likely to visit our page about our returns policy. We also kept in mind that we were looking at the same visit session only. Often, customers make multiple research visits before they finally make a purchase. Therefore, we were conscious that there may be other pages that motivate purchases, but are not reflected in our custom report because they were viewed in another session.

After reviewing the data, we determined that our most influential pages were:

1. Leathers page

2. Returns policy page

3. Tab2 - the delivery tab on our product page

4. Customer testimonials page



Taking action from our insights
Knowing our most influential pages has helped us maximise the number of purchases we generate through our website. Once we reviewed the data, we took the following next steps:
  • We’re in the process of redesigning our shopping cart, and we’ll look at ways to incorporate this information within each step to reduce drop off and increase conversion rates. For example, we’ll provide information about our returns policy and deliveries within the shopping cart pages itself. This will reduce the need to click away to our FAQ page.
  • We’ll also consider making some of this information, especially our customer testimonials, more readily accessible on our home page and custom shoe designer.
  • We’ll include some of this information on key search engine marketing landing pages such as our gift certificate page. For example, we’ll incorporate customer testimonials in order to assure those purchasing our gift certificates that they are providing a gift that will be appreciated.
  • This will be good information to incorporate into discussions on our Facebook fan page and in videos on our YouTube channel.
We’re excited by the range of insights that Custom Reports provides us. It allows us to slice and dice our data within a single report rather than having to combine separate reports within a desktop spreadsheet. We would love to hear about the custom reports that you find useful for your online business.

Posted by Alan Wrafter, Google Analytics Team
]]> https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/shoes-of-prey-using-custom-reports-to-identify-influential-pages/feed/ 0 Shoes of Prey – Using Custom Reports to identify influential pages https://googledata.org/uncategorized/shoes-of-prey-using-custom-reports-to-identify-influential-pages-3/ https://googledata.org/uncategorized/shoes-of-prey-using-custom-reports-to-identify-influential-pages-3/#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:48:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=ca8b22497578d7b9b9a1f4bf31160b6f This post was first published on the Asia-Pacific Conversionroom blog

Michael Fox is a co-founder of Shoes of Prey, an online retail store that allows you to design women's shoes online, which are then handmade and shipped to you. Michael blogs about running Shoes of Prey at the business blog www.22michaels.com. - Ed.

Like most online retailers, we’re always looking for ways to turn our website visitors into customers. We use Google Analytics to monitor the performance of our website and our online marketing and to understand how to make our website even more appealing to potential customers.

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve our website, we recently asked ourselves: which pages on our site are most influential to our customers’ purchase decisions? For example, if someone visits our testimonials page, does that make them more likely to make a purchase? How about watching the videos on our leather page, visiting our gallery, or arriving on our small shoes or wedding shoes landing pages? We knew the answers to these questions would help us maximise the number of purchases from our website.

Custom reports
To start answering these questions, we created a Custom Report in Google Analytics to review the “Highest Converting Pages” on our website. You can make a copy of our custom report setup here and use it with your own site data.



This report shows us three key data points:
  1. Pages that people visited (Page column)
  2. The number of views each page received (Pageviews column)
  3. How many sales (ie goal completions) were generated in that same visit session after visiting one or more of those pages (Total Goal Completions column)
Analysing the data
We then divided Total Goal Completions by Pageviews (on a separate spreadsheet) to discover what percentage of people who visit a particular page end up making a purchase. We assumed that the higher the percentage, the more valuable that page for turning visitors into customers. We could then promote the content on those pages more across our website.


We kept in mind a few circumstances that could impact this data. For example, people visiting our shopping cart or logging into our members area will have a high conversion rate, so we filter those pages out. Customers looking to purchase may be more likely to visit our page about our returns policy. We also kept in mind that we were looking at the same visit session only. Often, customers make multiple research visits before they finally make a purchase. Therefore, we were conscious that there may be other pages that motivate purchases, but are not reflected in our custom report because they were viewed in another session.

After reviewing the data, we determined that our most influential pages were:

1. Leathers page

2. Returns policy page

3. Tab2 - the delivery tab on our product page

4. Customer testimonials page



Taking action from our insights
Knowing our most influential pages has helped us maximise the number of purchases we generate through our website. Once we reviewed the data, we took the following next steps:
  • We’re in the process of redesigning our shopping cart, and we’ll look at ways to incorporate this information within each step to reduce drop off and increase conversion rates. For example, we’ll provide information about our returns policy and deliveries within the shopping cart pages itself. This will reduce the need to click away to our FAQ page.
  • We’ll also consider making some of this information, especially our customer testimonials, more readily accessible on our home page and custom shoe designer.
  • We’ll include some of this information on key search engine marketing landing pages such as our gift certificate page. For example, we’ll incorporate customer testimonials in order to assure those purchasing our gift certificates that they are providing a gift that will be appreciated.
  • This will be good information to incorporate into discussions on our Facebook fan page and in videos on our YouTube channel.
We’re excited by the range of insights that Custom Reports provides us. It allows us to slice and dice our data within a single report rather than having to combine separate reports within a desktop spreadsheet. We would love to hear about the custom reports that you find useful for your online business.

Posted by Alan Wrafter, Google Analytics Team
]]> https://googledata.org/uncategorized/shoes-of-prey-using-custom-reports-to-identify-influential-pages-3/feed/ 0 Learn how to set up Ecommerce reporting in Analytics at a live, online course https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/learn-how-to-set-up-ecommerce-reporting-in-analytics-at-a-live-online-course/ https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/learn-how-to-set-up-ecommerce-reporting-in-analytics-at-a-live-online-course/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:32:00 +0000 AdWords Online Classroom (UK).

During the course we’ll discuss how to set up Ecommerce tracking in your Analytics account and enable Ecommerce for your reports. We’ll also discuss implementation techniques such as tracking 3rd-party shopping carts and detail the best reports to use for in-depth analysis of your AdWords activity. This should help you assess your AdWords return on investment and give you more insight into how your advertising is performing in relation to online transactions and revenue generated on your site.

The course will be presented by Analytics specialists and is most suited to advertisers with websites which include the functionality to purchase goods or services. It will take place on Wednesday 26th January from 3pm - 4pm
GMT (7-8 am PST) and will include time for Q&A.

If you're interested, be sure to sign up now!

Posted By Alan Wrafter, Google Analytics Team
]]> https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/learn-how-to-set-up-ecommerce-reporting-in-analytics-at-a-live-online-course/feed/ 0 Using Google Analytics and AdSense: Monetise your top exit pages https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/using-google-analytics-and-adsense-monetise-your-top-exit-pages/ https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/using-google-analytics-and-adsense-monetise-your-top-exit-pages/#comments Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:22:00 +0000

Google Analytics does a great job of allowing you to analyse your web traffic through a very important metric: top exit pages. This metric, along with bounce rate and time on site, is valuable as it allows you to measure the impact of changes to your webpages. Did exit rate go up or down? You can choose to optimise pages with high exit rates to try to keep your visitors longer or help them convert, or -- if the page is a logical exit point, you can monetise outgoing traffic on high exit pages by using Google AdSense. (As you may know, Google Analytics and AdSense are integrated, similarly to Analytics and AdWords, so you can optimise your AdSense campaigns using data in Google Analytics.)

If you choose to monetise an exit page, take a look at this short real-world example.

SavetzPublishing.com, on its FreePrintable.net site, provide documents and templates for individuals and businesses, ranging from business forms and certificates, to bookmarks and almost any other document someone would want to print. With sixty-six sites focusing on different niches in printing, Savetz Publishing was looking for a way to optimize their ad placement without having a negative impact on their core users. As a solution, they decided to “find the pages with the highest exit rates and put AdSense on them," according to Kevin Savetz, the owner of Savetz Publishing and FreePrintable.

Kevin has been an Analytics user for as long as he can remember and he had an idea of where the bounce and exit rates would be highest. Kevin used Google Analytics to confirm his theory and placed AdSense ads on some of these pages. He quickly realised that this advertising did not have a significant negative impact on his site’s core users and on conversions. Instead, as he describes, these ads provide “a means of monetising traffic that would already be leaving. My users are still happy and getting relevant content.”

Savetz Publishing’s strategy highlights how sites can use AdSense to monetise traffic that is already exiting the site. AdSense can help sites like these increase overall revenue without changing their current business model. As Kevin put it, AdSense allowed him to “see a huge jump in revenue after targeting exit pages.”

And taking it one step further...As a Google Analytics user, you understand how visitors interact with your website. With this knowledge and the controls in AdSense, you can even structure your AdSense ads to appeal to advertisers who want to display their ads on your site. In turn, you will earn revenue by displaying more relevant and high quality ads.

Here are a couple suggestions to get started with AdSense on your site.

  • Try testing AdSense first on your top exit pages, and then evaluate the effect it has on your relevant traffic, by referring to your top exit pages report.
  • If, like Savetz Publishing and FreePrintable, you find that adding relevant ads on your site does not turn your relevant traffic away, increase the coverage of AdSense on your site. You can use the additional revenue you earn from AdSense to help you generate more qualified traffic.

Learn more about AdSense and start by testing on your exit pages.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team and Nathan Deoms, Google AdSense Team
]]> https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/using-google-analytics-and-adsense-monetise-your-top-exit-pages/feed/ 0 New Video: Use Google Analytics to track AdWords return on investment and optimise ads. https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/new-video-use-google-analytics-to-track-adwords-return-on-investment-and-optimise-ads/ https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/new-video-use-google-analytics-to-track-adwords-return-on-investment-and-optimise-ads/#comments Sat, 08 Jan 2011 13:43:00 +0000

Check out this short video to learn the importance of monitoring your AdWords return on investment by tracking sales/leads with Google Analytics. When you link AdWords and Analytics you’ll gain deeper insights that will allow you to optimise your ads and keywords and improve your return on investment.



This is the final video in the optimisation made easy video series. If you’d like to see additional tutorials to help you improve your AdWords account performance check out the AdWords Online Classroom. And for in depth videos on how to use Google Analytics check out the Google Analytics YouTube channel.

Posted By Sara Bonfioli, Google Analytics team
]]> https://googledata.org/google-conversion-room/new-video-use-google-analytics-to-track-adwords-return-on-investment-and-optimise-ads/feed/ 0