• Home
• Google AdWords™
  • PPC Management Plans
  • AdWords Strategy Session
  • AdWords Training Course
  • PPC Free Webinar
  • PPC Archived Webinars
• Google Analytics™
  • Analytics Support Plans
  • Analytics Live Seminars
  • Analytics Free Newsletter
  • Analytics URL Builder Tool
• Google Website Optimizer™
  • Website Optimizer Support Plans
  • Website Optimizer Training Course
  • Website Optimizer Free Video Course
• Urchin
  • Support Plans
  • Buy Urchin 6 Online
  • Upgrade to Urchin 6
  • Urchin 6 Free Trial
  • Urchin 6 Free Webinar
  • Urchin 6 FAQs
  • Urchin 5 Info
  • Urchin Reset
• Blog
• Careers
• About Us
• Contact

Blog Navigation

The ROI Revolution Blog

Tracking

AdWords Conversions: The One vs. Many-Per-Click Breakdown

June 25, 2009

There's a lot of confusion regarding Google's recent change to conversion metrics with the AdWords conversion tracker.  Previously a "1" in the "Conversion" column would tell you there was at least one conversion that happened within 30 days of that date. You were happy with this limited knowledge.

Messy and/or complex data was disguised as clean & simple data.  The "1" was all you knew.  If the user clicked an ad and purchased something, you'd see a "1."  If the user bookmarked the page with the conversion tracking script and went back to it a week later, you'd still see a "1."  If another purchase was made two weeks later, you'd still see a "1."  Simple, right?

In early April, Google exposed some of the potential mess to be more in line with the way conversions and transactions are tabulated in DoubleClick and other online ad platforms.  They changed the name of "Conversions" to "Conversions (1-per-click)" and added a new metric called "Conversions (many-per-click)".  While the 1-per-click conversion spot can only be filled once, the many-per-click conversions are incremented whenever any of your conversion scripts run within 30 days after a click.

Under the new system, consider the following scenarios and what conversions would be tracked for each:

Continue reading "AdWords Conversions: The One vs. Many-Per-Click Breakdown" »

Understanding Correlations in Google Analytics

May 28, 2009

Website traffic does not exist in a vacuum. Here's a simple example: Jack comes to your website on Monday after seeing one of your AdWords content ads and he likes what he sees. He's a careful shopper though, so he's not ready to commit quite yet and leaves the site for the day. He takes some time and does some comparison shopping throughout the week, talks to some of his friends and comes back to your site again after typing your company name into Google and clicking on an organic result. He sees an offer for a 10% off coupon if he signs up for your newsletter, so he does, and then leaves the site again. In a week, he gets an email about a sale you are having, and clicks on a link within the email, finally making a purchase on this, his third visit.

So the big question is - how does this show up in Google Analytics? Does AdWords get any credit for the sale? The simple answer is no. Depending on if you are tracking your emails in Google Analytics (and how you are doing it), you'll either see a conversion for the email, the organic branded search or even a direct visit. Wouldn't it be nice to know that at one point AdWords had something to do with the sale? Better yet, wouldn't you like to know the Campaign, Ad Group and Keyword that was responsible?

Jack's example is a very common one, and pretty simple in comparison to the way a lot of people use the Internet, so it is important to try and understand the relationships between your different traffic sources.

Still don't care? Let me give you a real-world example of what can happen if you ignore it:

Case Study: A company that deals in a software product noticed that it was getting what looked like a pretty poor return on Content Network traffic from AdWords (responsible for what Google Analytics reported as roughly 5% of daily revenue). In an attempt to reduce costs, they decided to pause this traffic completely. The result was that almost immediately they noticed a 15-20% drop in daily revenue!

What the heck happened? Well, it turns out a large percentage of that content traffic was coming back as either organic branded traffic or direct traffic. They never bothered to look at the relationship between their content traffic and other traffic sources, and it cost them.

Conversely, by understanding this relationship, they have been able to not only gain back the 15-20% that they lost, but improve the return even further!

So how can you learn from their mistake? Here are a few things you can do, ranging from fairly simple to more complex, to help you grasp the relationship between your marketing sources and mediums:

Continue reading "Understanding Correlations in Google Analytics" »

6 Tools You Can Use to Troubleshoot Google Analytics Yourself

April 17, 2009

It's nice to be able to find the tools you need when you need them. It's true for farmers and it's true for web analysts. Even if you aren't a web analyst, you have access to a lot of great tools on the web that can help you figure out if Google Analytics is working properly on your site. While my last article focused on tools you can use to get the most out of the reports in Google Analytics, this article is more for those of you that want to make sure that the data is right before it even gets there.

Bury your Google Analytics problems.

Read on for a list of 6 tools that you can use to find out for yourself what's going on with Google Analytics.

Continue reading "6 Tools You Can Use to Troubleshoot Google Analytics Yourself" »

Installing Website Optimizer if you use Google Analytics

September 17, 2008

Ok, so back when I declared that Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics represented 'A Perfect Marriage', I was overlooking some of the early bumps the newlyweds would experience before they lived happily ever after.

That being said, there are some things to look out for if you are using Google Analytics and are considering Google Website Optimizer as your testing platform of choice. Or maybe you have already noticed some strange things trying to use them together?

Here are the things to look out for:
1. Are you using urchin.js or ga.js?
2a. Are you setting _udn="something" (for urchin.js) or _setDomainName('something') (for ga.js)?
2b. Are you setting _uhash="off" (for urchin.js) or _setAllowHash(false) (for ga.js)?
3. If you are using urchin.js, are you tracking Ecommerce?

As long as you've got the above four things accounted for, everything should work fine. So I'm going to address each one in detail so that you know exactly what to do.

Continue reading "Installing Website Optimizer if you use Google Analytics" »

New and Improved: Google AdWords Conversion Tracking by Type

June 4, 2008

Are you sure that the conversions you see tracked in the Google AdWords Campaign Summary page are really the conversions you're hoping for? How do you know what types of conversions your AdWords campaigns are generating if you have the AdWords Conversion Tracking script on many of your site's success pages?

It's best practice to send a searcher to a landing page that has one clearly defined action that you would like them to take, say filling out a Contact Us form. But what happens when that Contact Us page links to another page on your site with a completely different desired action, say a newsletter sign up? If the searcher clicks on an ad that takes them to the Contact Us landing page but somehow moves over to the newsletter page and signs up there, you've still got a conversion reported for your Contact Us campaign. The problem is that it's the wrong type!

Now, when you look in your Contact Us campaign, you think you're only generating leads for people raising their hands to be contacted, but you've actually got people who are just interested in reading your newsletter lumped in there as well. It can be very misleading.

Google AdWords has created a way to track your conversions by type.

Continue reading "New and Improved: Google AdWords Conversion Tracking by Type" »

Using Website Optimizer with Google Analytics NEW!!

May 12, 2008

You may remember that back in April of '07, I came up with a way to get your Google Website Optimizer multivariate experiment data to show up in Google Analytics. While useful, there were a few drawbacks that I'm sure some of you have noticed, and it wasn't the easiest thing to implement. After getting a lot of great feedback from users, I've come up with a new script that has many advantages over the old method:

• Uses easier implementation
  
• Works with both ga.js and urchin.js (make sure you use the right instructions below for Step 2)
  
• Includes error-handling so that a JavaScript error no longer occurs if an experiment is not yet running or is paused, stopped, or completed
  
• Features automatic page name tracking - no more changing the Google Analytics code on the page
  
• No longer replaces regular page reporting

As a refresher, the whole point of this integration is to allow you to make the most of your experiments. While Google Website Optimizer by itself can give you a quick look at which combination is best at improving conversion, it tells you nothing about transactions, revenue, micro-conversions, navigation, segmentation by source, and bounce rate. If you integrate Google Analytics into your Google Website Optimizer experiments, you will get much richer data, and be able to get a true idea of how your test is doing.

Again, this integration is designed for multivariate experiments only - you do not need to use any special tools to be able to get A/B test data from Google Analytics.

The first thing to do is find out if you are using ga.js or urchin.js. Depending on which version of the Google Analytics code you are using, you'll want to use different instructions.

Continue reading "Using Website Optimizer with Google Analytics NEW!!" »

Google Analytics for Blogger in Private Beta

May 2, 2008

On Wednesday, Google announced that there will be a new Google Analytics interface for Blogger.

Measure Map, which was acquired by Google in February of 2007, has already done quite a bit for Google Analytics, which had its interface completely revamped. It looks like now the team is applying some of its lessons from that experience over to the blogosphere.

Although Google Analytics is already available to everyone, as a blog writer it's nice to have easy access to metrics that are tailored to your specific needs. Google seems to be addressing these needs with a new Google Analytics integration designed specifically for Blogger users.

According to Jeff Veen, Measure Map will be available 'as an integrated feature of both Google Analytics and Blogger'. That sounds pretty exciting to those of us that are obsessed with our blog statistics. And if the integration is being designed by the same folks that brought us the new Google Analytics interface, that means it should be simple to navigate and extremely useful.

This new interface is now in private beta (which means you probably won't notice it yet), but it looks like Google has plans to migrate all existing Measure Map users over to the new Google Analytics system. That means it could be a few months or even a year before it's rolled out to everyone - there's really no way to know at this stage. Since it's in beta, there's a good chance there will be some kinks to iron out.

So if you use Blogger for your blog, be sure to stay on the lookout for this neat new feature!

Products and Keywords in Google Analytics

April 11, 2008

In Google Analytics, there are a couple different ways to match up the products you sell with the keywords that brought users to your site.

The first method is already built right in to Google Analytics. All you need to do is look under the Ecommerce section of your Google Analytics profile and expand the Product Performance section. There you'll find a report called Product Overview. In this report, you'll see a list of all the products that were sold for the given date range. You can click on an individual product and segment it by Keyword to see which keywords were responsible for the product sale.

But what about when you want to see things the other way around? In other words, for each keyword, can you see which products were sold? Well, if you use the above method, you'd have to segment each and every product. That's not very efficient.

Luckily, you can use filters to find this information pretty easily. Here's how:

Continue reading "Products and Keywords in Google Analytics" »

Tracking Secondary Sources and Autoresponders Using Site Search

February 22, 2008

One of the many challenges when using any web analytics application is making sure that it meets your business needs. Many different sales cycles exist in the online market - some opt for a direct-to-sales approach, while others employ a model that takes advantage of autoresponders, teleseminars, webinars, and all sorts of creative methods for drawing potential and return customers back to the website.

Most web analytics applications allow you to track your marketing campaigns using a variety of different methods, usually involving adding some query parameters to your campaign URLs. The problem with this method is that most of these systems will allow you to measure the success of your original sources (like the AdWords ad that first caught a users eye), but lack the ability to simultaneously track the effectiveness of your secondary methods like email blasts, teleseminars and their siblings.

Google Analytics is no different. Out-of-the-box, it is a system designed to match each visit to a single source - the most recent source, so that it's very easy to lose sight of what brought the visitor to the website in the first place. In short, you could easily track either the effectiveness of your keywords to the final goal or your autoresponders to the ultimate goal, but not both.

That's not to say there haven't been attempts to get around this. One method was to make sure that each secondary source brought the user to a unique landing page. For example, teleseminars would use www.site.com/offera, while an online webinar would use www.site.com/offerb. Email autoresponders would also follow this system, with each email in the sequence using its own unique landing page.

If this seems like a lot of work, it is. Making a unique landing page for each type of secondary source can be time-consuming, confusing, and downright impossible to maintain. Adding a simple email to a sequence can turn into a real pain. To top it all off, finding the information you are looking for based on landing pages can get a little sticky if you're not a Google Analytics expert. Other existing methods use the User Defined variable creatively (which I like to reserve for Michael's awesome exact keyword tool), or get creative with custom tracking codes, neither of which is a particularly easy method to implement.

Why am I telling you this? Because I believe we've found a way out of this particular quagmire.

Continue reading "Tracking Secondary Sources and Autoresponders Using Site Search" »

Exact Keyword Tracking with ga.js

February 14, 2008

Last April, I posted a script that allowed paid search advertisers to view the exact search queries of their visitors. This was essentially a free tool that gave website owners the ability to weed out ineffective keywords and put more money toward the precise phrases that were really driving their business.

Google Analytics doesn't do this out of the box. It will tell you exact search queries for visits from organic listings, but for paid search, you're stuck with the keywords that you're bidding on. With broad and phrase matching, these could vary pretty drastically from what the visitors typed into the search engine.

We've gotten a lot of requests to update the script for the new version of the Google Analytics JavaScript, ga.js. Always happy to oblige, we've been hard at work on our new version of the Google Analytics Keyword Sleuth. Call it a Valentine's Day gift from ROI Revolution to you.

Continue reading "Exact Keyword Tracking with ga.js" »

Excluding Internal Traffic the Easy Way

November 20, 2007

If you've done research on excluding internal traffic from your Google Analytics reports, then you've probably heard words like "user defined variable", "dynamic or static IP address", and "orphaned web page." While you may want to become familiar with these terms someday, the truth is that not everyone is a webmaster.

What's my point? Well, I'm not sure if anyone's come up with this before, and quite frankly I wouldn't be surprised as this method is very easy, but here's a quick and easy way to exclude any kind of internal traffic from your reports, regardless of IP-whats-its. All you have to know is how to write an email.

Here's how:

Continue reading "Excluding Internal Traffic the Easy Way" »

New Google Analytics ROI Calculation Spreadsheet

September 7, 2007

Due to the new Google Analytics interface, some changes had to be made to our old ROI Calculator Spreadsheet tool. Unfortunately, there's now an extra step involved before you can use the tool to figure out your ROI (See Step 4 below). The good news, however, is that the new method is a lot more versatile, and you can use it for many kinds of reports, including your non-AdWords campaign and keyword reports.

Read on to learn more:

Continue reading "New Google Analytics ROI Calculation Spreadsheet" »

Using utm_nooverride Part 3 of 3 - Through the Wormhole

September 4, 2007

Click Here For Part 1 - Branding
Click Here For Part 2 - Tracking Emails

What do the topological feature of spacetime and the interesting little Google Analytics variable have in common?

Both deal with travel. One just happens to deal with matter traveling through spacetime, and one deals with visitors to your website. While I am not an expert on wormholes, I do understand how the utm_nooverride variable affects your visitors, and this post is about using the utm_nooverride for those websites that feature special paths which take the user through all sorts of intergalactic mayhem.

This includes websites that send the user to third party domains, even if just for a moment. This could be due to an autoresponder, a shopping cart, a form submission, a tool for visitors to use, credit card processing, and a whole host of other possibilities to consider.

A good example of a 'wormhole' is PayPal. When a user clicks on a PayPal link, they travel to a new domain. On top of that, it's a domain you can't control. You can't add any code to the PayPal pages or make the modifications that you would need to track things according to Google's official instructions. But you can control the URL that brings the user back to your site. And that's where the utm_nooverride comes in.

Continue reading "Using utm_nooverride Part 3 of 3 - Through the Wormhole" »

Using utm_nooverride Part 2 of 3 - Emails

July 24, 2007

Click here for Part I - Branded CPC Campaigns
Click Here For Part 3 - Through the Wormhole

Back in Part 1, I talked about using the utm_nooverride variable on your branded CPC campaigns to maintain original referral information. This time, I'll lay out when you should and should not use the very same variable within the emails you send out to potential customers. This is especially important to think about if you either:

A) Use an email autoresponder to send a series of follow-up emails to an initial lead or

B) Have a regular email newsletter that goes out with articles and/or special offers

How to Use utm_nooverride in Emails and What it Does
Before we get into when and when not to use utm_nooverride, let's look at how to implement it and what exactly the variable does. This may help you decide if it's right for you.

In Google Analytics, you can modify links to your website so they are recognized as coming from a specific source. To do this, you can use the 'utm' variables covered here. I'm not going to get into those details here, but if you decide to use these variables in your emails to potential customers, then if they click on those links their visit will be attributed to the specific email you tagged. This will overwrite any existing referral information they may have already had. Therein lies the major question - Do I want these users attributed to the email I sent out or to the original source?

The answer to this question will determine whether or not to use utm_nooverride=1 in your links.

Continue reading "Using utm_nooverride Part 2 of 3 - Emails" »

Using utm_nooverride Part 1 of 3 - Branding

July 3, 2007

Click Here For Part 2 - Tracking Emails
Click Here For Part 3 - Through the Wormhole

Are you bidding on your brand name in AdWords, YSM, or AdCenter? If you are, there's a good chance your return on investment for those specific keywords is very good. People searching for your specific brand know what they want and are ready to convert, while your costs remain low. But what if these people are coming back to your site after already having visited from another keyword - maybe one that's costing you much more money?

Well, there's a way to limit conversions attributed to your branded keywords, so that you can get information on the original keyword source.

Continue reading "Using utm_nooverride Part 1 of 3 - Branding" »

AdWords Conversion Tracker or Google Analytics.... Which One's Right?

June 8, 2007

Why are AdWords Conversion Tracker and Google Analytics showing different conversion rates and numbers of conversions? Which one should you believe? If these are questions you have ever found yourself asking, then you've come to the right place.

The short answer? They're both right, although neither one is perfect. This is of course assuming you've set them both up correctly. How can this be? We'll, I've attempted to put my unfortunate artistic skills to the test to try and clear up this puzzle.

So here's the story:

Continue reading "AdWords Conversion Tracker or Google Analytics.... Which One's Right?" »

Matching Specific Transactions to Specific Keywords

May 2, 2007

One of the great things about Google Analytics is the ability to view overall trends for your website. You can, for example, see how well all visitors who come from AdWords are reaching one of your goals. You can see how valuable the average visit from an email campaign is to your ecommerce business. You can see total transactions and revenue, and see what percentage of transactions are coming from a specific marketing source.

But what if you want to see where a specific transaction came from? What if you get a very large order and you want to see what the marketing source for that specific order is? Well, now you can, with a set of three custom filters that work together.

Here are the details:

Continue reading "Matching Specific Transactions to Specific Keywords" »

Exact Keyword Tracking with Google Analytics, Revisited

April 23, 2007

UPDATE: We have posted a new version of the script mentioned in this article at Exact Keyword Tracking for ga.js.

Last November, Jim Newsome of Omega Digital Media and the
GA Experts blog, posted a really clever trick on how to view detailed keyword information within Google Analytics. If you've ever searched through your AdWords Bid Terms and wondered what the actual Search Terms were, then you know why such a filter was in great demand. For PPC marketers, it's a great opportunity to weed out ineffectual broad match keyword phrases, and hone in on the most popular user search queries.

Here's an example: you've got a shoe store and you're running Broad Match AdWords ads for "shoes". When a visitor searches Google for "blue suede shoes", your ad shows up. This is all well and good, but what if you don't sell blue suede shoes?

Read on to find out how to track exactly what your visitors are searching for before they see your PPC ad and click on over to your site...

Continue reading "Exact Keyword Tracking with Google Analytics, Revisited" »

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

March 6, 2007

Yesterday, I wrote about tracking your website's visits to both Google Analytics and Urchin. Today, I'll answer a different question: can you track visits from a single website in multiple Google Analytics accounts? Certainly not as popular of a question, but still one that we're asked from time to time.

First things first, you'll need to understand the difference between a Google Analytics account and a Google Analytics profile.

Your GA account is tied into your Google Account, which is a single-entry login point that gives you access to most of Google's free services (Personalized Homepage, Personalized Search, Google Groups, etc.) If you're logging into Google Analytics, then you already have a Google account (but, contrary to popular belief, this does not necessarily mean that you have a Gmail account).

Continue reading "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" »

Your Choice: Urchin, Google Analytics... or Both?

March 5, 2007

A lot of our Google Analytics clients are Urchin Software users of old. Many of them hopped on the script-based bandwagon when Urchin introduced its UTM method, which combined traditional log-based tracking with a snippet of JavaScript that wrote and parsed cookies for greater accuracy over multiple sessions.

The natural progression was then to Urchin On Demand, which was entirely hosted and exclusively dependant on JavaScript. When UOD was rebranded as Google Analytics, we helped many of these clients migrate over. Because many had purchased Urchin, or had an Urchin installation through their hosting provider, they wished to track their sites on both the new Google Analytics service, as well as via tried-and-true Urchin.

If you're analyzing logfile traffic in Urchin using the "IP + User Agent" tracking method, you're fine. The standard Google Analytics tracking code will integrate seamlessly with your website. If, however, you are using the UTM method, you will need to make a few minor modifications on your site.

Continue reading "Your Choice: Urchin, Google Analytics... or Both?" »

Tracking PayPal Transactions in Google Analytics

February 13, 2007

We've had a lot of people enrolled in our Google Analytics Quick-Start Courses asking about PayPal. We've helped a few of our clients track PayPal e-commerce within Google Analytics, thanks to the Payment Data Transfer function and a bit of scripting on the back-end.

This method has only been tested with Buy Now buttons, and in all fairness, isn't much more than a hack. There are a couple of drawbacks. Because you cannot tag PayPal pages with the Google Analytics JavaScript, you will not have accurate funnel data for your e-commerce conversion goal. All converting visitors will leave your site (and move to PayPal) before coming back and registering their transaction. This will also result in an artificial hike in your total visits. That being said, it gets PayPal transaction data into Google Analytics, and is also relatively easy for those who are familiar with HTML, scripting, and general web development. Not everyone is going to understand this stuff, and if you find the whole mess a little too much, we're happy to help out with one of our Google Analytics support plans. Otherwise, read on and learn about how to track your PayPal transactions in Google Analytics.

Continue reading "Tracking PayPal Transactions in Google Analytics" »

Wishful thinking for a Green Christmas?

October 11, 2006

Nice article in a recent issue of Direct Magazine about online direct marketers anticipating the holidays.

They hope to pull in 20% of their 2006 revenue during the holidays, according to a survey conducted by Forrester Research and Shop.org for WebTrends.

And it isn't a small amount: The e-commerce total for the year is expected to top $200 billion.

Not that they're doing much to ensure a green Christmas.

The article then goes on to point out the percentage of web retailers who are reducing perks like free shipping, repeat-buyer discounts, and free gift with order...but the really amazing stat to me was the slim percentage doing measurement (36% using 'activity' or order metrics, 28% using click stats from referring media, and 10% plan to 'focus on unique visits' (does this mean they're looking at the little green page view counter at the bottom of their home page?) or deferred sales conversions (what the heck is a deferred sales conversion?--"Houston, we had a conversion--but it we won't see it in our stats package for another month or two").

The remainder won't do any 'demand measurement'. Ouch. Keep dreaming.

Tracking Multiple Domains

September 26, 2006

Justin Cutroni has yet another great series of articles over at his blog, all about common Google Analytics configuration mistakes. His most recent post discusses third party domains, and getting Google Analytics to track across them. As usual, it's well-written and very informative.

One thing that many people don't know, however, is that, by default, Google Analytics will track only the request URI of its tagged pages.

What's the URI, you ask? Take a look at the URL below:

You see that the part of the URL that is surrounded by red is "/index.htm". So, when a visitor hits the page above, Google Analytics registers a unique visit to "/index.htm". Because the majority of Google Analytics profiles are focused on only one domain, the hostname (surrounded by blue) is ignored in the reports.

But what if you have two domains? And what if you have pages on both domains that have the very same URI?

Continue reading "Tracking Multiple Domains" »

$6,000/month on Google AdWords w/o Google Analytics?

September 23, 2006

I received a very interesting telephone call early yesterday afternoon from a business owner of a lead generation website who had seen his PPC (Pay Per Click) ad spend on Google escalate in the last month or so from $4,000/month to $6,000/month with no detectible, corresponding 50% increase in business.

From beginning to end of the conversation his entire focus was on his concern that he was the victim of invalid clicks (a.k.a. click fraud).

Not coincidentally yesterday, Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal pointed out a lengthy Business Week cover story which was breaking yesterday about the very same topic.

Update: today's New York Times publishes its own article on the subject.

It's plausible that the business owner's (I spoke with) issue is not invalid clicks at all (or if so, perhaps less than suspected) but a less-than-analytics approach to his online marketing coupled with a surge of interest in his hot field. First clue: he had long ago opted *out* of the Google Content network. Further, he had Google's AdWords conversion tracker in place, but *not* Google Analytics.

Perhaps other real issues include a recent spike in competitive activity (driving his bid prices up) compounded by untested PPC ads, poorly performing landing pages, etc--all which could be analyzed in Google Analytics and then corrective action taken.

Further, he could also use Google Analytics to check on the click activity of potentially over-zealous competitors using the "Domains" or "Network Location" Visitor Segment Performance reports, had he suspected that problem.

The well spoken business owner wanted to know his options.

Here's what I told him:

Continue reading "$6,000/month on Google AdWords w/o Google Analytics?" »

You're the guest blogger: Google Analytics stories from the trenches

September 22, 2006

A couple of days ago, I pointed out a ClickZ article which discussed how a New York-based retailer (BuiltNY) tracks their print campaign with Google Analytics. Later in my post I asked for YOUR success stories.

Well the very next morning I heard from Terry Howard, owner of a fishing community site for Central Florida.

Here's Terry's story:

I work on a new project starting up that is a fishing community site for Central Florida.

We wanted to use business cards to place at bait shops, marinas, sub shops, wherever.

In order to track how successful these are we used our abbreviated domain cflfr.com instead of our primary centralfloridafishingreport.com on the cards and I set up a 301 redirect that is triggered whenever the short url is accessed and there is no referrer data sent.

This redirect sends type in traffic of that domain to our homepage with a tracking variable "?ref=offline" tacked on the end.

Now we can simply go into analytics under dynamic content, find the tracking URL page views and check conversion rates.

We can also do a crossview on the city stats to get roughly how we converted at specific card drop locations and even determine the range our cards have, like if people picked them up at one of our location and then took them home to a city across the state to look up our site at home.

Very cool!

Terry, great looking website by the way and great Google Analytics battlefield story. Send me your address and I'll mail a gift card for dinner for you and the Mrs.

Anyone else want to guest blog about how you're using Google Analytics successfully and get some free exposure for your website (and a PR5 link)?

Drop me a line and I'll publish your story if you've got your own good-great example.

View Visitor IP Address in Google Analytics

September 20, 2006

There's no way to view your visitors IP addresses right out of the box with Google Analytics. You can view visitor location and ISP in Marketing Optimization > Visitor Segment Performance, under the Domains and Geo Location reports.

But surely Google Analytics must collect the IP address, or there's no way that it could calculate visitor location and ISP.

In fact, it does collect this data from each visitor that accesses your site. Better still, the data is easily accessible with a fairly straightforward Advanced Filter and the User Defined variable. Here's how.

Continue reading "View Visitor IP Address in Google Analytics" »

New York-based retailer BuiltNY tracks print campaign with Google Analytics

Earlier this year ROI Revolution's Michael Harrison wrote a very useful post for marketers who wanted to track their offline (print, radio, TV, etc) ads using Google Analytics.

Yesterday, Kevin Newcomb (writing on the ClickZ network), wrote how New York-based retailer BuiltNY actually implemented this and agreed to be interviewed about it:

To track the print campaign, BuiltNY put a unique, easy-to-remember unique URL in the ad, which was only in use for that campaign. That landing page shows colorful x-ray images of objects like wine bottles, lunches, seashells and beach gear, all inside the appropriate BuiltNY bag.

Through Google Analytics, BuiltNY was able to attribute an 800 percent boost in traffic when the ad hit newsstands, and a 40 percent increase in online sales from visitors that came through that URL, Steve Bowden, art director for BuiltNY, told ClickZ.

"We can read it like the Wall Street Journal for our own Web traffic," Bowden said. "Every morning we get an update on how our Web, print and e-mail campaigns are doing, correlated to sales."

"Instead of gathering around the table scratching our heads, we actually have data to show how the campaign is performing," added Aaron Lown, a principal at BuiltNY and its co-creative director.

and finally, check this subsequent paragraph out (sound familiar?):

BuiltNY ran a more traditional test ad in Dwell earlier this year, before it began using Google Analytics. "But I have no idea if it worked," Lown said, since he had no way to track its success. Prior to implementing Google Analytics about the same time the X-ray campaign began, BuiltNY hadn't used any Web analytics products for its first three years in business. "We just had too many other things to do, like design new products, run our business...," Lown said.

Who else has used Google Analytics to track a print or otherwise offline advertising campaign? Write to me and if you've got a good case I'll post it here.

Neat, easy way to track 404 error pages in Google Analytics

September 10, 2006

Alex Ortiz, from the Google Analytics team, posted a very useful how-to tip on the Official Google Analytics Blog the other day.

Entitled "Tip: Tracking 404 Pages", Alex says:

Besides telling you from which sources your site traffic originates, Google Analytics also tracks just about any activity that occurs on your site, including popular navigation paths, plus track downloads, outbound links, and activities on cross-domain properties. But one shortcoming is the lack of reporting on 404 pages, which appear when there's no file or page that corresponds to the visitor's request. For example, sometimes visitors will type in a filename that they think is available on your site, or sometimes your site might have a obsolete link which routes to a deleted or non-existent file or directory. In both cases, a 404 or "Not Found" error page will appear on the browser.

It's valuable to see these requests so you can learn what visitors are looking for, and consider adding new content or fixing the broken link.

How easy is this to do? Piece of cake...and in just 3 simple steps:

1. Create a custom 404 error page and add the Google Analytics javascript code to the page.

2. Modify the script on this page by adding one line of code using the urchinTracker method.

3. Wait a while, then go to the Google Analytics Dynamic Content report and expand the list for "/404.html."

So what are you waiting for? Learn how to modify the script here.

Tracking Downloads with Google Analytics

April 4, 2006

With log-based web analytics utilities like Urchin Software, tracking downloaded files is easy. Your web logs register a hit whenever someone grabs a pdf or views a movie.

With a script-based package like Google Analytics, it's not possible to call the Javascript from pdfs, wmvs, avis, etc. So how can you tell when someone has taken the time to watch that video it took you days to create, or read your pdf whitepaper outlining the benefits your business offers over its competition?

Continue reading "Tracking Downloads with Google Analytics" »

AdWords Extends Print Ad Auctions

February 16, 2006

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.

How to Track Offline Ads with Google Analytics

February 8, 2006

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" »

Tracking Email Campaigns with Google Analytics

January 25, 2006

NOTE: Please see the UPDATE at the bottom of the article.

If you've ever sent out a mass email newsletter to your clients, you've probably found yourself pausing before clicking "Send" and wondering just how many people will actually open the thing, and of those, how many will find their way onto your site.

Google Analytics can help answer those questions, and a number of others, with its easy email tracking features. Open rate, click-through rate, and conversions can all be tracked within Google Analytics. You can even measure the effectiveness of your email campaign against your CPC, banner, and print campaigns.

Continue reading "Tracking Email Campaigns with Google Analytics" »

Google Analytics Link Tagging 101

January 13, 2006

The only way for you to see which advertising media are actually returning your investment is to tag your ads. It's an extremely simple process with Google Analytics, once you're prepared with the basic knowledge on how to categorize your various campaigns.

First, understand that you only tag what you need to tag. Don't confuse yourself, or add unnecessary work. For example, if you need to track a Google AdWords account that is linked with your Google Analytics account, you don't need to tag your AdWords URLs at all. Google Analytics does it automatically. Other paid marketing campaigns like banners, and unpaid media like email campaigns should definitely be tagged.

Continue reading "Google Analytics Link Tagging 101" »

What Should Be Tracked?

December 30, 2005

What you track and the reports you pay attention to within Google Analytics depends on the goals of your site. Google Analytics has over 80 reports, and only a small percentage of those reports provide truly relevant information and give value for your site. Every site has a unique set of goals based on the main function of the site, and these goals will help you to pick the reports that really matter for your specific website. If your site is a retail site, then one of your main goals might be to increase your conversion rate of visitors to customers from 1% to 2%. That might not sound like a big difference, but that would be a 100% increase in revenue!

Continue reading "What Should Be Tracked?" »

© Copyright 2009 ROI Revolution. All Rights Reserved.