Google Analytics Update - Increase Your Website's Effectiveness

Recently Google Analytics has had a major upgrade to v5. Some of the new features, as well as demonstration of how to effectively use Google Analytics is covered today at Go Measure in Malaysia.

These are some of the notes I have taken at the event.



First off, you need to activate the new features by clicking on

Instead of the drop-down list of all your sites, you will see a much cleaner interface of all Google Analytics profile at the home page. Accessing the dashboard for each of the site is as easy as clicking on any of your tracked site.

The main features in Google Analytics such as Reports, Intelligence, Goals, E-Commerce and Multi-Channel Funnels are just one-click away at the top navigation bar. There is much more focus on what you are trying to achieve with Google Analytics, rather than focusing on just plain statistics. So less about visitors, content and traffic sources, but more about assists and conversions.

Measurement

“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted”
Albert Einstein

Go Measure Keynote: Rethinking Measurement and Attribubtion

When you build your website, you care a lot about the overall theme, photos that you use, font type and all the little details to project your brand. Most people hire a professional web designer to create their websites. Once the website is launched, is that the end of the story?


Certainly not. Unless you are assuming that the website is already perfect, and will automatically get new customers, and ensure all existing customers stay loyal. You will not know how website visitors got to your website, what pages they browse and how many of them actually make a transaction if you do not measure. 


The core concept of Google Analytics is to gain Insight into the current visitor's behaviour, and then take Actions to attain your website's Goals. 

Go measure 2011 - URL Tagging & Campaign Variables

Goals

If you don't know where you are going. How can you expect to get there? - Basil S. Walsh

Defining & Measuring Goals  

Similar to an organization, a website also have goals. Without a goal, a website is simply one of those random, "me-too" collection of HTML pages.

Do you remember the Geocities, Tripod and AngelFire homepages in the '90s?

Surely you will want to design your website to achieve certain goals such as strengthening your brand, increasing loyalty among existing customers or converting visitors to customers and closing sales.



The example in the slides above shows that Brazil has the 3rd highest number of visitors. But if you look at the conversion rate, Brazil is not even in the top 10! This is the type of valuable insight that Google Analytics gives you, and you can turn into some actions such as:

• Creating Portuguese version of the website
• Find out and use the most popular online transaction method in Brazil, etc

Assists

A typical activity flow shows a user clicks on an advertisement, and provided that the  landing page is attractive enough, there will be a conversion. In reality, there are many assists before conversion (>10 is normal). 

The new Google Analytics now has much more focus on goals, and how to link your goals to actual conversions. 

Take for instance Amari's advertisement campaign for their hotels in Thailand. The results from Google Analytics shows that there are a lot of click-throughs from Google Adwords, which brings the user to a typical landing page with a very clear call-to-action and minimal information. 

This tactic does not result in much conversion, show that the current landing page is not effective. Amari was courageous enough to increase the amount of information on the landing page, such as details of the hotel room and services available. The result: 44% increase in conversion rate in one month. 

This Mckinsey's model of Consumer Decision Journey captures the full life-cycle of a customer making purchases. To learn more, head over to the full article including interaction diagram at Mckinsey's website. 

Social Networks

We have heard about the phenomenal growth of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+, and how much these networks shape the behaviour of Internet users. No web campaign is complete without taking into account the approach for social networks, as well as measuring the Return on Investment. 

Google Analytics now provide a one-stop solution with a single view of your campaign in other advertisement as well as social networks. 

Are there any product listing pages on e-commerce websites without a "Share on Facebook / Twitter / Google +1" button? Blogs, including this one, and news websites have been effectively using the link sharing ability of social network to increase the trustworthiness of their content as well as loyalty among users. 

Measuring Social using Google Analytics  

Using the social plugin in Google Analytics is as easy as adding an additional line of Javascript code

_trackSocial(network, action, target_url);

In fact, if you are using Google's +1 button, no setup is necessary.

A good example is MilkADeal.com using Facebook's Like button, Facebook's share (a URL), Google's +1 button and share via email. Facebook being the most popular social network, especially in Malaysia, we can logically expect Facebook Like / Send to have the most users as well as highest conversion

What's surprising is email conversion is 40%, compared to Facebook Like's 27%. Having known this fact, MilkADeal.com can then make email sharing more prominent.

The best source to learn more about Google Analytics is at Conversion University. The slides are very well: see for example the lesson on Campaign Tracking and AdWords Integration.

 Learn more about Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics/education.html