Comments for Increasing your Website's Conversion Rate

Comment on Google Analytics Site Search with Custom Search Engine by Robert Weide

Robert Weide — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:17:40 +0000

I agree with the comments above. The analytics help makes it seem just a little too simple. THis really should be in there, thanks for writing it down!

Comment on Update: auto-create Google Analytics Powerpoint and Excel presentations by Remco

Remco — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:55:27 +0000

Dear Sit,

I want to link google analytics to excel. How am i able to accomplish this?

Please thanks

Remco F. Wesselius

Comment on E-commerce exit surveys and conversion rates by Best Shopping Cart

Best Shopping Cart — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:46:34 +0000

That’s an excellent point Robbin. With the technologies available today there is no doubt you should have been told which field you didn’t complete. The site owners should have been lucky to get what you offered. There is no incentive whatsoever to complete it.

Comment on Wanted: GA Analysts who don’t do Regular Expressions by Alex B

Alex B — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:51:56 +0000

Robbin, I understand that but I wasn’t very clear. What I meant is that since grep is for regular expressions, reading what people wrote about grep could provide a good basis for determining how to describe them. For example, what is grep? Read what people have written about grep, and you might have your answer for how to describe regular expressions. Could be wrong, but it’s worth a shot.

Sorry for the confusion.

Comment on Wanted: GA Analysts who don’t do Regular Expressions by Robbin

Robbin — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:33:00 +0000

Nathan, even though you posted instead of sending email, people send me email and reference your comment (so I left it.) Pearce, that is a good thought, and if I can get that help center article changed, maybe that is the way to go. I often wonder if it should say, “Regular Expressions are a programming capability that live inside Google Analytics; they are there to use if you choose to.” Andre and Steve, I considered writing, “So this request isn’t for RegExperts like you,” but decided to stay away from that…. Alex, thank you for your thoughts. The issue is not about me learning it, it is about me teaching it. And I don’t worry abut people who grep, I think about people who say, “Now what is this Regular Expressions stuff?”

Comment on Wanted: GA Analysts who don’t do Regular Expressions by Alex B

Alex B — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:49:11 +0000

I do use regular expressions so I’m not your target here, but have you considered reading through the documentation/explanations of similar tools for inspiration? For all I know you have already done this, but tools such as grep have so much written about them that I can’t imagine a good description doesn’t exist somewhere.

Comment on Wanted: GA Analysts who don’t do Regular Expressions by steve

steve — Sat, 10 May 2008 00:24:58 +0000

@André: I disagree on “always want an expert to look at them”. Sure when you’re beginning it can be useful to cross check your understanding with someone else, but IMNSHO, the biggest part of learning is learning from your own mistakes. And speaking personally, even “experts” get it wrong.
Cheers!

Comment on Wanted: GA Analysts who don’t do Regular Expressions by André Scholten

André Scholten — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:43:42 +0000

Regular Expression are so powerful but can be very complicated. It’s a good thing Google tries to explain them, but in my opinion you always want an expert to look at them.

Comment on Wanted: GA Analysts who don’t do Regular Expressions by Pearce

Pearce — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:49:37 +0000

I would like to make a nit picky comment that when you say, “What are regular expressions?” your first line should be the answer. i.e Regular expressions are special characters that match or capture portions of a field, as well as the rules that govern all characters.

Which is actually a confusing answer, I am new so i do not know what would be better but as of that I do not understand what a regular expression is, or what it can do. I look down and I understand it is the criteria for filters in GA. But that is about it.

Here is the wikipedia definition that I understand better after reading it:
regular expressions provide a concise and flexible means for identifying strings of text of interest, such as particular characters, words, or patterns of characters. Regular expressions (abbreviated as regex or regexp, with plural forms regexes, regexps, or regexen) are written in a formal language that can be interpreted by a regular expression processor, a program that either serves as a parser generator or examines text and identifies parts that match the provided specification.

Comment on Wanted: GA Analysts who don’t do Regular Expressions by Nathan

Nathan — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:26:25 +0000

I would build out more around “what is a regular expression”, “why someone would want to use them.” I did a quick search for “regular expression” in the help center and your article was one of the first to come up. Why hit hits on “what” it doesn’t go far enough into the “why”…particularly why regular expressions exist.

I’m not new to using GA, but am really new to setting up GA (especially customizing the code to gain or exclude data)