Web Analytics Blog

Referral Attribution in Google Analytics

2009-08-12T19:53:00.003+01:00

I recently got involved in an interesting conversation on the Web Analtics Forum on the subject of large dicrepancies between traffic sources reported by Google Analytics (GA) and Coremetrics (CM).

As expected total sessions were very similar with both tools but I was surprised to discover large differences in direct, referral and search traffic:

Total Sessions
GA: 6,853,945
CM: 6,657,176
A/B: 103%

Direct Traffic
GA: 3.131,652
CM: 5,425,392
A/B: 58%

Search Engines
GA: 2,289,280
CM: 959,735
A/B: 239%

Referrals
GA: 1,357,464
CM: 79,774
A/B: 1,702% (yes 17x)

Thanks to nethab1 I discovered that the answer is simple. The mathematical geniuses among you may notice that if you add up all traffic sources for both tools the total number of visits is roughly the same (+/- 0.8%). The discrepancy arises because Google Analytics attributes some visits to Search and Referral that Coremetrics is treating as "Direct". I don't know how Coremetrics operates, but Google Analytics only attributes a visit to "Direct" if that visitor has never come from a non-direct source before.

In other words, if a visitor first visited from a Search engine but later made 9 "Direct" visits, all 10 visits would be attributed to the Search engine. Same with Referral visits. Google Analytics uses a source cookie for search as well as for marketing campaigns and keeps the duration value to the default 6 months (not sure whether this can be changed). It appears that tools like Coremetrics always attribute traffic source as the per the last visit.

More information on how Google Analytics attributes traffic source take a look at Avinash Kaushik's comments here.

SEOmoz | Case Study: How Much Do Rankings Matter?

2009-08-12T19:39:00.002+01:00

An interesting case study from SEOMoz looking at the relationship between keyword ranking and keyword traffic.

"Over the 7 months in this case study, Google visitors used over 250,000 unique phrases to reach the client's site. Over 80% of those phrases didn't contain any variation of the primary keyword at all. So, while rankings obviously still matter on a keyword-by-keyword basis, being #1 for your top keyword (or even your top few keywords) is no longer good enough – if that's all you're measuring, then you're missing the big picture."

Full case study here

Viralheat Measures And Analyzes Real-Time Content On Twitter, YouTube And More

2009-05-26T10:35:00.002+01:00

As YouTube and Twitter have become essential marketing tools for brands and companies, there has been an emergence of startups that help marketers track the buzz around a certain individual or brand. Radian6, Visible Measures, Omgili, Omniture and a plethora of others offer tools to monitor blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites for mentions of a company or individual’s name. Startup Viralheat is entering this space with the private beta launch of its affordable social media measurement product that scours social video sites including YouTube, Hulu and Vimeo, and Twitter to deliver real-time results of consumer generated content on these sites.

Full article....

Optimizing Website

2009-05-22T17:59:00.003+01:00

By Bryan Eisenberg May 22nd, 2009

“Talk to the dog in the language of the dog about what matters to the dog.” Roy H Williams

This past month, I shared my 10 step process for optimizing copy for websites or landing pages on my Market Motive training call. I was able to convince my friends at Market Motive to let me share the full presentation video with you (normally they only share the first few chapters unless you are a paid member). Unfortunately, it will only be available to be viewed on the blog until June 3rd.

Optimizing Website & Landing Page Copy - A 10 Step Process | FutureNow's GrokDotCom / Marketing Optimization Blog

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HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter

2009-05-21T11:06:00.003+01:00

Today, Twitter has roughly 6 million users and is projected to grow to 18.1 million users by 2010. With all those people, the chances for networking are endless and connecting with new people can lead to career opportunities, so it is essential that your personal brand exists on the service. Last month we showed you a step-by-step process for building your personal brand on Facebook, and today we’re going to show you how to do the same thing on Twitter. By leveraging the Twitter platform to build your brand you can showcase yourself to a huge and growing audience.
Full Article

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YouTube Offers Brand Partners Another Carrot: Google Analytics For Their Channels

2009-05-20T20:18:00.003+01:00

YouTube, a site that was once notorious for pirated content and user-generated videos that were practically useless to brands, has made great strides in the last few years as it looks to appeal to its growing number of advertisers and content partners. Today the site is adding a new feature that makes the platform even more useful, adding Google’s powerful (and very popular) Analytics reporting to YouTube brand channels, adding some credence to YouTube’s claim that it’s the “world’s largest focus group”.YouTube Offers Brand Partners Another Carrot: Google Analytics For Their Channels

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Estimating the effects of cookie-deletion

2009-05-20T18:50:00.001+01:00

A great post from Angie at ShowMeAnalytics There are differing opinions on how to label the metric historically known as “Unique Visitors”. On one side of the fence are those who think it should be relabeled “Unique Cookies”, since that is the most popular method used for calculations. On the other side of the fence are others who think the metric is a catch-all for the “best available” measurement (authenticated visitors, cookies if those aren’t available, IP/UA combination if neither is available) and should be replaced with a different term if/when a better, standardized way to measure people comes along. What we all agree on, though, is that a Unique Visitor metric measured with cookies is terribly inaccurate. Full post

Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics - Guest Post by Eric Ries

2009-05-20T18:19:00.004+01:00

The only metrics that entrepreneurs should invest energy in collecting are those that help them make decisions. Unfortunately, the majority of data available in off-the-shelf analytics packages are what I call Vanity Metrics. They might make you feel good, but they don’t offer clear guidance for what to do.

When you hear companies doing PR about the billions of messages sent using their product, or the total GDP of their economy, think vanity metrics. But there are examples closer to home. Consider the most basic of all reports: the total number of “hits” to your website. Let’s say you have 10,000. Now what? Do you really know what actions you took in the past that drove those visitors to you, and do you really know which actions to take next? In most cases, I don’t think it’s very helpful.

Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics - Guest Post by Eric Ries

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Next SUPA Meeting - The Place for Google Website Optimizer in Usability

2009-04-27T21:42:00.005+01:00

The next Scottish Usability Professionals Association (SUPA) talk is a practical discussion on how to improve usability using a powerful (free) tool: Google Website Optimiser. Design is very subjective, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. A website may look ‘pretty’ in your opinion, but design is not just about how something looks, it has a job to do – it needs to be usable. If your design is not doing the job it’s supposed to do, i.e. making you money, it doesn’t matter if it looks nice. Many arguments have been had (and time wasted) choosing one design over another, “I think that one is better!”, “why?”, “erm… I don’t know, it looks better?”. To borrow a phrase from Harry Hill, “There’s only one way to find out… fight!”

We prefer not to spill blood these days and that’s where Google Website Optimizer comes in; science to the rescue. By measuring which page layout is more effective at achieving the desired conversion we can quickly determine which design is best and learn from that to help make design decisions easier in the future. One image or line of copy may mean the difference between being profitable or not. We’ll be using lots of case studies to show you how we’ve started using Google Website Optimizer to run A/B Split and Multivariate Tests in the development of a social networking/gaming site and share some of the mistakes and lessons learned. It would then be good to open the meeting up to discuss how to use optimisation tools to improve website usability.

Steve Young – Creative Director and Jim Williams – Web Analyst, both from WeeWorld, will take you through how to fight nice between competing designs: may the most usable win!

We will be at Scottish Enterprise again, so thanks to them for the use of the venue:

Venue: Scottish Enterprise, Apex House, 99 Haymarket Terrace, Edinburgh, EH12 5HD

Sign up here

Advanced Segmentation with 4Q from iPerceptions

2009-02-17T19:25:00.005Z

4Q, is a simple free “voice of customer tool” created by iPerceptions in collaboration with Avinash Kaushik 4Q lets you ask the most important survey questions to your website visitors:

1. How satisfied are my visitors?
2. What are my visitors at my website to do?
3. Are they completing what they set out to do?
4. If not, why not?
5. If yes, what did they like best about the online experience?

Launched in February 2008 4Q gave organisations with small budgets the ability to inexpensively listen to voice of their customers. And on the eve of their one year anniversary and after hitting its 2 millionth respondent, 4Q has evolved to offer advanced visitor segmentation capabilities.

Adding supplementary customer questions to the customer survey:

6. Which of the following best describes how often you visit this website?

This is my first visit ever
First visit in last 3 months
2 - 5 visits in the last 3 months

7. How did you arrive at the website today?

Typed the URL into a browser
Bookmark / favourites
Search engine result
Clicked on an advertisement
From a link on a blog, forum or social network
From a link on another website
From an e-mail link
From a link sent to me by a friend
Other

These visitor segments can be cross-tabulated with the core 4Q results on task completion and site satisfaction to give you a clearer understanding of how well your site is catering to the needs of your diverse visitor segments.

Why is segmentation important? To quote Avinash Kaushik: “Analyzing data in aggregate is a crime…When you look at all that (data) in aggregate you get nothing…If you want to find actionable insights you need to segment your web analytics data…Then you’ll understand behaviour of micro-segments of your website visitors, which in turn will lead you to actionable insights because you are not focusing on a glob rather you are focused on a specific.”

The satisfaction of first time visitors is critical in improving site registrations, sign ups and recruiting future new purchasers. Identifying satisfaction problems with users who visit 2- 5 times in the last 3 months can help solve retention problems and drive Life Time Value in your high value customers.

Remaining ignorant of customer satisfaction is not a sensible option and for me 4Q with advanced segmentation has got to be a serious option.

User Tenure - How Long Do Your Users Remain Active on Your Site?

2009-01-23T16:29:00.004Z

We define user tenure as the number of days a user remains engaged with our site. It's the length of time between initial registration and when the user becomes inactive. The difficulty is when do you define a user as inactive - after 30 days, 60 days 90 days of not logging in? Have the web analytics experts agreed a standard on this one? We tend to use 30 days but I have seen other companies go for 90. May be we are being too hard on oursleves and 30 days is too draconian a cut off.

I guess it will depend on the type of site - an ecommerce site is probably going to care less about tenure than a community/social networking site. On the other hand it depends on what they sell - I engage with Dell to replace my printer cartidge every 3 months - does this mean I have become inactive and will reappear as a new user. I doubt it - I am recognised as soon as I log back in. However, if I haven't been to my Facebook page for 3 months is it likely that I will return? When is the last time you went to a virtual world like Second Life? I can't even remember my user name so I guess I am inactive there. Could this be the definition I am looking for? If only I could tell when my users have forgotten their login details. How about when an email is permanently bounced?

That leads on to what you do with this information. If you know that as soon as somebody fails to log in for 3 months there is a very high chance they will never return. Then is there some marketing intervention (targetted email - not much use if the email is junk) that can be employed to re-activate these users and bring them back to the site. This could make an enourmous difference to site retention.

The Most Common Errors in Web Analytics

2009-01-22T18:36:00.002Z

This extract is taken from Sem Angel and sums up the issues facing all web analyst experts so I had to quote it pretty much in full:

Going From a Theory of Error to a Web Analytics Process

Here are a few basic causes of error that I think drive the vast majority of problems in web analytics:

1. Self-Interested Measurement. This problem is hardly unique to web analytics. Many of the institutional practices of scientists and academics are designed to protect against the force of self-influence. Though this is sometimes portrayed as venal, it is even more commonly encountered as simple self-delusion – we all have the strong desire to find that whatever we currently believe is true.

2. Lack of Statistical Significance. Statisticians are generally, widely and rightly considered to be a royal pain in the rear. They are like gatekeepers who are constantly slamming the door in your face – usually with a snide remark to go along. They are only necessary because the rest of us are constantly and helplessly fooling ourselves into believing that a pattern is real because it “looks” real. Flip a coin ten times and there’s a pretty good chance you won’t get five heads and five tails. Just as detailed analysis of all these obscure variables turns up lots of opportunities for bad analysis, web analytics reporting will do the same. You are suddenly putting lots of information into everyone’s hands. If they aren’t protected from misusing it, I guarantee you that your company will soon be betting money on numbers that don’t mean a darn thing.

3. Unreliable data and what to do about it. Nothing can create a statistically significant finding faster than bad data. As every analyst knows, the first analysis pass is usually good for little more than identifying all of the interesting “facts” that turn out to be measurement artifacts. While my first two principles are completely common to every truth-seeking endeavor, number 3 is more pronounced in web analytics than in most disciplines. God knows that this isn’t because most disciplines have clean data to work with – ours is just unusually bad. The problem has been compounded by the prevalent and thoroughly misguided idea that “trending the data” somehow protects against data quality issues.

4. Siloed Optimization. Large organizations tend to create a special class of measurement issues by creating silos of measurement that focus on single issues like organic search optimization or multivariate testing. This inevitably leads to siloed optimization where the incentive to local optimization cannibalizes success in other parts of the organization. This is a shockingly common problem and it’s an unusual one because it tends to be worst in the most sophisticated companies.

5. Metric Monomania. We see a metric move and we know it’s supposed to be actionable. So we want to do something about it. But, as I’ve argued for years now, the movement in a single metric is pretty much NEVER actionable. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a KPI or even a really good KPI. In the real world, KPIs are nearly always interrelated into systems – meaning that changes in one variable are nearly always driven by changes in other variables. Unless you understand the system you don’t understand the true significance of any given change in a metric.

6. Tactical Focus. For most analysts, tactics come much easier than strategy. Analysis of data nearly always drives plenty of micro-changes that might make a web site better. But the best uses of data are often in completely unrelated problems and contexts that have nothing to do with immediate tactical problems. You can try forty different variations of a drive to registration, tweaking everything from button color to offer text.

And this is the important bit:

But registration rates will always be crappy if you don’t give your customers a really good reason to register.

You can micro-analyze your data with powerful statistical tools, but the biggest learnings may require nothing more than looking at your overall traffic numbers.

If you build your measurement processes to deal with these six problems, you’ll have protected yourself from a heavy majority of web analytics errors.

Whats Your PayPal Completion Rate?

2009-01-07T21:23:00.005Z

I am currently working with a client who use PayPal as their payment service provider. God I hate 3rd party PSPs. - don't they make life difficult? We've been tracking shopping cart abandonment over time but have been unable to set up a full conversion funnel analysis because only a very small proportion of purchasers click the return button on the payment successful page with in the PayPal domain and return to the site.

We had suspicions that the shopping cart abandonment rate was much higher than the industry average - Fireclick estimate this to be between 66 and 82%. But couldn't get a handle on what was happening on the PayPal payment page itself. Searching for "PayPal abandonment rates" on Google failed to come up with any useful figures. Does anybody else have estimates? PayPal aren't saying.

To begin payment on the site shoppers must click on a "buy now" button (Flash) which takes them to the payment page. We obviously know the number of completed purchses. So we could have used Google's Analytics New Flash Tracking to count the number of times users clicked on Buy Now. Luckily before I got the developers to do this somebody discovered that the back office system tracked all transactions started as well as completed - presumably as the system needs to pass on order details to PayPal. So in the end it was easy - PayPal abandonment is simply the percentage difference between the number of started transactions and the number of completed transactions.

In fact our PayPal Completion Rate was very close to the Fireclick Average for Fashion & Apparel average of between 18 and 32%.

Web Analytics Association Meetings in Scotland

2008-11-27T19:24:00.002Z

I joined the Web Analytics Association (WAA) back in 2006 after attending a couple of meetings of the Scottish branch (ish). I found the meetings really useful when I knew practically nothing about web analytics and I have learnt plenty through the WAA since. Unfortunately we are quite a small group of people in Scotland and it would be good to meet up to discuss common issues and learn from each other. May be up the profile of the profession as well. We are involved in such a fast moving industry that there are so many innovative things going on. Things like voice of customer to Google Website Optimizer and I have spoken to number of web analytics experts and some vendors and I am sure we can attract some good speakers to Scotland.

So - wouldn't it be great to re-start WAA meetings in Scotland. I am thinking of an event in either Edinburgh or Glasgow sometime in the New Year and would welcome any feedback.

Several Wednesdays have been pencilled in around March time 2009 and we are now looking for ideas on venues, meeting format and suggest topics. If you have any ideas then comment or contact us at JU2 Web Analytics

Using Google Analytics with Adobe Flash?

2008-11-18T18:45:00.005Z

One of the most common implementation challenges with Google Analytics has been tracking Flash content. In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every implementation had to be customized. Moreover, there was a lack of standards, and new developers who tracked Flash had to create their own processes to get it working.

At the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco, in a joint collaboration with Adobe and third party developers, Google announced a simplified solution for tracking Flash content called Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash.

This feature is a translation of the current Google Analytics tracking code into the ActionScript 3 programming language that dramatically simplifies the ability to track Flash, Flex and AS3 content. This new Flash tracking code provides all the features of the current JavaScript-based version, including campaign, pageview and event tracking and can be used to track Flash content such as embedded videos, branded microsites and distributed widgets, such as online games.

More information on tracking Google Analytics with Flash here.

Expert web analytics advice here

Advanced Segmentation on Google Analytics

2008-11-06T18:31:00.007Z

One feature that I always thought Google Analytics lacked was the ability to properly segment site visitors. So I was pleased to notice that as part of the recent Google Analytics update not only is the interface refreshed but Google have launched a new set of features including:

AdSense now integrated into Google AdWords.
Motion Charts!
Custom Reports!
The Google Analytics API.
Advanced Segmentation.

Although analytics already had some segmentation functionality I found it difficult to implement and use. With advanced segmentation its now really easy to create intra session segments. There are a number of default segments and then ability to set up custom segments

Custom segments are created using an easy to use wizard which allows you to drag and drop dimensions (such as Visitors, Traffic Sources and Content) and metrics ( Site Usage, E-Commerce and Goals) into the segmentation tool. For instance you can segement on frequent visitors by dragging Count of Visits into the tool and defining the number of visits.

Segments can be combined by adding AND/OR statements and tested using the Test Segment function.

Once you've set your segments up you can apply them to reports by selecting multiple segments from the Advanced Segments drop down menu in the top right of the Google Analytics interface.

The real strength of Advanced Segmentation is that multiple segments can be compared side by side as above. For more information on this subject I refer you to an excellent post from Avinash Kaushik at Occam's Razor

Great Firefox Extension for Web Analysts

2008-10-23T22:25:00.007+01:00

Take a look at this extension for Firefox at http://wasp.immeria.net/analyst.htm WASP enables you to check up on your web analytics tags and cookies easily and quickly. So no more excuses for incorrect tags or not knowing what tags are on what page.

THE IMPACT OF COOKIE DELETION ON THE ACCURACY OF SITE-SERVER AND AD-SERVER METRICS A STUDY FROM COMSCORE

2008-02-28T20:06:00.002Z

Did anybody ese read the above report from comScore " The Impact of Cookie Deletion on The Accuracy of Site-Server And Ad-Server Metrics: An Empirical Comscore Study By Dr. Magid Abraham And Cameron Meierhoefer" who analyzed the first-party “B cookie” from Yahoo! and the thirdparty ad server persistent cookie from DoubleClick, The study examined the degree to which Internet users clear these cookies from their computers, thereby causing site-servers to deposit new cookies and potentially leading to overstated estimates of unique users in cookie-based site-server data.

The results of the study seemed to indicate that approximately 31 percent of U.S. computer users clear their first-party cookies in a month (or have them cleared by automated software), with an average of 4.7 different cookies being observed for the same site within this user segment. Using the comScore U.S. home sample as a base, an average of 2.5 distinct cookies were observed per computer for Yahoo! This finding indicates that, because of cookie deletion, a server-centric measurement system which uses cookies to measure the size of a site’s visitor base will typically overstate the true number of unique visitors by a factor of up to 2.5 times.

In a departure from conventional wisdom this study found that 3rd party cookies were not deleted more frequently than 1st party cookies. This is particularly interesting as in my work I observe that Doubleclick consistently reports Unique Visitors to be approx 20% higher than JDC web analytics solutions such as Coremetrics and Google Analytics. I believed this trend to be caused by greater deletion of 3rd party cookies - may be not?

Rugs Direct increase sales by 30% using first-click analytics

2007-12-29T13:00:00.000Z

RugsDirect.com boosted sales by 30% after implementing Coremetrics` technology that tracks multiple customer interactions to determine which marketing tactic first put a consumer on the path to making a purchase.

Prior to using Coremetrics, Rugs Direct attributed online sales based on the last marketing tactic that influenced the buyer. For example, a customer might have visited a web site by clicking on a paid ad, then visited a second time after clicking on a banner ad, and finally purchased following a click on a link in an e-mail. Under the last-click approach, the sale would be attributed solely to the e-mail campaign.

Coremetrics’ flexible attribution management platform enables marketers to view transactions in the context of multiple customer interactions over time, giving a comprehensive picture that allows them to allocate digital marketing investments appropriately, the company says.

See full article at Internet Retailer

Google Analytics Reverting Back to Original "Average Time on Site" Calculation

2007-09-16T17:55:00.000+01:00

Read this from the Official Google Analytics blog

"We recently introduced a new way of calculating "Average Time on Site" that removed visitors who "bounce" from your website (people who hit one page of your site and then leave). This updated calculation attempted to give you a better idea of how long engaged visitors spend on your website. However, many of you prefer the original calculation: the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. So today we are changing it back".

Web Analytics Association Delivers 26 Standard Definitions to Promote Consistency across the Rapidly Evolving Web Analytics Community

2007-08-24T19:01:00.000+01:00

WASHINGTON, DC - August 23, 2007—At Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, CA, today, the Web Analytics Association (WAA) announced a major accomplishment and milestone with the publishing of standard definitions for 26 foundational web analytic metrics covering the areas of visits, content and conversion. The result of a collaborative effort between WAA members, vendors, agencies, practitioners and thought leaders, the new definitions provide consistency of the most widely used terms across the analytics industry. Read more .....

Download the WAA Standards Analytics Definitions Volume at http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cmt/?5

Google Analytics Changes Average Time on Site Calculation

2007-08-24T18:49:00.000+01:00

Anybody notice something strange with Google Analytics estimates for average time on site recently. We have seen them increase significantly at the back end of July. At a lost to explain this I was glad to come across Brandt Dainow's post on this very subject. It appears that Google Analytics have recently changed the way it calculates average time on site. According to Google Analytics tech support:

"Previously, the Average Time on Site had been calculated as the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. Both the total time on site and total number of visits included bounces.

As of July 20, 2007, we began reporting the Average Time on Site as the total time on site for all visits (excluding bounces) divided by the total number of visits (excluding bounces). This change also affected data from earlier dates, not just newer data.

I think this makes a lot of sense particularly if your site has a high bounce rate which would make average session times meaningless - but it would have been nice to have been told.

How to Squeeze More Out of Your Web Analytics

2007-08-23T19:31:00.000+01:00

Take a look at this excellent post by Bryan Eisenberg at GrokDotCom

Companies spend serious money gathering and trying to analyze the data they get from the Web — and they want more out of it.

His advice:

Practice Fundamentals — Invest your time and resources in getting the simple things right. Focus on mastering a few key reports to take action on, day after day and score some easy wins. The key to getting value is not in reporting data — not simply in developing insights — but in taking action.

Invest in Training — Any company that's been trying to locate that superstar analyst knows how challenging they can be to recruit and retain in today's market; there isn't a lot of web analytic talent out there. We would say this wouldn't we!

Take a look at the Web Analytics Association. they're doing incredible work especially in terms of education and standards. The Award of Achievement in Web Analytics course the WAA has produced for the University of British Columbia is excellent. Sign up for a course if you can.

Invest an hour a day in the fine analytics books out there. If you prefer hands-on learning, try the WAA Base Camp workshops. and try to attend the Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in October.

comScore Announces New Engagement Metrics Based on Visits per Visitor

2007-04-10T13:09:00.000+01:00

Today comScore, reported the latest worldwide rankings of top Web properties from its World Metrix service. The rankings are usually based on unique visitors and but this morning were also displayed by “average visits per visitor,” using a new suite of “visits” metrics. Included among the new suite of engagement metrics are total visits, average minutes per visit, average visits per visitor, and average visits per usage day.

A comparison of the rankings by average visits per visitor and by unique visitors shows a marked difference between the two. Only five of the Top 10 sites ranked by unique visitors (Google Sites, Microsoft Sites, Yahoo! Sites, Time Warner Network and Fox Interactive Media) appeared in the Top 10 list of sites ranked by average visits per visitor. The remaining sites on the Top 10 list ranked by average visits per visitor appear lower in the ranking based on unique visitors. Specifically, in addition to the aforementioned Asian sites, Facebook.com was the sixth-most engaging site worldwide (as measured by Average Visits per Visitor), but only the 73rd most-visited site in February, and the Web-hosting company United-Internet Sites was the eighth most-engaging property, but only the 79th most-visited site.

Measure Maps

2007-04-05T13:10:00.000+01:00

I just read a post by Avinash Kaushik called Web Analytics Tools: Does User Interface (UI) Matter? take a look at his description of Measure Map which is a analytics solution now owned by Google and currently in alpha. Have you ever seen an interface like this and there is lots of contextual data provided whne you need it. I'll take a more detailed look and get back to.

Challenges for Web Analytics Vendors

2007-03-21T10:06:00.000Z

Avinash Kaushik wrote an interesting blog post setting out what he thought the most important challenges to the web analytics vendors will be in the near future. For me they are:

1. Pagecentricity - the web page is dead how do we measure rich internet applications. Although I read recently that Omniture and Coremetrics seemed to started to address this issue already.

2. Web Analytics is not enough - vendors need to find a way of meaningfully integrating survey data into the analysis easily and cheaply.

3 ASP is not enough - there is demand out there to be able to merge javascript page tagging with log file analysis or allowing business to pay a one off software license rather than paying ASP.

4. Privacy - not on the radar for a lot of the vendors but there is a vocal chunk of people who are rightly or wrongly worried about their privacy and new and innovative ways to stay anonymous on the web. We should all be using first party cookies but we could even loose these and javascript tags . Maybe not tomorrow but surely in the near future. When that happens what do we do? Are we putting serious thought to alternative, and safe, ways to collect data?

Measuring RIA Success

2007-03-16T10:54:00.000Z

Avinash Kaushik gave an interview to Wendi Malley with the WAA Research Committee back= in October on the use of web analytics to measure the effect of RIA on website success. See http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/art/?133. The take home message for me is that the static web page is dead and if we want to measure rich media applications such as ajax or flash based shopping carts, product selectors, booking applications then we need to concentrate on measuring business events. Business events can be measured by placing javascript hooks into applications that log when key tasks have been completed by the users. Using the example of a RIA shopping cart these key business events would be things like submission of shipping details or sucessfully entering credit card payments. The web analytics vendors must be looking a this area but the mean time there may be the need for a lot of customer analysis.

Rich Internet Applications and Web Analytics

2007-03-16T10:01:00.000Z

Take a look at this article from Christopher Parkin, Omniture Inc. which begins to wrestle with the difficult subject of measuring the contribution rich internet applications make to the performance of web sites against online business objectives.

"As companies strive to enhance and optimize the effectiveness of their online channel, more and more marketers and business leaders have embraced the growing trend of adding rich Internet applications (RIA) to their Web sites.

While the visual appeal of the site is undoubtedly improved with these enhancements, the bottom-line value cannot be determined unless companies know how to measure the ROI (return on investment) generated by these applications.

Applying Web analytics technology to RIA can provide insight into the trends and behaviors associated with the interactions of online visitors and can reveal answers to critical business questions such as: How did the application improve sales or conversion—or why didn’t it? What specific features contributed to that outcome?

RIA leverage advanced technologies to provide users a more “life-like” experience—usually involving technologies that dynamically alter the interface without having to refresh the browser. "

See the full article on rich internet applications here

The Death of the Web Page

2007-03-15T13:07:00.000Z

Bryan Eisenberg annouces the death of the web page in this post. With the increasing use of web 2.0 or even web x.o, RIA technologies, widgets etc the web page and associated metrics are becoming increasingly irrelevent. Setting up a whole load of new challenges to the web analytics community.

The 2006 EMetrics Summit

2007-03-15T12:40:00.000Z

Haven't had much time to post lately but for all of you, like me who couldn't afford to go to the Emetrics summit last October don't worry. You can view some of the keynote speakers here. I haven't completed all the sessions yet but there's some really good stuff here from the likes of Jim Sterne, Matt Belkin and Brett Crosby from Google Analytics.

The Old Farmer’s Mascara

2006-10-05T09:47:00.000+01:00

Here's a nice summary from the people at The Conversion Chronicles on the subject of why web analytics should be an essential part of online marketing. For the full aricle click here

Finding Your Audience in the Age of Web Analytics

Marketers have always grouped their target audiences into different types of people based on various criteria. For instance, they might group people based on their age, gender, or geographic location. This is so that they can begin to figure out who the best type of person is to market their product to. A young woman living in Paris will obviously buy cosmetics more frequently than an 80 year old man living on a farm. The marketer’s job is to figure out the differences between the people she is marketing to and position her product accordingly. What I’ve begun to notice is that businesses

Name:Email: HTML: Text: are still not grouping their audiences effectively because they haven’t changed their thinking to match the way current Web analytics technology can help them. How Web Analytics Can Help Most Web analytics tools can segment or filter a website’s visitors based on certain criteria, at a general level – much the same as marketers do it now. For instance you can set up your Web analytics tool to view how visitors from a certain country or city act on your website as compared everyone else. You can (by using registration data) determine gender ratios, product/service interests, and actually record behavioral differences between different types of audience. Returning to our cosmetic example, if our Parisian lady had logged into her favorite cosmetics website and given them all the data she had been asked for (name, address, age, interests, survey information etc), you as the website owner could aggregate the data across all your registered visitors and use your Web analytics tools to segment them into groups. You could then present offers to the right people. Our lady might be interested in a certain type of perfume along with thousands of other registered users to your website. It means you could send a tailored email to them because your Web analytics tools have told you that these particular groups of users buy a lot of this kind of perfume. This is very valuable information to know but also the hardest type of information to get. Registrations require that the visitor gives you the information at some point in time and it’s often difficult to obtain. It works though. It’s why companies like Amazon are very successful because they know so much about every customer or registered user that goes to their website – and can present products which match the interests of each visitor. full article...

For help setting up web analytics as an integral part of your online business contact us at www.ju2.com

Is a view the same as a hit ???

2006-08-24T16:45:00.000+01:00

Check out this interesting post which discusses the difficulties in sensibly measuring video downloads. "Our HDNet Trailer for an upcoming Dennis Rodman show has been viewed 2339 times. I know I have gone to the site and it has started running at least 20 times that I didn't watch it all the way through. Are those counted ? I can't find anywhere on the Youtube.com site that defines how views are counted. Did I miss it ? And this isn't a reference on Youtube. Its a question for an industry. Streaming video servers and Ad Insertion servers can count exactly how many bytes were streamed to a user which can be recalculated into number of minutes , seconds or hours for each attempt at viewing a video, whether ad or content. And from experience, Ican tell you that a huge chunk of attempts to view are aborted for any number of reasons. Yet I have yet to see any references to views with an average length of viewing or a percentage of video watched competely through.

Just what is a view ? I have a feeling that its pretty darn close to a hit these days."

Clicktracks Press Release

2006-08-24T16:18:00.000+01:00

Here's the official press release from Clicktracks regarding their aquisition by eMarketing Firm J.L. Halsey. Fotunately it looks like there will be no internal restrcturing and John Marshall remians as CEO.

ClickTracks Secures Partner for Growth

2006-08-22T09:57:00.000+01:00

ClickTracks Merges Now Offers Services Including SEO: "Early this morning I received an email from John Marshall (as did other bloggers and pubs) announcing the merger of ClickTracks into a group of companies owned by J.L. Halsey that includes: Lyris, EmailLabs, and Hot Banana in a deal worth about $10 million. I must say, congratulations to John, he’s a great guy, entertaining speaker, smart and very passionate about web analytics.

The combined resources of the J.L. Halsey companies is sure to help ClickTracks offer a very valuable set of services to each group of customers as well as attract a new set of clients. I am posting about this a little late because I wanted to make sure I had a chance to get some additional questions answered first. Basically, J.L. Halsey made the best offer to allow ClickTracks to grow in the way John had envisioned. There will be some minor up/down pricing changes and training will remain a critical part of ClickTracks’ plans to evangelize and educate marketers on the value of web analytics. One thing I thought was particularly interesting and that I did not see mentioned in other coverage of this news was ClickTracks’ plans to offer a set of professional services including search engine optimization at $200/hr. PPC and Basic SEO are now offered as Premium Training Modules as well.

How did the merger come about? How do you see it affecting the vision you’ve had for ClickTracks? The approach was from Halsey, resulting from their vision of complete set of online marketing services incluing email marketing, search analytics, web analytics and content management. I wouldn’t have done this if it didn’t fuel the vision I’ve had for ClickTracks in the first place. You might imagine that we were approached by several suitors. Only Halsey offered the chance to accelerate our plans and integrate with a family of world class products.

Will ClickTracks pricing be affected in any way, short term or long term? Yes, there will be some pricing changes, both up and down, but I can’t announce exactly what just yet. Our real focus will be on teaching our customer and prospect base how to use and interpret web analytics results.

Will there be more or different training available? Online and/or offline? More training? Definitely! We have just updated our training to include web analytics basics, navigation analysis, data mining and segmentation, campaign tracking, revenue tracking, search engine keyword and ranking analysis and my personal favorite, funnel report interpretation.

We also offer free, monthly online marketing classes with guest speakers like Bryan Eisenberg, Jennifer Laycock, Dr. Ralph Wilson, and every once in a while, they let me teach. They are real live classes with no annoying product pitch, and we foot the bill for the online webcasting and audio connections.What kind of future enhancements are in store for ClickTracks products? Will you be expanding into services or consulting? Anticipating the deal, we’ve expanded our professional services with custom packages to perform click fraud analysis, search engine optimization and ad campaign optimization. I think it’s already up on the web site as a current service.

Thanks John!

45% of UK Households Now Have Broadband

2006-08-17T15:34:00.000+01:00

Take a look at the following report http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0607/. Around 45% of UK households now have broadband that's over 10 million people. However look at in another way. The majority of UK households and over 45 million individulas don't have broadband. Now think about how large some of your web pages are. If you webpage is 100kb then that will still take around 25 seconds to download over a narrowband 58k connection. What can you do in 25 seconds? Make a cup of tea? Run 100 metres - perhaps not most of us but you get my point. Are we not getting a tiny bit complacent about thinking that all our customers have high speed connections. How many of your potential customers do you loose because your pages take too long to load? Test your site at http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

A word of warning on conversion benchmarks...

2006-07-28T09:57:00.000+01:00

Matt Belkin at Omniture has some sensible words of warning on relying too much on aggregated industry benchmarks.

More on conversion benchmarks...: "Since I wrote about benchmarking two weeks ago, I've received many follow up emails. Many of you said "Amen! Thanks for dispelling the myths around web analytics benchmarking." However, some of you pushed back, saying that "conversion benchmarks are useful if you simply weigh them appropriately". And truth be told, I do not disagree with the second point. Benchmarks can be useful if you weigh them appropriately" - of course, when compared to site-centric data, I give benchmarks very little weight. To illustrate why benchmarks are often misleading at best, take a look at the Fireclick Index http://index.fireclick.com/ I've focused on this index because it's publicly available and everyone can readily access it." Read more

Click Fraud Settlement Approved

2006-07-27T21:02:00.000+01:00

Click Fraud Settlement Approved: An Arkansas state judge on Wednesday granted final approval to a class-action settlement between Google and advertisers who alleged Google allowed third parties to drive up fees by fraudulent use of its Web search advertising system. Google will have to pay up to $90 million in online credits to customers and legal fees, according to court documents. The Google settlement hearing is part of a broader legal action by plaintiff Lane's Gifts and Collectibles originally filed in February 2005 against Internet advertising industry players over the issue of so-called "click fraud". However, in March, Google broke ranks with its pay=per-click competitors electing to pay up to $90 million in a settlement. In June Yahoo reached a preliminary settlement in a separate "click fraud" lawsuit filed in California.

Monitoring patterns of clicks from AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns using web analytics can provide early warning of click fraud and give you the evidence you need to obtain refunds from your pay-per-click provider. Contact JU2 to find out how we can help.

Increase Sales and Profitability with Analytics

2006-06-20T14:38:00.000+01:00

Why analyse your site? Most companies measure their web activity because they have an interest in how well their marketing and advertising budget is being spent. Your average online business manager is likely to be responsible for email marketing, banner advertising, pay per click advertising, search engine optimisation, internal search, developing content, usability and online branding. How can you hope to make good decisions with out data?

Whether you’re in charge of site design and development, usability, marketing, customer communication, customer support, lead generation or online sales you need web analytics to help inform your job. What is web analytics? Web analytics is the statistical analysis of every individual visit to your website. It is a powerful way of understanding how people are interacting with your organisation online. Web Analytics also measures marketing channel effectiveness enabling you to maximise your marketing spend.

Fundamental to web analytics is a technique called conversion funnel analysis which looks at how visitors pass through the stages in your site from the home page through to payment. Funnel analysis looks at progression rates identifying poorly performing pages that loose you customers and sales. Ongoing development and monitoring of your websites key conversion funnels will help you maximise your sales.

Web analytics can measure the performance of your site against your business objectives and provides you with the information dash board you need to drive the sales and profitability of your company.

Want to learn more contact us at www.ju2.com call on 0845 890 8855 or take a look at www.ju2.com/web_analytics.html

JU2 Upgrade Web Analytics Service

2006-06-09T14:40:00.000+01:00

Yep - we've been through an upgrade adding Click Fraud Reporting to our other analytical services. Through identification of suspicious click patterns we can now protect you from malicious click fraud so that you can get the most from your pay per click budget. Our full range of web analytical services now include:

Site Overview Analysis
Return on Advertising Spend Analysis
Multiple Conversion Funnel Analysis
Website Overlay Reports
A/B and Time Split Design Testing
Robot Reporting
Search Analysis

Together ju2 offer a powerful range of services to transform the sales and profitability of your business.

http://www.ju2.com/web_analytics_reports.html

Web Analytics and SMEs

2006-05-23T20:12:00.000+01:00

Running a web consultancy advising SMEs on developing their online business strategy I meet many small businesses that have are totally un prepared for the challenge of taking their business online. Many companies spend far too much on the initial web development without a clear online business strategy and most do not set aside enough resource to market themselves successfully online resulting in disappointment and disillusionment.

In their first year of operation we advise clients to split their web budget 50:50 between web development and online marketing. Effective search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising and building links with other quality websites does not come cheap. However, most small business and even many web development companies have not yet woken up to the central importance of a new technology that can help businesses become successful online.

Web analytics is a relatively new technology that allows the measurement of web site performance through the statistical analysis of visitor behaviour. Web analytics allows the measurement of the cost effectiveness of online marketing channels such as email marketing, pay per click advertising and search engine optimisation allowing the small business owner to maximise their advertising spend. It provides information on visitors arriving from search engines such as Google which is critical in developing profitable search engine marketing campaigns. While providing insights into patterns of visitor behaviour, web analytics can identify places where potential customers exit the site, help improve customer conversion rates, reduce lost sales and provide valuable customer intelligence.

Used correctly the small business owner can use web analytics as a dash board to drive their online strategy forwards, improve website performance and achieve their business objectives.

Jim Williams
Managing Director,
www.ju2.com

Measuring Key performance Indicators

2006-05-09T23:04:00.000+01:00

Measuring Key performance Indicators: "This article is part 3 from a series of articles talking about Key Performance Indicators In the previous segment in this series of articles, we talked about identifying the most important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track, based on the type of website you have. We also touched on the notion that different roles with an organization will only want to see the KPIs that are important to them. In this article I will illustrate how to accurately measure KPIs by using a fictional company called Jasra Corp., identifying the company's needs, and then accurately measuring specific KPIs to help to solve its needs. I'll start with a brief background of our fictional company. Jasra Corp. is an online publishing company in the health care industry. It has loads of content, written by hundreds of industry experts on topics such as medicine, patient care, pharmaceuticals, etc...Their website receives 120,000 page views a month and their revenue model is advertising based. Their monthly online revenue is approximately $50,000. Jasra Corp.'s stakeholders have little understanding of"

Microsoft Acquires DeepMetrix To Enhance adCenter Metrics

2006-05-08T18:08:00.000+01:00

Good news for us conversion tracking junkies at www.ju2.com ThreadWatch points to a release that shows Microsoft has purchased DeepMetrix, a Web analytics company. The purchase is to enable Microsoft to 'deliver new Web analytics applications in future releases of Microsoft adCenter.' Last year Google acquired Urchin, and then renamed it to Google Analytics in November and began AdWords integration soon after. Microsoft will possibly do the same.

Posted by Barry Schwartz

AB Testing: Too Little, Too Early?

2006-05-08T17:42:00.000+01:00

AB Testing: Too Little, Too Early?: "Lately, everywhere you go analytics industry folks are talking about AB Testing. That's a good sign, since it means the industry is focusing on an overlooked leverage point in their web analytics investment. But as so often happens, achieving full buzzword compliance has become the goal rather than the means; what lies behind the words is often lost. In this case, 'AB testing' – the buzzword – has become a euphemism for plain old 'testing', which, like ordering liver on a first date, may be good for you, but is certainly not sexy. But throw some 'AB' in front of 'testing' and your dour liver is magically transformed into paté de foie gras. This is a bit disturbing, especially when you hear people sprinkling the 'AB' condiment to add flavor to anything from a focus group ('Hey, did you AB Test the response to the new company logo?') to the mundane ('Suzie's lamp is out, can you AB Test the light bulb?') to the painfully comical ("Honey, let's AB test the Lord of the Rings Director's Cut with the Wide-Screen edition!").

Mixed in there, perhaps lost among the cacophony of buzzword hype, are the ingredients to some real AB testing and with it a future vision of how to achieve its true objective.

What is AB Testing?

AB Testing is based on a simple principle that we're all familiar with: compare and contrast alternatives; based upon measurement, act accordingly. Let's say we want to determine whether Nolan Ryan is a better baseball player than Homer Simpson? How should we proceed? First, we might set a metric for what we mean by a "better" baseball player. We can measure evidence in concrete ways, noting the two subjects' different batting averages or RBIs or the like. What we're searching for is the right metric—a formula that would lead us to a correct decision. Such a formula is more precisely termed a "fitness function."

We might decide that considering indirect evidence will lead us to a better decision than comparing pure statistics. In that case, our fitness function may involve such things as the difference in salary paid for services or a comparison of the prices paid for our subjects' autographs on eBay.

AB Testing: Too Little, Too Early?

In virtually all such measures Nolan is the better candidate. If you were choosing a player for your team you'd certainly pick Nolan; you can be confident you've made the correct decision.
But let's think on that a moment: the reason you feel confidence in signing Nolan stems from your familiarity with the metric and fitness function that are implicitly applied when we speak of baseball. Your decision might be quite different if we want to pick an effective donut quality assurance taster. Suddenly, Homer Simpson is back in the running.

Source: John Quarto-vonTivadar,
Chief Technology Officer,
Future Now, Inc.

http://www.futurenowinc.com

Want more info on AB Testing get in touch at www.ju2.com

Analytics: You can't afford NOT to track

2006-05-04T09:39:00.000+01:00

Analytics: You can't afford NOT to track: "Budget, especially for smaller organizations, is often a major factor when researching which Analytics package to implement on a given website. There are business owners who continually push off the purchase of analytics until their company is financially ready to make the leap and online commitment; or until over inflated marketing projections prove to be just that, and mistakes need to be quantified. Something that the majority of business doesn’t seem to realize is the immense insight and knowledge they are missing out on by waiting. It’s the same old argument: spend a dollar today or two dollars tomorrow. Put... 24-Apr-06 1:00 PM"

Logfile Analysis vs Page Tagging

2006-04-28T09:42:00.000+01:00

We all know we should be using web analytics to analyse web site visitor behaviour and online marketing channel performance. However what type of web analysis should we use? Should you go for log file analysis or page tagging or a bit of both? First of all let’s define what we mean by these terms.

Page tagging involves placing a piece of code usually externalised JavaScript on each page of your site and is sometimes referred to as client-side data collection. Every time a tagged page is opened by a visitor’s browser the script is processed and visitor information collected. Log file analysis refers to data collected by your web server. What’s the difference from a web analytics point of view?

The bad news is that both strategies have their advantages and disadvantages so here goes.

Page Tagging Advantages

• Because data is collected client side this gets around any proxy and caching problems
• Will give you information on web design parameters such as browser versions, platform versions, screen resolution, connection speed etc
• Track client side events such as JavaScript and flash events

Page Tagging Disadvantages

• Firewalls can prevent or interfere with script processing• Set up costs associated with insertion of code.
• Insertion of code can lead to errors
• Will not pick up page errors such as 404s
• Because robots ignore scripts can not track search engine spiders
• Unable to directly track non html pages
• Vendor Specific

Logfile Analysis Advantages

• Historical Data can be analysed
• Little set up cost
• No firewall issues
• Easily track page errors
• Can track Search Engine spiders
• Vendor Independent
• Can track non html pages such as pdfs

Logfile Disadvantages

• Proxy/caching inaccuracies. If a page is cached no record is logged on your web server
•No web design parameters
• No event tracking

If you are used to looking at web statistics using Web Trends for instance you may see significant differences in visitor numbers. When moving to logfile analysis visitor numbers may increase by 20-30%. If your site is not using persistent cookies your web analytics programme can not identify unique visitors therefore all visitors are lumped together as total. Typically unique visitors represent about 20 -30% of total web site visits so this metric will be inflated by this amount. Sometimes you’ll see a dramatic reduction in site visits. This is usually because web analytics programmes strip out the loading of graphics which are erroneously counted as visits by other programs.

Other differences in visitor numbers are usually due to how programs define a visit. A visit duration of 30 minutes means that multiple visits from the same IP address with-in this time period will be counted as a single visit. Change this parameter to 15 minutes and these visits could be counted several times and your total visits will increase. Finally, when a web browser loads a PDF file is brings down different parts of the file at different time and some programs can count this as multiple requests for the same file. A good web analytics programme will collapse these multiple downloads into a single.

It is important to understand these differences and manage the expectations of your colleagues as surprise drops in web site metrics can sometimes lead to disenchantment with measuring web site performance altogether.

For more information on web analytics speak to us at www.ju2.com

Top 50 Retail Websites

2006-04-20T20:38:00.000+01:00

Read up on how the Top 50 Retail websites achieve their success. Online retailing has reached the point today where it’s the little things that count. The sites that stand at the top of the heap are those that know their customers and what they want and that make it easy for shoppers to find what they’re looking for and check out quickly and to shop online and buy offline. Learn from the likes of Amazon.com and innovators like Musicnotes.com

Jim Williams
Managing Director
www.ju2.com

Keynote E-Commerce Transaction Performance Index

2006-04-20T16:29:00.000+01:00

I found this index of response and success rates for major ecommerce sites which should be of interest to everybody out there running an online shop. The Keynote E-Commerce Transaction Performance Index shows the total execution time and success rate for logging into an account, searching for an item, adding it to the shopping cart, and proceeding to check out on selected Internet retail sites. It seems that the best sites such as Walmart and Office Depot can complete the sales cycle in just over 7 seconds. How does that compare with your website?

Jim Williams
www.ju2.com

Conversion Funnel 2.0

2006-04-18T11:40:00.000+01:00

The standard e-commerce conversion funnel is flawed. Throw it out. It's dead.

The Web has changed our lives in many ways, yet until now we've been too narrow with analyzing customer behavior using a linear model. Take a look at this thought provoking article by Shane Atchison

Web Analytics That Provides In Depth Business Intelligence

2006-04-13T17:24:00.000+01:00

Web Analytics That Provides In Depth Business Intelligence - 27-Mar-06: Web Analytics article: contact Alicia Whalen: "If you cant measure it, you cant manage it. This old saying is as true in our fast paced online world as it ever was. According to the recent SEMPO, (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization) survey, web marketers are aware of the need for broad-stroke measurements - a high percentage of them track visitors and traffic volume, but fewer are measuring click through rates and ultimate conversion. Most respondents to this survey are tracking ad campaigns, but few are using web analytics to track the more sophisticated marketing objectives, such as ROI from branding and online PR activities. 27-Mar-06 12:00 PM"

Analytics Analysis for Search Marketers

2006-04-13T17:18:00.000+01:00

Analytics Analysis for Search Marketers - 11-Apr-06: Web Analytics article: contact Manoj Jasra: "Attending Omnitures Web Analytics Summit has made me realize the extent of segmentation and analysis an analytics suite can provide for an organization. As stated in a previous article, about half of search marketers use analytics. This is a surprisingly low figure; however, of this 50%, how many online marketers are aware of the advanced features that can help focus and drive their overall search marketing strategies? Having analytics in place is just half of the solution, actually using them and tailoring... 11-Apr-06 11:00 PM"