Getting to the top of the organic or even the pay-per-click search list isn't the end of the battle - it's only the beginning. Think about the way you search online; you type in a phrase in the query box, and you click on the most promising result on the first page. Once you hit that first page, if it isn't immediately apparent that you have found what you're looking for, then you hit the back button and try the next result. So how do you get people to stop at your site, and not hit that back button for the next result?

Continue reading "Avoiding the Dreaded One-Page Visit" »

According to a Jupiter report, Key Performance Indicators - Using Analytics to Drive Action, a stunningly large percentage of companies don't bother to distribute analytic reports to the people within the company who can use them!

Less then 20% of the companies surveyed distribute analytics data to merchandising departments for review on a regular basis, and only 53% of marketing teams review analytics data. But surely the executives pay attention to the analytics data?

Continue reading "Reaping the Full Potential of Google Analytics" »

Eric Peterson, a senior analyst at JupiterResearch and author of The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators wrote a nice article on how Google Analytics will drive interest in and raise the bar for entry-level Web data analysis in 2006:

I expect 2006 to be a banner year for the Web analytics market based on factors including the likelihood that Google Analytics will drive interest in the subject and raise the bar for entry-level Web data analysis.

Though still not widely available, the functionality in Google Analytics is worth a look by anyone interested in doing more to measure the success of their Web sites.

He also said:

Site owners who recognize the need to invest in Web analytics technology to support their understanding of how their Web marketing and site efforts drive their overall business are poised to do well.

I couldn't agree more. And the awareness is being raised in the minds of the future generations of business leaders.

I spoke to a group of MBA students in a marketing analytics class last night at NCSU and was impressed with the fact that several of the students had recently participated in an engineering/business course where about a week was devoted to the study of web analytics.

Back in November, Amit Agarwal wrote about preventing Google Analytics from tracking visits via an edit to the Windows Host file. This is an effective work-around for excluding traffic from internal PCs with dynamic IP addresses, but tweaking the Hosts file is a bit tricky for the average user. Plus, if you've got dozens or hundreds of employees, it's really not practical.

Using Google Analytics' Visitor Segmentation, you can achieve the same result, much more efficiently and with a lot less work on your internal users' end.

Continue reading "Exclude Internal Visits from Google Analytics" »

AdWords guru Perry Marshall has a really nice 8 step system for squeezing the most juice out of your website.

According to Perry:

For most businesses, the FIRST thing you should do is properly set up a Google AdWords campaign and play with your website until the traffic converts to sales profitably.

THEN... once it's working on AdWords, you take the same messages and sales process and roll out your product in this order:

1. Google AdWords
2. Search Engine Optimization
3. Other PPC's like Overture and Findwhat etc etc.
4. Email promotions
5. Affiliates
6. Press Releases
7. Direct Mail
8. Print Advertising

But now that Google Analytics (formerly Urchin 6 On Demand) is free to any website owner, I must add a new "first" step to his excellently articulated step-by-step marketing path: getting Google Analytics intelligently and properly configured on your website.

Continue reading "Nine step system for powering website profits" »

Looks like AdWords is extending their print ads auctions until February 24th. If you missed the opportunity, be sure to act now, and don't forget to track your offline advertising with Google Analytics.

If you're a blogger looking for a way to connect with your audience, you might be interested in Google's Acquisition of Measure Map, an analytics service that focuses on weblogs. It should very intriguing, watching what they do with this already-popular utility. Go check out Measure Map now and sign-up for an invitation code.

Look at this neat script, from Eric Peterson's site. It's a tool to search a web site for the presence of different hosted analytics vendors.

This script currently searches for Google Analytics, ClickTracks, WebSideStory, Omniture, Coremetrics, Fireclick, Visual Sciences, IBM SurfAid and WebTrends.

Note the large presence of Google Analytics.

By now you may be aware that Google is testing the placement of ads from AdWords advertisers in select print publications.

Basically, Google has begun auctioning ad space in well-known magazines to see if this type of auction makes sense for print.

From the Inside AdWords blog:

Recently, we've been testing the placement of ads from our AdWords advertisers in select print publications. To help us figure out where and how we can best bring value to print advertising, we've experimented with text ads, templated ads, and full page display ads. And now, in the continued spirit of testing, we're auctioning ad space in well-known magazines. Why? Because we want to better understand our advertisers' interest in this ad space and see if this type of auction makes sense for print.

But if you do this type of ad, or even an ad in a local newspaper, you may want to use Google Analytics to track the ad if its purpose is to lead to an online conversion (such as a sale or a lead generation).

Here are a couple of ways to do it:

Continue reading "How to Track Offline Ads with Google Analytics" »

First pointed out by Fortune Interactive's CEO Andy "the scoop" Beal the Google Analytics site overlay is back!

Google Analytics displays your website pages superimposed with click and conversion data for each link. Site Overlay doesn't require any downloads, and allows you to easily see which links lead to conversions, just by browsing your site.

This is the feature we've gotten the most ooh's and ahh's from during my weekly free Google Analytics live online seminar. For about the past 8 weeks I've shown the details of how the site overlay feature works in my webinar but had to explain that it was taken off of the Google Analytics offering for a while.

Google Analytics Site Overlay report, welcome back!