The Internet Marketer» Analytics

Understanding Analytics reports

Pete — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:16:42 +0000

If you run a business that relies on your website then its absolutely critical that you know what’s going on in your website.

Just knowing how many visitors you have is not enough. Website metrics can tell you if your visitors are engaged, how are your visitors finding your site and where do they come from. Analytics provides deep information on what your visitors are doing and how engaged they are, and the new Google Analytics has even more sophisticated analysis tools built-in.

The problem many business people encounter is that there’s too much technical/web information and its difficult to correlate this data with business goals and sales objectives, so way back in 2009 I wrote Interpreting Analytics

Please feel free to download this, but if it doesn’t answer your questions, please let me know what other information you think it should include…

Checkout the new Google Analytics Click New Version next to your Google ID (top left...

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Checkout the new Google Analytics

Pete — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:14:27 +0000

Click New Version next to your Google ID (top left hand corner) to see what the new Analytics looks like Ill do a review when I get a micro-second spare… No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Rank Tracker now reports visitors from Analytics

Pete — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:13:59 +0000

The new update to Rank Trackers ver 5.1 now displays Visits using API integration into Analytics
Of course this means that you need to be tracking the site in Analytics, but frankly I think that’s a no-brainer.

What this means is you have a single console that you can see #searches KEI & how many visitors you’re getting for an individual keyword. A nice extra feature would be to split it into organic and paid searches tho’

Ive been using RankTracker for about a year now and I strongly recommend it anyone serious about tracking multiple websites search engine ranking. Its much quicker than other products Ive used, doesnt upset the search engines and the onboard KEI calculations helps focus your attention on the best opportunity keywords.

Im also run scheduled tracking on over 250 websites currently, and it doesnt have any problems at all

Im most impressed with the way Link Assistant have continually added new features too- Analytics Visits the most recent

Nice work Link-Assist! www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker

p.s It’d be nice if you could set preset templates for Aussie search engines & KEI source tho’ rather than having to change everything from the US default each time :)

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The Analytics data access & ownership dilemma

Pete — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:53:32 +0000

A dilemma that I am encountering more frequently arises when good meaning web developers create and deploy Analytics sub-accounts (Analytics calls them a ‘profile’) for their clients.

The ‘issue’ only arises after the clients engage an internet marketer, who will want to access the site’s Analytics information to better understand the website’s history and traffic characteristics.

Analytics enthusiasts like myself will refine the Analytics settings for improved reporting, specific investigations etc which requires Admin access, and this is where the problem emerges.

Granting Analytics Admin to enable these refinements, also provides access to all profiles;
ie the web dev’s others client’s in that Analytics account.

This is not desirable from either the web dev or the internet marketer’s perspective, and as a result admin rights are not typically granted. This in turn impedes the internet marketer’s ability to deliver services.

Solutions
A simplistic approach is to create a new Analytics account for the client and abandon the web dev’s profile; however this effectively means losing historical web traffic data.

My preferred approach is to use two Analytics accounts in tandem:

Retain the original account with the client/Internet marketer having read only access
Create an additional Analytics account that is ‘owned’ by the client, with admin rights granted to the internet marketer.
Analytics provides the ability to feed web tracking data simultaneously to two independent Analytics accounts – handy hey!

This approach:

Preserves the website history so it is accessible by all interested parties (web dev, client & internet marketer)
Places the ownership of web traffic data back with the client (where it should be!) This allows the client to retain their internet statistics even if they move to another web dev or internet marketer.

Checking your Analytics account
You can readily determine if the Analytics ‘account’ on your site is one of many sub-accounts by inspecting the UA number which looks similar to “UA-628649-1″ .

The final section (-1 in this case) indicates the Analytics profile number.
If the profile number is larger than the number of websites you have (eg 15) , then it is likely this is your web devs Analytics account and you are actually one of many profiles or sub-accounts within it.

Summary
In summary web traffic data is an important piece of data about your businesses, so I recommend that you take control of it and ensure you ‘own’ it.

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Happy birthday Analytics!

Pete — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 01:09:55 +0000

Yep, Analytics is 5 years old!

Its 5 years ago that Google acquired Urchin & so Analytics was ‘born’

Speeding up page load speed | Analytics Async scripts

Pete — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:50:27 +0000

During the prehistoric internet days, when dial-up was the only way to connect, page load speed was a critical issue. Now with high speed broadband connections and fast wireless access there’s less focus, even complacency about page load speed (by web devs).

Never the less, page load speed is important

As an Internet marketer I’m fanatical about having Google’s Analytics scripts in the site, but these too can impoact page load speed.

This article by Justin Cutroni of Analytics Talk provides some interesting insights into page load speed impact due to Analytics as well as some solutions including the new(ish) Analytics Async scripts.

Nice work Justin!

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Google WebMasters Tools | Updated Top enquiries with more info

Pete — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:59:25 +0000

Google WebMasters Tools recently updated its Top search queries
If you’re not a WebMasters Tools user, this capability enables you to see the terms and number of searches that your site ranked for in Google for up to the last 6 months.

Very useful data if you are trying to win some business online.

The new capabilities exposes more data about the terms (ie keywords), the rank and even the pages that did rank. All essential diagnostic data for this type of analysis.

What is even better about this enhancement is the data is presented in Analytics style charts with great drill down capability building into the UI

Nice work Google WebMasters Tools, and all the more reason you should be using this amazing tool to diagnose your business website’s organic search performance

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Analytics upgrade gives even closer website scrutiny

Pete — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:47:01 +0000

Google has upgraded Analytics to V4 with a host of new features to enable even closer scrutiny of your website’s performance.

This industrial strength yet surprisingly free website metrics system can help you understand more about how your site is performing and give clues on how to improve it to ultimately make it a viable contributor to your business sales activities.

The upgrade includes:

• More sophisticated goal tracking
• Better table filtering
• More flexible reporting
• A threshold based alerting system

Where are your website visitors going & what have they downloaded?

Pete — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:04:00 +0000

My stock answer to nearly all website measurement queries is to recommend Google Analytics.
Its easy to install; gives great reports; can plot a sales funnel and so much more. Unbelievably its free!

What is even more unbelievable is the amazing array of Analytics tweaks and custom tracking ‘extensions’.

For example, Analytics doesn’t report a couple of key pieces of info ‘out of the box’ ie

• where do visitors go when they leave your site?
• what has been downloaded from my site?

To answer these questions you would normally add special Analytics scripts to every link etc Tedious!
Good Web Practices has a nifty script that dynamically captures site exits and PDF and other downloads in Analytics – well worth a look.

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Analytics for business people | Referring sites

Pete — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:30:50 +0000

Referring Sites

Because of the important nature of referring traffic this module extends the Traffic Sources Overview to focus explicitly on where referrals are coming from.

Business Interpretation

Referring websites are just as important to your business as off-line sales referals;

They bring prospective clients to your site

You are being ‘recommended’ by the referee

YellowPages Online and other internet directory sites should also appear in this category if they are being used as part of your online promotion.

This referral data along with metrics like Pages/Visit will you to evaluate these sources as viable contributors to your business promotion.

If you don’t recognise the websites referring business to you, then make the effort to establish a relationship with them;you might get even more referrals!

Analytics for business people

This is one of a series of articles to help business people extract value from their Analytics reports.

Got questions about interpreting your Analytics reports?
Leave me a comment

Cheers
Pete

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