Archive for July, 2011
Posted on July 28, 2011 by Michael Harrison
Sometimes it’s important for certain people within an organization to have access to metrics within Google Analytics, but for whatever reason, they’re not allowed to have access to the whole shebang. Maybe ecommerce data is beyond their pay grade, or there’s sensitive data that they’re not privy to.
For whatever the reason, sometimes you have to restrict people’s access. Unfortunately, Google Analytics’ user access management leaves a little to be desired. You can either be an admin or a user. If you’re an admin, you have access to everything. If you’re a user, you can have limited access, but only by profiles. If you have access to a profile, you have access to every single report within that profile.
What if you wanted to restrict the type of data that a user had access to? Only give them a Pages report for a specific directory? Only grant them access to top level information about sources bringing traffic to the site?
Sure, you could create a bunch of profiles and try to uses some creative filters to ensure that only the right stuff gets into the filter and all the sensitive stuff gets blocked, but that can be extremely tricky, and downright impossible in some situations. If an employee needs to access some top-level sitewide metrics but not be able to drill down to certain others, you’re going to need a lot of different profiles.
Instead, I’ve found that creating custom limited-access dashboards with the Google Analytics Data Export API and a tool called Shufflepoint is straightforward and results in some pretty cool dashboards that can be installed on a static webpage or on a user’s iGoogle page.
First of all, let’s talk a bit about Shufflepoint. What is it? It’s a “report integration hub” where you can pull data from multiple sources–in our case, Google Analytics–and then push it to other destinations. I can create a custom query to the Google Analytics Data Export API and then push the data retrieved from that query to the Google Charts API, to Google Maps, and even to an iGoogle Gadget.
Shufflepoint has an awesome drag-and-drop query tool that lets me pick the GA profile, metrics, and dimensions I want to pull, and then spits out a feed URI for the tool I want to import it into. Using the charts and table gadgets in the Google Chart Tools, I can just plug that URI into a field and it’ll spit out a graphic that shows up on my iGoogle page.
Now I can micro-manage the types of reports a user has access to. They don’t even need access to the Google Analytics interface. They just need an iGoogle page. For more information on signing up for Shufflepoint and using it with iGoogle gadgets, check out this page on the Shufflepoint site.
These are all pretty basic reports, though. What if the user needs to have something a little more fully-featured?
Using Shufflepoint, JavaScript and the Google Charts Tools, we were able to create a custom report that did just that. Take a look:
Right away, the gadget is pulling data from Google Analytics using Shufflepoint: the page path, the visitors, the pageviews, and the time on page. In addition, if the user clicks on the page path, it drills down and shows us the sources and mediums for visitors to that page:
Pretty cool, huh?
It’s not a common problem by any means. If you can, I highly recommend that you give analysts and stakeholders access to the Google Analytics interface. With new features being announced all the time, it’s the best, easiest place to go for sifting through your site’s data.
But if you have to restrict access, think about using the GA Data Export API and building some custom iGoogle Gadgets with Shufflepoint. You might be surprised with what you can accomplish!
View Comments (5 Responses) | Categories: Web Analytics
Posted on July 26, 2011 by Brian Honigman
RECENT UPDATE: Facebook’s Newsfeed algorithm no longer penalizes 3rd party tools when they post on Facebook, although it is recommended that you post from both Facebook & third party tools when possible. Here are a few articles on the subject from a variety of industry experts: Social Mouths, EdgeRank Checker & Mari Smith.
Everyone uses them right? Social media tools like TweetDeck, Co Tweet, Sprout Social, HootSuite and others have become widely adopted. They are a great asset for managing your social media presence across multiple platforms and accounts. The main benefit of using these tools is they make managing social media much more convenient. One of the best things about these tools is the ability to schedule your posts ahead of time. I use HootSuite everyday to schedule my tweets and interact with users on our various social media accounts. Many also use HootSuite and the other tools to schedule their Facebook posts on their Pages, which is actually a bad idea. This is one instance when convenience limits the amount of people seeing and interacting with your Facebook Page. It’s a darn shame, even I was mad when I found out because who doesn’t like to make things easier!
Why You Shouldn’t Use Third Party Tools To Post on Facebook
The screen shots below were taken from my news feed today and they help illustrate how third party tools actually hide your posts sometimes. Let’s look at this example from the screen shots. So let’s pretend I’m a typical user, first I log into my Facebook account and see this in my news feed. It’s an update by Sprout Social, a newer social media engagement platform, posting about a test they are performing. I may click the link, like the post, leave a comment or continue browsing. However, if you look directly below the post there’s a link that reads “See 2 more posts from Sprout Social.” Most likely I go about my typical Facebook browsing and stalking, never thinking twice about clicking this See More button. What posts am I not seeing?
^This must be clicked to show items hidden from view.
By clicking this button you can see the rest of the recently posted content by the Sprout Social app being used by multiple Pages on Facebook. The algorithm that determines what is seen in Facebook’s news feed bunches together postings from applications on Facebook. To be able to post on Facebook, third party tools create these apps as a means of managing a Facebook Page. Look below to see what content was hidden from the news feed after I clicked the See More button.
Voila! Two posts from the lovely ladies at ModCloth were completely hidden from news feed until I clicked that button. If I were a typical user would I have seen those posts? The answer is yes and no. It depends on when I log in as compared to when the update was posted, but at that moment in time when I logged in those posts were hidden. ModCloth and other brands using these convenient functions are well followed and still receive engagement from these posts because they aren’t completely hidden and their audiences are engaged. However, it’s not worth hiding your posts from some possible visitors by adding another click for them to see your content.
Therefore, continue to use your third party tools as you see fit. I use these tools to engage with my social accounts, but just not to post on Facebook. I recommend just posting manually for the time being until Facebook makes a change to the algorithm correcting this problem if they ever deem it necessary.
Update 8/18/2011
One way to get around this issue (that I neglected to mention when this post was previously published) is if you have a custom branded publishing platform created it can help, since no one else would be publishing from this platform. For instance, Target’s Facebook Page uses a branded publishing platform called ‘Target.’
If you look at all of Target’s Facebook posts they say via Target with their logo. This is great for branding purposes, instead of saying via CoTweet or HootSuite. This custom platform created for Target allows them to schedule posts, but prevents their posts from being hidden in the same way via the News Feed. However, posts from Target, since they are through a third party application, are still grouped together in the News Feed. Yet, they don’t stand the same risk of being hidden because they aren’t grouped with posts from other Pages. This ensures that if Target’s posts become grouped in the News Feed, the very first post shown will be a post from Target. Therefore, using a custom third party tool is one workaround. The only downside to this is that it needs to be designed in-house or bought from an agency, which is going to be fairly expensive. However, i’m sure a few agencies providing these kinds of tools have the ability to white label their platform for your brand, skipping the development phase all together.
Was this a helpful insight? Are you mad that you shouldn’t schedule your posts?
View Comments (7 Responses) | Categories: Facebook, Social Media
Posted on July 20, 2011 by Brian Honigman
There are constant conversations about the ROI of social media because most businesses take actions completely based upon dollar amounts. Many associate social engagement on the various platforms as a part of the overall sales funnel, but a lot of the time aren’t able to connect eCommerce to engagement. Google Analytics has recently gotten one step closer to defining this relationship. By adding the ability to track social media plugins installed on your website, Google Analytics can track the actions of a social engaged user and begin to quantifying the relationship between their social actions and their behavior on your website.
Google’s +1s are automatically tracked if you already have Google Analytics code installed on your website. To track Facebook Likes, Unlikes, Shares and Twitter’s Tweets you must install tracking code to each network’s button to make sure you’re reaping the full benefits of GA’s new social section. Previously, event tracking provided a general way to track these social engagements on your website, but now Social Tracking allows for a standardized framework for measuring social actions on your website.
This is a step in the right direction for many trying to quantify their use of social media. Many current methods of social media measurement are scattered across different third party tools utilizing the various platforms API. Many of the tools, especially the free ones, don’t have the level of actionable insights many brands would rely on for making enterprise level decisions. Google has some of the highest brand trust among consumers and brands worldwide, that many companies will most likely continue over to include social tracking.
Therefore, Google Analytics measuring how social factors impact a company’s website will hopefully help more businesses and brands utilize social media to its fullest potential. It’s starting to make it easier for a company with multiple social accounts to consolidate their social metrics into one trusted measurement platform. The fact that this rolled out close to the launch of Google+ is most likely on purpose. Google is probably hoping that Social Tracking will drive more legitimacy to its social network, especially from brands looking to measure their efforts, and eventually be able to compete on the same playing field with Facebook.
What metrics do you take into account when measuring social media engagement? What tools have you found to be most effective in delivering results?
View Comments (4 Responses) | Categories: Facebook, Google Analytics, Social Media, Twitter, Web Analytics
Posted on July 10, 2011 by Robbin Steif
The best way to win in business (if not life) is to have what business school teachers call an “unfair advantage.” Although that sounds sleazy, it is really just an economic principle. Here’s an unfair advantage: “I’m the only one who has a basketball, so if all you guys on the court want to play basketball with my ball, you have to let me play, too.” In fact, the whole net neutrality argument is all about unfair advantage: if your ISP is a big cable company, it has the power to make it much easier for you to watch through cable TV and not so much through Hulu. (Depending on government regulation.)
OK, now that we got that out of the way — what does this all have to do with Google Plus?
1) My invite is through my lunametrics email, but I understand that you can get at it through your gmail. I assume it is just like Gtalk — sitting there on the side of your gmail. Gmail is the third most popular email service in the US (sorry, international folks, no data), according to Hitwise’s report from last week (July 2, 2011) . So Google has easy access, or more correctly, you millions of gmail users have amazingly easy access to Google Plus.
2) Google has been rolloing out their black bar on various properties (such as search and maps and you guessed it, Plus.) So in many different Google services, your plus profile is available, as is the red notification at the top, mentally nagging you to do things like assign people to circles.
3) And to take it all round trip, the Google +1 button (not to be confused) is now enabled for every search results when you are signed in to Plus , somewhat annoying on search, but it probably leads to way more +1 than I could have expected.
So — Google has taken advantage of all their unfair advantages, such as their role in your gmail, your search, your maps, to really try to make Google Plus a winner. The fact that the product manager, Surfer Boy, and his amazing team did an amazing job with the product, if not with the product name, helps enormously. That, however, is “just” great design and engineering, a topic for a different post.
And remember, there is nothing unfair about an unfair advantage.
Robbin
So, +1 us on Google Plus. Really rolls off the tongue, no? No?
Update: Read this article that Danny Sullivan wrote on Search Engine Land. He points out that Google, while still not quite getting it right technically, clearly shows how “friending” the few company pages that have been allowed helps those companies in the Google Search. And remember, there is nothing unfair about an unfair competitive advantage. It’s just business.
View Comments (3 Responses) | Categories: Social Media
Posted on July 6, 2011 by Talia Steif
Right now Google+ is in what they call the “field trial” phase. As you know, they have sent out invitations to a limited number of people to test out this new social media platform. But while this is a considered a testing period it is also technically a launch. And this launch has to be successful otherwise Google+ will go the way of other ineffective social networking sites like Friendster and Google Orkut.
Almost no information regarding how Google selected invitees has been released, but we do know that Google randomly selected a group of testers, all of which have Gmail accounts. And we can guess that Google looked for accounts that had extensive contact lists. Instead of using a random group of people, Google should have selected a controlled group, specifically a controlled group of college students.
Free Time Changes Everything
To have a social networking site perform well, people have to spend time on it. Google should have taken into account how much time their invitees have for online social interactions. An ordinary adult with a full-time job doesn’t have lots of extra time for social networking. So if their social networking time is limited, they want to focus their social energy on only one site, namely Facebook, where all of their friends already play.
On the other hand, college students have a considerable amount more time to spend online than those with full-time jobs. To say that college students are constantly on social networking sites would be an understatement. As LunaMetrics’ copywriter/social media intern, I’m a college student myself. In my experience there is no time in which college students aren’t using Facebook (this unfortunately includes class). So if they have more time to spare, they are more likely to check out new social networking tools.
Follow Facebook’s Lead
When Facebook first started out it was for college students only and like Google+, by invitation only. Now it is available for anyone to use, but if Facebook had not been originally devoted to college students (a demographic that has an extensive amount of free time and in general, cares a great deal about the social networking) it might not have become the incredibly widespread success that it is today. With lots of free time on their side, the invited college students were able to discover all of Facebook’s cool features. From there, the invitees’ other friends wanted to jump on the Facebook bandwagon as well.
In order to properly compete with Facebook and Twitter, Google should have sent its Google+ invitations solely to college students if they wanted to increase the chance of Google+ becoming a social media success. As a company that has been socially unsuccessful in the past (ex: Google Buzz and Orkut) Google should have taken a cue from Facebook and controlled the demographics that received invitations to Google+.
View Comments (5 Responses) | Categories: Industry News, Social Media
Subscribe to this blog's feed
