Archive for January, 2009
Posted on January 28, 2009 by Jonathan Weber
Custom reports can be a great way to get just the metrics you want in a report. But the out-of-the-box reports Google Analytics offers are pretty extensive, so sometimes people ask me, “What could I possibly want in a custom report? Are they really that useful?”
Here’s an example of a custom report I’ve found very useful for looking at AdWords performance. You can get all the same data in the AdWords reports in the Traffic Sources section of GA, but it’s separated in tabs so you can’t see it all side by side. There are a few things I want to know about an ad, from start to finish when someone interacts with it: how many people saw it (impressions), how many of them clicked through (CTR), how many of them have never been to the site before (% new visits), how many of them stuck with the site past the landing page (bounce rate), and how many of them actually achieved the site’s goals (conversion rate). And to make comparisons overall among ads, I want to know how much I spent (Cost and CPC), and especially how much I spent per goal conversion (that’s basically my cost of acquiring a customer).
Here’s a look at the report:
And here’s how it’s set up in the Custom Reporting interface.
Since custom reports don’t allow you to filter out just the data that you want, you’ll notice that all the visits to the site are here, not just AdWords. So you’ll see there’s a campaign “(not set)” that’s all the non-campaign traffic, and you’ll see any other kinds of campaigns you have running listed here as well (such as email campaigns). However, only AdWords campaigns will have the cost data we’re really interested in for this report. So you may want to either add “Source / Medium” as the very first dimension (so that you can click through on “google / cpc”), or use this report on a profile that has a filter to include just your AdWords traffic, or an Advanced Segment for just your AdWords traffic.
View Comments (11 Responses) | Categories: Google Analytics
Posted on January 21, 2009 by Robbin Steif
Tomorrow, we will be doing a one-hour webinar on Google Analytics 101 (1-2 PM EST). It is only $99, and Jonathan Weber from LunaMetrics will be conducting it. There will be plenty of time after the webinar to get your own questions answered.
A few people have written me and asked for more detail. This is a very very basic webinar — for people who have GA and look at it and say, “What does this all mean and where do I get the info that I need?”
You can go here to learn a little bit more, or just register here.
Robbin
View Comments (No Responses) | Categories: Google Analytics
Posted on January 20, 2009 by Robbin Steif
Here at LunaMetrics, we thought it was cool that there is a White House blog so soon after the US Presidential inauguration (less than 90 minutes ago.) If our own blog were about SEO, we would make fun of the fact that the new blog has descriptions and even meta keywords, but nothing special in the way of title tags. (LunaMetrician and SEO Jim Gianoglio caught that one right away.)
Instead, we’ll just point out that while they are using WebTrends Live, they don’t have analytics tags on all pages. We saw that one right away using Stephane Hamel’s WASP tool (you have it, right?) Maybe by the time you look at the new presidential blog, the tags will be there.
On the other hand, how awesome that they have a blog!! (And no matter which side of the aisle you sit on, we really made history today.)
Robbin
View Comments (5 Responses) | Categories: Industry News, Web Analytics
Posted on January 9, 2009 by John Henson
Cross-domain tracking is great. But just because you can do something doesn’t always mean you should. This goes for cross-domain tracking as well. Sometimes tracking two domains as separate sites instead of together, may be the right approach.
While there is no hard-and-fast way to make this decision (that I know of), here are a couple things to consider.
*Can visitors be commonly expected to cross from one domain to another to accomplish your goals? Their goals?
*Do the domains serve different audiences?
Imagine, for example, pbs.org and pbskids.org. These two sites (usually) serve very different audiences. And someone would not normally be required to cross from one domain to the other in order to accomplish their goal. This situation is probably best served by tracking them as different sites without any cross-domain tracking.
Another example is a company such as Perillo Tours that sells vacation tours. There is one domain that is the consumer facing site (perillotours.com)– you and I can buy a tour on this domain. The other domain is for travel agents to purchase tours for their customers (perilloagents.com). Both sites are virtually identical (they provide almost the exact same functionality, after all). Although you can move between sites, the two domains are serving different audiences and the visitors would not need to cross domains in order to accomplish goals. This is another example of when you’d not want to use cross domain tracking.
Again, these are just a couple examples and some things to think about when trying to decide if you want to implement cross-domain tracking. It may not apply to most of you, but for those in a situation like this, I hope it helps get you thinking about how to implement GA for your domains.
John
View Comments (3 Responses) | Categories: Web Analytics
Posted on January 7, 2009 by Robbin Steif
Every time we do a full-day of Google Analytics training, I get a bunch of emails that say, “When are you bringing your training to {fill in the city}?” So we’re having a one-hour live webinar on Thursday, January 22 at 1 PM Eastern time (10 AM Pacific time). You can sit in any city you like and learn.
The topic will be Google Analytics 101 – a basic introduction to where the data are and how to use them. Please spread the word to some of your newbie colleagues. Space is limited to fourteen seats (although you can buy one seat and have as many people in the conference room as you like. ) It’s $99/seat, and you can register here.
Robbin
View Comments (2 Responses) | Categories: Industry News
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