Analytics
12 February 2010
The Complexity of Deciding Which Web Analytics Solution To Use
The majority of online businesses need a tool to measure traffic to determine sources of visitors to their web site and how visitors interact with their site. These measures help determine profitability and areas of the site that are performing well and others that visitors are having difficulties with. As many business owners are aware, the solution to obtaining this data is by using a Web Analytics program to measure and track your site statistics. Using Web Analytics software is integral to your search marketing strategy and is the key to keeping on top of your search traffic, referrals, visitors and more. With paid and free Web Analytics providers which one should you use?
Photo by Search Engine People Blog via Creative Commons |
The answer to this question depends on the needs of your business and the type and amount of information that you require. If you're a search marketing agency and measure pay per click campaigns then an Analytics solution will assist in justifying your clients spend and ideally show return on investment (ROI). For those purely interested in organic search traffic then an Analytics solution is the best way to determine and justify your sites return via search engine optimisation. The most popular paid Analytics providers today include Google Analytics, Yahoo IndexTools, Microsoft adCenter Analytics, Omniture, Webtrends and Coremetrics. Another conundrum before deciding on the right solution is whether you want server side Analytics (log file analysis) or client side Analytics (page tagging using JavaScript)?
If data storage is a concern, the best solution is to use a provider that stores the data for you and tracks page visits via page tagging. Otherwise you will need to store the log files on your own server and use a server side solution that does the analysis using your own business resources (the cost of the software, a possible dedicated server, software upgrades, log files maintenance and management all need to be accounted for). Both server side and client side solutions have their advantages and disadvantages as outlined in the table below:
Most solutions today will use page tagging as from a business perspective it is an easier, more accurate and convenient solution. Also as a number of Analytics providers offer the service for free, such as Google Analytics, and therefore the cost of using such a service is a non-issue.
The best solution to deciding which Web Analytics solution to use is to evaluate each product (try and obtain a free trial from paid solutions) and record the key advantages, disadvantages and differences between each and then make a decision on which solution would provide the most benefits to your business/organisation. As Google Analytics is a free and powerful Analytics solution, that has many of the same features of the paid Analytics providers, it is more advantageous to use it than not and it provides a foundation of data in which to compare statistics from other Web Analytics providers during evaluation. It's important to note that no two provider's statistics will be the same and remember it's the data analysts that interpret this data and they need to make the right decisions to justify whether the Web Analytics provider chosen will benefit the business.
Either way I think you will all agree that the only way to gather information in relation to visitors to your site that can help make key business decisions is to choose a quality Web Analytics provider. If cost is an issue, eliminate this obstacle and sign up to Google Analytics today and evaluate whether it is the right solution for your business in 6 months time.
Posted by Grant Hilton on 12 February 2010 at 9:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
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11 August 2009
Google Analytics-The Good, The Bad and The Hidden
I had some really good feedback after my "SEO Tips-4 SEO Quick wins" article with some really great questions emailed and comments posted on the article. Alot of questions were directed at the use of Google Analytics. Ergo, I have decided to dedicate an entire blog post to the fascinating subject of Google Analytics metrics. The Good, The Bad and The Hidden (channelling my inner Clint Eastwood, I will attempt to limit calling people punks and asking if they feel lucky, if I do slip I apologise)
Photo by Ahmed Hussein via Creative Commons |
The Good Google Analytics Metrics
Traffic Sources ->Keywords
This is a great tool especially if the main driver of traffic to your site is organic (search engines). Using this report you can see which keywords drive the most traffic to your site. In addition you can see which keywords had the best results i.e. which had the lowest bounce rates, most page views etc. Create content that contain your highest value keywords to attract the right kind of visitors to your site.
Content ->Top Content
This is probably one of the first things you should look at when analysing the performance of your website. Finding out which pages on your site has had the most views or which pages users spent the longest time on can indicate stickiness and help direct future content of the site. This metric is a great indicator of user behaviour so be sure that you are on the pulse of your reader by regularly tracking their onsite activity.
Visitors -> Visitor Trending ->Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visits in which the person left your site from the landing page(the first page they see when they visit your site). You should use bounce rate to indicate quality; an elevated bounce rate shows that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors for the content they are looking for. The more relevant and interesting you're landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and the lower the bounce rate will be. Hence optimising landing pages for keywords that are relevant to your business offering (and not just driving lots of clicks) is still an imperative part of your early keyword research. Bounce rates vary from industry to industry but generally if your bounce rate is 50% or less you are doing ok.
The Bad Google Analytics Metrics
Visitors -> Visitor Trending ->Pageviews
This metric was very important and will in all likelihood remain relatively relevant in the short term. However, the pageview metric does not offer a consistent way to measure web 2.0 sites or those that contain useful engagement objects. Such sites may be built with Ajax, Flash and other interactive technologies that allow the user to do all their web surfing from one page - like Gmail or the Google Reader. This eliminates the need to click from one URL to another and therefore negating the usefulness of the pageview metric.
All of them
Now you may be asking after a post extolling the virtues of Google Analytics why would they all be bad, well in fact they aren't. The point I am trying to make is it's important to focus on the data with the most value to you, extract that data and use your insight to convert the data into useful business/website information. Data is just data; it's what you do with it that counts. You can't use all the metrics; learn which ones are most relevant to your site and use those in your analysis or you will be stuck in a Google Analytics quagmire of an infinite amount of useless data.
Visitors -> Browser Capabilities -> Operating systems
Just an example to prove my point above. You can find out which operating system everyone who visits your site uses. Unless you are a software vendor or reseller this adds absolutely no value to you. Imagine you are an online e-tailer selling peanut butter, what possible relevance could this metric have towards the success of your business?
The Hidden Google Analytics Metrics
Content ->Site Search Report
This metric is under the content section and needs to be configured and turned on. If your site has a search function this metric allows you to see what your visitors are searching for. You can use this to discover new keywords and keyword phrases to use as keywords in your website and as a basis to generate new content in the hopes of driving higher search traffic for popular keywords phrases.
Content -> Site Overlay
With Site Overlay, you can check out user behaviour and user actions as an extra graphic layer on your site. For every link, Site Overlay shows you how many users clicked that link and where they went subsequent to clicking on the link. This is a great way to measure conversion of your site on a very granular level. Unfortunately this feature doesn't always work on your chosen browser (in fact I have had issues with it on most browsers) But if you can get it working it's a really valuable tool.
Custom Email Reports
Ok, Ok for those of you who are pedantic, mea culpa, this is not technically a metric but a hidden feature that not many users know about. Google Analytics lets you make and save your own personalised reports, letting you choose and the metrics you want to see as well as the categories to keep drilling down for further inspection. Once you've customised your report, you can have it emailed to you in a variety of different formats and sent to at a frequency of your choosing. Spam filters often trap these, so save the address on a white list.
There are a variety of other features and tools than need to be setup up in Google analytics, like goal conversion and advanced segmentation and I havent covered those (I decided to review only the out the box features). However some of the more advanced tools are really powerful and with a little research you can find out exactly how to implement and use them.Google analytics is a such a valuable tool not only to someone who has SEO on his/her business card but for any website owner/developer/webmaster who wants to improve their site in any way. It's free, easy to install and use kind of a win win situation, "go ahead, make my day".
P.S. A Very happy birthday to our own Mike Van Der Heijden, Congrats Mike
Posted by Marc Elison on 11 August 2009 at 9:58 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
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6 April 2009
Search Engine Stats Australia and New Zealand by Bill Tancer, Hitwise.
The Day 2 opening keynote for SMX Sydney "The Australian Searchscape: All the Latest Stats About The Search Engines in Australia and New Zealand" is presented by Bill Tancer, General Manager Global Research - Hitwise.
As the GM for Global Research, Bill leads a team of research analysts in the US, UK and Australia, providing cutting-edge research and insight into online consumer behaviour and the application of online competitive intelligence.
Bill starts off by telling us that search data is valuable as it tells us about ourselves and human nature.
Hitwise Data
The Hitwise dataset includes 25 million users, 1 million websites and 172 industry categories. This can be analysed on monthly weekly or daily basis.
Bill says has Google still hasn't reached saturation point for search engine market share for Australia and New Zealand.
In Australia, the current market shares:
- Google - 90%
- Yahoo - 4%
- MSN - 5%
- Other - 1%
In NZ, the current market share is:
- Google - 92%
- Yahoo 3%
- MSN 2%
- Other 3%
Hitwise statistics show that top searched keywords are still brand names like: Facebook, Ebay, Youtube, Myspace, BOM, Hotmail. Users feel safer going to those sites via search results rather than typing the URL into the browsers address bar.
Adult Entertainment & Cognitive Dissonance
Hitwise statistics show that people are not honest when asked about the sites they visit, if they feel telling the truth could embarrass them. This is a great example of how observing real behaviour and search statistics can reveal the sites they actually visit.
Hitwise Predictions for 2009
- Words per query will continue to increase
- Search success rate will continue to degrade
- Long tail continues to grow as the amount content on internet grows exponentially
- Current search algorithms will become less effective in helping us find content online
Bill thinks that sites like Twitter could solve the problem of less effective search algorithms as people can ask friends for relevant suggestions. [Can Twitter really help with anything other than procrastination...? - Kate]
Posted by Des Odell on 6 April 2009 at 10:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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3 April 2009
Panalysis, Rod Jacka on What you Should be Measuring - But Aren't
Rod Jacka, MD of Panalysis will advocate the virtues of measuring not the usual metrics such as CPA, ROI, CTR but also of hidden and little thought about abstract metrics that have an impact on all levels of your firm.
The air is thick with anticipation on this the second day of SMX Sydney, most of the audience is bright eyed and bushy tailed with the remnants nursing some sore heads after a few drinks last night. Lets hope today is as dynamic and informative and yesterday
Rod starts out by explaining that ROI is generally calculated as Total revenue/Fixed costs & Unit costs. Bounce rate is only useful when applied to specific keywords, pages, visitor type and other individual elements. Good bounce rate is hard to assess, it must be viewed in context to make it relevant.
Segmentation, a relatively new feature that has been introduced to Google analytics, has taken the tool from adequate to enterprise class, making it one of the best free tools on the market.
Some good insights into some analytics programs with a heavy emphasis on Google analytics with Rod going into a fair bit of detail on segmentation and setting up of goals, quite a few case studies were also shown. Overall it was an intriguing session showcasing the benefits of measuring multiple metrics rather than the standard few.
Posted by Marc Elison on 3 April 2009 at 1:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Fairfax Media, Lucas Ng on Creative Management, Writing killer ad copy
Lucas Ng is the Director of Search & Analytics at Fairfax Media where he manages search marketing and web analytics operations for many of Australia's most viewed websites. His session concentrates on writing relevant ad copy and how this affects the SEM process.
Google's guidelines to ad copy
- Use the keywords in the headline
- Use prices and promotions so users know what to expect
- Use a strong call-to-action
What else is there to killer ad copy?
- Capitalise the first letter of every word
- Understand the audience - what is the audience profile and behavior?
- Who is it for? What has triggered their search process?
- Who else is influencing the searcher?
- Killer Ad copy differentiates itself from the crowd by understanding the audience better than the rest or identifying a unique selling proposition that the product/service has
- Killer ad copy is highly relevant to your landing page
- Killer ad copy uses a psychological trigger i.e. emotion, sense of urgency, instant gratification and a desire to belong
- The copy needs to filter clicks so all your leads are qualified
- Test, refine and test some more
- Put the product/service/brand into the display URL
Finally if you're stumped for ideas Lucas suggests using magazine covers to get ideas for copy.
[-- I always read Vogue to inspire internet marketing brilliance, it's not bludging, its work! - Kate]
Posted by Kate Gamble on 3 April 2009 at 1:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Marc Elison
Kate Gamble
Martin Orliac
