Archive for November, 2009
Posted on November 30, 2009 by Robbin Steif
1) Just wanted to remind everyone that our Google Analytics Training is going to be on December 8 and 9 in DC (Analysis day on the 8th, techie day on the 9th.) Prices start at $199 to attend half a day on the 8th; some people need to attend both days in full, and that price is $650. You can see the Google Analytics training microsite and register here. Tuesday the 8th (analysis) is at the American Institute of Architects, and the 9th is at the Mathematical Association’s Carriage House (Dupont Circle.)
2) Separately, I just wrote an article on “How Bounce Rate can help you Pinpoint Site Problems.” It’s on Dr. Ralph Wilson’s website, Web Marketing Today. (In the course of writing the article, I found out that this is their 15th anniversary. Just think, to be at this for fifteen years, you had to start in 1994. ) Enjoy!
Robbin
View Comments (1 Response) | Categories: Google Analytics, Industry News, Web Analytics
Posted on November 17, 2009 by Christina Keffer
Ever since starting at LunaMetrics, I’ve become increasingly immersed in and enthralled by Google Analytics. I thought I knew a lot about it before, but every day I find out about a new way to mine and organize the data I need on a day to day basis. I also think it’s interesting that the more one knows about how to do things, the more one comes to rely on the resulting reports.
My recent find, thanks to my coworker Jim, is a unique use of the new secondary dimensions and pivot function.
Keyword Research and Google Analytics
There are a number of ways to do keyword research using Google Analytics, but until the addition of the secondary dimensions, there was no easy way of extracting actionable data from keyword reports generated by Google Analytics.
For instance, have you ever done a GA keyword report, found an unexpected keyword in the top ten and wondered where in heck the user found your site by searching for it? Well, now you don’t have to wrack your brains and search through every single search engine ever created.
Lets say you are doing keyword research. You want to find out the following:
- What keywords are bringing users to the site
- What landing pages are those keywords bringing users to
- What source is directing traffic through those keywords (Google, Yahoo, Bing, PPC Campaign etc.)
- How qualified is the traffic that is coming from those keywords
Generating the GA Keyword Pivot Chart
All of these things can be found in one easily generated report. Here’s now to create it:
- Go to Traffic Sources in the Dashboard and choose Keywords
- Refine your report by clicking “Non-Paid” so that you only see keywords used in organic search
- Choose “Pivot” From the available views. (This is where it gets good!)
- Keep the default Pivot selection “Source”
- Keep the default metric “Visits”
- Add “Bounce Rate” from the adjacent drop-down.
- Keep the dimension “Keyword” then add “Landing Page” next to it.
Voila. You have a list of keywords, what landing page they go to, where the visitors came from and bounce rates or whichever metric you’re most interested in. If you get a lovely list of branded search terms, use the advanced filters to exclude those keywords. It’s much easier now that you don’t have to type in all the regular expressions anymore. Here’s a screenshot of what the final product should look like:
There are many things this information can tell you among which are:
- Conversion Stages: To see what stage of the buying process users are at when they reach a certain page. Long tail keywords usually denote a readiness to buy/convert whereas shorter phrases typically indicate a research phase.
- Traffic Quality: If you’ve done your homework right and you’re drawing traffic in through keywords that you’ve optimized for, but you’re lacking conversions or continue to have a high bounce rate, you could be going after the wrong keywords.
- Usability: Once you know what keywords visitors are using to get to your site, you can tailor the pages to fit their goals.
- Keyword Potential: There could be keywords that you never though of in this list. Take them into account when setting up an PPC campaign, or deciding how to further optimize the page.
I hope you found this report as useful as I find it! I’d love to hear about other uses or variations. Feel free to comment!
View Comments (7 Responses) | Categories: Filters, Google Analytics, Web Analytics
Posted on November 12, 2009 by Robbin Steif
We’re doing some experiementing with our Google Analytics training (coming up in Washington DC on Dec 8 & 9th, 2009). The biggest problem attendees face, and we face as instructors, is getting the level right. Not too easy, not too hard. But those things are different for everyone.
That’s why we decided to do Basic GA Analysis the morning of Dec 8, more advanced analysis that afternoon, and techie implementation all day on the 9th. You can pay for just half a day on the 8th ($199) and there are discounts to come to the full day (and yet more discounts to come to both days.)
Here is the link for the event, where you can see the schedule, and here is the registration page.
Robbin
View Comments (1 Response) | Categories: Announcements, Google Analytics
Posted on November 6, 2009 by Robbin Steif
A while ago, we wrote a post about the Google Analytics navigation report. The great thing about blog posts is that they last and last, and today, someone posted a multi-part question about the Navigation report. So (assuming that lots of people have the same questions) here are hers, and here are the answers.
1. Do the exits in the navigation report include exits bounces? (sorry about that original typo, now corrected) Answer: Yes. This was easy to find out using the new Advanced Filter that everyone now has in Google Analytics and filtering on pageviews = 1, bounce rate = 100% and exit rate = 100%. Then when I found the names of those pages, I went to the navigation report, and voila! saw that they all the “next moves” in the report were exits.
2. Are bounces and exits calculated completely separately, o
r do exits include bounces? Answer: Exits include bounces. A bounce is just a special kind of an exit, i.e. the user not only exited on that page, but entered there, too.
3. Does exit imply a visit to a previous page? Answer: No. But if you like, we can think of two kinds of exits: those that had a visit to a previous page in the visit, and those that did not. The later category has a special name for it: a bounce.
Now I will ask an extreme question that she did not ask, and hopefully throw this all into relief:
4. If Exits include bounces, how can my bounce rate be 100% and my exit rate be only 50%? Answer: Let’s say we have four visits that included a trip to a page we are interested in. Visit one landed on that page and left the site entirely (a bounce.) Visit two and three started on the home page, checked our our page, and then continued to look at other pages. Visit four landed on the home page, and left from our page.
- Visit one: A bounce from this page (which means it is also an exit)
- Visit two: Neither a bounce nor an exit
- Visit three: Neither a bounce nor an exit
- Visit four: An Exit
So our bounce rate is 100% for this page, because ever single visit that started on this page also left immediately (remember that was only one visit, the first one.) Our exit rate is 50%, because two visits (the first and last) left at this page, but there were four pageviews (2/4 = 50%).
5) Let’s ask one more question (which is really the same as the last question, dressed up in new clothes): How can I possibly have a 100% bounce rate? People love this page. I see it in the funnel, lots of visits continue from it. What is this 100% bounce rate nonsense? Answer: Bounce rate is only computed for visits that start on the page in question. You may have millions of happy visitors who eventually navigate to a page deep inside the site, and only one guy actually lands on that page (and leaves). That one guy makes the bounce rate 100%. And all those happy visitors? They didn’t start on the page, so they don’t get to a share of voice in the bounce rate equation.
Robbin
View Comments (2 Responses) | Categories: Google Analytics
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