Glass Case » Analytics http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc using internet marketing to grow your business Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:30:27 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/google-analytics-asynchronous-tracking-code/ http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/google-analytics-asynchronous-tracking-code/#comments Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:36:43 +0000 Chris Peters http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/?p=666 About a year ago, Google Analytics released a new "asynchronous" tracking code to be placed on your site. It had taken me about 11 months to get around to trying it, but now that I have taken a look at it, I highly recommend switching to it ASAP.

Read on for reasons why.

]]> About a year ago, Google Analytics released a new “asynchronous” tracking code to be placed on your site. It had taken me about 11 months to get around to trying it, but now that I have taken a look at it, I highly recommend switching to it ASAP.

Because the new code takes advantage of more advanced JavaScript features in browsers, you get some benefits from switching:

  • You can now place your tracking code in the <head> section of your HTML documents, which is a more proper way of doing it.
  • The reason why the recommended placement used to be at the end of your document was because the Google Analytics tracking code would slow down your website load time. With the new code, the browser does not stop all other processing in order to load the Google Analytics code.

Google also added more tracking options that you should look into if you find yourself in one of the following situations:

  • Need to track activity across multiple domains (i.e., example.com and something.com)
  • Need to track activity across multiple subdomains (i.e., www.example.com and store.example.com)

So if your tracking code doesn’t look something like this, it’s time to update your templates!

<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

(function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

]]> http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/google-analytics-asynchronous-tracking-code/feed/ 0 Online marketing suite: I have a dream http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/integrated-marketing-suite-dream/ http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/integrated-marketing-suite-dream/#comments Sat, 29 Aug 2009 02:19:31 +0000 Chris Peters http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/?p=562 I have a dream of a glorious website system. One that will tie all channels together and show marketers a clear picture of what's happening. A system that has an opinion on what the best practices are. A system that is human compatible, not just web server compatible.

The analysts call it an online marketing suite. And apparently I have quite a bit to say about online marketing suites. Read on for the opine.

]]> I have a dream of a glorious website system. One that will tie all channels together and show marketers a clear picture of what’s happening. A system that has an opinion on what the best practices are. A system that is human compatible, not just web server compatible.

The analysts call it an online marketing suite. And once analysts put a name on something like they did with this 2 years ago, you can bet that a lot of companies are building a solution.

Here’s the problem: these solutions are going to be expensive. And because the word “enterprise” will more than likely be attached, these solutions will not be user friendly. They will be clunky, unintuitive, and slow. Mark my words. Try out some of the stuff that’s out there today like Omniture (if you have tens of thousands of dollars in your budget to implement them, that is).

Another problem. These suites will need to have a wide range of features:

  • Web analytics/conversion management
  • Search keyword management
  • Content collaboration/integration/management
  • User experience management
  • Dashboards and automated reports
  • Campaign management
  • Data mining flexibility
  • E-commerce integration/management
  • Social media management
  • CRM integration/management

Note that the word management indicates the need for measurable results. Not just pretty charts to look at and go “Hmm…”

The list of features could go on from there. And the list will grow as the Facebooks, Twitters, and Googles create additional channels in the online marketing landscape.

The root of the problem is that online marketing suite providers will bolt on additional features, not worrying much about the user experience or how marketers need to think and work to get their jobs done. And they will continue to make it all so complex that you need to hire professional services just to keep it working. Boooooo.

Until something affordable and effective emerges, internet marketing consultants will continue to have it sweet. Inefficient, fragmented tools will allow for more billable hours and will introduce a greater cost of entry to those who want to become experts. And this will become a problem as businesses will demand more accountability and measurable results for less money.

It’s a great time to be one of the few that understand how it all works. The days are numbered for the fakes who pretend that they know what they’re doing, though I must admit that there will still be quite a few days left for them.

The revolution will be data driven. That’s for sure. And it will require opinionated tools that get the job done without trying to cater to petty feature requests.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

]]> http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/integrated-marketing-suite-dream/feed/ 0 Measuring organic traffic sent to a given page http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/measuring-organic-traffic-sent-to-page/ http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/measuring-organic-traffic-sent-to-page/#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:47:25 +0000 Chris Peters http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/?p=520 Google Analytics

On Tuesday, I posted instructions on measuring organic keywords that send traffic to a given web page. At the end of the post, I gave the caveat that the traffic reported to you isn't necessarily for just that page.

So what do you do if you want to know a more precise number of visitors referred to a given page by organic search? Fortunately, there is a way to get to that number in Google Analytics. But again, it's not very easy to get there. I will show you the way.

]]> Google Analytics

On Tuesday, I posted instructions on measuring organic keywords that send traffic to a given web page. At the end of the post, I gave the caveat that the traffic reported to you isn’t necessarily for just that page.

So what do you do if you want to know a more precise number of visitors referred to a given page by organic search? Fortunately, there is a way to get to that number in Google Analytics. But again, it’s not very easy to get there. I will show you the way.

Report on number of visitors referred to a given page by organic search

You don’t know if your work on SEO is really effective until you report on the traffic driven by organic search. Recording the number of visitors referred once a month is a great way to see whether or not your efforts are paying off.

For bonus points, if you have a Goal set up, you can also find out the conversion rate for visitors referred by organic search.

For this example, we will report on the number of visitors referred to the home page of ColdFusion on Wheels from organic search. Hey, because it’s an open source project, I won’t make anyone angry by sharing these details.

How to set it up in Google Analytics

This time, we’ll get a precise number of visitors by using a Traffic Sources report in Google Analytics. Start by clicking the Traffic Sources link in the left navigation.

The Traffic Sources report is available in the left navigation of the Google Analytics interface.

Next, click on the Search Engines link that appears in the left navigation.

The Search Engines report is in the left navigation underneath the Traffic Sources section. (You must be in the Traffic Sources section for the link to be available.)

Now that we’re on the Search Engines report, find the non-paid link just below the giant line graph. Click it.

The Show: non-paid link limits the data to just traffic referred by organic search.

This will show you stats for how much organic traffic was sent from each search engine.

To show how many people landed on each page, find the drop-down marked as Dimension and set it to Landing Page.

Find the Landing Page option in the drop-down labeled Dimension.

Now you will finally see a list of URLs that visitors have landed on and how many visits there have been for your chosen date range.

If the page that you’re interested in doesn’t appear in the list that appears, try searching for it in the Filter Landing Page Containing search box at the bottom of the page.

Note that if you’re reporting on the index page of a section (index.html, index.php, home.aspx, etc.), you will need to find the backslash / record.

In our example, we can see that 463 visitors have been referred to the home page by organic search over the past month.

The home page record shows up as a forward slash in this example. It shows 463 associated visits.

If you have Goals set up in Analytics (highly recommended!), we can also report on how effective that landing page is when people land there from organic search. Google Analytics can tell you how each landing page works with up to 4 different goals.

Taking a look at the Goal Conversion tab, we can see in the example that visitors who land on the home page from organic search download the freeware file 8.24% of the time.

This is a very powerful report because now I can set a goal to increase that conversion rate next month. Imagine that: actually using web analytics to drive better business results!

If you click the Goal Conversion tab, conversion metrics appear for the different landing pages.

One of the caveats still applies

I’ll repeat the first caveat from the last post. It still applies to this scenario as well.

Caveat #1: Inconsistent links on your site

Unfortunately, if you have multiple links on your site that point to the same content, you could have a problem with getting to the metrics that you want.

For example, if you have links on your site to each of these

  • /products
  • /Products
  • /products/index.html
  • /products/

then those URLs are going to show up separately in Google Analytics. This applies to mixed case variants.

The best way to avoid this problem is to go through your site and use a consistent linking convention. I prefer all lowercase with a trailing slash, as in <a href="/products/">Products</a>. If this is too painstaking, you may just want to see which version of the URL that Google search results are sending users to, for starters.

I hope you find these reports useful and another way to drill down to measure the performance of your search marketing efforts. Please consider subscribing by RSS or email to be alerted when I post more tips in the future.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

]]> http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/measuring-organic-traffic-sent-to-page/feed/ 1 Measuring organic keywords referring traffic to a given web page http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/measuring-organic-keywords-referring-traffic-to-a-given-web-page/ http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/measuring-organic-keywords-referring-traffic-to-a-given-web-page/#comments Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:04:59 +0000 Chris Peters http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/?p=517 Google Analytics

Let's say that you optimized a page for [blue widgets], are now ranking for the term, and you want to see if it's driving any traffic.

Google AdWords lets you measure your PPC keyword traffic easily, but it's not so obvious how to do the same for organic keywords in Google Analytics. Let me show you what I think is the best path to setting up a report.

]]> Google Analytics

Every now and then, it’s good to report on the keywords that are referring users to a given page on your site. Let’s say that you optimized a page for [blue widgets], are now ranking for the term, and you want to see if it’s driving any traffic.

Google AdWords lets you measure your PPC keyword traffic easily, but it’s not so obvious how to do the same for organic keywords in Google Analytics. Let me show you what I think is the best path to setting up a report.

Report on organic key phrases used to get to a given web page

My organic SEO work has focused on taking a single web page and optimizing it for a key phrase or two. I’ve wanted to take a given page and see what keywords searchers have been using to get to that page. If the page is ranking well for a given key phrase and my reporting shows no traffic generated by that phrase, then it would be an indicator that I’d probably want to try something else (or figure out why no one is clicking to get to my page)!

For example’s sake, let’s say that I’ve optimized my blog’s home page for the key phrase [chris peters]. (Imagine that!)

How to set it up in Google Analytics

There are many different ways to approach reporting on your metrics in Google Analytics, so let me show you the best path to take in reporting on organic keywords.

Once you’re in your site in Google Analytics, click the Content link in the left navigation.

The Content link is in the left navgiation under Traffic Sources

Next, click Content Drilldown.

The Content Drilldown link is underneath the Content by Title link in the left navigation.

If the page you’re interested in reporting on doesn’t appear in the Content Performance area, go ahead and search for the folder name in the Find URL search box at the bottom.

Once you’ve found the page you want to report on, click on it. (Note that if you’re reporting on the index page of a section (index.html, index.php, home.aspx, etc.), you will need to click the actual backslash “/” link to pull up the correct page.)

If you want to know traffic for the root file of a folder, click the / link.

You should be on a report called Content Detail: [Your URL here]. There is a drop-down called Analyze that defaults to “Content Detail.” In that drop-down, select “Entrance Keywords.”

The Entrance Keywords link is in the Analyze: Content Detail drop-down.

On the Entrance Keywords: [Your URL here] report, click on the Show: non-paid link to the right underneath the main graph.

The non-paid link appears after the Show: total | paid links.

At this point, you will see a list of keywords searchers have used to arrive at a given page, along with traffic metrics. If you look at my example, you’ll see that I’m pulling a decent amount of traffic for my name. (Considering that not too many people are looking for me.)

This Google Analytics report shows you how much traffic you've been getting for search terms.

If you would like to automate this particular report, you can click the Email button at the top of the report to have it sent to you daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.

Keep in mind that Analytics allows a limited number of automated reports, so you may end up in a situation where you’ll want to prioritize which reports you want to automate.

Caveats to organic keyword reporting in Google Analytics

Caveat #1: Inconsistent links on your site

Unfortunately, if you have multiple links on your site that point to the same content, you could have a problem with getting to the metrics that you want.

For example, if you have links on your site to each of these

  • /products
  • /Products
  • /products/index.html
  • /products/

then those URLs are going to show up separately in Google Analytics. This applies to mixed case variants.

The best way to avoid this problem is to go through your site and use a consistent linking convention. I prefer all lowercase with a trailing slash, as in <a href="/products/">Products</a>. If this is too painstaking, you may just want to see which version of the URL that Google search results are sending users to, for starters.

Caveat #2: Keyword reports in Content area aren’t just for a single URL

Content reports in Google Analytics behave a little strangely. When you report on keywords for a particular page like this, it doesn’t just show you keywords that caused the user to land directly on that page from search engines.

So if a visitor searched for your company name and somehow ended up on the target page, then that keyword is counted in this report. If you see anything that doesn’t make sense in your report, try searching for that word and seeing which page does come up.

Just a couple things to keep in mind.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

]]> http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/measuring-organic-keywords-referring-traffic-to-a-given-web-page/feed/ 4 Blogging and being in the right place at the right time http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/blogging-right-place-right-time/ http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/blogging-right-place-right-time/#comments Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:29:04 +0000 Chris Peters http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/?p=488 A couple weeks ago, I stumbled upon a slightly controversial blog post about an industry issue just after it was posted. It generated 108 comments, and I'm sure that thousands of people viewed it. Many people read some of the comments, and mine was there first. My comment also included a link to my blog post in response, which I drafted up as quickly as possible.

Read on for actual results of what this did for the open source project that I manage.

]]> You may or may not know that I manage the community and run the website for the ColdFusion on Wheels open source project. It definitely helps me sharpen my software marketing skillz. Plus I just can’t let go of my roots. :)

A couple weeks ago, I stumbled upon a slightly controversial blog post about an industry issue just after it was posted. It generated 108 comments, and I’m sure that thousands of people viewed it. Many people read some of the comments, and mine was there first. My comment also included a link to my blog post in response, which I drafted up as quickly as possible.

What’s cool about running this project is that I can share some of the analytics and marketing results with you. I don’t think I’ll get into trouble with anyone for doing that.

Can you tell when my comment was made by looking at this graph of daily visits?

CFWheels Visits

Lots of extra exposure, as you can see. And exposure is exactly what the project needs.

What about conversions, which are downloads of the actual framework code (the primary goal of the site)?

CFWheels Conversions

As you can see, we’ve only had 1 zero-download day since then. Discussion in the community forum has been picking up as well. There were even a couple comments on that blog post with people praising the project.

So here’s a testament to doing social media the right way. It’s not about blasting your me-me-me’s on Twitter or Facebook. It’s about being timely and relevant when the opportunity presents itself.

And this was a measurable way of evaluating results as well, which a lot of marketers have a lot of trouble dealing with these days.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,

]]> http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/blogging-right-place-right-time/feed/ 0 Web analytics: key performance indicators http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/web-analytics-key-performance-indicators/ http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/web-analytics-key-performance-indicators/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:00:13 +0000 Chris Peters http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/?p=63 really help?]]> Bar GraphWeb analytics can be very powerful, but only if customized to meet your site’s unique needs. Many believe that it’s just a tool to see how many people visited, which becomes quite trite after looking at that data a couple times. You’ll probably say, “Hmm, 500 people visited this week.” But how does knowing that really help?

Web analytics becomes powerful when you start matching the reports to your site’s goals. If your ultimate goal is to sell something, most analytics software can be configured to let you report on how all of the different metrics influence sales.

Let’s call this sample goal of sales a key performance indicator or KPI. (That’s what the experts call it!). You should be defining a few KPIs for your site and focusing on improving those metrics. Increasing the number of visitors to your site does not help if those extra visits are not leading to sales!

Google Analytics calls a KPI a “Goal”, and Omniture SiteCatalyst calls it “Conversion Tracking.” If you’re using something else, the functionality is probably named similarly.

With goals set up, you can go from this scenario:

These are the top 5 Google searches that refer people to my site. Hmm! Interesting?

To this scenario:

These are the top 5 Google searches that lead to sales. I should probably make sure that we continue ranking for those searches!

See the difference?

Photo credit: Bar Graph by kevinzhengli. Some rights reserved.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

]]> http://www.clearcrystalmedia.com/gc/web-analytics-key-performance-indicators/feed/ 0