Daniel and Ciaran talk through the new features in Google Analytics to help you get ready for Google turning off the old layout and reports version of the service early in 2012. In this episode we explore:- Event Tracking, Real Time Reporting, Visitor Flow and Goal Flow Visualization, Multi channel Funnels and Attribution, Mobile reporting, Custom Dashboards, Encrypted Search, Keyword Clouds, and how to link GA to your Google Webmaster Tools.

 

Econsultancy.com

http://econsultancy.com/uk

 

Google Conversion University

http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity

Also… be sure to check out the Google Analytics video. We posted it recently on our Google plus and Facebook pages. It will make you smile.

 

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How to get in Touch:

daniel@targetinternet.com

http://www.twitter.com/danielrowles

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Digital-Marketing-Podcast-2785308

http://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketingpodcast

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-digital-marketing-podcast/id373596600

 

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How to get in Touch:

daniel@targetinternet.com

http://www.twitter.com/danielrowles

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Digital-Marketing-Podcast-2785308

http://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketingpodcast

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-digital-marketing-podcast/id373596600

 

Google announced last week its intention to begin encrypting searches for logged in users in an effort to better protect their security online. This means that the search terms a user enters into Google will no longer be provided to the website owners of the sites they visit.

The reasoning behind this is a little muddy as it’s unclear how providing this information is in any way a threat to the user’s security as it doesn’t need to attributed to individuals merely the traffic source and how they found your site.

However the impact on SEOs who work hard to gain traffic through organic search is significant and has prompted a wave of negative views all across the web.

The basic issue is that if you can’t see what users are entering to get to yours and your competitors sites, how can you optimize for it? And when looking at drop out and bounce rates, analysis of how the user is navigating to your site is also much, much harder.

The changes have been implemented in Google.com as well as Google.co.uk and will be default for all logged in users very soon including Chrome. Given the high number of people with gmail and Google+ accounts, this could represent a large proportion of searches carried out.

Of course the new security settings only apply to organic search, paid search results will continue to receive the referral data as normal. This seems to go against Google’s main objective, the put the user first.

Paid for ads aren’t necessarily going to be the best option for a user as they are in their very nature pushed to the top of rankings because somebody has paid for them to be there. Organic search rankings have always been held up as the holy grail for SEOs and reaching the top of the rankings indicates good quality content that is relevant and useful.

Analytics data is the fuel that drives this and gives website owners the insight needed to really give their customers what they want. With this update, any referrals to your site made while logged in will show up as direct traffic i.e. typing the URL directly into address bar.

Understanding search terms and their relationship to where the user is landing is key to developing a better user experience, losing this data means SEOs are effectively working in the dark with little information as to the impact of what they’re doing.

Google believe the number of affected searches will not go above the single digit mark but many believe the actual figure will be much higher although it will be a while before the true impact of this change is revealed.

Needless to say, considering the announcement comes shortly after Google launched its paid for premium service, many are wondering if Google are looking after its paying customers before everyone else. And with Google being the only link in the chain that can view this data, only they know if our sites are correctly placed in the results based on our SEO efforts.

For those who have worked hard to push out good content and work within Google’s guidelines for best practice, you can see why many are wondering why they bothered. Why not just plough that money into paying for ads that may or may not be what the user wants.

It’s a difficult place for Google to be in, effectively taking away some of the tools needed for website owners to ensure their site is available to the customers who want to find it. Everyone has different concerns on what this means for their data, but the one view coming across loud and clear is that if security was a concern there were far better ways of going about it.

SEOptimise are running a poll collecting people’s thoughts on the motivation behind the changes and in top place is encouraging more people to use PPC ads, closely followed by pushing more people to use paid for analytics. Those believing security is the top motivator is sitting at a paltry 9%.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can enter your own views on the changes while the poll is open and see what other people are saying. You can also read more about the changes on Google’s blog.

Editor: There is also a great summary of experts opinions of the Google SSL changes on Econsultancy

 

Alongside its free service Google has now launched Google Analytics Premium which offers a more tailoured service for large organisations.

It states the tool has been built on four pillars:

• Extra processing power – increased data collection, more custom variables and downloadable, unsampled reports
• Advanced analysis – attribution modeling tools that allow you to test different models for assigning credit to conversions
• Service and support – experts to guide customized installation, and dedicated account management on call – all backed by 24/7 support
• Guarantees - service level agreements for data collection, processing and reporting

For some major companies the addition of these new services will mean GA is now a contender for their business, offering more of what they need and providing reassurance through the introduction of SLAs.

While the new tools look great, it’s the dedicated support that will have most of us wishing we were managing accounts like these.  Not only does it provide data freshness within a maximum of four hours, but your own personal account manager is on hand to help you decide how to react and where to push your efforts.

Of course a service like this doesn’t come cheap, and Google’s Premium service would set you back a whopping $150,000 or £97,500.

Although we often see companies start to lose interest in their free products once the paid for service is launched, GA is working hard to continually improve the free service it already offers. The premium product is very much aimed at a niche audience and in no way seems to be slowing down developments on the current service.

Google Analytics Premium is only available for download in the US, Canada and the UK for now but a wider rollout is expected soon.

If you want to find out more about the new service, Google has made a short video which gives a nice introduction as well as a factsheet covering the main points.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google responds to privacy laws in Germany.

While the big brains are still knocking their heads together over the new privacy laws, Hamburg’s data protection commissioner, Johannes Caspar, is already making strides to force local companies to comply.

Caspar has been working with Google’s Germany HQ, also based in Hamburg, to ensure companies using its analytics aren’t breaching user’s privacy rights.

Google has introduced changes which include an add-on for popular browsers which allow users to opt out of being tracked. The update will also provide a function which can shorten users IP address to anonymise them, and site owners will have to sign an agreement stating they will handle user data in accordance with the laws.

Unfortunately for many owners, the agreements mean all historical data must be deleted, as it wouldn’t have been collected in a way that falls in line with the guidance. This means companies will be forced to reset their analytics accounts and start afresh.

While the rest of Europe is still mulling over the options, Germany is taking no prisoners and failure to comply with the laws can result in a fine of up to 50,000 Euros.

While Google’s updates probably won’t be terribly popular, Caspar has made it clear that the responsibility for ensuring compliance in collecting analytics data sits firmly with site owners and not with Google.

Clearly Google has been pushed for a response in Hamburg before the rest of Europe but this could certainly be a taste of things to come for the rest of us reliant on our analytics data. Still, the best way to learn about what works is to put something out there and see what happens. Glad its not my site being used as the guinea pig though.

German officials have issued a blog detailing the changes, it’s in German but if you can either read the language or can be bothered to translate it here’s the link.

 

Most of us spend an awful of of time on getting more traffic to our websites. What we don’t do enough of is look at what happens to that traffic when it arrives and see how we could get more from what we already have. When you look at it logically it makes a lot of sense financially to look at ‘conversion marketing’. If you are currently converting 1 in 100 people into customers it often makes a lot more long term sense to change that to 2 in 100 rather than driving another hundred visitors to get the same impact (in fact why not do both). However the problem is that conversion marketing is seen as complicated. The following blog will try and show you some straight forward and easy to implement techniques that will help you get more from your website.

The Importance of Goals

Since most of us use Google analytics* thats what we’re going to focus on. If you are using analytics without having set up goals, you’re missing out the most useful functionality it has to offer. A goal doesn’t have to be a purchase, it can be a sign up for a email list, downloading a white paper, or any other  action you want the user to carry out. Normally you tell Google analytics that your “Thank you” page is how you know a goal has been completed. This is the page that says “Thanks for signing up for our emails” or “Thanks for downloading our white paper”. However it could just be product page that is deep within your site that you are keen for people to see.

The alternative to these “URL destination” triggered goals are to look at “Time on Site” and “Number of Pages”, both at which can help you set a threshold level that after which you see it as a completed goal. This makes the assumption that if a visitor has seen a certain number of pages or stayed for a certain period of time that they are engaged with your content.

Bounce Rates and Exit Pages

Bounce rates and exit pages can tell you where your site is not working. A “Bounce” is when somebody arrives and leaves on the same page of your website. This tells you one of two things. Either the page they landed on has fulfilled their need from your site (maybe they just wanted your telephone number) or, and more likely, the page wasn’t right for them and they left to go somewhere else. The pages with the highest bounce rates are the pages that we can focus our efforts in improving to try and lower our bounce rate.

Exit pages are the pages where people are leaving your site. By simply trying to improve these pages you can reduce the amount of people leaving your site before they carry out your desired action or have suitable engagement with your content. What you now need to do is work out how to improve these pages, and this is where Google Website Optimizer comes in.

Google Website Optimizer

Google Website Optimizer (GMO) is yet another free tool from Google that can help you improve your website. GMO allows you to version test your webpages and do something called multivariance testing. This essentially means you can try multiple versions of your webpages, and see which version ends up getting people to complete your goals. It’s particularly good for testing different versions of copy, headings and images, but not for completely different page layouts. You will need some technical knowledge to set it up, but the site has step-by-step instructions.

A couple of things to bear in mind about variance testing are (i) that the more variances you are testing the more visitors and data you need to get any meaningful results and (ii) you actually needs some decent versions of your content to do any testing. For example, if you just test a load of different, but not very good, page headings, you probably wont see any meaningful results.

Next Steps

Hopefully this blog has provided a few pointers the right direction as to how you can start to get more form your site traffic. For the next steps have a look at a few of the links below. Google Conversion University has loads of useful video tutorials on using the Google tools I’ve mentioned. For more from me check out the Internet Marketing Podcast or follow me on Twitter.

Google Analytics: www.google.com/analytics

Google Website Optimizer : www.google.com/websiteoptimizer

Google Conversion University: www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/