This coming Tuesday, June 2 2009, LunaMetrics is doing a two-track, one day training in NYC on Google Analytics. Two tracks so that marketers/analysts can enjoy one track and techies can do the other track. (Some attendees prefer to do a little of each track, and that’s ok, too.) $285/person, includes continental breakfast, lunch, Google goodies and all the slides. Click here for more information and/or to register, or just check out the agenda here.
Robbin
We often hear variations on the question “Do we need the leading dot when using _setDomainName”.
With the dot:
pageTracker._trackPageview(‘.lunametrics.com’);
Without the dot:
pageTracker._trackPageview(‘lunametrics.com’);
The _setDomainName method is used to tell GA what to set the “domain” to, for the cookies that it uses to keep track of visitor information. This “domain” field for the cookies are used as part of the security in browsers to determine what websites can access what cookies. (You don’t want porn.com getting access to your amazon.com cookies, for example.)
The Google Analytics documentation recommends using a preceding dot. For example: pageTracker._setDomainName(‘.lunametrics.com’)
The example above allows any lunametrics.com subdomain to access the same cookies. (blog.lunametrics.com and help.lunametrics.com are both still “lunametrics.com” so the browser says this is okay)
In most cases, it doesn’t really matter whether you use ‘.lunametrics.com’ or ‘lunametrics.com’. As long as you’re consistent across the entire website that you’re tracking. That’s part of the confusion. Both ways work fine.
However, Google explains, in cases with multiple levels of subdomains, you can sometimes run into problems if you don’t use the preceding dot with _setDomainName. If we had robbin.posts.blog.lunametrics.com the browser may not let the GA code on that page have access to cookies written with _setDomainName(‘lunametrics.com’), but it would allow access to cookies written with _setDomainName(‘.lunametrics.com’).
I am always amazed when site owners say, “Our customers love {whatever} about our site.”
Last week, they had an SEO day here in Pittsburgh, and I spoke on the analytics panel. So I was there at lunch when the speaker from MSN/Live got up to talk about Farecast (which was purchased by MSN a while ago) and heard her seem to know what her Farecast customers love.
I have been a Farecast user for a long, long time. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it is yet another travel site, with a unique twist: for most markets, it predicts whether fares are rising, falling, etc. For example, in this screenshot, you can see the forecast (farecast) for travel from my town to NYC (Laguardia). It’s clearly advantageous to purchase now, given that I have to travel within the next couple of weeks.
But that’s not what I love about Farecast, and I was surprised she assumed that it was. In fact, the thing I love about it is something you can 
get from other sites, like Kayak — Farecast just does a better job of it. Farecast gives you the capability to do excellent filtering on your travel selection. It’s not just that they ask when during the day you want to travel — the site actually cares what you tell it, and shows you all the prices at the various times. I know that I have to leave in the morning to be in NYC and work there that afternoon, and I know that I can’t leave the following day until the entire day of Google Analytics training is done.
It really looks like that $140 block is the one that is going to meet my needs. First of all, it is not too early in the morning for departure (after all, I don’t need to be in the city until after lunch.) After having done the GA training (which will be the following day) in NYC numerous times, I know the only good flight home is the 9:25 — a little late for my taste, but better than walking out on attendees just to get to the airport on time. And while not as inexpensive as the other fares, it’s only $140.
So — to return to my original thesis — why didn’t the MSN lady even mention that Farecast has an incredible user interface and travel usability tools to die for? Maybe she has done a lot of testing and knows what all her visitors love. After all, as my friend from the WAA, April Wilson, always says, “Don’t make your decision on this focus group of one person.” But I have a sneaking suspicion that like most sites and most products, the owners overlook the simplest of features and always care about the sexy ones.
Robbin
“But our paid search vendor won’t give me access to our keywords and ads,” complained an attendee at our GA training in DC. (I promised her that I wouldn’t use her name.)
“Hmm,” said I, “That seems a little awful. You would think they would keep you locked up as a customer based on how wonderful they are, not based on your inability to get at your own data.” In fact, I mused out loud to her, I wonder if that is a violation of the paid search terms and conditions….
…. so I did a search for Google AdWords Terms of Service, and I found this:
6 Agency. Customer represents and warrants that (a) it is authorized to act on behalf of and has bound to this Agreement any third party for which Customer advertises (a “Principal“), (b) as between Principal and Customer, the Principal owns any rights to Program information in connection with those ads, and (c) Customer shall not disclose Principal’s Program information to any other party without Principal’s consent.
So, I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that if the customer is an agency and advertises on behalf of a Principal (a real company), then the Principal owns the data. I don’t see that it says, the Principal must have access to the data, but hey, if you own it, you should be able to look at it, no?
And before I close — if you are in the NY Metro area and are interested in learning some actionable insights for your Google Analytics (techie or marketing), come to our GA Training Day, June 2 in Manhattan ($285 per person.) Learn more here.
Robbin
An old friend, Jeff Turner (of Blogbeat fame, the package that was purchased by Feedburner, which itself was purchased by Google), called me the other day. He and his business partner asked me to do some user testing on a new product they are developing called Pointomatic.
I’m not supposed to give too many details away, so I will just say that it is not a full-service analytics package, but rather, a product that focuses on visitor loyalty/engagement. Some of the things it can do with ease are very cool. If you are interested — especially if engagement is a very high priority for you — you can contact Jeff and get into his free alpha/beta. You can send him email or follow Jeff on Twitter.
Robbin
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