What's new with Google Analytics and Website Optimizer?

Mar 18, 2008 - 4:11 pm 2 by

This session is packed, people are sitting on the floor.

Avinash Kaushik Google Analytics, Analytics Evangelist is holding this panel. The issue is that there is too much data. The tool gives you actionable insights into data. I'm crammed here, this guy just sat on top of me...

Data democracy: Give anyone you want access to your data. He shows how you can easily email reports. You can email specific types of reports to specific types of people. They don't want to kill people with data, just send them what they need.

GA helps you discover patterns from the data. He shows how easy it is to drill down into these reports. I am sure most of you are very well versed in how GA works.

Context is King/Queen: People often miss context and GA helps you provide context. You can easily compare your data to past data or even look at goals. GA gives you your data in context. He is going through tons of data but getting it so easily.

He then says how you need to send green is good and red is bad to your manager, cause they don't know much.

People are constantly asking for definitions. There are little question-marks next to all data points in GA. But the green vs red helps avoid the questions.

He now shows off industry benchmarking data reports - some really cool reports. This is not 100% live yet, but should be live shortly.

He shows how you can drill down into a page and then combine those metrics with other metrics, to bring out life to the data. On the content by title, he shifted to a sub report of pageviews, and then time by page.

Now, what about non e-commerce? You can look at metrics such as visitor loyalty. Look at visitor recency, when was the last time I've seen you? Also metrics like length and depth of visits. The visitor loyalty reports help you understand some of those success metrics.

Bounce Rates: - Bounce rates are a great metric - Great filtering metric - Tells you where to focus on - If you filter those reports by source, then why is that source traffic sending you bad referrers? - Also, are you sending the keywords your buying to the wrong landing page?

He is a big fan of internal site search - Those searches on your site will tell you about user intent - You can see bounce rate for internal search (how much does your internal search stink?) - Compare conversions between site search and not site search

Web 2.0 - How do you track these ajax apps, flash, video, etc? -- Generate fake pageviews -- You dont have to do that anymore because --- You can catch different "labels" as actions in GA --- He shows a funnel graph of how many people started, then paused and then finished the video --- He shows all these stats on video data --- The then shows AJAX tracking and Flash/Flex

Moving Beyond Analytics - Coming Up Next, by Tom

Avinash is an awesome speaker, awesome. Brett!

Tom Leung, Business Product Manager (Google Website Optimizer)

Yea, he discusses Website Optimizer...

Website optimizer closes the loop between adwords and analytics. This tool will scientifically compare changes you make to the page.

Ad Creatives: - 0-3 seconds with 3% of pixels and no commitment to it Landing Pages: 0-20 seconds, 100% of pixels and demonstrated commitment Closing Pages: 2-3 minutes, 100% of pixels and significant commitment

How Does Content Experimentation Work? --> Visitor Comes ---> Visitors get different landing pages ---> You compare which page does best?

Benefits - Free - Easy - Does not impact SEO - Backed by Google - Increases in conversions >25% not uncommon - Discussion groups, tutorials, networks

Features: - A/B Split Testing - Multivariate Testing - Follow Up Testing - Works with ALL Traffic - Statistical Analysis - Platform Independent - Quarterly Feature Updates

He shows some sample reports (green is good, red is bad)

Innovations Since Last SES: - 5 Minute Set Up AB Tests - Agency Access Permissions - Cross Session Extended Cookies - Advanced Algorithm Enhancements - Google.com/WebsiteOptimizer, Testing Webniar Series, New Testing How to Articles - 12 Website Optimizer Authorized Consulting Agencies

Learned: - Content Experimentation is a technology enabled marketer-managed process - Testing takes great alternate content, proportionate traffic, and discipline - Many people mistakenly assume the more complex the test, the better - It is totally possible to double your sales with testing - There are lots of myths out there about GWO

He then gives some case studies, but I cant breath anymore. No air here.

 

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