The ROI Revolution Blog

Website Optimizer Wednesdays - Optimize Your Call to Action!

October 28, 2008

Nothing is more frustrating when browsing a web site, than deciding to purchase the product and having to hunt around to find out how to purchase the product! This is something that many web designers overlook when making decisions about the layout and design of their site.

Always remember that the call to action is probably the most important aspect of your page. It's the action your want your visitor to take when they visit your site. It could be anything from purchasing a product to filling out a contact form or signing up for a newsletter. Here are a few quick tips to increasing your conversion rate just by changing a few things about your call to action.

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Website Optimizer Wednesdays - Excluding Internal Traffic

October 22, 2008

Google Website Optimizer experiments use 4 different types of scripts. In a nutshell:

• Control script - Determines which combo to serve up
• Section scripts - Determines which areas to swap out
• Tracking script - Registers visit
• Conversion script - Registers conversion

To exclude ourselves from the reports, we only need to modify the tracking script and the conversion script. By only modifying these sections, we can see the page exactly as our visitors see it without skewing our test results.

Here's the way your tracking script looks "out of the box":

<script>   if(typeof(urchinTracker)!='function')document.write('<sc'+'ript src="'+   'http'+(document.location.protocol=='https:'?'s://ssl':'://www')+   '.google-analytics.com/urchin.js'+'"></sc'+'ript>') </script> <script>   _uacct = 'UA-XXXXXXX-X';   urchinTracker("/YYYYYYYYYY/test"); </script>

If we're already using Google Analytics, we'll want to properly integrate our Google Website Optimizer code with our Google Analytics Tracking Code. Check out Shawn's excellent post on the subject if you want to know exactly how to do this. For simplicity's sake, we'll use the above code as our base.

Now let's say we are excluding our own traffic by setting the user defined value to "internal". When we do this, the user defined value is stored under a cookie name "__utmv".

Using regular expressions, we can check for the existence of this cookie and its value and only run the Google Website Optimizer tracking script when the cookie exists with the correct value:

<script>   if(typeof(urchinTracker)!='function')document.write('<sc'+'ript src="'+   'http'+(document.location.protocol=='https:'?'s://ssl':'://www')+   '.google-analytics.com/urchin.js'+'"></sc'+'ript>') </script> <script>   _uacct = 'UA-XXXXXXX-X';   if(!document.cookie.match(/(^|;\s)__utmv=[0-9]+\.internal(;|$)/)){ // if we can't find a cookie with that value     urchinTracker("/YYYYYYYYYY/test"); // track GWO visit   } else { // otherwise track dummy visit     urchinTracker("/0000000000/test");   } </script>

Note that our conversion script should be the same as above, only replace "/test", with "/goal".

Now if you have a static ip address, you can also exclude based on that ip address, but this will take some server side code. We'll use php as an example:

<script>   if(typeof(urchinTracker)!='function')document.write('<sc'+'ript src="'+   'http'+(document.location.protocol=='https:'?'s://ssl':'://www')+   '.google-analytics.com/urchin.js'+'"></sc'+'ript>') </script> <script>   _uacct = 'UA-XXXXXXX-X';   <?     if($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']=='12.34.567.890') {       echo 'urchinTracker("/0000000000/test"); // otherwise track dummy visit';     } else {       echo 'urchinTracker("/YYYYYYYYYY/test"); // track GWO visit';     }   ?> </script>

This would exclude all traffic from Google Website Optimizer tests coming from the IP address 12.34.567.890.

As a footnote, these same ideas that we explored above can be used to do even more with our Google Website Optimizer experiments. We could, for example, modify the scripts so that only AdWords traffic shows up in our Google Website Optimizer reports. For a heavily AdWords-driven business, this would help tailor experiments to more closely match the most often used Google Analytics reports.

To learn more useful testing tips sign up for our Google Website Optimizer Training Series starting January 8th. This two session training series will encompass landing page principles, an intro to testing and advanced testing. Join us for the GWO Training Series!

Want more of Website Optimizer Wednesdays? Check out the rest of the series!

Exclude Internal Traffic from GWO | Optimize Your Call to Action | Landing Page Relevance | Choosing the Right Test Page | GWO and GA Renew Their Vows

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Google Analytics Report Enhancer Updates

October 21, 2008

BREAKING UPDATE! I had to make an update to the GAREnhancer Monday, March 9 at 10:00am ET due to recent interface changes. If the script is broken is broken for you, re-download the script and you should be all set.

I've decided to create a separate entry for some of the latest updates to the GAREnhancer Greasemonkey script. Most of these are just small things that can make your Google Analytics (and now Google Website Optimizer) life a little easier.

If you need the latest version of the GAREnhancer, click here.

The GAREnhancer is a Greasemonkey script. If you don't have Greasemonkey, you can get it by clicking here.

If you have no clue what the GAREnhancer does, you can read the original article by clicking here

Here's a quick summary of the most recent changes:

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Tagging Business.com with Google Analytics: Creating Transparency For Relevance Match

October 20, 2008

If you have a Business.com account, you probably know that they do not offer a conversion tracking feature within their UI. If you're reading this blog and you have a Business.com account, you probably (hopefully!) have your Business.com keywords tagged with Google Analytics tagging.

We have recently taken over PPC account management for a client's Business.com account that was already created but not tagged. We have come up with a way to not only tag the account to find which keywords are worthwhile and which keywords are wasting money, but we can also create some transparency for Business.com's Relevance Match using Google Analytics.

Business.com describes relevance match as keywords that are similar and relevant to the keywords that you are already buying in a particular category, but are not those exact keywords. I would say it's similar to the way that Google uses their broad match feature. Within the listings or categories in your account, you will see the list of keywords you are buying and the phrase "relevance match" at the bottom of the list. Clicks and spend will be assigned to "relevance match," but there is no way to tell in the interface what the search terms were that Business.com deemed relevant enough to show your ad and cost you a click.

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Tracking a Section with Google Analytics

October 16, 2008

If you've read Shawn's Article about tracking autoresponders, you know that Google Analytics' Site Search tool can be utilized to track secondary sources. Toward the end of this post I'll give you a way to use Site Search to track the effectiveness and value of a section, such as a blog section, as well as a page's contribution to conversion rate as a member of that section.

But first, a little background info:

If you've spent any time in the Google Analytics reports, you've probably noticed the $index field in the Top Content reports that somehow represents a page's relative worth. This field can be a great way to get an idea of a page's contribution to the success of your goals and ecommerce revenue.

But where do the numbers for $index even come from? If you click the question mark button next to $Index in the Top Content report, you will receive the following explanation:

"The average value of this page or set of pages. $Index is (Ecommerce revenue + Total Goal Value) divided by Pageviews for the page(s)."

Now it turns out that there are a few subtleties that are not indicated by the definition. For starters, the formula is actually using unique pageviews rather than pageviews.

Second, if you look at the $index of a page and compare it to the Per Visit Goal Value or Per Visit Value of that page (depending on whether you have a lead gen site or an ecommerce site) after drilling down into the page and segmenting by source (or medium, or source/medium if you've installed my Greasemonkey script), chances are very good that the two values are relatively close, but certainly not equal.

Why is that? Here's why:

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