eCommerceTips » Traffic

First 10 Steps to Web Data Analysis

admin — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 20:10:43 +0000

Avinash Kaushik, the leading voice in the field of Web Analytics and the Analytics Evangelist for Google wrote a great post for any web analytics beginner. A solid outline for success that even the most advanced web analysis people in the industry should read to shake the rust and dust off.

Here are this steps, according to Avinash:

Step #1: Visit the website. Note objectives, customer experience, suckiness.

Step #2: How good is the acquisition strategy? Traffic Sources Report.

Step #3: How strongly do Visitors orbit the website? Visitor Loyalty & Recency.

Step #4: What can I find that is broken and quickly fixable? Top Landing Pages.

Step #5: What content makes us most money? $Index Value Metric.

Step #6: How Sophisticated Is Their Search Strategy? Keyword Tag Clouds.

Step #7: Are they making money or making noise? Goals & Goal Values.

Step #8: Can the Marketing Budget be optimized? Campaign Conversions/Outcomes.

Step #9: Are we helping the already convinced buyers? Funnel Visualization.

Step #10: What are the unknown unknowns I am blind to? Analytics Intelligence.

Here is the original post, with the detailed steps and many tips. A must read for everyone!

How To Activate Internal Site Search In Google Analytics

admin — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:09:50 +0000

Internal site search is when a visitor of your website is using the search box on your website to find information. Tracking this information is very useful because every time your visitors are searching for something, they literally tell you in their words what they are looking for. You can see their initial searches, the refined searches when they didn’t find what they were expecting and which pages they searched from.

Google Analytics is offering this feature and all you have to do is to activate it. Here is how to do that:

In Analytics Settings page, click Edit near your website and again Edit in the next page (on the same row with Main Website Profile Information text). You’ll see the Edit Profile Information page, scroll down to Site Search area:

Check the option Do track Site Search and, for the required parameter, you have to check how exactly looks the URL of a search on your website: just insert a keyword in the search box of your website, hit Enter and check the URL in the Address Bar. Usually, this URL ends with ?q=keyword, ?search=keyword or ?s=keyword (for a Wordpress site it is ?s=keyword&x=0&y=0). The text between “?” and “=” represents the requested parameter (for Wordpress, this will be “s“). Insert this parameter in the field, check Yes, strip query parameters out of URL and No to Do you use categories for site search? Save changes and that’s it, you can wait for Analytics to gather data and start analyzing the reports.

In some cases, is possible that your website is not using that search parameters. What can you do? Simple: just add in the Google Analytics code inserted to your pages the following line:

pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/site search/?s=%searchterm’)

where “s” is the same parameter as above.

How to exclude your own traffic from Google Analytics

admin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:38:16 +0000

If you are using (and you should!) a service to track visitors to your website, it is very important to exclude your own visits from the statistics, in order to keep the relevant data. Google Analytics offers the option to stop tracking visits from a distinct IP. If your connection has static IP, this option will work very well. But if you have a dinamic IP, you need a different approach.

The idea is to set a cookie on our browser and then use Analytics’ filter to ignore visits from all machines that has this cookie set. In order to create this cookie, create a page on your website with the following code on it.

If you use the old urchin tracker

If you use the new Ga.js tracker

Replace ignore_cookie_name with any name of your choice. The name should be unique because if any other visitor has a cookie of the same name, his visits will be ignored too. Throw in some random numbers to nullify any chance of somebody coincidentally naming their cookie the same.

The next step is the create a filter on Google Analytics. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click ‘Analytics Settings’ and then click on ‘Filter Manager’ at the bottom of the page.

2. Click ‘Add Filter’

3. On the Create New Filter page, create a new filter with the following settings:

Filter Type: Custom filter > Exclude

Filter Field: User Defined

Filter Pattern: ignore_cookie_name (replace with actual name)

Case Sensitive: No

4. Under the ‘Apply Filter to Website Profiles’ section, select the website you want to apply this filter to.

The final step is to set this cookie on your browser. For this, simply visit the page having the JavaScript code. Make sure no visitors to your site has access to this page, otherwise the cookie will be set on their machines too.

To verify this is working correctly, place Analytics tracking code on this page and visit it a couple of times each day. Then try to find data about this page on Analytics report. If you can’t find any, it means that the ignore cookie is working.

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Checklist for Successful Email Marketing

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:45:33 +0000

Email was the No.1 tactic that marketers targeted for increases in the run-up to the 2009 holiday season, followed by SEM & SEO, online banners and coupons. Also, according to MarketingSherpa, emails to house lists or rented lists generates approximately 10 to 20% of website visitors to eCommerce sites.

“Email marketing remains the underfunded, underappreciated bulwark of online marketing. Although it routinely gets good reviews from all types of online marketers, email is less likely than other tactics to get its own line in the budget, or to be routinely upgraded with better technology.”

So, you understand the reasons and the benefits of email marketing and you are ready to start or to improve where things are not so good. Here is a checklist you should consider before starting an email campaign:

1. Campaign objectives – direct online sales, generating sales leads, branding & marketplace education, increase website traffic, other.

2. Email type – define the type (newsletter, promotion, product information) based on the campaign objectives

3. Target & segmentation – existing customers, prospects, email registrations, third party list

4. Design – html, text, image. Your Call to Action should be punchy and actionable! Also, you should consider that 49% of the consumers configures their inbox Preview Pane horizontal with small preview, so they will see first only a part of your email.

5. Subject line – the first test you have to pass is when your email enters the recipient’s inbox. If your subject is not catchy enough, your email won’t be opened and will affect the entire campaign.

6. Message – it’s all about building a relation with your customers and, the most important, to keep your promises!

7. Landing page – home page, product page, promotion page, custom page. Landing page have to be an extent of the message from email, to reflect the promises.

8. Delivery day & time – week days with higher email open rates are Wednesday and Monday, while lowest are Saturday and Sunday. Also, lunchtime is primetime on the Internet, when most of users log on to do non-work related activities during their lunch break at work.

9. Frequency – one time, weekly, monthly. Your customers don’t care whether they get your email weekly or yearly, as long as what you have to say is worth the time it takes to read it. Sending out too many emails could get you blocked by recipients and spam filters.

10. Metrics – always measure the results of your campaign! Open rate, click-through rate, clicks per each link, orders/leads/revenue per email are the most used metrics. Compare your results with open and click-through rates worldwide.

Google upgrades Ad Manager accounts to DoubleClick for Publishers

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:27:45 +0000

Google announced yesterday that it has finished combining DoubleClick’s DART system with its own Ad Manager product into one entity now known as DoubleClick for Publishers.

As a result, Google is offering two versions of its new product: one for large online publishers that takes most advantage of existing DART architecture and DFP Small Business, which is a more basic, free option for smaller publishers.

Over the next few weeks, they will upgrade all Google Ad Manager accounts to DFP Small Business automatically:

“This is the next generation of Google Ad Manager, bringing many requested features such as a new web services API, an improved user interface, and new reporting capabilities. We will be upgrading all Google Ad Manager accounts to DFP Small Business automatically. Ad Manager users will see the new DFP Small Business name and logo within the product and related resources upon completion of the upgrade. Usernames, passwords, ad delivery data and account data will be unaffected by this change. New customers signing up for Google Ad Manager today will automatically be upgraded on the same schedule as current Ad Manager publishers.”

Useful links:
- new DFP Small Business website
- videos demonstrating the changes
- DFP Small Business webinars

eCommerce tracking with Google Analytics

admin — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:47:18 +0000

Google Analytics represents a must-have tool for every eCommerce website. For online shops it is highly recommended to implement also the eCommerce tracking module, which is not activated by default in the basic version of Google Analytics.

What will bring this module for you? It will record the online transactions and will link revenues to visitors, content and traffic sources, helping you making decisions related to the marketing campaigns and the website in order to reduce the abandon rate and increase conversions.

Check this short clip to get familiar with the GA eCommerce tracking system:

It looks really nice, right? Now, how to get this? You can find here a complete installation & setup tutorial, or, if you are using osCommerce, you can find here an add-on that will do all the hard work for you.

Now, you can easily identify the most profitable campaigns, keywords, channels, you can improve ROI on your website and keyword bidding. Here is a video that will show you how to identify high spenders with GA:

BizTwitting – Twitter for business – Why, How, What?

admin — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:41:53 +0000

“By 2011, Enterprise Microblogging Will Be a Standard Feature on 80 Percent of Social Software Platforms” – STAMFORD, Conn., March 26, 2009

In a recent study, Gartner has identified four different ways in which companies are making use of the Twitter:

Direct – The company uses Twitter as a marketing or public relations channel
Indirect – The company’s employees use Twitter to enhance and extend their personal reputations, thereby enhancing the company’s reputation
Internal – Employees use the platform to communicate about what they are doing, projects they are working on and ideas that occur to them
Inbound signaling – Twitter streams provide a rich source of information about what customers, competitors and others are saying about a company

Now, you understand WHY you should use Twitter for your business – BizTwitting, but you don’t know HOW and WHAT to tweet. Here are some ideas:

What to tweet:

Sales/Marketing stuff:

- time-limited sales
- coupon codes
- specials
- contests
- event sign-up

Company Info:

- product pictures (www.twitpic.com)
- staff
- customer support
- customer/client news
- product tips
- press mentions

General Info:

- industry news
- re-tweets
- questions
- help requests/suggestions
- personal info

Who to follow – strategic following:

- customer/clients
- staff
- colleagues in the field
- vendors
- relevant journalists
- social influencers for your field
- competitors

How to get followers:

- include Twitter url everywhere
- write about your Twitter feed
- add linked Twitter badges to your site
- list yourself in Twitter directories (e.g. www.twellow.com)
- run contests

For a complete guide of what does Twitter do for business, check this link.

Email Marketing Metrics: Open and Click-Through Rates Worldwide

admin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:14:32 +0000

“Email Marketing Metrics Report” – 2009 from MailerMailer represents a must-read publication for people interested in email marketing. The 38-page report is filled with charts, tips and data that provides businesses with relevant information to help them adjust their email marketing strategy to cater to their audience’s changing needs. Here are the main findings for this report:

Email marketing open rates by industry and list size

Unique opens are calculated as the number of addresses which were tracked as having viewed a message divided by the total number of HTML messages sent. Each address, even if it opened the message more than once, was counted only once; hence, showing unique opens.

Religious and spiritual organizations had the highest open rates among large lists, followed by telecommunications and travel companies.

“A smaller list does not directly affect open and click rates, but mailings to smaller lists may be targeted better, contain more relevant content or have more recent subscribers,” wrote the authors of the report.

Email marketing click rates by industry and list size

Click rates are defined as the total number of unique clicks (i.e., the first time a person clicks on a link) divided by the total number of opportunities to click. It is calculated as follows: the total number of unique clicks divided by the product of the number of links in each message and the number of total recipients.

Click-through rates for lists of over 1,000 recipients were also highest for religious e-mails, followed by travel, general consumer and retail.

Other findings:

Most popular terms in subject lines:

news

party

newsletter

free

night

sale

com

update

holiday

week

Best days to send – Though weekends and the beginning of the week outperform the other days, Monday is the clear winner having both the highest open rate and click rate.
Subject lines – Emails with subject lines shorter than 35 characters were opened more than emails with subject lines longer than 35 characters.
How soon do people open their email? – 74.5% of opens occur within the first 24 hours and 84.3% occurs within the first 48 hours.

Full report can be downloaded for free at http://www.mailermailer.com/metrics.rwp.

How to move a Google Analytics account

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:24:59 +0000

I was searching for a while for this simple question: How to move an Analytics account from one user to another?”. Google says you can’t, but you can change the Adminstrator(s) of an account…

So, if you want to move the X account from user A to user B, here is what you have to do:

Ta-daa, account moved!

Social media vs Search behavior & Performance

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:25:16 +0000

An interesting research study was released recently, “The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption” from comScore, GroupM Search & M8, exploring the impact of social media on search behavior.

According to this report, social media can improve paid search performance for a brand by up to 300%, consumers exposed to both a brand’s influenced social media and paid search spending almost 3 times more time online than the average consumer:

Also, in organic search, consumers searching on brand product terms who have been exposed to a brand’s social marketing campaign are 2.4 times more likely to click on organic links leading to the advertiser’s site than the average user seeing a brand’s paid search ad alone!

You can check the entire report below:

The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption