Google Data » Trevor Claiborne

Site Speed gets an upgrade. Hello Performance tab

Trevor Claiborne — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:32:00 +0000

This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates. This week, we share an update to the Site Speed report to help you better understand your site's performance.

In May, we made it easier to compare your site’s business performance with your site’s actual performance with the introduction of the Site Speed report in the new version of Google Analytics. Today we want to share an update.

We’ve heard the need to get into more detail about the reporting of your page load times. We’ve introduced a new performance tab in the SIte Speed report that will allow you to see a breakdown of the samples. This allows you to move beyond the averages and better understand your site’s performance.

For example, I’m looking at the Site Speed report for the Google Analytics blog. I can see that my average page load time is 7 seconds (we have some room to improve here). Now, we know that averages can hide what’s happening underneath the surface.

With the Performance tab in the Site Speed report, I can now dig in and find those details.

Ah ha! I can now see that, almost half of my visitors (46%) are actually seeing decent load times of under 3 seconds. And another 32% are getting the page in under 7 seconds. But there’s definitely still room to improve with a full 20% seeing 7+ second load times.

Taking this a step further, I can apply an advanced segment, in this case Visits with Conversions. I have set up the blog with engagement goals. So I’m trying to see if there’s a relationship between page load time and engaging with the content here.

And looking at this data, it looks like there is. The distribution of visits with conversions is skewed towards fast-loading pages. As page load time increases, I am seeing a drop in conversions. I can actually see the business impact of a slow loading page.

Another type of segmentation to try would be by geography. To start off, try segmenting visits from your country versus visits not from your country. From there you may want to dig into specific countries and look at page load times.

You'll find the Site Speed report in the Content section of the new Google Analytics. To get site speed data, you need to make a small change to your Google Analytics tracking code. Setup instructions and more details about the Site Speed report are in the Help Center. We hope you enjoy the new Performance tab, and you can expect more updates for Site Speed coming soon.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Linking all of your AdWords accounts to Google Analytics

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:15:00 +0000

This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates. This week, Gavin Doolan, an Analytics specialist shares some of improvements to AdWords linking in Google Analytics v5.

We are happy to announce a new feature that will allow you to use multiple AdWords accounts with Google Analytics more effectively.

Previously it was only possible to link a single AdWords account to a single Google Analytics account. This made it more challenging to use auto-tagging and the AdWords reports inside of Google Analytics.

Starting today, you can now link multiple AdWords accounts to your Google Analytics account. The new data sources section in the Google Analytics account settings area makes it easy to use auto-tagging with multiple AdWords accounts and import your AdWords data into Google Analytics.

Let’s take a look at how to set this up:

Before you start, make sure that you're using a Google account that has access to both your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, and is an Administrator for the Analytics account.

If you want to link multiple AdWords accounts to a single Analytics account, you need to set the new version of Analytics as your default:

1. Sign into Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics.

2. Click New Version at the top right of the page.

3. Click Make this version default.

If you skip this step, you won’t see the new linking interface when you sign into AdWords.

Linking your accounts

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.

2. Click the Reporting and Tools tab, then click Google Analytics.

3. Click the gear icon at the top right.

4. Click All Accounts at the top left of the page.

5. Click the account to which you want to link the AdWords account.

6. Click the Data Sources tab.

7. Click the AdWords tab.

8. Click Link Accounts button.

If you are linking from a My Client Center child account the process is very similar. You can more in this article: Linking Analytics Accounts to My Client Center (MCC) Accounts.

Improvements to applying AdWords account data to multiple profiles

Now that you can link multiple AdWords accounts to Google Analytics, we’ve also made it easier import your AdWords data into multiple profiles in Google Analytics. We have put together a quick video demonstrating how to do this:

If you’re less of a visual learner, you can always find instructions on how to link accounts in the Google Analytics Help Center.

Happy linking!

Gavin Doolan

Google Analytics Team

Introducing Multi-Channel Funnels: discover untapped opportunities in your conversion path

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 18:10:00 +0000

An ad is clicked, and a purchase is made. Marketers have long used Google Analytics and similar tools to see which marketing efforts drive sales and conversions. Measurement is fundamental to ROI-focused marketing. Now, we’re taking this measurability a few steps further.

When a customer buys or converts on your site, most conversion tracking tools credit the most recent link or ad clicked. In reality though, customers research, compare and make purchase decisions via multiple touch points across multiple channels. So marketers that measure return solely on the last channel that a customer touches before conversion are getting an incomplete picture, and potentially missing out on important opportunities to reach their customers.

That’s why we’re excited today to introduce Multi-Channel Funnels to all Google Analytics users. This set of five new reports in Google Analytics gives marketers insight into the full path to conversion over a 30 day period, not simply the last click.

By looking at interactions across most digital media channels, including clicks from paid and organic searches, affiliates, social networks, and display ads, you can understand how different channels work together to create sales and conversions.

We’ve been piloting Multi-Channel Funnels with several customers over the past few months, and we’ve seen our customers gain valuable insight into the buying-cycle and understand the often hidden contribution of channels like social and display to conversions.

One of our early partners in the pilot, HUGO BOSS, uncovered significant contributions from upper funnel efforts, helping to better inform marketing strategy. "Knowing more about how our customers find us is very important, and this data helps us make better decisions. We found out that nearly two out of every three conversions involves more than one touch point,” said Patrick Berresheim, Director E-Commerce/CRM for HUGO BOSS. “It's now possible to value the contributions of assisting channels, which had previously been hidden by looking only at the last click.”

If you use Google Analytics on your website, and have goals or e-commerce tracking enabled, you can begin using the reports today by clicking on the My Conversions tab, with no further setup required. If you are an AdWords customer, make sure to link your AdWords and Analytics accounts to get the most detail on your ads performance. Starting today, you’ll see complete data in the reports for the past two months, and we’ll be expanding to encompass data back through January 2011 in the coming days. Update: This data is now available in Multi-Channel Funnels reports.

To help you learn more about the type of analysis you can do using Multi-Channel Funnels, including advanced features such as conversion segments and custom channel groupings, we’ll be scheduling a free webinar - look out for the registration details on the blog in a couple of weeks or sign up here to be notified by email. We’ll be walking through the reports and common use cases and you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions - we hope you’ll be able to make it.

Update: September 1, 2011 10:30am PST - Conversions are now available in the Multi-Channel Funnel reports going back to January 2011

Posted by Bill Kee, Product Manager for Google Analytics

Update to Sessions in Google Analytics

Trevor Claiborne — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 01:45:00 +0000

Updated: 8/17/11 at 2:10 PM PST

Beginning today, there will be a small change in how sessions are calculated in Google Analytics. We think this update will lead to a clearer understanding of website interactions. We also want to explain how these changes might impact your reports.

What’s changing?

Currently, Google Analytics ends a session when:

More than 30 minutes have elapsed between pageviews for a single visitor.
At the end of a day.
When a visitor closes their browser.

If any of these events occur, then the next pageview from the visitor will start a new session.

In the new model, Google Analytics will end a session when:

More than 30 minutes have elapsed between pageviews for a single visitor.
At the end of a day.
When any traffic source value for the user changes. Traffic source information includes: utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content, utm_id, utm_campaign, and gclid.

As before, if any of these events occur, then the next pageview from the user will be the start of a new session.

How will this affect my Google Analytics data?

This change only applies for visits going forward from today, and your historical data will not change. We’re bringing the definition of session in line with the common definition of a visit. If a visitor leaves your site and returns soon after with a different traffic source value, each visit will be measured with its own session.

Since Google Analytics will start new sessions for all new campaign information, sessions will now have the more accurate attribution information. This will be especially helpful if you use Multi-Channel Funnels. Additionally, by continuing a session when the user closes their browser for only a very short time, sessions will more accurately model a user’s engagement with the website. Overall, this change may slightly increase the number of visits. Based on our research, most users will see less than a 1% change.

We are excited about this update, and look forward to providing you with a better understanding of your website activity. Please leave any question about the change in the comments.

Update 8/17/2011 2:10 PM PST:

We identified an issue responsible for unexpected traffic changes following our recent update to how sessions are defined in Google Analytics. A fix was released at 2pm PST Tuesday August 16th.

The issue affected some sites using the following configurations:

1. If a user comes to a customer’s site with a space in some part of their traffic source data, then revisit the same landing page during that session by refreshing the page or later pressing the back button, a new session will be created for every hit to that page. (Clicking a link elsewhere on the site that leads back to the page should not matter.)

2. Google Analytics implementations using multiple trackers (an unsupported configuration) are also affected when a space is included in the traffic source data. These sites will see fewer visits from new visitors, and more visits from returning visitors (with some variation due to different implementations).

Again, a fix for this issue was released yesterday. Please let us know if you continue to see unexpected traffic changes. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Improvements in Custom Reports: Better builder, more metrics, and custom navigation

Trevor Claiborne — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:35:00 +0000

This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates. This week, Gilles Roux, an Analytics engineer will discuss some recent improvements to custom reporting in Google Analytics.

Creating custom reports in Google Analytics is a great way to answer specific questions about how users interact with your website or keep track of the metrics that really matter to you.

Since releasing the new Analytics earlier this year you have sent us lots of great feedback. Thank You! We have been hard at work integrating some of your suggestions and adding new features that will make custom reports more useful and easier to use.

Simplified custom report builder

The custom report builder has an updated look and feel that simplifies the process of creating and editing custom reports. The sections are now clearly labeled, with optional settings at the end, and the metric groups are shown on a single page without the need to switch tabs. We have also added the ability to quickly reorder metrics and dimensions using drag and drop. We hope these improvements will help you create reports that look just the way you want, in just a few minutes.

More metrics and dimensions!

We know - when it comes to analyzing your website usage, the more metrics the better. That’s why we have enabled 45 additional metrics and dimensions inside custom reports. These cover a wide variety of areas such as mobile, social, goals, site search, e-commerce and advertising. All metrics and dimensions are now organized in categories to make the list more manageable.

When viewing a custom report that has an explorer tab, you will now be able to select a secondary dimensions, which can be useful to perform a deeper analysis of your data without having to make changes to the custom report.

Custom navigation

The custom reports overview page is the central place to view and manage all your custom reports. You will now notice a ‘New Category’ button to create your own categories, in which you can group related custom reports. You will also be able to reorder reports, for example to make sure that your most important ones are conveniently shown at the top of the navigation.

We hope these improvements will help you create powerful reports that are targeted to the specificities of your site. As always, please don't hesitate to send us feedback, and expect more features in the near future.

Posted by Gilles Roux, Google Analytics Team

+1 reporting in Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:16:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the AdSense and Google Webmaster blogs.

It’s been a busy week for us here at the Googleplex. First we released +1 buttons to Google search sites globally, then we announced the beginning of the Google+ project.

The +1 button and the Google+ project are both about making it easier to connect with the people you trust online. For the +1 button, that means bringing advice from trusted friends and contacts right into Google search, letting the users who love your web content recommend it at the moment of decision.

But when you’re managing a website, it's usually not real until you can measure it. So we’re happy to say we’ve got one more announcement to make -- today we’re releasing reports that show you the value +1 buttons bring to your site.

First, +1 metrics in Google Webmaster Tools can show you how the +1 button affects the traffic coming to your pages:

The Search Impact report gives you an idea of how +1‘s affect your organic search traffic. You can find out if your clickthrough rate changes when personalized recommendations help your content stand out. Do this by comparing clicks and impressions on search results with and without +1 annotations. We’ll only show statistics on clickthrough rate changes when you have enough impressions for a meaningful comparison.
The Activity report shows you how many times your pages have been +1’d, from buttons both on your site and on other pages (such as Google search).
Finally, the Audience report shows you aggregate geographic and demographic information about the Google users who’ve +1’d your pages. To protect privacy, we’ll only show audience information when a significant number of users have +1’d pages from your site.

Use the +1 Metrics menu on the side of the page to view your reports. If you haven’t yet verified your site on Google Webmaster Tools, you can follow these instructions to get access.

Finally, you can also see how users share your content using other buttons besides +1 by using Social Plugin Analytics in Google Analytics. Once you configure the JavaScript for Analytics, the Social Engagement reports help you compare the various types of sharing actions that occur on your pages.

The Social Engagement report lets you see how site behavior changes for visits that include clicks on +1 buttons or other social actions. This allows you to determine, for example, whether people who +1 your pages during a visit are likely to spend more time on your site than people who don’t.
The Social Actions report lets you analyse the number of social actions (+1 clicks, Tweets, etc) taken on your site, all in one place.
The Social Pages report allows you to compare the pages on your site to see which are driving the highest the number of social actions.

Over the next few days (and if you’re using the default version of the latest Google Analytics tracking code), if you’ve added +1 buttons to your site we’ll automatically enable Social Plugin Analytics for +1 in your account. You can enable analytics for other social plugins in just a few simple steps.

Social reporting is just getting started. As people continue to find new ways to interact across the web, we look forward to new reports that help business owners understand the value that social actions are providing to their business. So +1 to data!

UPDATE: 7/8/11 5:30pm PST, corrected references to the social plugin analytics feature.

Posted by Dan Rodney, Software Engineer

New Google Analytics: Improvements in Mobile Reporting

Trevor Claiborne — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:50:00 +0000

Internet traffic from mobile devices is growing rapidly with smartphones and tablets expected to outsell computers this year. Google Analytics already provides a number of ways to track this growing mobile Internet usage from standard tracking on smartphones to SDKs for embedding Google Analytics into applications in iOS and Android. We’re hard at work at delivering more.

Today you'll see small first step along our path to improve mobile reporting inside Google Analytics: a new Mobile section in Visitors reporting.

Inside the Mobile section you’ll find two new reports. The first is a Mobile Overview report, which shows the simple breakdown between mobile traffic and non-mobile traffic.

The second report is the Devices report, which provides information about the various mobile devices that visit your site. As part of this report, we’ve added three new dimensions: Mobile Device Info, Mobile Device Branding, and Mobile Input Selector. Data for all these dimensions is available starting from June 6, 2011.

Mobile Device Info is the actual hardware that visited your site. One of the nice benefits of this report is you can quickly see a picture of any device. While you’ve probably seen an iPhone in person and have an idea about how your site will look on one, that might not be the case for less common devices like for example, the Nokia E63. Click the camera icon next to any device to see pictures of it.

Mobile Device Branding lets you see the brand associated with the phone. Depending on the device this might be the manufacturer or the carrier. Mobile Input Selector shows the primary input method for the device, whether it’s a touch screen, a clickwheel (like you’ll find on a Blackberry), or even a stylus.

And if you haven’t tried out the improvements to map overlay reports that we talked about last week, give them a try in the Mobile reports to visualize where your mobile traffic is coming from.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

New Google Analytics: Improvements in Map Overlay reports

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:58:00 +0000

In GA, we're always looking for ways to improve existing reports. For example, we noticed that you can only see state (i.e. province/region) breakdowns if you're looking at the United States. Surely, this information ought to be available for other parts of the world?!

It seemed like something that could be done in a short amount of time and yield a big win for our users. So, we're glad to announce that as of this week's release, you can now see region level maps of over 170 countries!

To try it out, simply go to the Location report (under Visitors > Demographics) and click a country. We'll try France:

Voila! We can see at a glance that Ile-de-France sends the most visits to our site. To see cities, just click City in the Viewing: list immediately below the map. Once you're on the cities view, you can try out another feature we rolled out recently -- a magnifying glass that appears when cities are clustered closely together.

Enjoy the new features in your maps. We hope they speed you on your way to gaining actionable insights and metrics. Happy analyzing!

P.S. Did you know you get map overlay in more places than just the Visitors > Demographics > Location report? Take a look at the tab on the Visitors > Technology > Mobile report

Posted by Eyal, Jerry, Yinnon, and Brian, Google Analytics Frontend Team

Summer time and the learning’s easy!

Trevor Claiborne — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:16:00 +0000

Our Google Analytics Certified Partners (GACPs) are busy over the summer making sure Google Analytics and Website Optimizer users have plenty of opportunities to learn the basics, deep-dive the data, master the technical stuff and tune for conversions!

So if you're in need of some fast-track training, why not join them? Here's the June schedule for US and Europe:

Tue-Fri, June 14-17, 2011	Dallas, TX
Wed-Fri, Jun 22-24, 2011	San Diego, CA
Tue-Fri, June 28-July 1 2011	London, UK
Wed-Thur, July 6-7, 2011	Glassgow, Scotland
Tue-Thur July 12-14, 2011	Philadelphia, PA
Wed-Fri July 13-15, 2011	Boston MA

If these dates don’t work for you, see the complete Seminars for Success schedule.

This is what you’ll learn by attending a seminar with one of our GACPs:

Google Analytics 101 – Introduction & User Training

Whether you’re just getting started or have been involved with Google Analytics for a while, if you’re looking for a thorough training in all of the reports Google Analytics provides, this is the course for you. First, you’ll get a detailed background in the web analytics industry. Then you’ll go through a detailed examination of all of the reports Google Analytics has to offer, with real-world examples of how they can help you. You’ll also learn how to segment your site’s users, spot key trends, and of course, how to take your web analytics data and use it to your advantage.

Google Analytics 201 – Advanced Analysis Techniques

If you’re already familiar with the basics of Google Analytics and are looking to become more sophisticated in your analysis, this course will show you how to do just that. Whether your business goals are user engagement, lead generation, or e-commerce, you’ll benefit from learning how to use the most advanced analysis features of Google Analytics, like Intelligence and Advanced Segmentation.

Google Analytics 301 – Implementation & Advanced Topics

For those who are comfortable with Google Analytics but want to dive deeper into the technical side of GA, this advanced technical implementation course is for you. This training is tailored a bit more toward the tech-savvy, but is extremely valuable to anyone who wants to learn what Google Analytics can do when taken beyond the “plain vanilla” implementation. You’ll go “under the hood” of Google Analytics and learn about filter configuration and setup, opportunities for advanced, custom implementations, as well as the newest beta features that are rolling out.

Website Optimizer

Once you’ve nailed down your Google Analytics implementation, you’re ready to start taking action on your data by testing your website. This interactive training in Google Website Optimizer teaches you how to test your site to improve your users’ experience and your business’s bottom line. Attendees will receive a strong background in landing page testing and testing best practices, many real-world case studies, and an optional, hands-on lab experience in starting both A/B and Multivariate tests.

If you've been wanting to increase your knowledge on Google Analytics, Seminars are one of the best ways. Seminars are going on across the United States and Europe. If these days don't work for you check out the full seminar schedule.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Pilot the Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics integration

Trevor Claiborne — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:09:00 +0000

Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools, which tool should you use? For many webmasters and online marketers, the answer is both. Much of the data in Google Analytics is about what happens after a user chooses to visit your site; whereas, Webmaster Tools reports are more focused on data from before the user makes that choice.

We’ve heard from many of you that an integration between Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics is at the top of your wishlists. So, today we’re happy to announce that we’re starting a limited pilot of just such an integration.

The initial release will be a set of reports in Google Analytics using search data from Google Webmaster Tools. This includes query information, clicks, impressions, clickthrough rate, and average position. You’ll also be able to use Google Analytics advanced data filtering and visualizations with this data.

We hope this will be the first of many ways to surface Webmaster Tools data in Google Analytics to give you a more thorough picture of your site’s performance. We’re looking forward to working with members of the pilot to help us identify the best ways to make this happen. If you’re interested in using these reports, ~~please sign up for the pilot~~ (see below).

Update July 15th, 2011, 2:25pm PST: We've closed the sign up sheet for the pilot for now. We'll update you when we open up sign ups again.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

The Making of Google Analytics v5

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:14:00 +0000

Since we launched the new Google Analytics, we've been talking to many of you about the new version, and getting your feedback. One question we got was about our goals for the new version and why we made the changes we did. So, we got a few members of the Google Analytics team together to share their stories of how the new version began, our approach, and our goals in building it. Along the way, they also share a bit about what you can expect in the future from Google Analytics.

The Making of Google Analytics v5

We also put together a second video where the team runs through a few of the many new features in Google Analytics v5:

What’s New in Google Analytics v5

You can find more information on many of these in the New Google Analytics blog series including a few that aren’t mentioned in the video like Site Speed and new overview reports. And like Sagnik says at the end of the video, there’s much more to come in Google Analytics. Stay tuned!

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

What’s new about Analytics Intelligence?

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 25 May 2011 22:49:00 +0000

In 2009, we debuted the first iteration of our Intelligence reports. Since then, we have been enhancing these reports with more insightful information such as explanations, SMS alerts and improved alert quality.

In the past month, we have released a few enhancements to these reports. First, there is a new overview report that surface significant events for a given date range in a sortable table.

With this flexible table overview, users can perform full-text search, event sort, as well as drilling into details of each event. For example, clicking on the “Details” for row 2 above,

In this detail view, users can explore the event further, add an annotation, or drill in by clicking on Go to Report, which allows users to jump to a full report related to the dimension of interest.

Additional improvements include the ability to create and edit custom alerts without leaving the Intelligence reports:

We’ve also made significant improvements to the quality of automatic alerts by filtering similar alerts and more comprehensive measurements of importance.

As we continue to improve the Intelligence reports, we hope to surface more actionable insights to you. If you have suggestions for our effort here, we greatly appreciate your comments.

Posted by Phil Mui, Google Analytics Team

New Google Analytics – Overview Reports Overview

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:15:00 +0000

This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates.

This week we’re going a bit meta with an overview of the new Overview reports in the new Google Analytics. Overview reports were part of the old version of Analytics, of course, but we’ve made some changes to help your analysis.

Anatomy of the Overview Report
Each overview report consists of three sections. There's a timeline graph, some aggregate metrics, and a set of reports.

Whats inside of each of these sections depends on which report you’re looking at. For example, the Visitor Overview shows a graph of visits and metrics like New vs. Returning visitors, while Content Overview shows metrics like pageviews and average time on page.

The Graph
We’ve made a few changes to the graphs in the new Google Analytics, and we'll share them here. You can now make adjustments to the graphs you see in Google Analytics from the buttons on the top right of the graph:

Switch a graph between Line Chart and Motion Chart
Graph different metrics: Select from the dropdown or the scorecard

Metrics dropdown

Metrics Scorecard

Compare two metrics: Graph an additional metric for comparison

Graph By: Change graph from between Monthly, Weekly, Daily, and even Hourly for some reports

Reports
The bottom section of an overview reports lets you look through a subset of the reports available in that section. You can flip through these reports to see where you want to start your analysis. In the Traffic Sources Overview, we can start by looking at a report of Keywords.

From here we can go view the full report or look at another report, like Referral Sources:

Intelligence Overview
Google Analytics Intelligence automatically searches your website traffic to look for anomalies. When it finds something that's out of the ordinary it surfaces this as an alert. You can also setup your own alerts by defining custom alerts.

Now you can feel like the president of the principality of Analytica with your very own Intelligence Overview report.

The Intelligence Overview report shows you all of your automatic alerts (daily, weekly, and monthly) at a glance. From the Intelligence Overview, you can click on Details to see a graph of the alert and go directly into the GA report. You can also add or review an annotation right from the pop-up graph.

I hope you enjoyed this overview of Overview Reports. Please continue to send us feedback on the new Google Analytics. Stay tuned for next week’s installment in New Google Analytics series.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Issue affecting Analytics data for April resolved

Trevor Claiborne — Mon, 09 May 2011 20:06:00 +0000

Late last night we discovered an issue in Google Analytics that caused reports with data from April 2011 using custom reports, advanced segments, or secondary dimensions to return 0 visits. Our team has been hard at work since then, and have found the cause and are taking steps to resolve the issue.

We will update this post as we work to resolve this issue. As always, you can visit the Google Analytics Status Dashboard to see the current status of Google Analytics.

Update 5/18/11 1:40 PM PST
We have completed the fix for April data affected by this issue ahead of our estimate. Data for April using advanced segments, custom reports, or secondary dimensions has been restored.

Update 5/13/11 3:45 PM PST
April data affected by this issue has been restored for all days after and including April 20th.

Update 5/11/11 10:30 AM PST
We want to reiterate that no data was lost due to this issue, and we’re working hard to make the April data fully available in your Analytics reports. Our current timeline for restoring full functionality for April data is approximately 12 days, by May 23rd. We’re doing what we can to shorten this period. We’re restoring the data day by day so you will see it come in to your account over time and not all at once. Keep in mind, that you can view the affected April data through the standard reports.

Secondly, we’ve seen some comments about Fast Access mode and its relation to the issue. Fast Access mode is a change, in name only, to how we label a sampled report to help better explain why sampling happens in Google Analytics. This change was not responsible for the issue with April’s data.

We’ll continue to update this post with developments we work to completely resolve this issue.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Measure Page Load Time with Site Speed Analytics Report

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 04 May 2011 19:12:00 +0000

At Google, we are passionate about speed and making the web faster, and we are glad to see that many website owners share the same idea. A faster web is better for both users and businesses. A slow loading landing page not only impacts your conversion rate, but can also impact AdWords Landing Page Quality and ranking in Google search.

To improve the performance of your pages, you first need to measure and diagnose the speed of a page, which can be a difficult task. Furthermore, even with page speed measurements, it’s critical to look at page speed in context of other web analytics data.

Therefore, we are thrilled to announce the availability of the Site Speed report in the new Google Analytics platform. With the Site Speed report you can measure the page load time across your site.

Uses for the Site Speed Report

Content: Which landing pages are slowest?
Traffic sources: Which campaigns correspond to faster page loads overall?
Visitor: How does page load time vary across geographies?
Technology: Does your site load faster or slower for different browsers?

One effective use of the Site Speed report is to measure speed for your most critical pages. For example, you might learn that the target audience of your site is located in a geographic region that experiences slower page speed. Or, you might learn that certain pages on your site run slower in some browsers. In addition to the Site Speed report, we’ve created a custom report that you can use to help answer these questions: view the Site Speed custom report.

Setting up the Site Speed Report

By default, page speed measurement is turned off, so you’ll only see 0’s in the Site Speed report until you’ve enabled it. To start measuring site speed, you need to make a small change to your Analytics tracking code. We have detailed instructions in the Site Speed article in the Analytics Help Center. Once you’ve updated your tracking code, a small sample of pageviews will be used to calculate the page load time.

We’re excited to bring this important metric into Google Analytics as part of the new Google Analytics platform. Please continue to send us feedback on Site Speed and the rest of the new Google Analytics.

By Zhiheng Wang, Phil Mui on behalf of the Google Analytics team and the Make the Web Faster team.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Custom Reports in the new Google Analytics

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 22:49:00 +0000

Every website is different, yet we focus much of our time on the standard reports in our web analytics tools. Custom reports have been an integral part of Google Analytics since 2008. With the new platform, we took a close look at how we could improve the custom reports to make them more usable and powerful.

The Custom Reports tab

For starters, custom reports now live under their own tab, which you can find next to My Site in the main menu bar.

The overview shows a list of all the custom reports available for your profile. You can also view, edit, or share a custom report, and, of course, you can also build a new custom report.

Building a custom report

As with the previous version of Google Analytics, you build a custom report by picking the metrics and dimensions you want. For the new platform, we’ve made some enhancements. Let’s walk through the creation of a custom report for measuring the effectiveness of content on this blog (borrowing from one of Avinash’s awesome custom reports).

Getting the right data

We saw that custom reports were most useful when focused on subset of data. For my blog report, I've decided that I want to only focus on referral traffic. In the old version, I’d have to combine an advanced segment with my custom report to do this analysis. With the new platform, we’ve made it possible to make the filter part of your custom report.

You can add multiple filters to the same report, and filter on dimensions other than those you’ve chosen to use in the report. Best of all, these filters are saved as part of your custom report. As soon as you (or your boss) opens the report, you’re looking at the data you need.

Organizing your report

Like the current version, you can build multiple report tabs into your custom report. This is helpful to organize your report, or build different views for people across your organization. In the new Google Analytics, you’re no longer restricted to using the same dimensions for each report tab, which allows you to truly get all of the data you care about in one custom report. There are two types of report tabs available: Flat Table and Explorer tabs.

Explorer report tabs are similar to the report view that is used across Analytics. They allow you to drill down into data, as well as add a secondary dimension. When creating an Explorer tab, you can also create Metric Groups, which help further organize your report for easier analysis. For our example, I've built out an Explorer tab focused on content quality metrics with a drill down into where the traffic came from.

Flat Table report tabs allow you to look at two dimensions side by side, meaning you don’t have to click to drill down into your data. We’ve created this report view to make it easier to export the information you care about, email it to a colleague, or simply print it out. For the example report, I have a Flat Table tab focused on where the traffic came from and the quality of that traffic.

And here's the finished report:

Sharing your custom reports

Once you've finished creating your report, you might want to share it with your team. One of the most widely used features of Custom Reports has been sharing, which allows you to share a link to your custom report configuration with others.

Like the current version, sharing a custom report in the new Google Analytics only shares the structure of the report, not the data from your account. There is one difference to keep in mind, when you share a custom report in the new version, the link will always reflect the state of the report when you first created the link. So, if you create report, share it with your colleagues, and then make further changes, the link you shared will still point to the first version of the report. You can share your reports from the Custom Reports overview. Just click the share link:

And here’s a link to the custom report example we’ve referenced throughout this post: http://goo.gl/McSBl.

Finding a home for your old custom reports

Did you spend a lot of time creating the perfect custom report in the old version? Not to fear: we’ve created a migration tool to help you migrate your reports from the old version to the new Google Analytics. From the Custom Reports Overview, you’ll see a section called Migrate Custom Reports. It will let you know if you have reports to be migrated. Keep in mind that migration only works one way. Once you move your reports over the new version, you won’t be able to use them in old version.

Using standard reports to analyze your website can only take you so far, which is why we’ve put so much effort in making custom reports more powerful and easier for Google Analytics v5. Please continue to give us your feedback on the new Google Analytics. Happy analyzing!

Posted by Kate Cushing, Google Analytics team

The New Google Analytics Available to Everyone

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:57:00 +0000

I’m very excited to announce that the new version of Google Analytics is now available to all Google Analytics users in all languages. When you sign into Google Analytics you’ll see a link to the new version in the top right of your account.

If you haven’t, we encourage you to try the new version today. There’s a host of new features to help you do better analysis. These new features are only the beginning of what's coming to the new Google Analytics platform over the next few months.

Here are five things you can try in Google Analytics v5 today:

Create an additional dashboard to focus on your important metrics
Set up an Event Goal to track interactions like downloads and video engagement
Graph and compare any two rows over time with Plot Rows
Check out your favorite report (Did it move? Our Report Finder can help)
Flip between your different profiles and sites while staying focused on the same report

So what happens next? You’ll continue to have access to both versions of Google Analytics, and you can switch between them at any time. If you find anything that doesn’t work or could be better, let us know. We especially want to hear about issues that force you back to the current version. We’re still hard at work on enabling a few features from the old version including PDF export and email scheduling, and they’ll be coming soon.

Take some time this week to try the new Google Analytics, and let us know what you think. We’ll continue making improvements and adding functionality. Next week, we’ll be covering how to use custom reports in the new version.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Good luck to Jeff Gillis

Trevor Claiborne — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:25:00 +0000

If you have been a reader of the Google Analytics blog for any amount of time, you’ve likely seen the work of Jeff Gillis. In fact, if you go all the way back to the very first post on this blog from June 2006 you’ll see Jeff as the author.

Jeff has been working on Google Analytics since there was a Google Analytics. After Urchin was acquired in 2005, Jeff left his post on the AdWords team to join Brett Crosby and form the original Google Analytics marketing team.

Today is Jeff's last day with the Google Analytics team. Jeff will be putting in some time consulting with other Google teams. Please join me and the Google Analytics team in thanking Jeff for his years of dedication to the team. Thanks Jeff!

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Case Study: Universal Technical Institute Increases Application Requests Eight-fold With Website Optimizer

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:28:00 +0000

UTI revved up their conversion rate with Google Website Optimizer. By conducting rigorous testing, making design improvements to their landing pages, and increasing AdWords investment to capitalize on their higher conversion rates, UTI cut their cost-per-application request in half and increased their request volume by more than 700% in in marketing campaigns that used the new landing pages. Read more to learn how they did it!

Since 1965, Universal Technical Institute has helped automotive enthusiasts turn their passions into careers. Offering programs in Automotive, Diesel, Collision, and Motorcycle Repair, as well as courses to become a Marine or NASCAR technician, UTI has trained more than 140,000 professionals in the automotive industry. Today, UTI operates 11 campuses, and currently has more than 15,000 students that are working with their hands to learn career skills that will last a lifetime.

The Goal: Improve Conversion Rates Through Website Optimization

UTI has been an AdWords advertiser since 2004. After years of fine-tuning their search campaigns, and successful investments in Display, Mobile, and YouTube, UTI was looking for their next big avenue of growth. After doing some research - they realized the opportunity was right in front of them, on their own site! With the help of Website Optimizer, UTI tested different calls-to-action, images, videos, buttons, and button placements. After many different landing page combinations, they ultimately settled on a winner.

The Results: A Great-looking Landing Page and a 300% Increase in Conversion Rate

UTI's new landing page was a dramatic departure from their previous landing page. Most notable is their use of “gradual engagement” - asking for user’s information in several steps rather than showing an intimidating 15-field sign-up form.

Original landing page (click to see full size)

New landing page (click to see full size)

“Prospective Students responded extremely well to our new landing pages,” said Loring Kohrt, Online Marketing Manager for UTI, “not only did we triple our conversion rate, we reduced our exit rate and saw a boost in site engagement metrics across the board.”

More Good News: The Effect on Advertising

The jump in conversion volume was substantial and immediate, but UTI didn’t stop there. Realizing that their increased conversion rates had dramatically lowered their cost-per-lead, UTI decided that they had room to bid much more aggressively on Google’s Search and Display Networks. By doing so, they increased their average position, and brought in eight times the conversions at about half the CPA!

Improving conversion rate amplified all other marketing activities

Reflecting on his experience, Mr. Kohrt said “We are tremendously happy with the results of our redesign. We were able to dramatically improve the profitability of our advertising, increase our enrollments, and deliver a better experience to potential students.”

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

New Year, New Asynchronous Tags for GWO

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:27:00 +0000

Happy New Year fellow testers! We’ve just made a change to the Website Optimizer tags that will help your pages load faster, improve data accuracy, and eliminate tracking errors when tags are not fully loaded.

The next time you go to create an experiment, you’ll be given the new tags, which use asynchronous JavaScript. Asynchronous tagging, which is already a standard for Google Analytics, allows the Website Optimizer tracking and conversion scripts to run in parallel to your site loading. For Website Optimizer veterans, these new tags appear in Step 2 of the setup wizard -- be sure to read the instructions as the installation is slightly different.

Here’s five things you should know about the new tags:

The traditional (non-async) snippets will continue to work if you want to use them. And there’s no need to retag experiments.
We’ve combined the Control Script and Tracking Script into one snippet of code. Be sure not to double tag your pages.
Async tags go immediately after the opening tag on your test and conversion pages, not at the bottom of the page like the old tags.
If you customize your Control Scripts (for experiments with cross-domain experiments and the like), the Control Script still uses urchin.js-style methods.
Articles in the Help Center have been updated to reflect the new tags though we still have articles with the traditional tag for your reference.

Here’s to winning experiments in the new year.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

New Year, New Asynchronous Tags for GWO

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:27:00 +0000

Here’s five things you should know about the new tags:

The traditional (non-async) snippets will continue to work if you want to use them. And there’s no need to retag experiments.
We’ve combined the Control Script and Tracking Script into one snippet of code. Be sure not to double tag your pages.
Async tags go immediately after the opening tag on your test and conversion pages, not at the bottom of the page like the old tags.
If you customize your Control Scripts (for experiments with cross-domain experiments and the like), the Control Script still uses urchin.js-style methods.
Articles in the Help Center have been updated to reflect the new tags though we still have articles with the traditional tag for your reference.

Here’s to winning experiments in the new year.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Welcome, Google Apps users!

Trevor Claiborne — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:39:00 +0000

Google Apps recently launched an improvement that made dozens of exciting Google services available to Google Apps users for the first time. As part of this launch, Google Website Optimizer is now available to our Google Apps users for free with their Apps accounts.

Google Apps is Google’s suite of cloud-based messaging and collaboration apps, including Gmail, calendar, documents, spreadsheets, and more, specifically optimized for use in organizations. These services, which run entirely in the cloud, are used by more than 30 million users in small and large businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, and non-profit organizations around the world. You can learn more about how Google Apps can lower IT costs and improve productivity and collaboration at your organization at google.com/apps.

For those users who have a Google Apps account, if your administrator has already transitioned your organization to the new infrastructure, you can get started using Google Website Optimizer at google.com/websiteoptimizer with your existing Apps account.

For more details, read the complete post on the Google Enterprise blog and follow all the updates on other newly available services for Google Apps users.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Update your Website Optimizer scripts to secure your site

Trevor Claiborne — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:14:00 +0000

Earlier this week we notified affected Website Optimizer users of a potential security issue with the Website Optimizer Control Script. If a website or browser has already been compromised by a separate attack, a hacker might also be able to execute malicious code by exploiting a bug in the Website Optimizer Control Script.

We have not seen any evidence indicating that sites using Website Optimizer have been targeted through this bug, but wanted to proactively reach out to site owners. While the probability of this attack is very low, we are urging Website Optimizer users to take action by updating their Control Scripts. We have taken action, so all new experiments created after December 3 are not susceptible.

Any experiments you are currently running need to be updated to fix the issue on your site. Additionally, if you have any Website Optimizer scripts from paused or stopped experiments created before December 3, you should remove or update that code as well.

There are two ways to update your code:

Stop current experiments, remove the old scripts, and create a new experiment.
Update the code on your site directly. We strongly recommend creating a new experiment as it is the simpler method.

Instructions for both methods are available here at the Website Optimizer Help Center.

We’re committed to keeping Website Optimizer secure, and we will proactively work to prevent any future vulnerabilities.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Update your Website Optimizer scripts to secure your site

Trevor Claiborne — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:14:00 +0000

There are two ways to update your code:

Stop current experiments, remove the old scripts, and create a new experiment.
Update the code on your site directly. We strongly recommend creating a new experiment as it is the simpler method.

Instructions for both methods are available here at the Website Optimizer Help Center.

We’re committed to keeping Website Optimizer secure, and we will proactively work to prevent any future vulnerabilities.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Instant Preview issue resolved

Trevor Claiborne — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 23:26:00 +0000

Since Instant Preview launched in early November, some Analytics users have noticed increased pageviews in their accounts.

We’ve now fixed this issue, and visits from Google Instant Preview will no longer show up in your Analytics account. We will not be reprocessing the data to remove past visits, but you can use an advanced segment to see the visits from Instant Preview in the context of your total traffic. WebShare, a Google Analytics Certified Partner, has put together a blog post detailing this method (see “Option 1: Advanced segment”).

We’re sorry for any problems this issue caused especially as we get into the holiday shopping season. We’re working more closely with the Google Instant team to prevent issues like these from happening again.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

System Update for November 2nd

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:39:00 +0000

On November 2nd, Google Analytics experienced technical difficulties, which lasted for a few hours. No data was lost, but users saw lower visits than expected during this time.

We deployed a fix as as soon as we were alerted and Analytics is now back to normal and data has been restored.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Introducing In-Page Analytics: Visual context for your Analytics data

Trevor Claiborne — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:07:00 +0000

When looking at Google Analytics reports, sometimes it’s difficult to visualize how visitors navigate on a given website page. To make this visualization easier, some users keep the website open in another browser tab so they can reference it while looking through reports. Others rely on the Site Overlay report in Google Analytics, which, admittedly, hasn’t worked as well it could.

Today, we’re happy to share with you a bit of what we’ve been working on to address this problem. We’re releasing a new feature into beta: In-Page Analytics. With In-Page Analytics, you can see your Google Analytics data superimposed on your website as you browse.

Take In-Page for a spin and let us know what you think. In-Page Analytics is still in beta, so some things in the report may not work perfectly yet. There’s a lot left to do, but there’s even more that we want to build going forward. In-Page is currently available for all English users of Google Analytics. We also have a demo video that walks you through the feature and how you might use it.

You’ll find the In-Page Analytics report in the Content section in your Google Analytics account, and it replaces Site Overlay. You can read more about In-Page in the Google Analytics Help Center. Let us know what you think and how you’re using it!

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 03:43:00 +0000

A new online video training course is now available from lynda.com to help you get the most out of using Google Website Optimizer. It’s called Google Website Optimizer: Essential Training, and it's created by David Booth of WebShare, one of our Website Optimizer Certified Partners and Seminars for Success Leaders.

The course itself is available both online and on DVD and contains almost 4 full hours of step by step instruction around how to identify test pages, plan and implement your experiments, and read and interpret the reports. Advanced topics like sample size calculation, Google Analytics integrations and dynamic page testing are also covered among a wide variety of conversion optimization and testing topics.

I sat down with David and asked him to share with us what he likes best about this new course, and here’s what he had to say:

A video course is great for a few reasons: First, it lets you accomplish things you can’t necessarily do in other formats. As an example, in this course we have start to finish screen captured demonstrations of how to create a new test, tag your pages with Javascript, and then launch both A/B and Multivariate tests. Someone watching this course can actually see it happening and not have to rely on instructions or a help file.

I also like the variety of learning styles that can be accommodated by what the lynda.com team has put together. If you’re a visual learner, you’ll love this - there’s a nice mix of presentation styles, screen captures and visual aides throughout the whole course. If you learn by doing, you’ll enjoy the step by step, narrated demonstrations you can follow along with.

And it’s all broken up into videos that are just a few minutes long. If you want to block off a morning and watch it straight through you can, but if you want to catch a couple of videos when you’ve got 15 minutes of down time you can get through it that way too. Or if you just have a question on a specific topic, such as when to use A/B vs Multivariate, you can jump directly to that video and have your answer a few minutes later.

Take a look at the trailer below:

Well, we like things that make it even easier to use Google Website Optimizer in even more effective ways, so thanks Dave. You can find the course at lynda.com!

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 03:43:00 +0000

I sat down with David and asked him to share with us what he likes best about this new course, and here’s what he had to say:

A video course is great for a few reasons: First, it lets you accomplish things you can’t necessarily do in other formats. As an example, in this course we have start to finish screen captured demonstrations of how to create a new test, tag your pages with Javascript, and then launch both A/B and Multivariate tests. Someone watching this course can actually see it happening and not have to rely on instructions or a help file.

I also like the variety of learning styles that can be accommodated by what the lynda.com team has put together. If you’re a visual learner, you’ll love this - there’s a nice mix of presentation styles, screen captures and visual aides throughout the whole course. If you learn by doing, you’ll enjoy the step by step, narrated demonstrations you can follow along with.

And it’s all broken up into videos that are just a few minutes long. If you want to block off a morning and watch it straight through you can, but if you want to catch a couple of videos when you’ve got 15 minutes of down time you can get through it that way too. Or if you just have a question on a specific topic, such as when to use A/B vs Multivariate, you can jump directly to that video and have your answer a few minutes later.

Take a look at the trailer below:

Well, we like things that make it even easier to use Google Website Optimizer in even more effective ways, so thanks Dave. You can find the course at lynda.com!

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Join Website Optimizer at eMetrics & Conversion Conference in Washington DC

Trevor Claiborne — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:59:00 +0000

In less than two weeks, Conversion Conference East will take place in Washington DC. Google Website Optimizer will be there along with Google Analytics.

Conversion rate optimization is still a young discipline in the world of interactive marketing. The event was founded by Tim Ash, president of Site Tuners (a Website Optimizer Certified Partner). What's exciting about Conversion Conference is that the entire program is dedicated to the discipline. Experts in the field, as well as those who are just learning the art and science of conversion optimization, now have a forum to share best practices, network, and learn from each other.

If you are anywhere near Washington DC October 4-5, we hope you'll join us there. We have a coupon for $250 off for Website Optimizer blog readers. Enter the code CCE631 when registering at the Conversion Conference site.

Here’s a taste of some of the presentations at Conversion Conference:

Monday, October 4th

The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online (Tim Ash)

The Power of Split Testing (Brooks Bell and Lance Loveday)

Pay Per Click Landing Page Continuity (Lauren Vaccarello and William Leake)

Tuesday, October 5th

Getting Started with Google Website Optimizer (I'll be giving this one)

Multivariate Testing (Eric Hansen and Chris Duskin)

The Science of Pursuasion (John Whalen)

Be sure to stop by the Google booth and say "Hi" and grab a squishy HiPPO. Looking forward to seeing you.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Join Website Optimizer at eMetrics & Conversion Conference in Washington DC

Trevor Claiborne — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:59:00 +0000

In less than two weeks, Conversion Conference East will take place in Washington DC. Google Website Optimizer will be there along with Google Analytics.

Here’s a taste of some of the presentations at Conversion Conference:

Monday, October 4th

The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online (Tim Ash)

The Power of Split Testing (Brooks Bell and Lance Loveday)

Pay Per Click Landing Page Continuity (Lauren Vaccarello and William Leake)

Tuesday, October 5th

Getting Started with Google Website Optimizer (I'll be giving this one)

Multivariate Testing (Eric Hansen and Chris Duskin)

The Science of Pursuasion (John Whalen)

Be sure to stop by the Google booth and say "Hi" and grab a squishy HiPPO. Looking forward to seeing you.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Google Instant and Google Analytics

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:44:00 +0000

Today, we announced the launch of Google Instant, a new Google.com interface that shows relevant results while the user types. This exciting new search interface applies to both search results and related ads. We expect Google Instant will help users find what they’re looking for faster. With this change, you might notice some fluctuations in AdWords impression volume and in the distribution of organic keywords. For example, you may find that certain keywords receive significantly more or fewer impressions moving forward.

To read more about how this change affects AdWords advertisers, please visit the Inside AdWords Blog. Users of Webmaster Tools should also see their post about Google Instant.

Update at 5:10pm PST: Clarified that you may see a change in the distribution of traffic of organic keywords.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Introducing Weighted Sort

Trevor Claiborne — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:34:00 +0000

Have you ever sorted a report by bounce rate and seen nothing but entries with a 100% bounce rate? Have you then noticed that these entries only have 1 visit? Not only is this useless and frustrating, but it obscures the real data points that you care about behind pages of garbage.

Well fret no more! We are pleased to announce a new sorting algorithm called weighted sort. Now when you sort on a computed metric, you can weight that sort by the number of data points, bringing you the most interesting and actionable rows first. For instance, in our example weighted sort will weight the computed value bounce rate by the number of visits. Let's take a look at some screen shots that will make this effect more obvious.

Here we are sorting by descending value on bounce rate. Notice how all these rows have 1 visit each for a bounce rate of 100%. Useless. Now lets turn on weighted sort.

Ah ha! Now this is something you can make sense of. Weighted sort took into consideration the number of visits for each row bringing to the forefront the items you care about. Keep in mind that because weighted sort is no longer a strict sort, there will be values that don't strictly follow the order you would assume.

Weighted sort is also available on other popular computed metrics, including goal conversion rate, % new visits etc. Try it out now on your own data! Take a look at the demo below to learn more or read the help article to get started.

Happy sorting!

Posted by Linus Chou, Google Analytics Team

Creating Targeted Tests using DoubleClick Ad Planner and Website Optimizer

Trevor Claiborne — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:09:00 +0000

This guest post was contributed by Daniel Waisberg, the Founder and Editor of Online Behavior, a Marketing Measurement & Optimization website. Daniel looks at how you can use DoubleClick Ad Planner to find ideas for testing.

Testing is probably the most effective way to optimize websites. Through testing we can understand what our customers like, which ultimately will help us create a better customer experience for our audience. But "our audience" is usually not a unique type of person; it is important use techniques such as Test Segmentation to understand the differences in the tastes of each cluster of customers.

However, where can you get ideas for tests? How do you choose, for example, if you should use an image of a man, a woman, a couple, a baby or a family? Most of us do not have the privilege of testing the YouTube homepage: traffic is limited for most sites, so it is important to run tests that have a high chance of making a difference. We have to focus our efforts on our best guesses. In this post, we will show a way to use DoubleClick Ad Planner to research for testing ideas that will be tailor made to the segments you are trying to target in your website.

Finding Your Audience on Ad Planner

In a recent blog post on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog, the DoubleClick Ad Planner mission is described as:

...to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible. This insight helps display advertisers select the best sites for their media plans and drive results for their campaigns.

However, I believe this description is missing an important part, which is not less important to advertisers: to understand your audience tastes and which kind of websites they like. The DoubleClick Ad Planner provides important insights into how to design your campaign landing pages and your website at all.

So, let's suppose I am working to optimize the eMetrics Summit website for the San Francisco conference in 2011. The Summit targets marketing managers, web analysts and business intelligence experts that are trying to understand how to increase the return on online investments. Here is how to find the tastes and preferences of this audience:

Sign in to DoubleClick Ad Planner and create a new Media plan;
Go to Research tab, choose the Research by Audience secondary tab;
Choose among the various segmentation options in order to narrow the audience and the websites they visit. Below are the segments chosen for eMetrics San Francisco audience:

Geography: chose country USA and refined it to include only West Coast states. That's the main target for this show since eMetrics also hosts a Washington DC conference
Demographics: included both males and females, between 25 and 44 years old, with at least a bachelor degree, with a household income above $75K. I think this segment is very close to the audience of the conference (but I have no inside information)
Online Activity: chose a large website that the audience is likely to visit: Google Analytics
Interests: chose everything under 'Business' and 'Computers & Electronics'
Ranking Method: chose the ranking method to be 'Best Match' since we are not doing this analysis in order to find a place to advertise (in which case we might sort the websites by reach), but to find a place that our target likes to visit

Below is a screenshot from DoubleClick Ad Planner showing all the segmenting options and the audience created above. We can call the list created below "Website Testing Inspiration"

Click for full-size image

Getting Ideas for Your Test

Once we find the "Website Testing Inspiration" table, which shows the websites where our targeted audience is surfing around, we have the raw material necessary to get ideas for our testing efforts. Continuing our example above, we can visit the websites in the Top 10 websites that match our audience and start analyzing them.

So, here are a few insights from the analysis above for the eMetrics San Francisco home:

First of all, looks like Jim Sterne chose the right color, blue is very prominent in all the websites;
Idea #1: it could be worth a try to add some geeky machines to the page, such as in the Pitney Bowes, Kaiser Permanente and Frys websites;
Idea #2: call these companies and have someone present at eMetrics and feature it at the conference homepage;
Idea #3: submit a post to both TechCrunch and Gizmodo, which would certainly be happy to feature interesting content about social media metrics. The posts would be useful in order to promote the conference and, in terms of testing, the eMetrics homepage could try featuring in a prominent place that the conference is being quoted in these websites (something like "In the news");
Idea #4: interesting to see that Stack Overflow is number 5 on the list, a website for "professional and enthusiast programmers". It looks like many technical people are inside this audience. Maybe it could be worthwhile to try showing a classification on the site targeting different types of people: "Programmers only talks", "Business Minded talks", "Marketers, Statisticians and liars"...

These are initial ideas that should be discussed and improved based on the website and the target being studied. As the analysis gets deeper, the insights will become more valuable.

Bonus: Instead of looking for your audience and which sites they visit, you can also look into your competitors' sites and understand which segments they are attracting that you are not. Read more about it on Avinash's post: Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google / DoubleClick Ad Planner.

Creating Targeted Tests using DoubleClick Ad Planner and Website Optimizer

Trevor Claiborne — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:09:00 +0000

...to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible. This insight helps display advertisers select the best sites for their media plans and drive results for their campaigns.

Sign in to DoubleClick Ad Planner and create a new Media plan;
Go to Research tab, choose the Research by Audience secondary tab;
Choose among the various segmentation options in order to narrow the audience and the websites they visit. Below are the segments chosen for eMetrics San Francisco audience:

Geography: chose country USA and refined it to include only West Coast states. That's the main target for this show since eMetrics also hosts a Washington DC conference
Demographics: included both males and females, between 25 and 44 years old, with at least a bachelor degree, with a household income above $75K. I think this segment is very close to the audience of the conference (but I have no inside information)
Online Activity: chose a large website that the audience is likely to visit: Google Analytics
Interests: chose everything under 'Business' and 'Computers & Electronics'
Ranking Method: chose the ranking method to be 'Best Match' since we are not doing this analysis in order to find a place to advertise (in which case we might sort the websites by reach), but to find a place that our target likes to visit

Below is a screenshot from DoubleClick Ad Planner showing all the segmenting options and the audience created above. We can call the list created below "Website Testing Inspiration"

Click for full-size image

First of all, looks like Jim Sterne chose the right color, blue is very prominent in all the websites;
Idea #1: it could be worth a try to add some geeky machines to the page, such as in the Pitney Bowes, Kaiser Permanente and Frys websites;
Idea #2: call these companies and have someone present at eMetrics and feature it at the conference homepage;
Idea #3: submit a post to both TechCrunch and Gizmodo, which would certainly be happy to feature interesting content about social media metrics. The posts would be useful in order to promote the conference and, in terms of testing, the eMetrics homepage could try featuring in a prominent place that the conference is being quoted in these websites (something like "In the news");
Idea #4: interesting to see that Stack Overflow is number 5 on the list, a website for "professional and enthusiast programmers". It looks like many technical people are inside this audience. Maybe it could be worthwhile to try showing a classification on the site targeting different types of people: "Programmers only talks", "Business Minded talks", "Marketers, Statisticians and liars"...

Using The Wrong Tracking Code Can Cost You $500k a Year

Trevor Claiborne — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:15:00 +0000

This is a guest post from Tom Critchlow who is an excel ninja, data geek, analytics nerd and head of search for Distilled, a London & Seattle based search agency. Tom provides a cautionary tale on the importance of keeping your site up to date.

This blog post title may appear sensational but I assure you that it's not (much...). I recently spotted an issue with a client's e-commerce website which was costing them £100,000 / month in revenue (~$150,000). The fix took 5 minutes. Even more surprisingly, since I've been on the lookout for this issue I've spotted it on quite a significant number of websites. Hence why I got in touch with the Google guys and asked if I could talk about this in front of as many people as possible to try and spread awareness!

1) Graph of Win

Firstly, let's take a quick look at a pretty graph. This is comparing revenue month on month before and after the fix was made:

Note the increased revenue! :-) Everyone loves increased revenue. For those with beady eyes you will have spotted that this isn't total revenue on the site but it's just IE8 users. What's going on here?

2) The Issue

Before I delve into the issue, let me first give you a little background. When you enter private information online, such as your credit card details, you want to be sure that you're transmitting the information over a secure connection. You can usually tell you're on a secure connection to a website if the page URL begins with https:// instead of http://

Making webpages secure, however, is more resource intensive and so most websites only make their most important pages secure (though Gmail now always uses https:// by default). This means that when you browse a website, for example http://www.amazon.com you will browse around product pages which are all located on http:// URLs. When you want to actually purchase something from the site however you transition over to secure URLs such as https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cart/view.html

This is standard practice for e-commerce websites and when you move through the buying funnel you should inevitably transition at some point from a non-secure page (http://) to a secure page (https://).

Now, the issue I'm talking about in this post is with the client's site. The site uses Google Analytics however unfortunately they were using the old version of the code and were using the same piece of code across all pages of their site. The code they were using looked a little like this:

Unfortunately, this means that their secure checkout pages such as https://www.example.com/checkout/payment contained non-secure elements - namely the URL call to "http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js". Browsers like Chrome and Firefox don't display a warning but Internet Explorer 8 produced the following security warning when users transitioned from the non-secure (http://) pages to the secure (https://) pages. This error looks like this:

Pretty scary huh! Unsurprisingly this was causing almost all users browsing in Internet Explorer 8 to abandon the shopping process. Since Internet Explorer 8 is one of the most popular browsers on the web this was a huge amount of revenue they were missing out on!

3) How To Fix It

This issue arose because of a non-secure HTTP call within a very old version of the Google Analytics tracking code. The fix for this is very simple - just install the new code! The new code is more versatile than the old code and works both on http:// pages and https:// pages so you don't need to worry about using a different code on secure and non-secure pages. The new code looks a little like this:

There's a complete run-through here on using this new code here and specific migration advice.

And that's it! It's a simple fix but one that can have significant impact on your bottom line. I repeat what I said at the top of the post - I've seen plenty of sites that suffer from this issue so it's really not as rare as you might think!

I should point out here that the Google Analytics code has been able to handle HTTPS and HTTP pages properly since well before the asynchronous code was released, but plenty of sites are still using very old legacy code, which is why this is still an issue for some sites. Also, it's not just the Google Analytics code which can cause problems! Any non-secure elements on a page can cause a security warning so double check your code carefully.

4) How to Diagnose This Issue (simple)

If you're wondering if your site suffers from this problem there's a quite easy way of checking by looking at your conversion rate segmented by browser:

Setting up these custom segments is really easy, but to make it even easier I've set them up for you and all you need to do is click these links to add both these segments directly into your Google Analytics account:

Internet Explorer 8 Users

Non-Internet Explorer 8 Users

Then browse to your conversion rate report and select the segments from your custom segments:

5) How to Diagnose This Issue (advanced)

Of course, the issue I'm talking about in this post is only a specific issue and plenty of other issues may well exist like it. The underlying principle is that segmenting your funnel is a useful thing to do so that you can see if a specific visitor type are not converting or there is a specific drop-off point for them. Unfortunately there isn't a way of segmenting your funnel within Google Analytics at the moment but there are a few advanced ways of getting around this. For example:

ROI Revolution have a method for segmenting on the fly. Unfortunately this method doesn't let you check custom date ranges.
LunaMetrics have a way of segmenting the funnel using goals. Unfortunately this method won't let you capture historical data.
Analytics Ninja has a way of segmenting using advanced segments. Unfortunately this method only let's you track up to a maximum of 3 funnel steps at a time.

None of these methods quite does what I want it to so I'm presenting a 4th option here:

Step 1 - Identify your funnel steps

This is fairly straightforward, all you need to do is understand what the URLs look like for your funnel. For example, let's say our funnel looks like this:

http://www.example.com/cart/availability
http://www.example.com/cart/details
http://www.example.com/cart/extras/
http://www.example.com/book/check/
https://www.example.com/book/payment/
https://www.example.com/book/confirm/

Step 2 - Create some regex

This is getting slightly more complex, however, assuming that all your URLs are exact match (rather than head match or something more complicated) the regex to create is this:

Where we generate this string as follows:

^/url1/$ - this matches the exact URL contained between ^ and $
| - separate each URL with a pipe, this OR matches any of the statements in the string

For a more complete (and very pretty) guide to using regex in Google Analytics download this PDF.

Step 3 - Enter this regex in the top content report

In the top content report copy and paste this regex into the filter box:

This will then filter the top content report to only show you visits to one of the above pages in your funnel. Now we can see the drop off between steps like we can in the regular funnel.

Step 4 - Add custom segments & export to Excel

Now, we add whichever custom segments we want (for example IE8 users like above). This gives us each step of the funnel and the visits to each step broken down by segments:

Unfortunately this data is a little bit difficult to analyse as it doesn't give us the drop off percentage. So, to make this data easier to process and analyse export it to Excel. This will allow us to create a nice little table like this (very minimal excel magic required!):

This is an improvement over the simple diagnosis above because it not only shows us that IE8 users are not converting as well as users from other browsers, but it even tells us the exact step where it's a problem (the cell highlighted in red in the image). Looking back at the URLs we've identified we see that this drop off percentage is the same step where a user transitions from HTTP to HTTPS.

Note: The super-observant among you may have noticed that there is a potential discrepancy here. The warning message that IE8 throws up allows the user to select the option to only view secure elements on the HTTPS page. If the user selects this option then theoretically the user could still carry on through the site and complete the purchase. This visit and the revenue from this purchase wouldn't be tracked in Google Analytics since the HTTP Google Analytics call is blocked by the browser. So the extra £100,000 / month could in theory only be a reported increase in revenue. In reality however we found that the true bottom line still increased by over £30,000 per month as a result of this change. This implies that displaying the pop-up still has a drastic effect on conversion rates.

6) Conclusion

So what have we learned? The key lessons here are as follows:

Keep your GA code up to date
Use advanced segments to monitor conversion rate between browsers
Always perform browser testing to ensure your website functions for all browsers

Remember, the HTTP/HTTPS issue applies equally to all URL calls so even if you use the up-to-date Google Analytics tracking code some other non-secure element on the page might be costing you revenue so always make sure that your website is functioning perfectly across all browsers. If you don't, you might end up losing £360,000 ($500,000) a year or more!

Thanks Tom for a thorough look at how to avoid this problem. And to echo Tom's advice, we encourage everyone to move to the newest version of the GA tracking code. You can follow more analytics insights and online marketing tips at the Distilled Blog or follow Tom on Twitter.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Campaign Data Issue Being Corrected

Trevor Claiborne — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:35:00 +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 apologize for this inconvenience and are taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Update: July 14, 2010 10:15 AM PDT

Reprocessing is now complete and all reports should now show correct data.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

The New AdWords Reports in Google Analytics

Trevor Claiborne — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:11:00 +0000

Last month, we made a number of announcements around the Google Analytics ecosystem. Along with launching the Google Analytics Application Gallery and making the new, faster page tag the default, we released a major update of the AdWords reports in Google Analytics. As of today, all Analytics users now have access to the new AdWords reports. With this update, you have access to three new reports, 10 new dimensions, and more AdWords metrics.

Three Brand New Reports

Three new reports give you the ability to dig into all aspects of your AdWords campaign performance.

Day Parts Report

Curious to know the best day of the week for your ads or the best hours of the day for your campaigns? See your ad performance broken down by day of the week and by hour of the day using the Day Parts report. The Day Parts report can help you find the most profitable times of day for your ads. Then pair it with the Ad Scheduling feature in AdWords to automatically adjust your bid to capture the right traffic at the right time.

Destination URLs Report

What are your best landing pages? The Destination URLs report lets you dive into the performance of each of your Destination URLs. You can break out performance at the Campaign, Ad Group, or Keyword level. Apply a secondary dimension like Keywords and see your top Destination URL/Keyword pairs.

Placements Report

The Placement Performance Report in AdWords shows you the performance of your ads on the Google Content Network. With the Placements Report in Google Analytics, you can get rich post-click performance data about your campaigns and find the best sites to target your ads. Or, either exclude the sites that don’t send you engaged traffic or identify the top performers to create a targeted display campaign.

10 New AdWords Dimensions

Dive deep into your AdWords performance using 10 new AdWords dimensions. For example, try Match Type to see performance between Broad, Phrase, and Exact Match. Love the search query report in AdWords? Segment by Matched Search Query to see exact user queries that triggered your ads and post-click performance.

Clicks Tab in Campaigns and Keywords reports

The Clicks tab brings your AdWords performance metrics into Google Analytics. From the Clicks tab you can get an overview of AdWords performance at the Campaign, Ad Group, or Keyword level. Combined with Goals or eCommerce tracking you can see a complete picture of your AdWords performance.

How to Get Started with the New AdWords Reports

To start using the new AdWords reports in Google Analytics you need a linked AdWords account. You also need to make sure that Destination URL auto-tagging is turned on. Start from your AdWords account, select the Reporting tab, then Google Analytics. To access the reports from Google Analytics, select Traffic Sources, then AdWords.

You can see the new reports in action in this video:

Hope you enjoy the new reports! Let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

School’s out, but the learning never stops

Trevor Claiborne — Fri, 28 May 2010 21:09:00 +0000

Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer Seminars for Success are a great way to get in-depth, hands-on training on two products that can help you maximize your marketing and website ROI. Seminars are available coast-to-coast all summer long. Starting in June, we have three sets of seminars being held in New York, Phoenix, and Chicago.

Here’s a look at what you’ll learn by attending a seminar with one of our Google Analytics Certified Partners (GACP).

Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training

Google Analytics – Advanced Analysis Techniques

Google Analytics – Implementation & Advanced Topics

Website Optimizer

New York, NY: Register Here

June 8: Google Analytics Introduction & User Training

June 9: Google Analytics Advanced Analysis Techniques

June 10: Google Analytics Implementation & Advanced Topics

Phoenix, AZ: Register Here

June 9: Google Analytics Introduction & User Training

June 10: Google Analytics Implementation & Advanced Topics

June 11: Google Website Optimizer

Chicago, IL: Register Here

June 23: Google Analytics Introduction & User Training

June 24: Google Analytics Implementation & Advanced Topics

June 25: Google Website Optimizer

If these dates don’t work for you, see the complete Seminars for Success schedule.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Website Optimizer at eMetrics San Jose and Conversion Conference West next week

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:27:00 +0000

Two great industry conferences are happening next week in San Jose: eMetrics and the Conversion Conference. Veterans of the industry will be familiar with eMetrics, but you may not know about the Conversion Conference.

The Conversion Conference is a brand new event being chaired by Tim Ash. Tim is the president of Site Tuners (a Website Optimizer Certified Partner), and if you’ve been to any online marketing conference in the last few years, you’ve probably heard him speak about the importance of conversion. He’s helped assemble some of the best minds in conversion (like Bryan Eisenberg and Jakob Nielsen) for a really amazing event.

If you haven’t registered yet, Conversion Conference is offering a $250 late-bird discount. Just enter CCW646 when registering at the Conversion Conference site.

Here’s some of the happenings at the two conferences:

Tuesday, May 4th

11am - Introduction to Website Optimizer session (I’m giving this session)
1:50pm - What’s New with Google Analytics with Brett Crosby
2pm - Web Analytics & Uncovering Problems with Eric Peterson & Brett Crosby

We’ll be hosting a book signing of the brand new book Performance Marketing with Google Analytics. All three authors, two Google Analytics Certified Partners, Justin Cutroni and Caleb Whitmore and a former member of the Google Analytics team, Sebastian Tonkin, will be on hand giving away and signing the new book on May 4th, starting at 3pm in the Cupertino room.

Wednesday, May 5th

9am - Keynote: Leveraging Bleeding Edge Analytics Goodies with Avinash Kaushik
12:15pm - Brown Bag Deep Dive with Google Analytics product manager, Jayanth Mysore

Also, don’t miss your chance to come face to face with the HiPPO at the Google booth. Hope to see you next week in San Jose.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Website Optimizer at eMetrics San Jose and Conversion Conference West next week

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:27:00 +0000

If you haven’t registered yet, Conversion Conference is offering a $250 late-bird discount. Just enter CCW646 when registering at the Conversion Conference site.

Here’s some of the happenings at the two conferences:

Tuesday, May 4th

11am - Introduction to Website Optimizer session (I’m giving this session)
1:50pm - What’s New with Google Analytics with Brett Crosby
2pm - Web Analytics & Uncovering Problems with Eric Peterson & Brett Crosby

Wednesday, May 5th

9am - Keynote: Leveraging Bleeding Edge Analytics Goodies with Avinash Kaushik
12:15pm - Brown Bag Deep Dive with Google Analytics product manager, Jayanth Mysore

Also, don’t miss your chance to come face to face with the HiPPO at the Google booth. Hope to see you next week in San Jose.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Google Analytics User Conferences go Dutch!

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:20:00 +0000

Despite the travel havoc caused by the volcano in Iceland, today we hosted our first Google Analytics User Conference in Europe. Six of our Dutch partners joined forces to deliver an interactive and informative day for hundreds of our Dutch users.

Clancy Childs (Google Analytics EMEA Lead Sales Engineer) discussed business intelligence, traffic improvements, conversion optimization and the Google Analytics API.

Brian Clifton also joined the list of speakers to cover ‘Measuring success in a Web 2.0 world’

We had a further 12 workshop sessions hosted by experts from each of the partners including (to name a few):

Developing a conversion attribution model using Google Analytics
Creating targeted dashboards
Landing Page Optimization
AdWords Optimization

It was really great to meet some of our enthusiastic Dutch user base and we look forward to rolling out more of these User Conferences across the world. Copenhagen is next on the list! Stay tuned to the blog for more details.

Well done to ClickValue, Traffic Builders, OrangeValley, Traffic4u, Netsociety and Netprofiler for hosting a great day!

Posted by Alan Wrafter, Google Analytics Team

Making the Web Faster

Trevor Claiborne — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:17:00 +0000

Today, our web search team announced how Google search now uses site speed as a factor in ranking. All things being equal, a faster loading site is better than a slower site.

With this announcement, we wanted to remind you about Google Analytics asynchronous tracking. The asynchronous tracking code has a faster load time and can improve site speed, especially on rich-media or script-heavy pages.

We encourage users to update to the asynchronous snippet to help make your site and the web faster. You can read up on how to implement the asynchronous snippet on our Google Code site. We also have a comprehensive list of migration examples to help you make the switch.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Custom variables webinar available for your viewing pleasure

Trevor Claiborne — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Custom variables is one of the most powerful features in Google Analytics. With them you can segment traffic by almost any attribute. We recently hosted a webinar on how to make the most effective use of custom variables. If you missed it, you can now watch this highly informative webinar on the Google Analytics YouTube channel.

If you’re interested in learning how to use this powerful feature in Google Analytics, sit yourself down with some popcorn this Friday night and get analyzing.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Back to Hits

Trevor Claiborne — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:32:00 +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:

(click to view full-size)

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

Upcoming Webinar: Google Analytics Custom Variables

Trevor Claiborne — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:14:00 +0000

Custom variables are one of the most powerful features in Google Analytics. With them you can segment traffic by almost any attribute. For example, you could compare traffic from first-time customers versus repeat buyers. Or, if you run a content-oriented site, you could see which authors produce the most traffic..

While powerful, setting up custom variables can be a bit tricky, so we’re holding a webinar so you can learn how to make the most of them.

We'll start with Phil Mui, Senior Product Manager for Google Analytics, who'll share with you the features and capabilities of custom variables. Next, we'll hear from Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Developer Evangelist. Nick will show you how to implement custom variables on your website and share best practices.

We'll also be joined by Jim Snyder and Peter Howley from Empirical Path, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant. They'll share how they implemented custom variables for the Business Insider and the insights they've gained as a result. We'll close with a Q&A session with all the speakers.

We’ve set up a Google Moderator to take your questions in advance and so you can vote on the questions you’d most like to see answered. Ask your questions

Date: Wednesday, March 24th

Time: 10:00 AM Pacific

If you can't make the live webinar, we'll post a recording on the Google Analytics YouTube Channel a week or two afterwards.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Upcoming System Upgrade for Greater Scalability & Reliability

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:55:00 +0000

Within the next two weeks, Google Analytics will be performing a system upgrade. This upgrade is to further increase the scalability and reliability of Google Analytics to meet the demand of an 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, 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 unparalled reliability and scalability that users have come to expect from products running on Google’s globally renowned infrastructure.

P.S. Google Website Optimizer 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. Read more on the Website Optimizer blog.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

Website Optimizer system upgrade coming soon

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:13:00 +0000

Within the next two weeks, Google Website Optimizer will undergo a system upgrade. During this upgrade, Website Optimizer will be in maintenance mode. Your experiments will continue to run and collect data, and you’ll be able to view your reports. However, you will not be able to create or modify experiments. This includes launching, pausing, or stopping an experiment.

We’ll notify you of the exact timing of this upgrade both here on the blog and with a message inside your Website Optimizer account. Thanks for bearing with us as we continue to make Website Optimizer better.

If you also use Google Analytics you should know that they’ll be undergoing a similar upgrade, which you can read about on the Google Analytics blog.

Update: 3/2/2010 at 8:55 AM

We've begun the upgrade and Website Optimizer is currently in maintenance mode. A reminder that you'll be unable to create or modify experiments during this time.

Update: 3/3/2010 at 8:10 AM

As of about 2AM PST this morning, Website Optimizer is out of maintenance mode and working normally. Thanks for bearing with us during the maintenance period.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Website Optimizer system upgrade coming soon

Trevor Claiborne — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:13:00 +0000

If you also use Google Analytics you should know that they’ll be undergoing a similar upgrade, which you can read about on the Google Analytics blog.

Update: 3/2/2010 at 8:55 AM

We've begun the upgrade and Website Optimizer is currently in maintenance mode. A reminder that you'll be unable to create or modify experiments during this time.

Update: 3/3/2010 at 8:10 AM

As of about 2AM PST this morning, Website Optimizer is out of maintenance mode and working normally. Thanks for bearing with us during the maintenance period.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

25 Google Website Optimizer Tips for Better Product Pages

Trevor Claiborne — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:28:00 +0000

Late last year, a fantastic post went around the Internet with 55 Google Website Optimzer Tips and Tricks. Today, we have a sequel for you. This is a guest post from Khalid Saleh, who is the president and cofounder of Invesp, an ecommerce conversion rate optimization company.

Increasing e-commerce conversion rates is challenging. With thousands of possible pages, where should you start optimizing? Even if you can answer that question by picking a small set of pages to start with, what changes should you make?

The following tips will be focused on product page testing, but we will first set the stage with few setup items:

1. Segmenting your visitors. Nothing is more powerful than segmenting your visitors and examining the different trends these visitors follow on your site. At a minimum, you should segment visitors by source of traffic, keyword, type of visit (new vs. returning) and country.

2. Segmentation with Google Website Optimizer = Testing on Steroids! Not all customers are created equal, nor should you deal with all customers equally. Testing different versions of your page or funnel is powerful. Testing different versions based on the type of visitors is even more powerful. There are different ways of doing this, but we recommend starting with BTBuckets or with these instructions.

3. Setup your funnels. Funnels tell you what pages are causing visitors to exit the site. At a minimum, we recommend you setup the following funnels:

Home page to cart page funnel
General checkout process funnel including the cart page
General checkout process funnel excluding the cart page
Checkout process funnel for different payment types including the cart page
Checkout process funnel for different payment types excluding the cart page

4. Funnels & visitors. Beyond setting up funnels is segmenting your traffic and examining how it moves in funnels. But how do you do that in Google Analytics? We will let you in on a small secret:

Setup the different funnels in Google Analytics
Setup different profiles to represent the different segments
Now, you can examine each of the funnels for the different profiles

5. Returning visitors vs. new visitors. Comparing different segments of visitors can be confusing. You should expect visitors from organic search to interact differently with your site compared to visitors from paid search. We find that segmenting new visitors versus returning visitors can reveal major design problems in the site. Generally returning visitors will take longer on a site, view more pages, and have lower exit and bounce rates. If that is not the case, then you might have major design issues to deal with.

6. Product pages: A micro conversion. We like to run the product pages tests twice with different conversion goals:

Micro conversion goal: When a visitor adds an item to the cart, we count that as a micro conversion.
Macro conversion: When the visitor completes an order, we count a macro conversion.

7. Product pages: the image. Yes, you heard it before. An image is worth a thousand words. However, product images do require an investment, so test the correct solution for your website. Each of the options below will require considerable time, software, and resource commitment. So, test with 5 to 10 products before choosing the right solution for your website.

8. Product pages: Image of product in use. Test with showing the product in use vs. images with solid backgrounds. While in many cases showing the product in use helps the visitors see themselves use the particular product, this is not the case for all products. Apparel websites seem to benefit from this feature. Electronics or book websites, not so much!

9. Product pages: Location of the image. Where should you place the product image? Common wisdom is to place product images on right side of product pages. But common wisdom fails to predict how visitors will act on your website. So test placing the image on left versus the right and see which converts better.

10. Product pages: Product zooming. If you have the software installed on your website, then allowing visitors to zoom in and examine the product closely is an excellent feature to add.

11. Product pages: Multiple product images. Finally, consider having multiple images of the product. We usually recommend having 3-4 images per product to start with. But a word of caution here: hire a professional photographer for these images. Having several low quality images versus a single high quality image is something worth thinking about.

12. Product pages: your product descriptions. Most e-commerce stores take the product description from the manufacturer and place it on the site. So, you will find the same description on competing e-commerce stores. Pick your top 10 best selling products and:

Test the impact of having the standard manufacturer's description versus custom copy your team creates. What impact does this have on the micro conversion (visitors adding items to their cart)?
Test different versions of the custom copy you create: Not all copy created equal. You might want to test technical copy versus non-technical. Consider the different market segments and what words will have the most impact on them.

13. Product pages: Reviews. Reviews are great for increasing conversions. There are many studies that show product reviews are responsible for up to 30% uplift in conversions. However, if you are just starting out, allow customers to add reviews but do not display them right away. Wait for a product to collect enough reviews before sharing them with your visitors. Consider using services such ProductWiki to add images on your site.

14. Product pages: add to cart buttons. Yes, they do impact conversion. And there are many things you can test with these:

Test the location of the add to cart button
Test different designs of the add to cart button
Test the wording on the add to cart buttons

15. Product pages: don’t overdo it! What do you think of this?

Too many CTAs (call to actions) can stop a visitor in their tracks.

16. Product pages: cross-sells and upsells. We know that you want to sell more of your products. Cross-sells and upsells can help you do that, but they also can distract the visitors. So, test the placement of cross-sells and upsells on your product pages. Should they go in the left navigation or somewhere in the middle section of the product pages?

17. Product pages: pricing. Most of your visitors will do some sort of comparison shopping. So, test different prices and see what impact that will have on your conversion rates. We had a client who reported a 135% increase in conversion rate by lowering product prices by 10%. We do not like to focus on pricing as a mechanism to increase conversion rates but sometimes it works really well.

18. Poor man testing: pricing & Google Website Optimizer. It is usually difficult to switch back and forth between different pricing for items, but here is a general framework to help you:

Most ecommerce packages provide a way to maintain a single price for a product. Plan on a strategy for testing multiple prices:

Price A is the original price
Price B is the original price x 1.10 (10% increase)
Price C is the original price x 0.90 (10% decrease)

Price A (original is already saved in your database). You can either maintain Price B, C in the database or have application logic to switch between the different prices for a single item.
One option to implement this is to have all prices available on the page and use GWO to display one price and hide the other two prices. Another option will be to use GWO to pass a variable value to be used in a formula to change the price.
Implementing this should take less than a day and will provide a mechanism to test prices in Google Website Optimizer.

19. Product pages: stock availability. This is a no brainer. No customer likes to add an item to their cart only to discover later that the item is out of stock. So, tie your front end e-commerce store to your inventory system. If that is too much, then consider a daily update.

Bad: No product availability on your site
Good: Always display product availability
Excellent: Display messages to encourage customers to buy a product if you have limited stock available (Only 5 left in stock -- order soon.)

20. When can I have it? Tell visitors when the product will be in their hands. Do not tell visitors the items will arrive 3 to 10 days. That will simply kill your conversion and if it does not, it will irritate visitors.

21. Product pages: Feature list.

The first level of attracting customers is features. Features are the facts about a given product. Features of an outdoor grill might include:

Electric
Grease tray
Non-stick cooking surface
Temperature control
300 square inches of cooking space
Attached working surface

22. Product pages: The benefit list. Benefits start you on the road to closing a sale. The benefits of the above outdoor grill include:

Convenience

Electric
Non-stick cooking surface
Attached working surface

Easy to Use:
- Electric
- Non-stick cooking surface
- Temperature control
- Attached working surface
Saves Money

Electric
Temperature control

23. Product pages - People buy benefits, they do not buy features. What results do your customers want from your barbeque? They want a grill that offers:

Tasty, Healthy Food Every time

Temperature control
Grease tray

Perfect for Easy Entertaining

300 square inches of cooking space
Attached working area
Easy to clean

A Double Bonus: Environmentally Friendly While Saving You Money!

Electric versus charcoal emissions
Do not have to buy charcoal for the life of the grill

24. Bundled pricing. Consider bundling shipping costs with product items so visitors will not have to worry about paying for shipping costs. If the shipping costs are too complicated to understand or might be on the high side, we recommend testing bundling them with the product price.

25. Free shipping is a great way to increase sales. We have many clients who offer free shipping on orders above a certain size and usually see a nice uplift in both conversions and average order value by doing so.

26. Bonus tips: If you are about to start conversion rate optimization, then these resources are a must:

Conversion rate 101: a series of articles on conversion rate optimization.

Personas 101: a complete guide to creating personas for your website

30+ principles to a better landing page design: a must read for anyone interested in landing page design.

Landing page templates: we optimized these templates using GWO to increase their conversion rates to the double digits. They are a good starting point.

Thanks to Khalid for putting together this great list. Share your own favorite GWO tips in the comments.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

25 Google Website Optimizer Tips for Better Product Pages

Trevor Claiborne — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:28:00 +0000

The following tips will be focused on product page testing, but we will first set the stage with few setup items:

3. Setup your funnels. Funnels tell you what pages are causing visitors to exit the site. At a minimum, we recommend you setup the following funnels:

Home page to cart page funnel
General checkout process funnel including the cart page
General checkout process funnel excluding the cart page
Checkout process funnel for different payment types including the cart page
Checkout process funnel for different payment types excluding the cart page

Setup the different funnels in Google Analytics
Setup different profiles to represent the different segments
Now, you can examine each of the funnels for the different profiles

6. Product pages: A micro conversion. We like to run the product pages tests twice with different conversion goals:

Micro conversion goal: When a visitor adds an item to the cart, we count that as a micro conversion.
Macro conversion: When the visitor completes an order, we count a macro conversion.

10. Product pages: Product zooming. If you have the software installed on your website, then allowing visitors to zoom in and examine the product closely is an excellent feature to add.

Test the impact of having the standard manufacturer's description versus custom copy your team creates. What impact does this have on the micro conversion (visitors adding items to their cart)?
Test different versions of the custom copy you create: Not all copy created equal. You might want to test technical copy versus non-technical. Consider the different market segments and what words will have the most impact on them.

14. Product pages: add to cart buttons. Yes, they do impact conversion. And there are many things you can test with these:

Test the location of the add to cart button
Test different designs of the add to cart button
Test the wording on the add to cart buttons

15. Product pages: don’t overdo it! What do you think of this?

Too many CTAs (call to actions) can stop a visitor in their tracks.

18. Poor man testing: pricing & Google Website Optimizer. It is usually difficult to switch back and forth between different pricing for items, but here is a general framework to help you:

Most ecommerce packages provide a way to maintain a single price for a product. Plan on a strategy for testing multiple prices:

Price A is the original price
Price B is the original price x 1.10 (10% increase)
Price C is the original price x 0.90 (10% decrease)

Price A (original is already saved in your database). You can either maintain Price B, C in the database or have application logic to switch between the different prices for a single item.
One option to implement this is to have all prices available on the page and use GWO to display one price and hide the other two prices. Another option will be to use GWO to pass a variable value to be used in a formula to change the price.
Implementing this should take less than a day and will provide a mechanism to test prices in Google Website Optimizer.

Bad: No product availability on your site
Good: Always display product availability
Excellent: Display messages to encourage customers to buy a product if you have limited stock available (Only 5 left in stock -- order soon.)

21. Product pages: Feature list.

The first level of attracting customers is features. Features are the facts about a given product. Features of an outdoor grill might include:

Electric
Grease tray
Non-stick cooking surface
Temperature control
300 square inches of cooking space
Attached working surface

22. Product pages: The benefit list. Benefits start you on the road to closing a sale. The benefits of the above outdoor grill include:

Convenience

Electric
Non-stick cooking surface
Attached working surface

Easy to Use:
- Electric
- Non-stick cooking surface
- Temperature control
- Attached working surface
Saves Money

Electric
Temperature control

23. Product pages - People buy benefits, they do not buy features. What results do your customers want from your barbeque? They want a grill that offers:

Tasty, Healthy Food Every time

Temperature control
Grease tray

Perfect for Easy Entertaining

300 square inches of cooking space
Attached working area
Easy to clean

A Double Bonus: Environmentally Friendly While Saving You Money!

Electric versus charcoal emissions
Do not have to buy charcoal for the life of the grill

26. Bonus tips: If you are about to start conversion rate optimization, then these resources are a must:

Conversion rate 101: a series of articles on conversion rate optimization.

Personas 101: a complete guide to creating personas for your website

30+ principles to a better landing page design: a must read for anyone interested in landing page design.

Landing page templates: we optimized these templates using GWO to increase their conversion rates to the double digits. They are a good starting point.

Thanks to Khalid for putting together this great list. Share your own favorite GWO tips in the comments.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

How to quadruple a conversion rate

Trevor Claiborne — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:06:00 +0000

We’re big fans of increasing conversion rates. The bigger the increase, the happier we are. So we were delighted when Conversion Rate Experts, one of our Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants, told us how they recently quadrupled Voices.com’s conversion rate from under 5% to 22%.

You can read all about how they did it on their website, which I strongly encourage you to do. Come back after you’ve finished reading. We’ll wait.

OK, done reading? You probably got some great ideas on what you can do to improve your site.

Here’s CRE’s summation of key lessons:

Find out why customers aren’t converting; don’t just guess. If you don’t know what their objections are, your chances of overcoming them are very slim.
Don’t “hide your light under a bushel.” If your company is the best at something—and if you have proof—make certain the proof is prominently placed on your website.
Consider segmenting your visitors. How do you know whether to segment visitors? If your most common “visitor intentions” can’t be addressed with the same message, you should segment them. Similarly, if you have more than one type of visitor, and they can’t all be served by the same message, you’ll probably have to segment them. Beware that segmentation can create a lot of extra work, so only do it if you absolutely have to.
People don’t buy what they don’t understand. Clearly explain your service, so the prospect is more likely to feel in control and take action.
Sometimes video is the best medium for explaining things—and for providing proof. Web video needn’t cost a lot, as we’ll reveal soon (subscribe to our newsletter to receive details). Screen capture videos can easily be carried out using Camtasia (for PC) or Screenflow (which is our preferred option for Mac).

The Big Lesson

For me, the biggest lesson from this story is that quadrupling a conversion rate is hard work. Let’s break this up a bit:

Know your (client’s) customer

CRE has a lot of experience in improving websites, but the first thing they did was work to understand the customer. They ran surveys, they spoke with the Voices.com CEO, they dug deep into the web analytics, all to find out what customers were thinking when they visited the website.

Time and again, the greatest conversion rate increases I’ve seen have come from a better understanding of the customer. So, take the time to really get inside your customers’ heads.

Avoid the Spaghetti Strategy

If you want to radically increase your conversion rate, you can’t just throw up a test with two new images and three new headlines like pieces of spaghetti and hope that they stick. You need to put thought into how you can improve conversion rate, and you need to know your customer.

Don’t stop at the first test

Conversion Rate Experts didn’t go from 5% to 22% with one test. It wasn’t two, three, or even five tests. The 400% increase is the result of 11 tests. Maybe more importantly, these tests spanned the entire conversion funnel and didn’t just focus on the landing pages. By continuing to learn more about the customer and methodical testing, CRE achieved great results. Testing isn't a one time thing, and it takes a few iterations to get the biggest wins.

It may be hard work, but as Voices.com's results show, it’s worth the effort.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

How to quadruple a conversion rate

Trevor Claiborne — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:06:00 +0000

You can read all about how they did it on their website, which I strongly encourage you to do. Come back after you’ve finished reading. We’ll wait.

OK, done reading? You probably got some great ideas on what you can do to improve your site.

Here’s CRE’s summation of key lessons:

Find out why customers aren’t converting; don’t just guess. If you don’t know what their objections are, your chances of overcoming them are very slim.
Don’t “hide your light under a bushel.” If your company is the best at something—and if you have proof—make certain the proof is prominently placed on your website.
Consider segmenting your visitors. How do you know whether to segment visitors? If your most common “visitor intentions” can’t be addressed with the same message, you should segment them. Similarly, if you have more than one type of visitor, and they can’t all be served by the same message, you’ll probably have to segment them. Beware that segmentation can create a lot of extra work, so only do it if you absolutely have to.
People don’t buy what they don’t understand. Clearly explain your service, so the prospect is more likely to feel in control and take action.
Sometimes video is the best medium for explaining things—and for providing proof. Web video needn’t cost a lot, as we’ll reveal soon (subscribe to our newsletter to receive details). Screen capture videos can easily be carried out using Camtasia (for PC) or Screenflow (which is our preferred option for Mac).

The Big Lesson

For me, the biggest lesson from this story is that quadrupling a conversion rate is hard work. Let’s break this up a bit:

Know your (client’s) customer

Time and again, the greatest conversion rate increases I’ve seen have come from a better understanding of the customer. So, take the time to really get inside your customers’ heads.

Avoid the Spaghetti Strategy

Don’t stop at the first test

It may be hard work, but as Voices.com's results show, it’s worth the effort.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Change the way you see your site with Browser Size

Trevor Claiborne — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:29:00 +0000

This is a guest post from Jesse Nichols. Jesse is part of the Google Analytics team and is one of our Analytics gurus. Here, he shares a new tool in Google Labs that can help you see how visitors see your site.

The easiest websites to optimize are the horrible ones. In fact, the hardest part about optimizing a site that has a million and one problems is deciding which ones to go after first. However, where do you begin if you have a beautiful, clean, profitable website? If there are no clear issues - if the calls to action are visible and the page uncluttered and the buttons big and shiny - then what can be done short of remaking the entire site (an idea as scary as it is unnecessary)?

Sometimes, all you need is a change in perspective. We, the web savvy, see the Internet through big, clear monitors and 11 point font. We look at our site and we can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t be able to perform whatever task the site is designed to do. Well, to that end, Google Labs has created Browser Size. This nifty little tool allows you to see how much of your webpage is immediately visible to your visitor depending on the size of their monitor and resolution settings.

The concept of “the fold” of a webpage (as in “above the fold”, i.e., what can be seen upon landing on a webpage without any scrolling) is not a solid line that snips the bottom off every page, but rather a subjective experience. The notion of having important links, buttons and messages above the fold is taken for granted as a good policy, so what if you found out that 20% of your visitors couldn’t immediately see what you thought they could?

Plug your site into Browser Size and you’ll get that perspective. Each band of color represents approximately how many visitors will see that section immediately upon landing (the seemingly shaky lines are actually a true representation of the visible area excluding the title bar, toolbars, etc). If you have important information or buttons in the 70% range, that means 30% of your visitors are forced to scroll to see that information and convert.

Take a look at this example from the Website Optimizer homepage:

Click to see full-size

As you can see, most people can see our primary call to action, the “Start testing now” button. However, some of our educational content like Benefits and Testing 101 sections is below the fold for 50% of viewers.

Think the numbers are different for your site? Browser Size bases its data on a sample of visitors to Google.com, but you can check out your screen resolutions report in your web analytics tool to see the most common visitor screen resolutions for your own site. For most sites the list of dimensions is quite long, and the ones we in the industry tend to use – 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x1024 - typically only represent about 50% of the visitors at best.

So get back to the optimization grindstone, squeeze another percentage point or two into your conversion rate, and give all of your visitors the experience they deserve. You can start using Browser Size at http://browsersize.googlelabs.com

Thanks again to Jesse for sharing this post with us.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Change the way you see your site with Browser Size

Trevor Claiborne — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:29:00 +0000

Take a look at this example from the Website Optimizer homepage:

Click to see full-size

Thanks again to Jesse for sharing this post with us.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Google Analytics launches asynchronous tracking

Trevor Claiborne — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:26:00 +0000

Google Analytics now provides a new Asynchronous Tracking Code snippet as an alternate way to track your website!

Think of the asynchronous tracking code snippet as a script that uses a "separate lane" to handle part of the processing of your webpage. As the number of cars (or in this case, scripts on your webpage) increases, the asynchronous tracker uses this lane to reduce webpage load time. Websites that use many scripts or rely on rich media content will especially benefit from this new method, but even lightweight sites will see improvements.

The new tracking snippet offers the following benefits:

Faster tracking code load times for your web pages due to improved browser execution
Enhanced data collection and accuracy
Elimination of tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript hasn't fully loaded

The asynchronous tracking code is now in Beta and available to all Google Analytics users. Using the new tracking code is optional: your existing Google Analytics code will continue to work as-is. But if you want to improve your webpage load times and fine-tune the accuracy of your Analytics data, then we think you'll love this new option.

Learn more about this new tracking code on our Analytics Help Center and get started on Google Code.

Posted by Jesse Savage, Google Analytics Team

Two webinars now up on the Website Optimizer YouTube channel

Trevor Claiborne — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:25:00 +0000

It's a great week for the Website Optimizer YouTube channel. On the heels of Dan Siroker's talk, How we used data to win the election, we just posted two recorded webinars. The first webinar is Planning and Running your First Experiment with Website Optimizer. David Booth, one of our authorized consultants, gives an outstanding presentation that guides you through setting up your first test. Along the way, he shares lots of great insights, case studies, and tips for increasing your conversion rate.

The second webinar is about the Website Optimizer Experiment Management API and is aimed at a more technical audience. In this webinar, Website Optimizer engineers Erika Rice-Scherpelz and Gary Kacmarcik explain how to use the API. We also have a demonstration from Ken Colborn, also a GWO authorized consultant, on how he's integrated Website Optimizer with their Motivity CMS platform.

Grab some popcorn and enjoy.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Two webinars now up on the Website Optimizer YouTube channel

Trevor Claiborne — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:25:00 +0000

Grab some popcorn and enjoy.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

New video: How We Used Data to Win the Election

Trevor Claiborne — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:58:00 +0000

We just posted a new video on the Website Optimizer YouTube channel that shows the power of website testing. Last month, we held our annual Google Partner Summit where we hosted all of the Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, and Urchin Software Authorized Consultants. One of the keynote speakers was Dan Siroker, Director of Analytics for the Obama Presidential campaign.

In his 50 minute talk, Dan explained how they used data to win the election. He shows how they used tools like Google Analytics and Website Optimizer to get more engagement and more donations. He also describes the lessons that they learned throughout the campaign. With the successful election behind him, Dan is now focused on his startup, CarrotSticks, and he explains how he's using the same principles within his own company.

Special thanks to Kobi Reiter, Website Optimizer engineer, for his steady hand in recording this video.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

New video: How We Used Data to Win the Election

Trevor Claiborne — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:58:00 +0000

Special thanks to Kobi Reiter, Website Optimizer engineer, for his steady hand in recording this video.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Google Data » Trevor Claiborne

Site Speed gets an upgrade. Hello Performance tab

Linking all of your AdWords accounts to Google Analytics

Introducing Multi-Channel Funnels: discover untapped opportunities in your conversion path

Update to Sessions in Google Analytics

Improvements in Custom Reports: Better builder, more metrics, and custom navigation

+1 reporting in Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics

New Google Analytics: Improvements in Mobile Reporting

New Google Analytics: Improvements in Map Overlay reports

Summer time and the learning’s easy!

Pilot the Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics integration

The Making of Google Analytics v5

What’s new about Analytics Intelligence?

New Google Analytics – Overview Reports Overview

Issue affecting Analytics data for April resolved

Measure Page Load Time with Site Speed Analytics Report

Custom Reports in the new Google Analytics

The New Google Analytics Available to Everyone

Good luck to Jeff Gillis

Case Study: Universal Technical Institute Increases Application Requests Eight-fold With Website Optimizer

New Year, New Asynchronous Tags for GWO

New Year, New Asynchronous Tags for GWO

Welcome, Google Apps users!

Update your Website Optimizer scripts to secure your site

Update your Website Optimizer scripts to secure your site

Instant Preview issue resolved

System Update for November 2nd

Introducing In-Page Analytics: Visual context for your Analytics data

New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

Join Website Optimizer at eMetrics & Conversion Conference in Washington DC

Join Website Optimizer at eMetrics & Conversion Conference in Washington DC

Google Instant and Google Analytics

Introducing Weighted Sort

Creating Targeted Tests using DoubleClick Ad Planner and Website Optimizer

Creating Targeted Tests using DoubleClick Ad Planner and Website Optimizer

Using The Wrong Tracking Code Can Cost You $500k a Year

Campaign Data Issue Being Corrected

The New AdWords Reports in Google Analytics

School’s out, but the learning never stops

Website Optimizer at eMetrics San Jose and Conversion Conference West next week

Website Optimizer at eMetrics San Jose and Conversion Conference West next week

Google Analytics User Conferences go Dutch!

Making the Web Faster

Custom variables webinar available for your viewing pleasure

Back to Hits

Upcoming Webinar: Google Analytics Custom Variables

​Upcoming System Upgrade for Greater Scalability & Reliability

Website Optimizer system upgrade coming soon

Website Optimizer system upgrade coming soon

​25 Google Website Optimizer Tips for Better Product Pages

​25 Google Website Optimizer Tips for Better Product Pages

​How to quadruple a conversion rate

​How to quadruple a conversion rate

Change the way you see your site with Browser Size

Change the way you see your site with Browser Size

Google Analytics launches asynchronous tracking

Two webinars now up on the Website Optimizer YouTube channel

Two webinars now up on the Website Optimizer YouTube channel

New video: How We Used Data to Win the Election

New video: How We Used Data to Win the Election

Upcoming System Upgrade for Greater Scalability & Reliability

25 Google Website Optimizer Tips for Better Product Pages

25 Google Website Optimizer Tips for Better Product Pages

How to quadruple a conversion rate

How to quadruple a conversion rate