Google Data » Evelyn O’Keeffe

Free online course on how to define and analyse goals in Google Analytics

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 20:07:00 +0000

This Wednesday, November 24th, we’ll be hosting a free, live, online course all about using goals in Google Analytics. Goals are a way to measure conversions or successful actions on your website. This action could be a view of a specific page such as a 'thank you' page after a visitor has completed a form or made a purchase on your site.

In this live course you’ll learn how to set up goals and how they can be of benefit for you. We'll also clarify the difference between AdWords conversions and Google Analytics goal conversions. Finally, we'll discuss what reports the goals section offers and how these reports can help you make informed business decisions, particularly in relation to monitoring the performance of your AdWords ads.

This interactive course will be delivered by two members of the Google Analytics team and will take approximately 1 hour including time for Q&A. It will take place on Wednesday 24th November from 3pm - 4pm GMT and is suitable for anyone who’d like to learn more about goals in Google Analytics.

If you're interested make sure to sign up now!

Posted by Sara Fogarty, Google Analytics team.

New features available in AdWords Search Funnels reports

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 08:47:00 +0000

We’ve received very positive feedback from advertisers using Search Funnels - the new set of reports launched in Conversions. Advertisers are beginning to understand the path to conversion beyond just the last click and are now able to give credit to assisting keywords and ads that customers saw and/or clicked before converting. Each buying cycle is different and Search Funnels is eliminating the guesswork over the roles your keywords are playing in the path to conversion.

And here’s the first round of improvements, as requested by you.

Longer, customisable Conversion History Windows
A buyer may take longer to research and buy a vacation package rather than purchase movie tickets, for example. The funnel for various conversion types can differ greatly in regards to time to purchase and number of clicks to purchase. Now, you can adjust the time span, or Conversion History Window, to 30 days (default), 60 days or 90 days prior to a conversion to see the Search Funnel data leading to that conversion. With this feature, you can look further back into the history of your conversion paths.

Only show complete conversion paths
A percentage of surfers clear cookies from time to time, which can influence search funnels data by causing conversion paths to appear shorter by eliminating some upper funnel assists - impressions or clicks on your keywords - that may have occurred prior to cookie deletion. For instance, if a buyer clicks on one of your ads, then clears cookies, then goes on to click another one or your ads before making a purchase, the click prior to cookie deletion will not show up in your Search Funnels reports.

Now, you can sanitize the search funnel data you’re looking at by checking a box in your reports called “Only show complete conversion paths.” This optionwill filter out conversions that are from paths that are potentially biased by cookie deletion. As such, while you will end up analysing fewer conversions overall, you will be seeing truer, more complete conversion paths. Use this option to strengthen your overall funnel analysis and understand how buyers are finding your products.

These new features were created based on feedback we received from Search Funnels users and we hope you find them useful as you experiment with, analyse, and optimise your portfolio of keywords.

Posted by Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics team

Transform your AdWords account and win cool prizes – sign up by October 3rd

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:45:00 +0000

There’s still time to sign up for the the AdWords Train & Gain challenge which kicks off October 4th.

Once signed up, you’ll receive four weeks of free advice for improving your AdWords account. At the end of the four weeks, you’ll have learned lots of different ways to improve your account performance. If you complete all the steps and answer a short questionnaire to let us know what you learned, you could win an Android Phone. Or even a free consultation with an AdWords expert — in Sydney, Australia.

Check out the Train & Gain site for more details about the challenge, who’s eligible to compete and how we’re selecting winners. Full terms and conditions can be found here.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

Get more from AdWords, win cool prizes

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 08:54:00 +0000

We’re so excited to announce the first AdWords Train & Gain challenge.

You’ve asked us for recommendations of things you should be doing with your AdWords account, so we’ve put together a series of simple steps to help you become more successful with your online advertising.

The AdWords Train & Gain challenge starts October 4th. You’re invited to participate. Simply sign up, and you’ll receive a weekly list of simple steps for improving your AdWords account. Then, sign in to your account twice a week, and take the suggested actions on how to better manage your account. At the end of four weeks, you’ll have learned a lot of different ways that you could improve your AdWords account. And if you completed all the steps and answered a short questionnaire to let us know what you learned, you could win an Android Phone. Or even a free consultation with an AdWords expert—in Sydney, Australia for you and a colleague.

Here’s a sneak peek of the fast and easy tips you’ll get:

Improve ad text: Stand out from your competition by writing ads that highlight your most competitive features: Low price, special services, free delivery, etc.
Use negative keywords: Specify which search terms you don’t want your ad to appear on. This will help you keep costs down because it prevents clicks from people looking for things you don’t offer.
Track sales and leads: See where your ad spend is working best and focus your money on the efforts that are generating business.

We hope you’ll sign up for AdWords Train & Gain, so you can see for yourself: it really doesn’t take a lot of time to make a big difference for your business. Learn more or see official rules for more details about the challenge, who’s eligible to compete and how we’re selecting winners. Terms and conditions can be found here.

Also, if you’re ever looking to learn more about your AdWords account, you’ll also want to check out our brand new AdWords Small Business Centre, which we announced last week. The site is a central AdWords learning hub for small and medium businesses. It allows visitors to explore beginner, intermediate or advanced AdWords topics and connects you to the latest AdWords news and best practices. All easy-to-find in one place.

Posted by Jo Hainsworth, Google AdWords team.

Free live course about using Google Analytics goals – sign up today!

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:29:00 +0000

We'd like to invite you to a free live course about using goals in Google Analytics which is taking place on September 15th, 2010 at 3pm - 4pm BST / GMT+1, 7am PST, 10am EST.

Goals are a way to measure conversions or successful actions on your website. This goal could be a view of a specific page on your site such as the 'thank you' page after a user has submitted information through a form or made a purchase on your site.

In this course, you will learn how to set up goals in Google Analytics and how they can help you track your return on investment. We will also clarify the difference between AdWords conversions and Analytics goal conversions and discuss how to analyse the goals report section of Google Analytics so that you can make informed business decisions.

Posted by Zarina Khaliq, Google AdWords team

The AdWords Small Business Centre: the key tips, tutorials, and updates you need for a successful AdWords account

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:22:00 +0000

Last Friday we launched a new website - the AdWords Small Business Centre. Many of you asked for an AdWords resource focused on learning and top tips for small and medium businesses, and we listened. This new central learning hub allows you to share AdWords best practices and provides the key information you need to know to run a successful AdWords account.

Learn the essentials

Whether you're new to AdWords or not, the AdWords Small Business Centre allows you to explore insightful topics as a beginner, intermediate, or advanced user. It covers everything from strategies for writing great ads to ways to improve your website, all in an easy-to-navigate format.

Explore new possibilities

Want to discuss one of tips on the site with another small business owner? Visit our recently launched AdWords Small Business Corner, a discussion forum in which other small and medium business owners who use AdWords exchange advice on the strategies that have helped them grow their businesses. Use it to share your AdWords experience or simply learn from others.

We hope you find the AdWords Small Business Centre useful. Check it out today!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Google AdWords team.

Introducing ‘Improving Online Conversions for Dummies’!

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:44:00 +0000

Are you eager to optimise your Conversion Rate, but feel a little bit overwhelmed by all of the tools available to help you? Today we're delighted to introduce ‘Improving Online Conversions for Dummies’!

We have just released a simple, easy to follow mini book, in conjunction with John Wiley Publications, to help you get a better grasp of the conversion improvement tools offered by Google. Improving Online Conversions for Dummies explains how you can make sure your ads show on searches that are most likely to convert into sales. Understand which ad clicks and impressions lead to conversions, better apportion your marketing spend and even develop your own conversion attribution model. Discover the secrets to getting more bang for your buck with this ebook!

For more information, visit www.google.com/conversion/fordummies

Posted by Alan Wrafter, Google Analytics team

Introducing the Japan & Asia-Pacific Conversion Room Blog

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:09:00 +0000

Today we'd like to introduce the Japan and Asia-Pacific (JAPAC) Conversion Room Blog. Over the last two years we have seen a tremendous uptake of Google’s conversion products in this region, celebrated many success stories with users, and witnessed the development of local expertise. The JAPAC Conversion Room aims to inspire JAPAC (and global) online marketers towards maximising conversions through sharing success stories and expert tips from this region.

If you are drawn to digital marketing, optimising for conversions, and have an interest in the Japan and Asia-Pacific region, then head on over to the site now and subscribe to all the latest articles.

Posted by Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar and James Toepfer, Google Analytics team.

Upcoming Free Webinar: Increase ROI with Enhanced CPC

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:28:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, we announced the launch of Enhanced CPC, a new automatic bidding feature designed to increase your conversions and ROI in your Max CPC AdWords campaigns.

We’d like to invite you to a free webinar hosted by members of the product development team to learn more about Enhanced CPC. Specifically, we’ll discuss:

How Enhanced CPC works and benefits your campaign performance
How Enhanced CPC complements your current bidding strategy, including 3rd party bid management solutions
Key differences between Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimiser & how to select the best bidding option for your campaign

Register here for the webinar to be held on September 8th at 9:30am PST / 5.30pm GMT.

Posted by Lisa Coffey, Google AdWords Team.

Announcing the Conversion Champion!

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:47:00 +0000

Back in June, we announced the Conversion Champion Challenge to help motivate you get your conversion rates in shape for summer. Many of you embraced the challenge - with stronger ROI to show for it! However, one advertiser stood out among the rest as the true Conversion Champion.

We are delighted to invite our Champion, Hüseyin Tanrıöven from the Wall Street Institute in Turkey, to our super cool offices in Zurich, Switzerland to meet our Conversion Specialist team for a full usability assessment of their website with recommendations to further improve their conversion rate.

Wall Street Institute (WSI) is the world’s largest English language school with 430 centres in 29 countries. The Wall Street Institute opened operations in Turkey in 2001 with 11 learning centres in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmit, Eskisehir, Bursa and Izmir. The Turkish WSI website was launched to provide potential students with course information and contact details to sign up to a learning centre. The WSI have always been keen to understand how their marketing efforts were contributing to conversions, given that conversions in AdWords are currently attributed to the last ad clicked before the conversion happened.

Hüseyin told us a bit about his journey to the finish line:

“WSI analyzed the search funnel reports for campaigns over a 73 day period. We derived insightful data about path lengths and how campaigns assisted each other in terms of conversions.

We conducted a deep-dive analysis to come up with a weighted attribution model so we could determine the real value of assist keywords, ad groups and campaigns by going deeper into the conversion path, instead of just focusing on last click conversion data.

We compiled a list of keywords where we could change bids to increase the average position and conversion numbers while still remaining within our CPA limit and even further decrease that value. We then went on to delete some negative keywords, which we had added to the account months ago having deemed them to be valueless by just looking at last click conversion data.

Search funnel analysis was very valuable for us to understand that these keywords could actually be assisting a lot of valuable conversions, so we were then able to make informed decisions about keyword performance and remove them as negative keywords.

We regrouped keywords into more appropriate ad groups and added some new ad text in order to increase the CTR and attract additional conversions by improving our account structure.

In the 28 day period since our account overhaul with Search Funnels, we have seen conversion rates increase by 54.5% and CTRs improve by 10.5%. Furthermore, the cost per conversion has decreased by 28.1%.”

Stay tuned for the full case study. Well done Wall Street Institute in Turkey! See you in Zurich!

Learn more about AdWords Search Funnels and Conversion Optimiser.

Posted by Alan Wrafter, Google Analytics team

Increase your conversions… Improve your ROI… Say hello to Enhanced CPC

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:31:00 +0000

We're excited to announce the launch of Enhanced CPC, a new automated bidding feature to help you improve your ROI on your Max CPC campaigns. Each time that your ad is eligible to appear, Enhanced CPC will automatically adjust your Max CPC bid based on the likelihood that your ad will convert. It does so by using your campaign's historical conversion tracking data. As a result, you should receive more conversions while maintaining or reducing your overall CPA and hopefully spend less time managing your Max CPC bids.

How does it work?
Let's walk through an example. Jeff sells model airplane kits and has enabled Enhanced CPC for a campaign that contains the following keywords, each with a Max CPC bid set to £0.30: model airplane, model airplane kits and build model airplanes. When a user searches for 'model airplane kits,' the AdWords system recognises that this term has converted well for Jeff in the past and therefore increases the Max CPC bid to £0.32 for this specific auction. If the likelihood of a conversion is very high, Enhanced CPC can bid up to 30% above the Max CPC. This means that the most that Jeff will be charged for a click is £0.39.

On the other hand, when a user searches on the more general term 'model airplane,' the AdWords system recognizes that this term has not converted well for Jeff in the past and lowers Max CPC bid for this specific auction to £0.20. By adjusting bids based on Jeff's conversion data, the AdWords system ultimately helps him increase sales while maintaining or decreasing his average cost per conversion.

Enhanced CPC has the unique ability to consider a number of factors when predicting the likelihood of a conversion. A few examples of what Enhanced CPC is able to do include the following:

Adjust your bid depending on how well a particular search or content partner site in the Google network has converted for you in the past
Recognise when specific words within a keyword (e.g. 'kits') convert well and adjust your bid when users search on variations of these terms (ie 'model airplane kits for children')
Detect attributes such as the user's location, language settings, browser and operating system and analyse how these attributes may impact the likelihood of your ad converting

How to get started

To use Enhanced CPC, you'll need to first enable Conversion Tracking for your campaigns. Conversion Tracking not only allows you to take advantage of ROI-boosting features like Enhanced CPC but also provides you with valuable insight into how frequently your ads convert into sales and how much you're paying for these conversions.

If you're already using Conversion Tracking, getting started is easy. Simply navigate to the 'Bidding and Budgeting' section of the settings tab for your campaign, and select the checkbox under 'Enhanced CPC'.

If you're choosing between Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimiser as your method for boosting ROI, please read this FAQ for more information on how these tools differ. You can also visit our Help Centre to learn more about Enhanced CPC and view instructions for enabling Conversion Tracking.

Posted by Lisa Coffey, Google AdWords team.

Spotlight on AdWords Search Funnels – Part 1

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:35:00 +0000

We recently announced a brand new section to AdWords reporting called AdWords Search Funnels and today we’d like to give you more in depth info about these very useful reports.

What are AdWords Search Funnels reports?

Search Funnels show you the AdWords ad click and impression behaviour that leads to a conversion on your site. A conversion could be a completed sale, form submission, time spent on your site etc.. These conversions are based on the completed action(s) you have specified with AdWords Conversion Tracking or from goals imported into AdWords from your Google Analytics account.

Now you can uncover the value of all keywords, ads and campaigns in your AdWords account, not just those related to the last click before a sale/lead.

Why is Search Funnels data useful?

The standard approach to conversion reporting traditionally focused on a customer’s last click on your ad. Search Funnels fills in the gaps on what happened before this last click!

Before completing a sale/form on your website, your customers have likely searched multiple times on Google. This means they may have searched using many different keywords and clicked on more than one of the ads in your AdWords account before they completed your defined conversion/action.

Tip:

To get the most from AdWords Search Funnels reports it helps to have a good AdWords account structure. Check out this video for tips on improving your account layout.

In addition you should always look at an appropriate amount of data before making business decisions. For example, looking at one month’s worth of data instead of one day’s, should give you a better picture of what’s happening in your account.

Interpreting AdWords Search Funnels reports

To start with, let’s explain some of the new metrics available within these reports:

Assist clicks: Any click on your Google AdWords search ad that happened prior to the 'last click' before a conversion.
Assist impressions: Any impression on your search ad that was not clicked and happened prior to a conversion.
Path length (clicks): The total number of AdWords search ad clicks in your account (including the 'last click') that preceded a conversion.
Assisted conversions: The number of conversions that were assisted by a particular campaign, ad-group or keyword. Assisted conversions do not include last click conversions.
Last click conversions: The number of conversions that had a particular campaign, ad-group or keyword as the immediately preceding search ad click.

For a full glossary of all the new terms relating to Search Funnels check out this help centre article.

So let’s look at some of these new reports...

Below we’ve highlighted just two of the nine reports available in AdWords Search Funnels to give you an overview of the insights now available into your conversion path.

Assist clicks and impressions report

See how many assisting clicks and impressions there are for each keyword, ad group or campaign in your AdWords account
Identify which campaigns are contributing to conversions and adjust your bidding and budgets accordingly
Optimise your keyword lists to ensure you have keyword variations included for strong assisting keywords

Top Paths report

See the combination of keywords, ad groups and campaigns that were clicked on or seen before a conversion
Look at how brand term campaigns compare to more general term campaigns
If your brand terms and general terms are grouped together consider breaking out into different campaigns to gain further insights

What can you do next:

If you have already set up Conversion Tracking or imported your Google Analytics goals into AdWords, log into your Google AdWords account and visit the ‘Reporting’ tab and select ‘Conversions’. (Not tracking conversions yet? Learn how to set up AdWords Conversion Tracking or import goals into AdWords from Google Analytics
Select ‘Search Funnels’ from the left hand side of the next page
Navigate through the nine report types on the left hand side to learn more about the ads and keywords that contribute to sales/leads on your site
Re-evaluate keywords and ad text based on this data and adjust AdWords account settings or optimise ads and keywords accordingly

We hope you find these tips useful. If you’re already a Search Funnels user please share your experiences by leaving a comment below. And don’t forget to enter our Conversion Champion Challenge by July 31st and be in the running for a trip to Google Zurich, a website audit from a team of Google experts and $500 of free Google AdWords advertising!

In the new few weeks we’ll follow up with another deep-dive into using AdWords Search Funnels reports so check back soon.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics: campaign data issue being corrected

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:08:00 +0000

Late last week, we made a change that caused some visits and campaign data to be processed incorrectly. All data was properly collected, but your reports may currently be missing some visits and campaigns information for the dates June 24th through June 29th. We are reprocessing this data and expect to have all report data corrected by early in the week of July 12th.

The impact of the incorrect processing will vary by site. Sites that receive a large number of new visitors and new campaigns have been most affected. Again, we are reprocessing, and all reports will soon be corrected. We will update the blog once reprocessing has completed and data in all accounts is correct.

We sincerely apologise for this inconvenience and are taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Update: July 14, 2010 18:15 GMTReprocessing is now complete and all reports should now show correct data.

Get your ROI in shape for the summer with the Conversion Champion Challenge

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, we announced the Conversion Champion Challenge, a contest challenging you to get your ROI in shape for the summer by using free AdWords conversion products & submitting a mini case study about your experience. It’s not too late to enter and compete to win the grand prize – an AdWords voucher and a trip to Google!

Whether you’re just getting started or are actively working to get your conversion rate in shape, here are some best practices for getting the most out of two of the free AdWords tool in the Conversion Champion Challenge: Conversion Optimiser & Search Funnel reports.

Tips for using Conversion Optimiser

Save time by letting Conversion Optimiser manage your bids to reach your ROI goals (On average, campaigns that use Conversion Optimiser experience a 21% increase in conversions and a 14% decrease in cost-per-conversion ).*
Choose to bid using the metric that you’re most comfortable with: Target CPA or Max CPA
Set different CPA bids for each Ad Group if conversions in one are of more or less value to you than conversions in another.
Let Conversion Optimiser run for a couple weeks to give it a chance to acclimate to your campaign’s performance.
Test it on just one campaign if you’re not ready to make large scale changes to your account. If you ever choose to disable the product, you’ll be able to return to the Max CPC bids that you had previously set.
Learn more and check out these success stories from advertisers who have used Conversion Optimiser.

*This analysis compares the performance of Conversion Optimiser campaigns over the course of a year with a control set of campaigns and represents the average impact of Conversion Optimiser. The actual impact will vary from campaign to campaign.

Tips for using Search Funnel Reports

Run Search Funnel Reports within your AdWords account to gain insight into which ads and keywords users clicked on leading up to a conversion.
Identify keywords that play a key role in the conversion process and ensure that you’re bidding competitively
Identify low value keywords, those that you're paying for but aren't leading to conversions, and decrease your bids accordingly.
Use the Time Lag and Path Length reports to understand how long (time and number of searches) it takes before conversions typically happen on your site. This can help you determine how long to run your campaigns.
Learn more about Search Funnels at this help centre article and also check out upcoming Conversion Room posts where we'll deep dive into how Search Funnels can help you gain further AdWords ROI insights

We can’t wait to hear about your experiences with these useful tools, so let us know how it goes by entering the Conversion Champion Challenge.

Posted by Alan Wrafter, Google Analytics Team.

Free webinar about AdWords Search Funnels & Conversion Optimiser, Thursday, June 10th

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:00:00 +0000

With the recent launch of Search Funnels, we wanted to host a webinar showing off these new reports and we also wanted to offer you a refresher on Conversion Optimiser. So this Thursday we'll give an overview of these features, showing how they work and how they can help you.

At the webinar, you’ll learn:

How tracking conversions can take you beyond clickthrough rate and help you focus your spend on the ads and keywords that drive sales and leads
How the data in Search Funnels can take you a step further and tell you which ads and keywords are assisting your conversions
How Conversion Optimiser can use your conversion tracking data and cost-per-acquisition goals to help you focus your spend on the clicks most likely to convert

The webinar takes place this Thursday, June 10th at 5pm GMT. Register here if you’d like to attend, and please submit or vote on questions related to Conversion Tracking, Conversion Optimiser or Search Funnels that you'd like answered during the webinar by Wednesday, June 9.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Team.

7 ways to improve your call to action

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 18 May 2010 09:58:00 +0000

If you only had 5 seconds to sell your product, what would you do? Your landing pages have, on average, about 5 seconds before visitors decide to stay or bounce.

So how can you make sure your landing pages do their job and captivate your visitors? Antoine De Saint-Exupery once said:

"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."

The problem for landing pages is that often the opposite is true. In an attempt to satisfy the needs of every possible visitor, landing pages are often crammed full of text, graphics, special offers and sometimes even advertising banners. Your call to action is competing with all that noise. Visitors are often left confused and unsure what to do.

Below are some suggestions to improve your call to action. As with any new changes you make to your website, we strongly recommend using a testing tool such as Google Website Optimiser to confirm any changes you make have a positive impact.

1. Good ol’ large call to action buttons

Perhaps the most obvious and definitely an oldie but a goodie when it comes to landing page design. Big call to action buttons really do work, because they are just so blatantly obvious.

Tips for big glossy buttons

Place your call to action buttons above the fold
Size does matter. Make sure it’s the biggest, especially if you have multiple buttons on the page
Start your button’s call to action text with a verb such as Sign Up, Buy, Order, Learn, Donate, Discover
Use a contrasting colour to the rest of your design

By default HTML buttons are not very exciting and not very good at conveying the strong message you want to show your visitors. With a little bit of CSS, HTML and your favorite graphical editor you can create a great call to action button as this tutorial demonstrates.

2. Support your call to action

Use graphics that support (not compete) with your call to action
Use bullet points (around 8 max) to emphasise your offer and its best attributes
If applicable consider using genuine customer testimonials
Use plenty of white space in your design and make use of grids
Avoid placing lengthy paragraphs of text above the fold
Use a compelling heading

The 8 bullet points list the benefits of the product
The testimonial is supported by a photo of someone playing guitar
The graphic in the top left supports the core message - someone playing guitar
Good use of white space and grids
The main focus in this design is still on the call to action buttons
The call to action is placed above the fold

It also tells visitors...

3. What’s in it for me?

This is the question your visitors are asking themselves. To truly strengthen your call to action make sure you address this question in your landing page design. Here is how you can do it.

Spend less time talking about yourself and more time talking about how you can help your visitors
Use a 50 words or less introductory paragraph to describe what makes your product or service wonderful
Tell them why they should choose you over the competition (example: price comparison)
Use upbeat positive language
Be personable - speak on a person to person level
Address any possible concerns (example: No Spyware / Adware)

This website tells you exactly who the product is in the headline Email marketing software for designers and their clients. Then it tells you why you should use the product in the introductory paragraph. Earn a tidy profit by letting your clients send at prices you set.

4. Reduce the number of choices

When it comes to landing pages, offering more choice is not necessarily a good thing. Barry Schwartz talks about the Paradox of Choice (20 mins) which discusses how reducing choice can result in selling more.

Brandon O’Dell discusses how reducing menu items in a restaurant is a good thing. When Gordon Ramsay went to Paris to help a struggling vegetarian restaurant he only offered 1 item at lunch, soup. In fact Gordon uses the same kind of formula (step #5) often in his Kitchen Nightmares show.
Apply the same formula to your landing pages. Simplify what you are offering and remove any competing choices a visitor has to make.

When possible create unique landing pages for each product
Simplify your offer and focus on its core benefits
Experiment with creating category pages that show less items per page
Aim to have only 1 call to action on a given page
If you must have more than 1 offer on the same page, help customers decide by telling them what offer best suits them based on their experience, budget or other relevant attributes

5. Competing offers

Sometimes you can’t avoid having more than 1 offer on a page. Let’s take a look at 2 example pages where multiple offers are displayed to visitors.

Both pages have multiple plans on offer. However, in the second example we can see that visitors are given some guidance as to what plan they should choose. Use of graphical hierarchy and the wording most popular plan helps visitors decide. Also worth mentioning is that the free plan has been de-emphasised but is still available.

6. Repeat your call to action

If you need more than one page to convince your visitors to take action, feel free to repeat yourself. If you offer a product tour or use several pages to explain complex features and options, place your call to action in a consistent position. This way visitors will know where to go when they are ready to take action.

On both sites above, you can see the call to action buttons Sign up now and Sign Up For Free on the upper right hand corner of the screen. The left hand navigation pane allows visitors to navigate through various sections of their site. Each page has the call to action button in exactly the same position.

7. Category pages and a call to action

These pages are often overlooked when it comes to improving your call to action. However have you ever tested allowing people to directly add an item to their shopping cart from this page?

The price comparison showing the price £RRP and YOU SAVE £X.XX assists the primary call to action
The buy now button allows visitors to add the items directly to their cart

This category page allows visitors to select a number of items they want to add to their cart, saving them time and making their shopping experience better.

Case study analysis

Take this case study by Tim Ferriss for example. The original landing page was good, but over time the page has changed and evolved as a result of continued website testing:

Original page (before testing)

After several tests

Reduced choice (only 1 large glossy button)
Repeated call to action (in 5 other sections)
Headline changed from Workout and Food Tracking to Better Fitness Results in Less Time (what’s in it for me factor)
Plenty of white space and clarity in design
Latest blog posts were removed
Latest member list was removed
3 bullet points used to support the call to action
Media buzz (credibility badges) moved above the fold
Improved graphical elements (assist call to action)

apple represents healthy eating
dumbbell, water bottle, measuring tape represents workout/gym
program screenshot ties them all together

The overall message has been simplified and anything deemed as a distraction has been removed from the overall design. The call to action button Join for Free! literally screams for attention. For additional case studies check out the Expert Help tab above.

How to test for success

When testing your call to action it’s a good idea to test micro conversions. This helps reduce experiment duration because your test pages and goal pages (micro-conversion points) are closer together.

You are also likely to have many more micro conversions than macro conversions on your site. This gives Google Website Optimiser more data to work with in a shorter time period, quickly giving you the winning variation. Example: If you decided to test your category pages by adding a call to action, select your add to basket page as the goal page in Google Website Optimiser (not your final checkout page).

The aim of your Google Website Optimiser experiment should be to determine if you get more visitors adding an item to your shopping basket (micro conversion) as the diagram below indicates.

Visitor conversion path flow

Hopefully you now have some fresh ideas to improve your call to action. Have any tips of your own to share? Leave a comment and let us know.

Posted by Gavin Doolan, Google Analytics team

AdWords Search Funnels workshop coming to eMetrics London

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:52:00 +0000

We recently announced the new AdWords Search Funnels reports and we’re delighted to let you know that these reports are now available to everyone who is tracking conversions with AdWords Conversion Tracking or importing goals or transactions into AdWords from Google Analytics.

If you'd like to learn more about this cool new feature you can register for our free Search Funnels workshop with Senior Product Manager, Sissie Hsiao at eMetrics London. Sissie will be running the workshop on Monday, 17th May and Tuesday, 18th May from 12:40-13:20.

After Sissie’s workshop, Clancy Childs, EMEA Lead Sales Engineer for Google Analytics, and I will be hosting the Web Analytics Wednesday (on Monday, 17th May...go figure!) at eMetrics. Not only can you join us for a pint, but we’ll be also be running a Google Analytics Quiz. Brush up on your Google Analytics IQ knowledge to be in with a chance to win some cool Google Analytics schwag!

Don't forget to register for these events soon as places are limited. We look forward to seeing you there!

Posted by Alan Wrafter, Google Analytics team.

New AdWords reports in Google Analytics coming soon

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:09:00 +0000

Yesterday we announced a new set of AdWords reports in Google Analytics which allow you to see detailed information on what happens after a visitor clicks on one of your AdWords ads.

Over the coming weeks this new set of AdWords reports will become available in your Google Analytics account, under the ‘Traffic Sources’ section. These new reports will allow you to break out your AdWords traffic by actual search query, match type, distribution network and many other AdWords attributes. We’ve also added reports for day parting, placements, and destination URLs to allow you to make informed changes in your AdWords account to improve performance.

To avail of these reports you must first link Google Analytics to your AdWords account and enable auto-tagging. Find out how to do this here.

You should also check out this short YouTube video to see our new AdWords reports in action:

We’ll have a follow up post in the next few weeks to show you how you can use these new Google Analytics reports to optimise your AdWords performance.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

Companies and Conversions: Cottages4you improve checkout click-through by 21%

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:03:00 +0000

Today we’d like to highlight a website analysis and testing success story from cottages4you.

Cottages4you is an online holiday cottage website offering visitors the ability to book holiday properties online or via a cottages4you advisor.

Cottages4you wanted to improve its conversion rate, turning more site visitors into completed reservations. The company consulted its Google Analytics reports in order to see the areas of the website that could benefit from improvement. Google Analytics showed that although many visitors came to the checkout introduction page (below), 40% did not progress further through the checkout funnel to complete a booking.

Cottages4you decided to use Website Optimiser to test a variety of alternative pages in an attempt to increase the number of visitors that continued past the checkout introduction page.

Before:

What to test?

Cottages4you had a few hypotheses to test:

reducing the amount of text on the page
shortening the explanation points for each section
moving the form elements above the fold
changing the travel agent log in section

Cottages4you tested a number of variations of the new checkout introduction page over a 3 week period until one variation begun to out perform the others. Below you can see the winning page.

This new page increased the number of visitors continuing to the next page in the checkout process from 60% to 73%. This is a 21% click-through improvement from the new page (below) compared to the original variation (above).

After:

What can you do next?

Use Google Analytics to identify areas of your website that could benefit from testing
Decide on some hypotheses you’d like to test and then create some alternative pages to the original
Looking for testing ideas? Check out these previous posts from Gavin: Improve web-forms and Is your website easy to buy from?
Use Website Optimiser to run new page variations concurrently until one begins to perform better than the rest
Implement the best performing page and continue testing on other areas of your website

Have you had an analysis and testing success story you’d like to share on the Conversion Room? Let us know, send us an email or leave a comment below.

Posted by Clancy Childs, Google Analytics team.

Google Ad Innovations: keep up to date on new Google ad tools

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:10:00 +0000

Google Ad Innovations is a brand new website where you can find out about newly released ad technologies and cool features that are currently in beta testing. Here you can watch videos about these new features and then try them out in your account.

As well as containing information about Google Analytics, you will also find details on new AdWords opportunities in the Display, Search and Mobile space.

Here is a taster of what you can find on Google Ad Innovations:

Display: Remarketing

Allows you to show your ads to visitors who have already visited your website while they are browsing websites in the Google Content Network. Learn more.

Mobile: Click to Call Extensions

Allows potential customers who see your ad on their mobile devices with full browsers to call your business directly. Learn more.

There are lots more new features to read about at the Ad Innovations site. Bookmark the page and visit regularly to ensure you are making the most out of your Google advertising and analysis tools.

Posted by Evelyn O’Keeffe, Google Analytics Team.

Google Analytics: Back to Hits

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:23:00 +0000

Over the years we’ve worked hard to make complex data easy to access and easy to understand. We’ve released features like Advanced Segmentation, which lets you segment your traffic on the fly, Custom Reporting—the ability to create and share your own reports—and Analytics Intelligence, an algorithmic intelligence engine that automatically spots important changes in traffic. All of this work was done with the belief that you needed this data in order to make sense of your website traffic.

We’re big believers that data trumps opinion, so we set out to prove our belief. We’ll be the first to admit that we were wrong. After extensive analysis by our quantitative teams, we’ve uncovered that hits (or How Interneters Track Success) is the only metric that actually matters in web analytics. Forget that business about absolute unique visitors, goal completion rate or even bounce rate. If you want to achieve success, you need to focus on hits.

With this finding, we’ve gone back to the drawing board with the Google Analytics interface. Since this will be a major change, we want to share with you a preview of the new Google Analytics UI:

To help you make this transition, Avinash Kaushik is releasing a new book: Web Analytics 3.0 - The Greatest Hits. The new book (more of a thick brochure, really) is chock full of nearly 1,000 words on how to use hits to track your success. It’s your chance to learn how to hit from a true analytics ninja. Plus it’s much shorter than most of his blog posts.

We’re looking forward to exploring the next stage of web analytics with you. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got a hit counter to watch.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team & Hits Master

Increase your AdWords conversions: optimisation made easy with YouTube video guides

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:44:00 +0000

It's important that your AdWords advertising helps you reach your business goals successfully, so here are 5 short videos to help you make sure your account is working as effectively as possible.

1. AdWords Account structure

This video shows you how a few minor changes to your account structure can make a big difference to your advertising performance:

2. AdWords budgeting tips

This video walks you through three simple ways to make your budget work better for you:

3. Improve keyword performance

This video explains the three simple steps you can take to improve your keywords and make sure you're effectively reaching your potential customers:

4. Improve ad texts

This video shows you how to write engaging ad texts to attract more customers:

5. Tracking results

This video shows you how to track and understand your AdWords results in order to fine tune your advertising:

We hope you find this series of videos useful in improving your AdWords performance and increasing conversions. Let us know what you think.

Posted by Mary Healy, Google AdWords team.

More choice for users: opt-out plug-in for Google Analytics on the way

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:17:00 +0000

As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy. Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser-based opt-out plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalising and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to making it available to our users in the coming weeks.

Posted by Amy Chang, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics

Free online training courses in the Google AdWords Online Classroom

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:17:00 +0000

Today we wanted to let you know about free online training modules available from Google.

The modules cover a variety of topics and below we've highlighted some conversion related courses that we think will interest our Conversion Room visitors.

Each course is 15-20 minutes long and is available on demand, so you can learn from a Google expert at a time that's convenient for you!

The Google AdWords Online Classroom can be found here. And below you can find out more about a selection of the courses on offer...

Maximise your advertising ROI with Conversion Optimiser
Save time and increase your profits with Conversion Optimiser, a free AdWords bidding feature that allows you to set a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Join the product team for an overview of how Conversion Optimiser works and learn how you can get more conversions at a lower cost for your AdWords search and content campaigns. This course would suit advertisers who want to focus on maximising conversions through AdWords.

Track your AdWords ROI using Google Analytics
Learn about Google Analytics and how it can provide valuable insights into your online business. This course will cover the creation of a new Analytics account, how to link it to your AdWords account, and how to install the Analytics code on your website to begin tracking visitor activity and conversions. This course would suit AdWords users who are not currently using Google Analytics or users who are new to the product.

Set up your Analytics account to track ROI
Correct set up is essential to ensure that you are making decisions based on accurate data. We will cover advanced implementation issues that will give you the confidence to make effective decisions on where to spend your marketing budget and areas of your site that could be optimised. This course would suit advertisers with more complex websites, such as subdomains or 3rd party shopping carts.

Use reports in Analytics to improve your AdWords return-on-investment
Learn how to interpret your Google Analytics Reports to identify areas of development for your AdWords campaigns. Get insight into evaluating data to identify focus points and optimise your AdWords performance. This course would suit advertisers who have already set up Google Analytics and are tracking data.

Get the most from your website with Website Optimiser
With Google's free Website Optimiser, you can test different lay-outs for pages of your website, and measure exactly which one generates the most sales or leads. We will provide you with an introduction to website testing, including how you can set up Website Optimiser and get testing yourself. This course would suit advertisers who are actively tracking their website's conversions and who are looking to make further site changes to improve their conversion rates.

Visit the site today and bookmark the page so you can take advantage of these free trainings at any time.

Posted by Jo Hainsworth, Google Team.

Google Analytics: upcoming system upgrade for greater scalability & reliability

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:36:00 +0000

Within the next two weeks, Google Analytics will be performing a system upgrade. This upgrade is to further improve the scalability and reliability of Google Analytics to meet the demand of the increasing number of enterprises using Google Analytics.

Rest assured your website traffic data will be unaffected and there will be no interruption to data collection or processing. All reports will be available and accessible to users. However, for some limited hours, users will not be able to perform administrative account actions such as opening new accounts, creating or modifying profiles, setting up filters and goals and managing user access etc.

The specific system upgrade times will be posted in the Google Analytics administrative interface. If you anticipate a need to make account changes during the next two weeks we encourage you to make them as soon as possible to ensure smooth operations during the system upgrade.

We are proud to see the continued growth in Google Analytics and are committed to delivering the unparalleled reliability and scalability that users have come to expect from products running on Google’s globally renowned infrastructure.

P.S. Google Website Optimiser will also be undergoing a system upgrade. All running experiments will continue to run and collect data. However, users will be unable to create or modify experiments.

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Analytics Team

Google Conversion Professionals: website health-check winners announced

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:48:00 +0000

Back in September we launched the Make Your Website Work guide to provide tips on improving your website's performance. We were really eager to hear what you thought about the guide so we asked for your feedback and ran a competition for three respondents to win a free website health-check from one of our Google Conversion Professionals.

Today we are delighted to announce our three winners who will each receive an audit of their company's website from a conversion expert. They will then receive practical advice about what changes should be tested and implemented on their site to make a real difference to the site's conversion rates.

So here are our three winners...

The Ultimate Finish: Supply automotive care products and accessories

Front Up Rugby: Create and sell fashionable rugby-inspired clothing

Big Fat Balloons: Sell balloons and gifts for special occasions

In a few weeks time we will follow up with these three companies to find out what they learned from our experts' advice. In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about our Conversion Professionals, check out some previous Conversion Room posts:

EMC Conchango

MoneySpyder

ConversionWorks

Big thanks to everyone who read the guide and submitted feedback! We're delighted you found it helpful. We hope you've been experimenting with your own website and are seeing conversion rate improvements as a result.

We'd love to hear about the changes you've made, experiments you've run and the results you've seen. Please leave a comment below, or drop us an email.

Posted by Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team.

Improve your web-forms and increase conversions

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:18:00 +0000

As a follow up to our previous post "Is your website easy to buy from?", we're now going to take a deeper look at web-forms. Web-forms are often the only communication point your website visitors have with your business, yet unfortunately they are often a neglected after thought for many websites.

Imagine for a moment that your forms are a set of hurdles. Potential customers have to jump over multiple sets of hurdles to reach your conversion point. The easier the web-form, the lower the hurdles. The more difficult, ambiguous or complex the web-form, the higher the hurdles.

If you are considering making changes to your website design, take a moment to consider the potential revenue impact of your redesign. The graph below shows a theoretical overview of the ROI impact of various parts of your website.

The good news is, you can make almost any form a better experience by following a few simple guidelines.

But first...

Why do users fill in forms?

If you ask someone if they enjoy filling out forms, you are more than likely going to find that forms are not viewed as an enjoyable experience. Users are likely to complete a form if they feel it helps them accomplish a task and / or there is a personal benefit / incentive for them to complete it.

For example:

Users are often in a rush to complete their task and reach their goal. By removing obstacles and making the web-form easier to complete, we increase the likelihood of visitors reaching your conversion page.

So how can we increase the likelihood that visitors will reach your goal page and find your web-forms easier?

Form layout and design

Eye tracking and usability studies reveal that many visitors scan form fields with a left to right eye movement, often ignoring instructions. Items on the far right of the form may not be seen, or may not get the visitors attention.

When designing web-forms here are some things you might want to try:

1. Place form labels to the left hand side
2. Use a single column form
3. Align fields to a grid

Example of a grid layout using the blueprint css framework

The right hand side shows the grid lines on, all elements align to the vertical grid.

4. Use an easy to read screen font (sans-serif) such as Verdana
5. Use appropriate negative (white) space to separate form fields
6. Use high contrast text and backgrounds (colour wheels can help)
7. Make it pretty, visitors trust pretty websites more
8. Use semantic markup to assist users with accessibility issues

Provide clear form instructions

Remove large blocks of instructive text, visitors probably won't read them. Think of Jeremy Clarkson assembling a Caterham
Use clear headings eg: "Home Loan Application" not "Application Form"
Avoid acronyms (if you do use them, provide their full meaning next to it) eg: ABN = Australian Business Number & PPS = Personal Public Service Number (Ireland)
Use plain English
Always be polite when asking for information, never demand it and be extra nice with error messages
If visitors will require specific information to complete the form, mention this at the beginning of the web-form
Use a graphical representation to aid visitors

If you read our last post this will look familiar, but we felt it was so important we had to show it again. This graphical representation helps visitors identify the information you need them to provide.

8. Choose the appropriate form control for the information you want Example of a slider that allows visitors to select a range of values with ease. The Jquery slider is just one example.

9. Group form field questions into groups based on theme or topic

Ask appropriate questions

When requesting information from visitors via a form it's important to consider the relationship your business has with the visitor being asked to complete the form. If you don't have an established relationship with the visitor yet, don't ask detailed personal questions. Chances are the visitor will abandon your form and conversion process.

Lets say for example our e-commerce website checkout form asks the following question:

I just want to order some books, why do I need to specify all this personal information?

If you must collect this information:

In the form above, there may be valid reasons for needing this information, but without an explanation as to why you need this information, it seems awfully personal and inappropriate.

Tips for form questions:

Start a form with less personal details
Remove fields that are not required to complete the task
Break long or complex forms into multiple step forms
Don't force visitors to respond to marketing questions - visitors will probably just 'fudge the answer' to get past any validation you put in place

Provide a reason to trust you

Show your website is credible and will treat information submitted with respect.

Use security badges / certificates for payment gateway
Link to privacy policy that details how you handle submitted user information
Tell me why you need information if it's personal
If I give you this information what will happen?

Requesting email? Will I get your marketing emails?
Requesting phone number, should I expect your call?

Use inline errors (with care)

When completing web-forms, traditionally, the process has been to complete a set of fields, then hit the submit button. The information is then validated by the web server, and if an error occurs the visitor is provided with feedback after the page has refreshed.

The problem with this process is that visitors have to correct their error(s), hope they have done what is instructed of them, click submit again and wait for feedback. Each additional time this happens the visitor becomes increasingly annoyed.

Inline errors provide an instant feedback mechanism that allow visitors to complete forms with less fuss and more accuracy.

Gmail gives users a button that helps them check if a username is available, and it provides feedback on the password field as you type into the box.

Inline error guidelines

Validate data after the visitor has completed entry (onblur event for javascript techies)

Only validate fields that visitors won't know are correct beforehand

Minimum password length
Password does not match
Username is taken
Credit card number is not long enough

3. Use a graphical icon such as a tick to indicate if the field is correct versus incorrect
4. Highlight the problem area with a red border or text
5. Try suggesting what the problem might be or how to correct the error

How long should my form be?

It depends on the task a visitor is being asked to complete. Most visitors would expect that booking a flight will be more time intensive and require more information than registering for your special offer newsletter.

In order for visitors to successfully complete your web-form, you will need to ensure:

You provide them with a reason to trust you with the information they supply
The reward for completing the form outweighs the effort to complete it
The time required to complete the form is appropriate for the task at hand

If you satisfy these conditions it shouldn't matter how long your form is.

Should I have a multistep form?

If your form is sufficiently long, such as an airline booking form, you might want to consider breaking your web-form into multiple parts.

Search
Select flights
Provide passenger details
Provide payment information
Confirm booking

Flight booking progress indicator has a nice little plane icon, I can easily see I'm at stage 3 of 5

The advantage of adding a multistep web-form to your website is that you can use Google Analytics Goal and Funnel reports to help determine which step is causing the most friction.

Tips for multistep forms:

Tell visitors what to expect next
Don't hide a step in between indicators - visitors won't like it
Make your progress indicator obvious (place it just above the form)
Use a combination of graphics and text, don't blend it into the background or make it too small to see

Provide a small reward

Depending on the task at hand, you may find you need to provide an additional incentive to complete the requested form.

If you're trying to sell copies of a PDF booklet, give visitors a free sample chapter
Providing an online training course? Give visitors 3 days free access to materials
Membership based website? Give visitors reward points for filling in additional details

It should be noted that not all forms will require a reward, sometimes completing the form will be reward enough as it allows visitors to complete a particular task.

Form redesign example:

Lets take a look at a real world example. The following form is the 3rd step in a 4 step process for booking a holiday. At least one contact number is required, along with the other details indicated below. The form also gives visitors the opportunity to specify if they would like to receive future newsletters and how they heard about the company.

The form could be vastly improved by making small changes to the layout, alignment, form options and wording.

For those of you wondering how to achieve this kind of form layout there is an excellent write up on A List Apart.

What changed?

Aligned the fields and labels to a grid
Changed the form to single column
Placed the progress indicator above the form
(to step 4...) tells visitors what to expect next
Changed country to a select / option field
Opt-in status for newsletter default to unchecked and reduced wording
Removed how did you hear about us? See the previous post about this
Removed optional phone field

The form still isn't very pretty, but this of course is just the beginning, we can further improve the form and measure the improvement of each iteration. We recommend using Google Website Optimiser to help test which form structure provides the best conversion rate.

Taking it a step further, you may also want to carry out in-house user based testing to see how people interact with your website forms. This could provide even more valuable insight into potential problems visitors have when trying to complete your forms.

Posted by Gavin Doolan, Google Analytics Team.

Spotlight on new Google Analytics features: More goals and Engagement Goals

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:47:00 +0000

Today we wanted to highlight some recent enhancements to goals in Google Analytics.

More goals and Goal Sets
You can now track even more visitor actions and behaviours on your site within one Google Analytics profile. Previously in Google Analytics there was a limit of 4 goals per profile, but now we've increased this to 20 goals to ensure you can track every important performance metric for your site. These 20 goals are broken down into 4 Goal Sets, each with 5 available goals. You can use Goal Sets to group similar marketing objectives together.

Engagement goals
In the past a goal was tracked by specifying a URL on your website that represented a completed action, such as a 'Thank You' page. Now we've introduced Engagement Goals to allow you to see visitors Time on Site and Pages per Visit as defined goals or conversions.

These two metrics allow you to gauge visitor involvement with your site and measure engagement with particular content for a specific amount of time, or to measure visitor interaction with your site in terms of the number of pages viewed.

Engagement goals are just as easy to set up as URL destination goals...

Within your chosen profile in Google Analytics, visit the 'profile settings' page:

You can then select 'add goal':

Finally select the specifics of your new Engagement Goal. You also have the option of assigning a value to this goal:

Now that you can track more goals, and new engagement goals, you will have the opportunity to track macro and micro conversions on your site.

Here's are some examples of how different sites may organise their Goal Sets...

Digital print store and photogrpahy site

Marketing objectives: sales and growing registered members of community

Goal Set 1:

Goal 1 - completed purchase
Goal 2 - completed add to cart
Goal 3 - brochure download

Goal Set 2:
Goal 1 - sign ups to online community
Goal 2 - new posts to forum
Goal 3 - sign ups to monthly newsletter
Goal 4 - time on site

Local news & weather site

Marketing objective: increasing visitor engagement and serving third party

advertisements

Goal Set 1:
Goal 1 - Spend more than 5 mins on site
Goal 2 - View more than 10 pages per visit

Goal Set 2:
Goal 1 - Completed site feedback form
Goal 2 - Signed up for site newsletter

To learn more about creating goals in Google Analytics and accessing your goal reports check out the YouTube video below:

We hope you find these new goal types useful!

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

A new resource to help your AdWords ads perform better

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:15:00 +0000

A new year tends to bring new year's resolutions, so why not make one now to get even more sales and leads from your AdWords campaigns?

To help you do this, we'd like to share the new Google AdWords Optimisation Centre with you. This is an online guide focused on helping you access lots of useful information even faster to improve the success of your advertising campaigns.

For easy usability, our AdWords specialists have organised the navigation of the site in three different ways:

View tips by level of expertise so that the advice matches your AdWords knowledge. You can choose to start with basic tips, move on to more intermediate techniques and finish up with advanced advice.

Click directly on the account features you'd like advice on. You’ll get detailed suggestions on topics ranging from writing compelling ads to using advanced bidding techniques.
Read strategic tips that our AdWords experts have put together based on your potential advertising goals, such as increasing sales, or improving clickthrough rate.

Visit the Google AdWords Optimisation Centre today to find answers easily and become an AdWords expert!

Posted by David O'Donovan, Google AdWords team

Discover new AdWords keywords for 2010 with the Search-based Keyword Tool

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:06:00 +0000

Now that the Christmas peak is over you may be thinking about how to drive more traffic to your AdWords campaigns during 2010 and in turn drive more sales/leads on your website.

Millions of people use Google each day to find products and services by searching on various keywords. This means that by including all keywords that are relevant to your product or service in your campaigns, you can ensure as many potential customers as possible see your ads.

To help you do this, you can use the Search-based Keyword Tool to quickly identify relevant keywords which are not yet included in your AdWords campaigns.

Check out our new YouTube video below to see how the tool works and how it has already helped one AdWords advertiser to increase sales:

To see keyword suggestions for your AdWords account today go to www.google.com/sktool, sign in to your AdWords account and enter your website URL.

Posted by Donal Mac Manus, Google AdWords team.

Tips for more online conversions from AdWords during the festive season

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:34:00 +0000

For many online businesses this is the busiest time of the year, so we thought we'd put together a few tips to help make sure you're capturing those last minute and post-December 25th conversions. These are tips that can be implemented quickly, but which can have a big effect on the performance of your ads.

1) Check your AdWords campaign budgets. If the campaigns are regularly reaching their daily budgets, this means your ads may not be showing for every search on your keywords. Remember to budget for increased traffic during this period so you don't miss out on any potential sales.

2) Retailers, make sure you're also showing ads from December 25th onwards. In 2008, "traffic to retail websites started to increase significantly on Christmas Day*", and Boxing Day was "the busiest time of year for online retailers*." This presents a great opportunity to take advantage of increased activity on the web during this time.

*Experian Hitwise - The 12 days of Christmas - Planning for a Successful Christmas 2009.

See the Google Insights for Search graph below for search volumes related to the term 'sales' in the UK in December 2008. To learn more about using Insights for Search check out this previous post.

3) Have a look at which ads and keywords in your campaigns are performing best. If there's a certain call-to-action or special offer in your ads that seem to be attracting more customers than others, test these in your lower performing ads to see if this has a positive effect on consumer engagement.

4) Finally, if your budget is tight but you want to prioritise what you spend, filter your keywords by performance indicators like conversion rate or clickthrough rate (CTR) in the Keywords section of your Campaigns tab in AdWords. If you're already meeting your budget each day, you can then pause the keywords which are under-performing over the festive period, which should mean more of your higher performing keywords can show ads more often.

We hope you found these tips helpful, and that your AdWords ads are working to gain you even more business over the festive season!

Posted by David O'Donovan, Google AdWords Team.

More new features just launched in Google Analytics!

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:21:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, we announced a set of new powerful, flexible, and intelligent features for Google Analytics. Yesterday at SES in Chicago, Phil Mui, Senior Product Manager for Google Analytics, announced an additional set of features that build on these same themes to make your life as an analyst easier.

Check out Phil's description of each new feature below, as post on the Google Analytics blog last night....

Annotations

Do you ever wonder about an inexplicable change in your traffic? Or forget exactly when you launched something, or who was responsible? After scratching your head, did you have to chase down different departments in your company or go digging through old emails to get an answer?

For instance:

Was that dip in traffic because the servers went down?
When did the new display ads campaign launch?
Who's responsible for the checkout page redesign and when did it go live?

Running around asking everyone from marketing, IT, and product doesn't scale. More and more large companies are using Google Analytics, so we wanted to cut down on the mileage you need to cover to account for everything that happens to your website and online marketing.

This week, the wild goose chase is over -- you can now easily denote unexplained dips or spikes and figure out "what happened" with the launch of Annotations in Google Analytics.

Annotations allows any user with access to a Google Analytics profile to leave shared or private notes right on the over-time graph. Building upon the concept of bringing Intelligence to data, Annotations complements existing anomaly detection by capturing the tribal intelligence of your company, which tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all. A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers.

Taking its usefulness even further: Annotations can become your central repository, or logbook, for all online marketing and website design actions within your business. So even if you have multiple marketing teams, agencies, or webmasters, or if you have employee churn or other disruptions, you can always see which events may have caused conversions to increase or decrease. No wonder this has been one of the top requested features in Analytics for such a long time!

Custom Variables now segmentable and available in custom reports

Custom Variables provide you the power and flexibility to customise Google Analytics and collect the unique site usage data most important to your business. In Google Analytics, not only are you able to define multiple custom variables, each custom variable is a name-value pair and can be assigned one of 3 scopes: page, session, or visitor. Each custom variable name and each value is an arbitrary string defined by you pertinent to your business needs.

When we announced Multiple Custom Variables in October, the only way to view metrics on these Custom Variables then was to open the standard "Custom Variables" report in the Visitors section. This week, a user can create an advanced segmentation based on any key, value, as well as key-value combination of all Custom Variables. In other words, if you've created a Custom Cariable, you can also create an advanced segment based on that variable and see it across all of your reports.

You can also create Custom Reports with any of the key or value dimensions associated with any Custom Variable. Now, you can see how a segment defined by Custom Variables behaves along any of the metrics available in Google Analytics.

The ability to create visit segments and custom reports based on Custom Variables is critical in maximising the full potential of Custom Variables. Users can now slice and dice their metrics by decorating their site traffic with the appropriate key-value pairs.

New Analytics Tracking Code Setup Wizard

One of the more daunting tasks in setting up analytics on any site is to manually configure the tracking code for specialised situations, such as multiple subdomains, cross-domain tracking, mobile web tracking, PHP sites, campaign tagging, etc.

Well, fear no more. When you create a profile, you'll notice a new tracking code setup wizard in Google Analytics. This wizard automatically generates the appropriate tracking code according to the setup options specified by you.

New version of Analytics API

Later this week, there will be a separate announcement about a set of very exciting features to our Analytics API. Here's a little preview: support for Advanced Segmentation will now be available through the API.

In addition, new data dimensions and metrics will be made available, including those in our recently announced features.

Posted by Phil Mui, Google Analytics Team.

Spotlight on new Google Analytics features: Analytics Intelligence and Custom Alerts

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:43:00 +0000

We recently launched an exciting new feature in Google Analytics called Analytics Intelligence and today we want to tell you all about it.

Analytics Intelligence will automatically alert you to significant changes in your website's traffic. In addition to automatic alerts, you can also specify custom alerts that you would like Analytics Intelligence to monitor and highlight for you!

You can find Intelligence reports in the right hand menu within your Google Analytics account. Reports are divided between daily, weekly and monthly alerts.

Automatic alerts:

Google Analytics looks at past performance information from your website and makes a prediction about your expected performance. If there is a big difference between what actually happens on your site, and what Analytics Intelligence expected would happen, you'll see a green bar appear in the bar graph above the alert details. The significance rating found to the right of every metric can help you gauge the performance of your site according to the expected target performance.

In the example below, you can see that Analytics intelligence expected an increase in traffic of 75-79%, but actual traffic was up 91.93%. This triggered Analytics Intelligence to alert us via the green bar graph. When you click on the bar graph you are then shown details of the alerts for that time period, in this case a weekly alert. Automatic alerts are applied to historic data in your account as well as all new data going forward.

Custom alerts:

With a custom alert, you control what Analytics Intelligence will alert you about. To easily create a custom alert in your account follow the steps here. When using a custom alert it's important to define what information is important to you and what exactly you would like Analytics Intelligence to monitor for you. Unlike automatic alerts, a custom alert does not trigger when used with historical account data.

Not sure why you'd use a custom alert? Here are 5 really useful applications for this new feature:

1. Revenue Drop Alert

This condition is triggered if traffic from the medium 'cpc' (meaning paid traffic), such as Google AdWords, has a revenue decrease of more than 15% compared to the same day in the previous week. We selected 15% to account for normal fluctuation, of course you can select a percentage that makes sense to your business.

We selected the 'Same day in the previous week' over compared to 'Previous day', because certain days (e.g weekends) might have lower revenue rates as a matter of fact. So we want our alert to only trigger based on week-week performance.

In our example we used Revenue as our metric which will only apply to websites using E-commerce reporting. However if you measure return on investment using goals and goal value you can just as easily change this metric to Goal Value to get the same insight.

2. Landing Page Bounce Rate Increases

This alert allows us to examine the performance of a specific landing page. If the bounce rate of the page increases by more than 20% an alert is triggered.

Use Case:

Running a large website with multiple departments separated by different categories with different stakeholders?

Example:

/electronics/
/fashion/
/kids/

You could change the dimension condition to 'Starts with' /kids/ to monitor the performance of the kids section of the website. Of course bounce rate is just a suggestion. You may try other metrics such as revenue.

3. Campaign Performance

Launching a new AdWords campaign on the Google Content Network with lots of interesting creatives for Christmas or any special promotional period? Want to be notified quickly on its performance? Create some alerts...

Alert 1:

Alert 2:

We create 2 alerts because we want to monitor performance in both directions positive / negative.

We used compared to "previous day", because an online retailer would typically see a steady increase in sales leading up to Christmas day.

The first alert lets us know that our campaign is increasing in revenue which is great! The second alert informs us that something may be wrong or the campaign may require tweaking.

If we start to see a negative trend we can click on the alert in the Intelligence interface and it will tell us what changed in our website's traffic. This can help you pin-point what area of your campaign needs work.

4. Keyword Performance

If you know a particular keyword is important to your return on investment, you may want to monitor it more closely by creating an alert. This can be especially important for seasonal keywords where many advertisers could be competing for top listings in search results.

The above alert will let you monitor any drop in expected visits, and give you the opportunity to make changes to your advertising to compensate.

For those paying close attention, this will include both organic and paid traffic. However when you view the closer details of the triggered alert you can easily distinguish between the 2 traffic mediums by using "group by" dimension

5. Country Performance

If you are specifically targeting a region using Google AdWords and want to ensure you get a consistent number of visitors, simply select the dimension Country/Territory. If you need even more granular detail, select the dimension city and provide a value such as Munich.

This alert could also be useful for monitoring non AdWords traffic such as local newspaper, television or radio advertising.

Want to learn more? Check out this YouTube video on the Google Analytics channel:

Thought of any other useful reasons to use Custom Alerts? Let us know, drop us an email or post a comment below.

Posted by Gavin Doolan, Google Analytics Team.

Companies and Conversions: Marie Curie increased donations by 14% using Website Optimiser

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:24:00 +0000

This week we wanted to share how Marie Curie improved its website performance using Website Optimiser and saw a 14% increase in donations on the site!

Marie Curie felt its 'Make a donation' page could be improved to increase conversion rates.

The organisation's web team had some ideas on changes that might result in more donations:

a simplified donation form
removing unnecessary information from the page
making the purpose of the page clearer

In order to see if their hypotheses were correct they decided to use Google Website Optimiser. Marie Curie ran a straightforward A/B test, and within a few weeks saw that the new layout had already increased donations by 14%.

Original 'donate' page

New 'donate' page

Marie Curie's web manager, Victoria Ludlow describes the results:

"our hypothesis was correct, the new page did improve our donations. However we never expected to improve them by that much. We are absolutely delighted with the results".

What can you do next?

Think about how you could improve the performance of your website's conversion page and test a new variation. Analytics data will help you identify which pages to test, for example, you may want to test different versions of the pages that have the highest exit rates.

Could you simplify your lead/contact form?

Do you provide all necessary information on your product pages so that it's easier for customers to make their purchase decision?

To see examples of what you could test on your new variation, read our 'Make your website work' ebook and check out this previous Conversion Room blog post.

Once you know what to test, you can set up an A/B test using Google Website Optimiser by following these steps. When your test has been running for at least two weeks, you can see check your reports to see which of the variations performs best.

You can then implement these changes, monitor your conversions and look for other pages or page elements to test next!

Marie Curie are just one of a number of Google Website Optimiser users that have shared their conversion improvement success stories with us. You can read more about others companies in the 'Learn' tab above.You can also read more about our Google Conversion Professionals programme in the 'Expert Help' tab and see how they could help you improve your site's profitability.

Posted by Faustina Clifford, Google Team.

Create your own festive themed image ads with Google AdWords

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:57:00 +0000

Image ads are a great way to raise the profile of your business on relevant websites on the Google Content Network.

The holiday season is on the way and online businesses and retailers are looking for ways to make the most out of the upcoming opportunity. To help you reach more of your potential customers and take advantage of this opportunity, you can now create festive themed, animated image ads with Display Ad Builder for free within your AdWords account.

To access the Display Ad Builder, follow these simple steps:

Log in to your AdWords account at www.adwords.google.com
Select the campaign and the ad group in which you would like to build your image ads
On the 'Ad Variations' tab, click on the 'New Ad' button, then select the 'Display Ad Builder' option.

All you have to do to create your own image ads is select a design template from within your account. You write your own message just like with your text ads, change the fonts and colours if needed, and upload an image that represents your business - our tool does the rest.

As well as these seasonal specific themes you can also choose from over 150 different templates to find a format that suits your message and business.

Based on your choice, Display Ad Builder will generate up to 6 image ad versions with the standard sizes (120 x 600; 160 x 600; 468 x 60; 300 x 250; 728 x 90; 336 x 280 pixels) for you. Now your own animated image ads are ready to show on the Content Network. To make sure you're opted in into the Content Network, in you AdWords account go to the 'Campaign settings' page and look for the section called 'Networks, devices, and extensions'.

To learn more about creating and running display ads, please visit the Display Ads 101 tutorial.

If you are using Conversion Tracking, you could also check out the new View Through Conversion Tracking reports. With View Through Conversion reports you can see when a user looked at your image ad, did not immediately click, but later came back to your site and reached the conversion page.

Log into your AdWords account today to get started!

Posted by Zoli Stekkelpak, Google AdWords team

Setting up and using AdWords Conversion Tracking is now even easier

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:43:00 +0000

Last week, our colleagues in the US posted on some changes which have been made to the AdWords interface. If you use AdWords Conversion Tracking, you may have already noticed that the interface for this tool has been redesigned so that it's easier for you to troubleshoot issues and monitor your results. If you are not already using Conversion Tracking, it's now easier than ever to implement! We wanted to discuss these changes on the Conversion Room too, just in case you missed them.

There are now 3 easy-to-use tabs - Conversions, Webpages, and Code - that help you manage your conversion data. Let's take a closer look at each of them:

Conversions: This is where you see information about the conversion actions you're tracking.

The "Tracking Status" column lets you know whether a conversion action is tracking properly. It shows you if a conversion has ever been recorded, if it has recently stopped recording, or if it's working just fine.
The "Value" column shows the accumulated value of the conversions you've received based on the value you've assigned to each action.
The "New Conversion" button allows you to easily create new conversion actions or import them from a linked Google Analytics account. (Note: In order to import Google Analytics goals, you'll first need to follow a few steps.

Webpages: Here, you'll see which pages on your site are getting conversions. You can also see a breakdown of the number of conversions per page on your site. This is useful for troubleshooting, as you can make sure conversions are coming from the pages you expect and identify pages that are not reporting conversion activity.

Code: This is where you get the tracking code for each conversion action. You can also change the value of an action, which helps you calculate ROI.

Custom Alerts*: You can now create custom alerts to monitor shifts in conversion volume, conversion rate, and cost per conversion. By setting alerts for your conversion data, you can make sure that you're quickly notified about fluctuations in your key metrics.

*Please note that we're still working to bring custom alerts to all linked accounts for My Client Center (MCC) users. In the meantime, you can still set custom alerts for your individual accounts if you're able to log into them directly.

Once you have set up Conversion Tracking you may then become eligible to use Conversion Optimiser. This is a free AdWords feature which uses Conversion Tracking data to get you more conversions at a lower cost-per-acquisition. You can find more Conversion Room blog posts on Conversion Optimser here.

We hope you enjoy the new Conversion Tracking interface!

Posted by Faustina Clifford, Google AdWords Team.

We’ve added more Seminars for Success to our calendar for London and Glasgow!

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:25:00 +0000

Want to use Google Analytics data to improve your website and marketing?

Ready to boost your ROI and drive more business to your site?

Whether you're new to online marketing or a seasoned veteran, Seminars for Success can help you meet your goals. Led by independent and unbiased industry professionals, these full-day, in-person seminars will help you learn how to make the most out of the time and money you invest in AdWords, Analytics and Website Optimiser.

Sign up now for any seminar and we'll also give you a £50 credit to spend on AdWords advertising. Find out more about this free advertising credit, and how to register, by visiting our website today:

Seminars for Success

Posted by Alan Wrafter, Programme Manager

Is your website easy to buy from? Tips you can test to improve your site’s checkout process

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:37:00 +0000

We recently released the Make Your Website Work e-book to show common pitfalls of website design and show steps that can be taken to improve your website conversions. Today we'd like to delve further into the checkout process on websites, and give some suggestions on areas to test and ways to improve your conversion path.

Many e-commerce websites suffer from low conversion rates. We have compiled a list of e-commerce checkout tips that you may like to test on your own site.

Think about testing the following...

Product Images and Location

As a rule of thumb, the more expensive an online purchase is, the more detailed your product shots and information should be.
Place product images above the page fold (don't require users to scroll your pages).
Be creative. Make effective use of existing technologies (ajax, flash, video etc..)

Example above demonstrates that when a user mouses over part of the product image they can see the texture of the jacket in close detail. This is known as a "javascript image zoom" effect.

Buy Buttons

Also known as 'add to cart' buttons, these are possibly the most important call to action on your website.

Colour / Contrast - Eye catching use a different colour to the rest of your page.
Text - Make it large and easy to read (no fancy typography).
Icons - Icons aid usability (+ Add to Cart)
Position - Users expect to find your 'add to cart' button on the right hand side of your product image.
Make them BIGGER* - Large buttons grab attention, but also accommodate more users.
Long product descriptions? Try using 2 add to cart buttons (1 above the fold, 1 below)

*Large buttons accommodate users who may have poor motor movement. See Fitts Law.

Checkout Without Registration

Don't require customers to register before checkout.
Forms should only ask for essential information.
Tell customers why you need information. Especially personal details.

Form above clearly displays that you can login if you are a member already or checkout without registering.

Yes we ask for your email address, but here's why.

Progress Indicators

One of the most overlooked elements on many E-commerce websites is a progress indicator. This is the online equivalent of the shopping centre "You are here!". It also instantly answers:

Where am I?
How many more steps till I finish?
What can I expect next?
Do I get a chance to review my order?

You can easily see where you are in relation to completion of the task.

Forms Should Be Easy

So many forms on E-commerce websites are difficult to use and don't provide meaningful feedback to users. Believe it or not you can make forms a fun, rewarding customer experience.

The outcome can be amazing as your customers know exactly what information they need to provide to complete the purchase.

Here are some other form tips you could test

Provide clear labelling free from industry jargon / terms
Use a checkbox / radio button to reveal optional additional info you may require.

Eg: Different billing address / shipping address.

Avoid popup errors. Instead use inline errors that highlight the problem area.
Don't reset form data if an error occurs or the customer doesn't fill out the form the way you expect them to. Customers don't like repeating themselves. Allow them to correct their error but preserve already entered details.

Answer Customer Questions

There are often many unanswered questions a customer has before they complete a transaction. How well does your website answer the following?

Can I return this item within x amount of days?
Can I review my order before I confirm the purchase?
Can I easily contact support or customer service if something goes wrong?
If I hit the next button, will I be billed?
If I hit the next button, will I be able to make a revision still?
What is the total price with shipping to my address?
How many days before I get my item delivered?
Is this site secure, can I trust you with my credit card details?
What payment types other than credit card do you accept?
If I'm only making a booking, how much is due now and how much is due later?
What is your privacy policy?

Useful tip: If you don't want to include all the text necessary to answer questions like those above, link to relevant sections of your site that explain the details or show(+) / hide(-) the content with javascript or similar technology.

This example shows a javascript 'accordian' interface where clicking on the question, hides / shows the relevant answer. Great for use in compact spaces so it won't clutter your interface and it's user intuitive.

Permission Marketing

Many E-commerce websites ask for customers to opt-in to special promotional emails before checkout, but have you ever tested removing this step from your conversion process?

You can always politely ask them to sign up to your newsletter:

After checkout (on your receipt page)
Via email order confirmation (mail out)
After the item has been posted to the customer

Another popular question on E-commerce checkout pages is 'Where did you hear about us?'

If you are not already, you should start using Google Analytics to help you identify the best conversion sources on your website, thus eliminating the need to ask the customer how they found you. Not to mention that some users don't know the difference between a 'search engine' and a 'browser'. So you may find the data you collect from asking this question is not that useful anyway.

You can always test to see if removing this question improves your conversion rate using Google Website Optimiser

Trust Indicators

Trust indicators are badges, qualifications, affiliations or security assurances that can help customers feel at ease on your website. Some common trust indicators are:

Secure payment gateway badges
Brand names you sell
Places you have been seen or mentioned in the media (eg: As Seen on TV)
Money back guarantee
Industry standards / rating / qualification
Demonstrating your site is secure (highlight the secure symbol)

Where you place your trust indicators will depend on the context of your trust indicator itself.

For example: credit card payments, any secure payment gateway certificate or seal should be placed in close context to your credit card details form.

The padlock in the bottom of a users browser is a trust indicator, but you may sometimes want to point it out as this graphic does.

Certain payment gateway providers will give you trust indicators to work with. Google checkout provides several.

Test and Confirm

Still not sure if the tips above will help improve your checkout conversion rates?

Remember you should always test and confirm changes to your site with Google Website Optimiser. Website Optimiser is absolutely free to use, to learn more check out our previous Conversion Room post about testing with Google Website Optimiser.

Posted By Gavin Doolan, Google Analytics Team

New Website Optimiser features just launched

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:37:00 +0000

Google Analytics is not the only product to announce some cool new features this week. The Website Optimiser team have also been busy introducing an Experiment API and a new reporting feature called over time charts. As you'll know from previous posts, Website Optimiser allows you to test page variations on your site to find out which content and design drives the most sales and leads for you. Read about new features below, and visit our resources to learn more.

Over time charts

If you've recently looked at your Website Optimiser reports you may have noticed something different. This week we launched another new feature designed to help you better understand the performance of your variations: over time charts.

With over time charts you can see the cumulative conversion rate of each combination over the life of an experiment. This can give you a better understanding of how your site is performing. The new charts are available for all Website Optimiser experiments, and you'll find them on the reports page.

Website Optimiser Experiment Management API

The Experiment Management API allows for the creation and management of experiments outside of the Website Optimiser interface. Creating and launching a Website Optimiser experiment involves a series of steps. Depending on the design of your website, the content you want to test, and how technical you are, these steps can be easy and quick or potentially difficult.

One of the most important steps in creating an experiment is adding the Website Optimiser tags to the test pages. This step can be problematic if your website uses a content management system or a third party shopping cart since it can be difficult to directly access the code for these pages.

With the Website optimiser Experiment Management API, these platforms can integrate Website Optimiser directly into their services. This week two platforms have launched their integrations: CrownPeak and Blast Advanced Media's Motivity CMS.

Both integrations allow you to create and launch Website Optimiser experiments without touching your website's code. Many other platforms are working on integrating with Website Optimiser, and we're excited about helping more businesses increase their conversion rates through website testing.

We also have set up a special Google Group for the Website Optimiser Experiment Management API. It's a place where you can discuss implementations and get questions answered. Visit the group here.

If you'd like to learn more about using the Website Optimiser API, we've got a number of resources for you. First and foremost is the Website Optimiser API site on Google Code. There you'll find complete documentation on the API and our Getting Started guide.

Free webinar
Hear about the new API from an expert, sign up for our free webinar run by the Google Website Optimiser team on Wednesday, 28th October at 5pm GMT (10AM PDT). Register here.

To learn more about Website Optimiser you can read our previous posts on the Conversion Room:

Website Optimiser - Identifying high value pages to test

Introducing the Beginners Guide to Website Optimiser

You could also check out the Website Optimiser YouTube channel.

Posted by Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team.

Get involved in Google trainings and events in the UK

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:23:00 +0000

There are lots of different ways to learn more about Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Website Optimiser (in addition to visiting the Conversion Room!)

If you'd like to listen to an expert explain practical ways to get better results from your advertising or find out how to get the most from Google analysis tools, check out the resources below....

Google AdWords webinars:

Webinars are online trainings you can access from your computer. You can find full details of all our UK webinars here. If you would like to sign up for webinars in another language you can check out what is available here.

We've picked out some upcoming webinars that you may find interesting:

Conversion Optimiser
Learn how you can get more conversions at a lower cost per conversion from your AdWords search and content campaigns.
11/11/09 3pm Register now

Make your website work: 10 ways to turn visitors into buyers
Explore the common website design pitfalls and techniques to avoid them.
18/11/09 3pm Register now

Tracking your AdWords return on investment
Learn how to better convert online clicks into profit for your business using AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics.
02/12/09 3pm Register now

Trainings:

Seminars for Success are in depth trainings run by Google accredited organisations. You can find some upcoming Google Analytics sessions being held in Glasgow by visiting this website. You can also see where other seminars are taking place around the world.

Events:

Google will be hosting AdWords and Google Analytics sessions at the eCommerce Expo, London, October 20th and 21st. Find out more about these sessions here and register for the event for free.

We hope you can make it to some of these trainings. If you do, let us know what you think - leave a comment below or send an email.

Posted by Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team.

View-through conversion reporting on the Google Content Network

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:07:00 +0000

In our previous posts on the Google Content Network we discussed the importance of tracking your performance using conversion tracking, the networks tab and other easy to use tools within AdWords.

Today, to help you better measure the value of your display advertising campaigns, we're announcing a new feature called View-through conversion reporting on the Google Content Network.

Display ads are influential in driving purchase consideration and the overall awareness for your product or service, and with View-through conversion reporting, you can better measure the impact of your display ad campaign for those instances where your ad is seen, but not immediately clicked on. More specifically, View-through conversion reporting measures the number of conversions that occurred within 30 days of a display ad impression for which there was no ad click generated.

By using View-through conversion reporting, you can more easily compare the performance of your Google Content Network campaign with the performance of your other display advertising campaigns. This feature can also help you determine the best ways and places to advertise, how best to optimise your display ad campaigns, and, ultimately, how to spend your advertising budget more effectively.

Here is an example of how View-through conversion reporting works: Let's say you're selling pet food online and you're measuring conversions on your site's shopping cart "Thank You" pages. You've been testing running an image ad with a cute cat in it on the Google Content Network. Previously, you could only see if a visitor clicked on your ad and went on to purchase on your site. But if a user saw your colourful image ad, and later thought to visit and buy from your site, you had no way of knowing that your cat image ad had generated this business.

Now, if a visitor sees your display ad, does not click on it but then visits your site within the next 30 days to purchase cans of cat food, you'll see a View-through conversion reported on your Campaigns tab in AdWords. With this feature you can much more clearly assess how your display campaigns are impacting visitor behaviour.

Visit the Campaigns tab in AdWords to activate the optional View-through conversion reporting column. You'll need to have AdWords Conversion Tracking installed for View-through conversion reporting to work for your campaigns. However, the good news is if you have conversion tracking enabled in your AdWords account, View-through conversion tracking will automatically work for your display ads.

To learn more about View-through conversion reporting on the Google Content Network, you can visit our Help Centre. We hope this feature will provide you with better information about your campaigns and help you get the most out of your display advertising campaigns.

Posted by Ciaran Russell, Google AdWords Team.

New additions to the Google Conversion Professional network

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:39:00 +0000

Today, we’re very delighted to unveil our latest wave of Google Conversion Professionals.

Our network of GCPs operate across the UK and Ireland and can help you to define your business and website goals and gain valuable insights into your customers.

Here are some of the services they provide:

Full implementation of analytics and site optimisation tools
Improvement of marketing effectiveness
Website enhancement through analysis and testing
Help tailoring your product & service proposition for maximum results

The latest additions to our network include:

Vivaki (part of the Publicis Group)
Latitude Group
Epiphany Solutions
iSpy Search Marketing

You can read more about our partners and how to contact them from the 'expert help' tab, where you can also read case studies showing the impact our GCPs have had on different businesses.

To hear tips and advice from our partners you can also check out this YouTube video.

Posted by Alan Wrafter, Programme Manager

Managing CPAs for maximum results

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:44:00 +0000

In August, we posted a Conversion Optimiser case study and Patrick left a comment asking how to manage campaigns effectively once you have enabled Conversion Optimiser. So today we are responding with tips on how to manage your bids to find the most cost-effective solution for your business. Thank you all for your comments to date, keep them coming!

On average, advertisers using Conversion Optimiser see a 21% increase in conversions while decreasing their CPA by 14%*. However, to get the best results for your business, you will need to set your maximum CPA (cost-per-acquisition) carefully, potentially trying a few different CPAs before deciding what level works best for you.

*This analysis compares the performance of Conversion Optimiser campaigns with a control set of campaigns and represents the average impact of Conversion Optimiser. The actual impact will vary from campaign to campaign

How do I decide on a maximum CPA?
In order for your business to be profitable, you will have a maximum amount that you can spend on each sale or lead before advertising costs exceed the value from the successful conversion. This is your break even point.

Take time to work out how much you can, or are willing to, spend securing conversions, while still returning a profit. Once you know this, you can set a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bid and Conversion Optimiser will manage your CPCs for maximum results. There's no hard and fast rule when setting CPAs - but you will know your business best.

How can I maximise conversions and ROI?

Setting a maximum CPA is similar to setting a maximum CPC in that you can restrict the traffic you are getting for a campaign if your CPA is set too low. If you find that you are getting fewer conversions than you would like, try increasing your maximum CPA in small increments. Let Conversion Optimiser run for a few days at a CPA level that you want to try and monitor the results by seeing how many conversions you get at this new cost, and how much profit you make at this new level.

Remember, the lowest cost-per-acquisition may not always lead to maximum profits for your business. If you can get more conversions at a higher price-per-conversion, do the total additional profits outweigh the additional costs?

A simple example...
Say you make €10 profit on each t-shirt you sell before AdWords costs. If your average cost-per-conversion is €2, and you are getting 100 conversions per week at this cost, then you would make €800 profit on the sale of t-shirts after advertising costs.

However, if you raise your maximum CPA to get an average cost-per-conversion of €3 you get 200 conversions per week, because by bidding more you get more conversions. You would then make a profit of €1,400 after advertising costs.

Let Conversion Optimiser run for a few days at each CPA level that you want to try, then monitor the results.

Do I focus on specific problem areas?
As CPAs are set at the ad group level, changes to the maximum will affect all keywords in the group. If you find that some of your keywords are performing well at your current CPA, but you would like to improve the performance of others, you may consider breaking out your ad group into smaller groups.

Try leaving your top performers in the current ad group and placing some of the weaker keywords into a new ad group within the same campaign. Now you can adjust your CPA on your top performers to get additional conversions, while monitoring and tweaking keywords with less traffic to ensure that they are profitable for you.

I need a lower CPA to remain profitable, what impact will this have?

Say you need to lower your current cost-per-conversion for some products to maintain profitability. In this case, gradually reduce the Ad Group max CPA over time and monitor the results. You should expect to see a decrease in traffic, clicks and conversions as you lower your max CPA. However, each conversion should fall to or below your desired cost level.

I want to make the most out of my budget

If you are not meeting your campaign's daily budget, but are willing to do so, then you can try raising the max CPA for some of your ad groups. This lets you see how many more conversions are available at the higher CPA level.

Alternatively, create a new ad group, with new keywords, for your campaign. Conversion Optimiser allows you to test broad match keywords to see what your potential customers are searching for, while still looking to only show your ads when a conversion is likely. Using the search query report, find out what specific keywords are leading to conversions and add these directly to your campaign for maximum results.

To learn more about Conversion Optimiser visit this website, where you can find out how to activate Conversion Optimiser in your AdWords account today.

Posted by Faustina Clifford, Google AdWords Team.

Find new converting keywords more efficiently with the Search-based Keyword Tool

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:09:00 +0000

Trying to think all of the possible keyword variations that your potential customers could be using to find your site can sometimes be an inexact science. But did you know that you can leverage the power of search to discover these missed keyword opportunities? By logging into the Search-based Keyword Tool and entering your website’s URL, you can quickly and easily discover search queries that are relevant to your site, but that are not currently in your AdWords campaigns.

When you enter your URL, you will not only receive potentially valuable new keyword ideas, but also:

The average number of searches on each query per month
The competitive bidding level for each term
The estimated bid to appear in the top three ad positions
The % of time with which an ad for your website appeared for the given query
The % of time which your site appeared in the first page of search results for the query
The suggested landing page for each keyword

Read how a South African travel services company, Accommodation Direct, increased their conversions and reduced cost per conversion by 34 percent with the Search-based Keyword Tool (SbKT) here.

To see your keyword ideas, just go to www.google.com/sktool, sign in to your AdWords account, and enter your website URL.

Post by David O'Donovan, Google AdWords Team.

Make Your Website Work – Free guide launched today

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:44:00 +0000

We've just launched a brand new guide to improving website performance called 'Make Your Website Work', and we wanted our Conversion Room readers to be the first to see it! The guide can be viewed online from the 'e-book' tab above, and you can also download it in PDF format to read later.

The booklet focuses on common website design pitfalls from the point of view of a potential customer and uses real case study examples to show how you can improve your own website conversion performance.

We've also partnered with our Google Conversion Professionals to offer three lucky companies a free website health check from one of our experts. To be in with a chance of winning this service simply fill in our feedback form after you've read the guide.

Check out the e-book tab today and read our online guide, or download to read later or pass to a colleague. And as always please let us know what you think, send us an email or leave a comment below.

Posted By Edward Jackson, Google Website Optimiser Team

New Internet Stats site from Google

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:34:00 +0000

Today we wanted to share a cool new website that can help your business by giving insights into what's going on online. The Google Internet Stats site offers stats on the economic environment, consumer behaviour and current media trends. (Please note this site is currently only available in English and covers mostly UK statistics)

The stats are split into five sections:

Technology
Macro Economic Trends
Media Landscape
Media Consumption
Consumer Trends

The information will be updated regularly with up to date research, but if you have an interesting insight you'd like to share you can Submit a Stat to appear on the site.

We think the Consumer Trends section will be particularly useful for Conversion Room readers. Take a look at what your website visitors and customers are doing online and think about adapting your site design/advertising to suit their behaviours.

Did you know...

In mid-2008, social networking accounted for around 10% of worldwide online time. This is a category that didn't exist 3 years ago.Nielsen, March 2009

76% of UK adult Internet users find out about local services online. Ofcom, August 2008

There are 1.5 million business searches daily on YouTube, making it the second-most-visited destination for business searches, behind Google. Google, Forbes, BtoB, June 2009, June 2009

33% of shoppers in the UK shop a lot more online since the recession. Media & Marketing, March 2009

Don't forget to also try out Insights for Search to look for up to date search trends. Check out these previous Conversion Room posts to learn more:

Capitalise on search trends using Insights for Search

Insights for Search iGoogle Gadget

Let us know what you think about the Internet Stats site, drop us an email or leave a comment.

You could also check out the Google Barometer Blog, where the Internet Stats site was recently announced. This blog is a useful resource for tips and advice on planning your marketing campaigns.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

New look Conversion Room blog!

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:37:00 +0000

This morning we're delighted to launch our revamped Conversion Room blog, along with some cool new additions to the site.

Learn
Check out the 'Learn' tab to find information on examining the various components of your website to ensure you are maximising the profitability you get from your existing traffic. You can download case studies from companies who have improved site performance and conversions, and apply the learnings to your site. Don't forget to sign up to our free webinar here too.

Expert help
Looking for an expert to help you improve your website profitability? Take a look at the Expert Help page to hear from our Google Conversion Professionals and find a company to suit your needs. If you're part of a company that would like to become a Google Conversion Professional, you can learn more about the application process here too.

We hope you enjoy the new additions to Conversion Room. Don't forget to sign up to our site feed to ensure you never miss a post. And if you have any feedback on the new look blog or topics you'd like to see covered in the future drop us an email:

conversionroomfeedback@googlegroups.com

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

Companies & Conversions: How EMC Conchango optimise websites based on user behaviour

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:38:00 +0000

EMC Conchango has recently become part of the Google Conversion Professionals programme. In this final post in our current series of Companies & Conversions, David Ellis, Head of Performance Measurement at EMC Conchango considers how website optimisation services will impact user centered design (UCD), but also what attitudes need to shift before this revolution in website design really takes off.

Earlier this week, I announced the result of our most recent website optimisation test. I was very excited - the results were outstanding - but what was most interesting was colleagues’ reactions to the results.

The initial reaction from a colleague was “Will the business believe the results?” And this, I believe, is the curious position that website optimisation services find themselves in at the moment. Because the results are often so impressive that businesses sometimes find them literally unbelievable – they can’t understand how they can be so good. This is particularly the case as the investment is so reasonable – after all, many thousands (or, indeed, hundreds of thousands) of pounds can be spent getting sites or applications up and running and they never seem to get such results.

And yet, there is no catch; these are real increases and improvements. This most recent test will add millions of revenue to the bottom line of the business and so the real benefits of the programme are indisputable.

I think there are two reasons for people finding website optimisation unbelievable, one of which in particular reflects a fundamental change in how we approach user centered design.

The return of the entrepreneur

Firstly, I think many businesses expect that only major levels of investment can deliver significant uplift and that these changes require significant back end work. In other words, they understand the limitation of their existing infrastructure – that is, the site design and structure, the back-end systems and the content management system and processes. They accept that, whilst they may be able to improve some things, these are essentially tweaks until they can completely rebuild their web site and ecommerce operations. But the point about website optimisation techniques is they focus on how the individual site visitor behaves, so any back-end infrastructure issues do not need to be a limiting factor, if the business is willing to work around them.

Those businesses who “get” optimisation have a more entrepreneurial attitude and are prepared to take risks. They tend to look beyond immediate limitations and want to learn and improve. They understand that in order to deliver big improvements, they need to take risks and are confident enough to accept these. Indeed, one of the great advantages of website optimisation techniques is that they manage risk by testing out all the options and demonstrating the most effective, thereby actually reducing the ongoing risk.

The changing face of User Centered Design

The second big point is that many businesses, and agencies, think they know best when it comes to designing interfaces. Agencies, in particular, focus their skills and their services on designing beautiful interfaces in the first place, and as a result very often they regard any alterations to or deviations from these interfaces as a threat. Businesses and agencies don’t always have the combination of analytical and business skills to reassess and then optimise their site’s performance.

However, the very best designers realise that the ultimate measure of how good an interface is, is the sales performance; how many conversions (sales, leads, or whatever) it generated for the business. They are fascinated by how they can learn and improve their understanding of how users really behave and respond to their designs. Our designers and user experience architects at EMC Conchango have really taken to our website optimisation services, because they realise that the best designs “live” once they are launched, and then evolve to respond to customer behaviour; they also realise that a site is never truly “finished” and set in stone, and they also get very excited when we outline just what an impact their work has had on the client’s business.

And this is the most interesting part, because this changes the nature of how we design web sites. No site is complete as it goes live and no matter how talented the design team, optimal rework adds real value. And this means that website optimisation services in general are currently changing the way that user centred design works. UCD no longer ends with a complete and final answer when the site goes live, but it enters a new phase with a site that is “born” and that will grow and evolve to be even better as we learn how it best can work in its particular ecosystem. UCD used to deliver sites that performed well, but from now on, with website optimisation services, the two complement each other to deliver best performing sites.

Tips for website optimisation

Embrace your limitations - Look to optimise what you can, rather than look at all the things that you can’t change because they require significant investment; you may be surprised with how much you can alter – and improve

Rediscover your inner entrepreneur – Website optimisation services offer genuine returns for those that back themselves, but you have to be confident enough to manage some risks, even if they are comparatively small

Test your designs - Consider how multivariate techniques could improve your design processes. For example, use the 80/20 rule to get most of the site ready, but then look to use optimisation techniques to establish the answers for the final 20%.

By David Ellis, Head of Performance Measurement, EMC Conchango

EMC Conchango are part of the Google Conversion Professionals Network, learn more about this programme and find an expert to help you to improve your online profitability here.

How to manage your ads effectively across the web

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:33:00 +0000

In our previous posts on the Google Content Network, we talked about the value of reaching buying customers across the web. Customers spend 95% of their time browsing sites beyond search engines, and you can achieve CPAs on the Content Network that are comparable to Search*. What are the best ways to get great conversion results?

Let's look at some simple steps that will help ensure your ads show on the most relevant websites possible and result in more sales and conversions for you.

Step 1: Ensure your ads are eligible to show on relevant websites

Step 2: Build a strong campaign

Step 3: Monitor your performance

Step 4: Focus your advertising

Step 1: Ensure your ads are eligible to show on relevant websites

To get your ads showing on relevant websites now, ensure that your campaigns are opted in to the Content Network. You can do this through your AdWords account.

Here's how to do it:

Sign in to your AdWords account at http://adwords.google.com.
Click the name of the campaign you want to adjust.
On the 'Settings' tab, locate the "Networks and devices" section, and click "Edit."
Opt in to showing your ads across the network.
Click "Save" when you're done making your selection.

Step 2: Build a strong campaign

Just like with Search, the performance of your ads on the Content Network is linked closely to the content and structure of your campaign.

Create specific keywords and ad texts in separate ad groups for each product or service you want to advertise. Then we'll place your ads on web pages that are relevant to your business and your customers. By creating themed and specific ad groups, you get the best performance on Search and the Content Network.

Step 3: Monitor your performance

Once you've opted in to showing campaigns on the Content Network, Google will match your advertising, by theme, to relevant websites. You can monitor how these 'automatic placements' perform for you in your AdWords account. To do this, simply follow the instructions below.

Select the 'Networks' tab within your campaign.
Click ''show details" beside your automatic placements.

Use this view to compare the performance of your ads on the different sites they've shown on. Metrics include clicks, impressions, cost and conversions / sales generated when your ads showed on each site. You can then see which sites are most profitable for your business.

Step 4: Focus your advertising budget

You also have the ability to select individual sites that are performing well and focus your budget on these by adding them as managed placements. Here's how:

Select the 'Networks' tab within your campaign.
Click ''show details' beside 'automatic placements'.
Select the sites you wish to manage separately.
Click 'Manage placement and bid'.

Similarly you can reduce your bids on certain sites or even exclude sites altogether if you feel this will make your advertising more successful overall.

Follow these simple steps to get the exposure and results you want, as you reach customers across the web. You can also learn more about advertising on the Content Network here.

* 'CPA Performance Trends on the Google Content Network' - Google white paper 2009

Posted by Ciarán Russell, Google AdWords Team.

Companies and Conversions: Opportunity analysis techniques from MoneySpyder

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:16:00 +0000

Moneyspyder recently became part of the Google Conversion Professionals programme and today Doug Hall, Chief Technology Officer, shares his insights into opportunity analysis on your website.

Starting as you mean to go on

Over the last three years at Moneyspyder, we have developed and refined a set of tools, processes and techniques that we use to help our clients decide what they really need to focus on in order to improve their websites. We've helped clients discover opportunities that can significantly increase revenue through building an 'Opportunity Profile' prior to any development or testing.

The Opportunity Profile should be the first output from an initial web analytics audit and review. Building a clear strategic and tactical plan without firstly drawing the metaphorical line in the sand is a rather fluid exercise resulting in a confusing and nebulous representation of a web business.

The Revenue Funnel

A fundamental tool in the Opportunity Analysis armoury is the revenue funnel. Built using Google Analytics data (either in a spreadsheet or via the GA API), the revenue funnel is similar to the well known goal funnel in Google Analytics. Rather than seeing where users are leaking from a checkout process, the revenue funnel shows where revenue is being left on the table. Where the goal funnel uses each goal step, the revenue funnel uses the main touch points on a site to represent the steps towards the gross profit figure:

The top bar represents the maximum potential revenue that the site would generate with 100% conversion. Subsequent bars represent the theoretical maximum potential revenue for:

• Users who didn't bounce
• Users who added products to their basket
• Users who started the checkout

Finally, we see actual figures for revenue and gross profit. Whilst the first bars are notional, and the numbers have been blurred to protect the innocent, the numbers themselves are not of interest at this point. The real value can be gained by looking closely at the relative sizes of the bars. Seeing that the majority of the revenue is being left on the table at the basket stage in this example indicates just where maximum impact on the bottom line can be gained. Does the site need a new basket? The funnel certainly suggests this!

The same graph can be visualised as a pie chart where the entire pie represents the 100% conversion figure:

Roll your own

Key to the Moneyspyder philosophy is to 'take the think out of eCommerce'. The revenue funnel takes the think out of what to prioritise quickly and clearly. Moving forward, the revenue funnel can be used to pose 'what if...?' questions to your Google Analytics data. Simple sensitivity analysis can reveal what levers to pull in order to affect maximum change to your gross profit. This straightforward technique has proven useful and valuable in getting effective change programmes rolling. Try it with your data and you could see some revealing insights!

By Doug Hall, Chief Technology Officer, Moneyspyder.

Moneyspyder are part of the Google Conversion Professionals Network, learn more about this programme and find an expert to help you to improve your online profitability here.

Companies and conversions: how Next increased conversion rates by 103%

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 07:54:00 +0000

Over the next few weeks on the Conversion Room we are going to look at how real companies have used conversion tools to improve their ROI. We will also hear tips from our network of Google Conversion Professionals on how they help clients improve their online profitability.

This week, Next share with us how they improved their conversion rate by 103% on high traffic keywords.

Next's PPC keywords 'catalogue' and 'directory' drove high volumes of traffic to their site. In fact, these keywords represented 30% of Next's overall PPC traffic. The Next team noticed that while these keywords brought lots of visitors to their site, the visitors were likely to bounce - or leave the site straight away. Having identified this trend in Google Analytics Next looked at their site. The keywords 'catalogue' and 'directory' both led to a catalogue sign up page.

In an attempt to reduce the bounce rate, Next tested sending visitors on these valuable keywords to their homepage instead. The results were dramatic, bounce rates decreased by 37% as more people were spending more time on the site. As a result sales increased, and these keywords experienced a 103% increase in conversion rate and 107% increase in per visitor value.

Catalogue page

Home page

What can you do next?

Check out the following report within your Google Analytics accounts: Traffic Sources >> AdWords, then look at the bounce rate for various keywords that drive traffic to your site.

Examine the relationship between keywords with a high bounce rate and the URLs these visitors are sent to.

Could visitors searching on your keywords be brought to a more relevant landing page?

Next are just one of the companies that have shared conversion improvement success stories with us. Read more about Next and others in the Conversion Centre. You can also learn more about our Google Conversion Professionals programme and how they could help you improve your site's profitability here.

Posted by Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team.

Now even more AdWords campaigns can use the Conversion Optimiser!

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:56:00 +0000

The Conversion Optimiser is a free bid management tool that allows you to set your optimal cost-per-acquisition (CPA) values to make the most of your advertising spend and really drive profitability from AdWords. On average, campaigns using Conversion Optimiser see a 21% increase in conversions, combined with a 14% decrease in CPA, when compared to manual CPC bid management.*

*This analysis compares the performance of Conversion Optimiser campaigns with a control set of campaigns and represents the average impact of Conversion Optimiser. The actual impact will vary from campaign to campaign.

We have recently lowered the criteria to use the Conversion Optimiser from 30 to 15 conversions in a campaign within the last 30 days. This means even more AdWords advertisers can benefit from this free bid management tool.

To use the Conversion Optimiser you must also have Conversion Tracking enabled within your AdWords account or import your conversion goals from Google Analytics into AdWords. Check out our previous Conversion Room posts to find out more about these two options:

Boosting AdWords ROI with the Conversion Optimiser

Importing your Google Analytics goals into AdWords

Read our Success Stories and find out how UK Tights have used the Conversion Optimiser to reduce cost per conversion by over 50%. You can also learn more about how the Conversion Optimiser works by visiting this microsite.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Team

Check out Page Speed and help make your site and the web faster!

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:28:00 +0000

Making your website as fast as possible could help keep visitors on your site, so any improvements you can make to the speed of your site should be good for business! Conversely, if browsing a site is slow and cumbersome, visitors may give up and shop elsewhere. Today we want to share a cool Google tool called Page Speed that can show you how to increase the speed of pages within your site. If you are not responsible for your website's code you may want to pass this information on to your webmaster.

What is Page Speed?

Page Speed is an open source Firefox/Firebug Add-on that webmasters and web developers can use to evaluate the performance of web pages and get suggestions for improvement.

How does Page Speed work?

Page Speed can carry out tests on your website's web server configuration and front-end code. The tests rate your site against a set of best practices proven to enhance web page performance. When you run Page Speed on on your site's pages you will get a set of scores for each page, as well as suggestions on how to improve performance.

How do I get Page Speed?

Access the Page Speed site here. Once you or your webmaster install the add-on you can begin testing your web pages. You can also watch this YouTube video to learn more.

Page Speed is part of a wider Google campaign to make the web faster for everyone. Check out the YouTube video below to hear about Google engineers and webmasters vision on making the web faster:

Find out more by visiting the Google Code site. If you have your own suggestions for making the web faster please let us know.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

Improve your AdWords ads to win even more converting customers

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:21:00 +0000

With search advertising, the route that a buying customer takes towards making a purchase on your website begins with their search query (your AdWords keyword). But it is the content of your ads that will determine if they ever actually reach your site. So we thought we would share the short video below which contains some of our best practices for creating winning ad texts. These will provide you with ideas to test when writing your ads, which will help to differentiate your business from the crowd and drive even more converting customers to your website!

Test the above optimisation tips by logging into your AdWords account today, and editing your ads to make your marketing messages even more compelling to your potential customers!

For more information, visit our content on ad text optimisation in the AdWords Help Centre.

Did you like the video? We'd love to hear your feedback. Let us know.

Posted By David O'Donovan, Google AdWords Team

How to convert clicks into profit – download free Google how-to guide

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:28:00 +0000

We wanted to share this how-to guide with you as we think it is a great resource for anyone involved in online marketing. How to convert clicks into profits, is a step by step manual for working with 5 Google products that can help you increase your online profitablility: Insights for Search, Conversion Tracking, Conversion Optimiser, Google Analytics and Website Optimiser.

Whether you are new to one or all of these products, or an experienced user, you will find tips and best practices to help you track your online results and drive competitive improvements. Equip yourself with the tools and the resources to identify areas of improvements on your website and start seeing the impact you can have on your bottom line.

Download a pdf version of the how-to guide now and drive conversions for your business, no matter what the economic climate.

Did you like the how-to guide? We'd love to hear your feedback. Let us know

Posted By Ruth Brennan, Google AdWords Team

Check out our free Google webinars & online training

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:03:00 +0000

Today we wanted to remind you of the range of free Google training available online. We're highlighting some upcoming webinars and online resources that could help you understand and improve your website conversions.

Google Webinars

The Google AdWords team run regular webinars on a variety of topics which you can attend for free. Some webinars are live, and others are recorded so you can access them on demand. The English language webinar calendar can be found here. (Webinars are also offered in other languages, find out more here).

Below we have highlighted just some of the topics we thought would be of interest to Conversion Room readers...

Conversion Optimiser
August 19th 2009 3pm - 4pm British Summer Time (GMT +1)

Join the product team for an overview of how Conversion Optimiser works and learn how you can get more conversions at a lower cost per conversion from your AdWords search and content campaigns.
Register now

Tracking your AdWords Return on Investment
September 9th 3pm - 4pm British Summer Time (GMT +1)

This webinar will show you how to better convert online clicks into profit for your business using AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics. We will show you how to get started with these tools in order to anaylse your return-on-investment and make informed decisions in your AdWords account.
Register now

Websites That Work: 10 ways to convert visitors into buyers
September 16th 3pm - 4pm British Summer Time (GMT +1)

This webinar will explore the common website design pitfalls and techniques to avoid them. It will also show how leading companies have used free Google analytics and testing tools to dramatically improve conversion performance.
Register now

You can also access on demand webinars, check out the recorded sessions below:

Google Analytics I: Getting started & tracking conversions

Google Analytics II: Managing your Google Analytics account set up for best results

Google Analytics III: Report navigation & analysis of AdWords data

Website Optimiser - Test & enhance your website

Google Analytics Learning Modules

A few months back we announced the launch of the Google Analytics IQ, an individual qualification you can take to show your proficiency in Google Analytics. You can improve your knowledge of Google Analytics for free by following our online tutorials within the Conversion University.

If you want to go on and take the exam you can do so by visiting this page.

We'll continue to keep you updated regularly about Google webinars and trainings on the Conversion Room. In the meantime we hope you find these free resources useful!

Posted by Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team.

Need help improving your site’s online profitability? Contact a Google Conversion Professional

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:41:00 +0000

Today we are really excited to unveil a network of conversion experts in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, who are ready to help you grow your business by increasing your conversions and driving greater return on investment from your online spend. Our Google Conversion Professionals use web analytics and testing best practices to turn more of your website visitors into paying customers. Google conversion tools, such as Google Analytics and Website Optimiser, are free to use but if you lack the time and resources to really focus on the insights these products provide then a Google Conversion Professional could be the answer.

Google Conversion Professionals are Google accredited specialists that examine your marketing effectiveness, website usability, and product / service offering, in order to find areas of improvement. Learn more about how these elements of your business impact your overall profitability by visiting our new site.

Google Conversion Professional services include:

• Full implementation of analytics and site optimisation tools
• Improvement of marketing effectiveness
• Website enhancement through analysis and testing
• Help tailoring product & service proposition for maximum results

Check out this video to hear our experts sharing their advice on improving conversions...

How do I contact a Google Conversion Professional?

Visit our brand new conversion focused website today to learn more about our experts and find a professional to work with today:

www.google.co.uk/gcp

In the coming weeks we will feature cases studies showing how major brands have increased conversions by addressing issues with their marketing effectiveness, website usability or by adapting their product/service offering. We'll also feature guest posts from our new Google Conversion Professionals. Sign up for our site feed or subscription service to ensure you don't miss out.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

New German conversion blog launched

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:15:00 +0000

We're delighted to announce a new blog for our German speaking Conversion Room visitors across Europe. Our German Conversion Room blog launched last week and will cover Google Analytics, Website Opitmiser and AdWords converison tools just like the Conversion Room.

Check out the new blog today by visiting conversionroom-de.blogspot.com. You can also sign up for the site feed to have weekly posts delivered directly to your email address.

If you have ideas for topics you'd like to see covered on this blog, or our new German blog, please drop us an email.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

Optimise your AdWords keywords using Google Analytics

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:17:00 +0000

Have you ever wondered how good the return on investment is from your AdWords traffic? More importantly have you ever asked yourself how you can improve it? In today's post we're going to address these thoughts and go over how you can answer three specific questions:

Which of your AdWords keywords are generating the most revenue?

Which are generating the least revenue?

How can you make your keyword advertising more profitable?

Before we begin, make sure that you have linked your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts together in order to see detailed AdWords reporting within your Google Analytics account. To find out how, check out this video. With both accounts linked the next step is to ensure that you make decisions based on trustworthy data. Isolate the data you need in Google Analytics by following the steps below...

Make decisions based on valid data

Imagine the following scenario, you've just started tracking with Analytics and 10 visitors arrive on your site, all of them converting by performing an action you have set as your goal. You could say that you have a 100% conversion rate since every visitor you have tracked has converted. However, it is unlikely that this behaviour will hold true for the next 10 visitors.

To ensure that we are making decisions based on normal user behaviour we will only examine keywords that meet a certain threshold of visits. The higher the threshold, the more diluted the one off anomalies become. If most of your keywords are showing tens of visits rather than hundreds of visits, you can always expand the date range to increase their visit numbers.

Generate your AdWords optimisation report

Now that we have isolated only the keywords we're interested in, we can return to the 'AdWords Campaigns' report.

Under the 'Site Usage' tab we want to focus on the 'Bounce Rate' metric. We'll then compare it to a metric that shows us the return for our money such as 'RPC' (revenue-per-click) under the 'Clicks' tab or 'Goal Conversion Rate' under the 'Goals' tab. Whilst it's possible to toggle between the different tabs it's probably best to create a Custom Report , as seen below, to show only the data we are interested in.

With our new report now active, click on the 'google / (cpc)' entry to see only AdWords keywords. Next click on the comparison link on the top right of the report and compare 'Bounce Rate' on the left with either 'Goal Conversion Rate' or 'RPC' on the right.

Now that we have manipulated the data to show only information that is relevant, the next step is to discuss what can we do with it.

Separating the winners from the losers

The report should now be ordered by keywords that have a higher bounce rate first. Looking at the right of the screen we can see that of these keywords those with a green bar have performed above average for 'Goal Conversion Rate' or 'RPC', whilst those with a red bar have performed below average, i.e. green is 'good', red is 'bad'.

Now it's time to optimise your keywords...

Group 1: High Potential keywords

From the initial screen isolate only our 'green' keywords. These are keywords with a good return but a poor 'Bounce Rate'.

We should focus on trying to optimise these top performing revenue generating keywords with the aim of further increasing the return they bring in.

For our list of 'High Potential' keywords consider the following, our aim is to decrease the 'Bounce Rate' but maintain our higher than average return.

Examine the current Landing Page and consider deep linking further into the site to more relevant content.
Experiment with different ad copies that include the keyword in the title and possibly the Visible URL.
Drive visitors to a Landing Page that is built around those keywords. Experiment with Google Website Optimiser to achieve the best results.
Concentrate a higher percentage of your advertising budget on these keywords.

Group 2: Poor Converting Keywords

Previously we focused on the keywords that were generating the greatest return from AdWords. Looking on the other end of the scale we'll focus on the keywords that are performing below average and outline what actions you could take with them. Switch to the default 'table' view and order by 'Goal Conversion Rate' or 'RPC' so that the poorest performing keywords show first. Switching back to our 'comparison' view we should arrange our report to see poor performing 'Goal Conversion Rate' or 'RPC' results on the left and 'Bounce Rate' on the right, as in the image below.

Focusing on the keywords with poor conversion rates and that are in the red section of 'Bounce Rate' we can consider the actions below. Our aim is firstly to improve the 'Bounce Rate' and secondly, the return we get from these keywords:

Are these keywords relevant to your product/service? If the keywords are not relevant, are not performing, but are using up budget you could consider removing them. If they are relevant or you feel they have potential, optimise to improve performance per the steps below.

Examine the current Landing Page and consider deep linking further into the site to more relevant content.
Experiment with different ad copies that include the keyword in the title and possibly the Visible URL.
Drive visitors to a Landing Page that is built around those keywords. Experiment with Google Website Optimizer to achieve the best results.
Consider expanding these keywords to make them more specific or conversion focused e.g. 'buy google hat' in place of 'google hats'.

Group 3: Non-converters The final group of keywords are those that are within the green section of 'Bounce Rate' from the report structured in Group 2. Remember, a green 'Bounce Rate' indicates that visitors to the site via these keywords are more likely to explore your site.

These keywords don't convert but are driving traffic beyond the landing page. People are sticking around so these keywords do have some value. It is possible customers are researching before they commit to a purchase and to confirm you could look at the 'Visits to Purchase' report within the Ecommerce reports section of Google Analytics.

If you are satisfied that these keywords help in the conversion process then you could take the following action:

Move these keywords to a branding campaign whereby you could allocate a specific budget you are comfortable with to this campaign.
Consider expanding these keywords to make them more specific or conversion focused e.g. 'buy google hat' in place of 'google hats'. Monitor their performance over time to see if they improve.

Now you should be able to analyse your AdWords keywords using the data in your Google Analytics account. To learn more about optimising your AdWords campaigns visit the AdWords Help Centre and to find out more about optimising AdWords using Google Analytics check out this video.

We'd love to hear how you've used Google Analytics data to improve your AdWords performance, if you've got tips to share please let us know.

Posted By Eoin O'Carroll, Google Analytics Team

Spotlight on Google Analytics features part 3: Motion Charts

Evelyn O'Keeffe — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:10:00 +0000

Today, in part 3 of our spotlight on Google Analytics features, we are looking at Motion Charts.

What are Motion Charts?

Motion Charts allow you to animate your Google Analytics reports so you can easily visualise and explore trends in your data. They offer multi-dimensional analysis of all metrics for a particular report within your Google Analytics account.

How do I use Motion Charts?

Look for the 'visualize' button at the top right of the report interface within your Google Analytics account.

Next, create your customised Motion Chart by selecting the type of information you want to see on the X and Y axis, and then selecting what the size and colour of the circles or bar graphs represent. When you've selected the metrics you want to see, simply click on the play button to see your data animated!

You can also link to your newly created chart directly by copying the URL at the 'Link to chart' button shown below:

Why would I use Motion Charts?

Now you know how to create your own charts you may be wondering how you can use this feature in your day to day analysis. Below are two examples that may be useful...

1. Identify AdWords opportunities
If you have an AdWords account linked to your Google Analytics account, you may want to look at the bounce rate for visits to your site via these keywords.

Go to 'Traffic Sources' - 'AdWords Campaigns', and then drill down to the keyword level. Set the date range to one month. Select 'Visualize', and create your motion chart using the following settings:

X axis: Bounce Rate
Y axis: Revenue
Size: Clicks
Color: Visits

Press play and you will be able to animate your data and easily see which keywords generate a lot of revenue for your business but also have a high bounce rate. There is an opportunity to grow revenue by reducing the bounce rate on these profitable keywords.

2. See trends in behaviour for different languages
If you have an e-commerce website, it could be useful to look at your visitors' language preferences in order to see areas where you could focus marketing efforts and website development to increase conversions and drive revenue.

Go to 'Visitors' - 'Languages'. Set the date range to one month. Create your Motion Chart using the settings below:

X-axis: E-commerce Conversion Rate
Y-axis: Bounce Rate
Color: Revenue
Size: Visits

If your website is only available in English, for example, use this report to look for languages other than English that drive lots of visits to your site and actually convert well.

If visitors from these languages have a high bounce rate it may be a worthwhile investment to have your site available in these language to keep visitors on your site for longer. Conversely, if visitors from a particular language have a relatively low bounce rate but are converting fairly well this is an indication that they are happy to use the English version of your site. You could wait until further down the line to look at translating your website for these languages.

Check out this YouTube video to see Motion Charts in action:

You can also visit our Help Centre to learn more, or read posts from our colleagues in the US.
Once you've mastered Motion Charts we'd love to hear from you by email if you've thought of other cool uses for this feature.

Next week we'll have a post from our Google Website Optimiser Specialist, so make sure to check back then, or sign up to our site feed so you never miss a post!

And if you have suggestions for topics you'd like to see covered in future posts please let us know at conversionroomfeedback@googlegroups.com

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team