Bottlenose - A Smarter Way To Surf The Stream. Why web measurement is easy, yet gaining insights is hard. Collecting data is very straightforward – you simply paste a few lines of JavaScript to your pages and data will start to stream into your account. I am specifically referring to Google Analytics here, but the principal is the same for all the main web analytics vendors. Superficially that’s all there is to it. If you just wish to view visitors and pageview counts you don’t need an analytics specialist to help you – all you require are basic webmaster skills.
However, products such as Google Analytics have 100+ reports so that you can analyse much more than these – in fact, regardless of how much traffic you receive, those can be covered in a handful of reports. So why so many reports…? If all you require are traffic volume graphs and a site-wide conversion rate (i.e. the number of transactions divided by the number of visits), then you don’t! What is the value of a visitor to my site? Being able to answer these two innocuous questions opens the door to the world of insights. A 10-Point Check List to Setup Your Google Analytics Properly. A good friend of mine, Daniel Waisberg, and I were discussing how organisations are reluctant to invest in their Google Analytics setup – be it implementation, training & education or insights/consultancy.
Our conclusion was, that is difficult to get even the richest of companies to invest in a product that is free. The perception is that everything else that is required to make it “work” i.e. all of the above, should also be free. Of course the new GA Premium product changes this a great deal – though that is very much aimed at large enterprises i.e. Fortune 500 types. That group aside, why is it an organisation will pay tens of thousands of pounds on a CMS platform or CRM solution, but fail to see the opportunities of investing a similar amount (or less!) In their web analytics? As I wrote in an article last year, the hard part of web analytics is gaining insights form your reports when all you have is the basic setup.
The 10-Point Check List 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. ? 10. How to Get the Most Out of Google Analytics. After we published a primer for using Google Analytics, readers said they were hungry for more. Google Analytics has since revamped its design, giving it not only a cleaner look but also updated data sets. You can now find everything from real-time stats to details about which mobile device your site visitors come from. Though the data possibilities seem endless, Google Analytics product manager Phil Mui says the design reflects three core metrics: acquisition, engagement and outcome. Let's take a closer look at what these numbers mean and how you can track them with one of the most widely used web analytics platforms. Acquisition The lowest-hanging fruit of web analytics is counting metrics. This data encompasses the number of visitors that come to your site and can be filtered to show what sites they're coming from and how many of them have or haven't been to your site before.
SEE ALSO: 10 New Google Analytics Features You Need to Start Using Engagement Outcome Other Noteworthy Features. How to Leverage Year Over Year Data Successfully. The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. Oh the New Year. How we love you so. There are so many reasons to love you. Let us count the ways: Those "Best of 2010" blog posts finally come to an end.
We all have a great reason to buy more stuff than we need because the entire world is on sale. Everyone's energy is sky high. On top of all those excellent reasons I'd like to add my favorite part about the coming of a new year to the mix--it's time to explore your Year Over Year (YOY) data! What makes YOY data so valuable? YOY data is one of the few datasets that both offers a micro and macro view of your site's performance in one sitting. We can compare data and isolate out things like; year over year trends, year over year differences, anomalies that don't follow the grain, and so much more. For those of you wondering the easiest way to get YOY data, if you are in GA, note the below screenshot. 1. The Three Greatest Survey Questions Ever | Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik. 11 Types of Analytics for 2011. I was recently interviewed along with other online marketing bloggers for the Inc. Magazine article 11 Best Analytics Tools. Not all of my picks made the article, so I’d like to share them with Get Elastic readers, as they’re pertinent to ecommerce.
Rather than individual tools, this article will cover 11 different types to keep you busy in 2011. 1. Traditional web analytics Thanks to Google Analytics’ free-ness, no one has an excuse to be without web analytics! (Going without a web analyst is another story). I’m vendor agnostic when it comes to analytics tools, but I do recommend everyone have a Google Analytics account for a few reasons.
However, Google Analytics may not be enough if you have advanced analytics needs, such as importing cost data, for example. Even if you’re using a Gucci paid analytics tool, it’s a good idea to collect data with Google Analytics as a backup (if anything ever goes wrong with your enterprise tool, you won’t have periods with missing data.) 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. How to Configure Analytics for Your Small Business Website - Search Engine Watch (SEW)