Today Google announced their Google+ social networking platform. The buzz (sic) … in our office is like a bunch of kids at Christmas, hovering outside the living room door, just bursting to get inside!

“Can we come in yet!?”

Before you read the rest of this article here is a video which describes what Google's new social networking (and Facebook competitor) is.

Is Google+ For Real?

In our internet lifetimes we have seen a lot of new and innovative releases. Some that have promised and fully lived up to expectations, some that have survived the trough of disillusionment and made it to stardom and some that have simply wimpered into non-existence. Google itself has produced products that have fallen into each of these categories and the question that we are asking ourselves is;

“Have Google learned enough from Wave, Buzz, Orkut, (and so on) to really engage people with a simple more effective way of socializing that is so compelling that it moves us from our existing platforms?”

Time will tell.

Here Are My Initial 5 Impressions of Google+

1) This launch is a more polished product than usual. The interface and concepts are cleaner and simpler. This will make it easier for early adopters to engage and use. And then share with others!

2) Google+ looks like it will improve some issues within the social networking environment. For example: I hate not being able to post a slightly inappropriate comment on my Facebook feed, way too many of my kids friends go there. Google+ Circles seems an ideal solution for being able to post things that your entire list of friends get to see. (I might be exposing myself here!)

3) I love the thought of integrating search and socialization! My Facebook feed is just as full of Tennis news as it is family news. I love it!

Algorithm based content…. fed from Google into my Google+ based on what I am talking about to my social circles will provide a better user experience for me and I am excited! But I need to have control so I don’t just receive a huge amount of unwanted marketing messages that this new platform will open up on a grand scale!

4) As an internet marketer I see groundbreaking opportunity based on thought number 3. Demographics, social circles, targeting based on the +1 feature that Google is already rolling out. The opportunity here is truly remarkable!

5) Lastly but perhaps most importantly; there is social evolution here! We will have the ability to message, chat and conference with groups of people ad hoc.

Skype + MSN + Facebook = Google+ (in theory).

Keep your fingers crossed….

Google+ Summary

In summary, if there is doubt, confusion or complexity in a new product like this then it is doomed to failure because no one will spend the time to understand since there is already a great medium in existence.

But it looks like Google+ simplifies and improves the ability to socialize within a familiar Google interface.  That’s no mean feat! If the features live up to expectation then we could be looking at an internet changing release that will also provide a huge opportunity for marketers to put a great deal of money into.

As soon as I’m able to unwrap my present….. I’ll let you know whether I got socks (boo), Or the coolest tennis racquet on the planet! (yeh!)

P.S. If someone actually understands what Wave was all about then feel free to drop me a line, I still wake at night wondering.  Hopefully I can sleep better with thoughts about Google+.  Time will surely tell!

But how do we understand and prepare for the surge in mobile usage? With Google Analytics we can understand the quantity and quality of mobile interaction right now and make plans for future growth.

For our customers we have the following approach to achieve this:

1) Understand many mobile visitors you are receiving? Are these visitors as engaged as non-mobile visitors?

Build the report in Google Analytics: Visitors > Mobile Devices > Click Comparison button

Analysis: This helps understand the breakdown of mobile devices used, so that you can build pages that suit the device type. Also you can understand how mobile browsers are interacting compared to full internet browsers. The aim here is to make improvements over time by creating content that is more engaging on mobile devices.

2) How many conversions are you receiving from mobile visits?

Build the report in Google Analytics: To understand this data we need to isolate the mobile traffic segment. Click “All Visits” and select Mobile Traffic segment. I suggest leaving the all visits segment enabled too so you can see how conversion rates compare.

Click on Goals > Goal Conversion Rate

Analysis: This data will tell you how far behind mobile traffic is in conversion terms.

The key to making improvements here is to set goals for improvement, tracking them over time and implementing conversion improving tools. We suggest:

a) resizing pages for mobile browsers so that the most important information is at the top of the device.

b) make lead forms or mobile specific checkout pages fit within screen sizes.

Conversion testing these options is the best method for improvement!

3) Understand which areas of your site are being visits by mobile visitors!

Build the report in Google Analytics: Use the custom segment described above (by itself, i.e. without All Visits”). Click on Content > Top Content

Analysis: This report allows us to understand what the most visited pages are from a mobile device and target where to place our improvement efforts. Bounce rates of above 50% are slightly more acceptable on mobile devices due to the fact that visitors may be looking up a number to call. However we should be minimizing the bounces by trying to engage as often as possible.

For ecommerce sites the 1st focus should be to improve the checkout process and ensure it is simple and smooth from a mobile device. Then examining the top content report will provide a priority list for further improvement.

Mobile Device Conclusion

Using the above reporting we can monitor the performance of mobile visitors. By making improvements and tracking the performance over time we can address the numerous elements that will bring online success from mobile devices. Understanding what your visitors want though is primary key to this success.

These steps should be taken in conjunction with a mobile advertising campaign which leverages advertising on mobile devices and uses such features such as “click to call”.

Feel free to contact us on any of the above… we’ll be glad to help.

When you are managing lots of Google Analytics profiles it is a huge benefit to be able to share your carefully crafted custom reports across different data sets or customers.

Here is how to share an existing report into a new profile.

1) Open manage custom reports

2) Click Import from other profiles

3) Select the reports to include and apply…. simple!

An alternative is to share the report across multiple profiles when you create it by clicking the drop down profile list and selecting more profiles to add it to!

Managing reports across profiles within the same account is easy! Now lets just hope that Google addresses the sharing of custom reports and segments between separate accounts in the near future!

Just a quick tidbit for you all!  If it helps one person I am a happy Analytics master.

Yesterday Brett Crosby took the stage and announced several enhancements to the Google Analytics product set. We will post a review on each of the new features as they become available but here is a synopsis!

Introduction of the Google Analytics Applications Gallery. Browse the available applications that enhance the Google Analytic product. One of our favorites for keyword trees is Analytics Visualizations from Juice Analytics.

New Adwords reports available within Google Analytics, including extra Adwords dimensions, day part reporting, placement reports, actual search queries.

Brett also informed everyone that search funnel reporting is now live within Adwords! We’re very excited about this new feature that will show the true value of Adwords ads by reporting whether an ad has been viewed (as opposed to clicked) on the way to a purchase.

For the real techno-geeks out there, Adwords Ad ID information will now be accessible via the Google Analytics API. This makes more valuable reporting easily accessible. My concern is that you PAY for this data using the Adwords API and my-spidey sense tells me that at some point in the near future Google should expect to see similar charges for the same data through the Analytics API. I hope I’m wrong!

Last, but by no means least, Google officially launched the asynchronous tracking code. The benefit of this version of the code is more accurate data collection and a faster loading page. Google is pushing everyone to migrate to the asynch version as soon as possible!

For the lay-person, all this extra functionality means that Google Analytics and Adwords are able to report more valuable decision making information to you so that you can maximize your advertising effectiveness and therefore your return.

Its all about ‘Data Driven Decisions’!

Sounds like a recipe for success!
But how do you know what is working?

This is my number one item to address with our client base at the moment!  We have so many seasonal businesses starting to drip market using newsletters and unless they are tagged using Google Analytics, we have little ability to learn what is and isn’t hitting the right buying buttons!

Let me elaborate on the problem and then explain how to get the maximum amount of useful data from your email marketing campaigns!

Untagged Email Marketing Campaigns

If you send out a newsletter and receive visits to your site without tagging, Google Analytics will either show this visit as:

1) A direct visit if your customer has not visited from that computer (browser) before

2) A visit from the source that they last used to view the site. For example, if they searched using Google and clicked on an organic link 3 weeks ago, then clicked on your newsletter, the credit for the visit will be given to the Google/Organic source/medium.

3) A visit from their webmail server. Which IS at least recognizable, but infuriating for trying to build overall email marketing campaign value.

As you can see… none of the above helps to understand how effective that newsletter has been overall, much less which elements of the newsletter were of most interest to people.

Here is how to rectify this issue so that we gain maximum amounts of information from your email marketing campaign.

Email Newsletter Tagging

Tagging Structure

First of all, it is highly recommended to understand how you need to record your newsletter information. Each time you send a newsletter we need to be able to track the following and this influences the use and naming of our tags. By breaking this out we can see all metrics (including visits/goals/revenue) for each.

• Track the individual newsletter sent (e.g. March-20-2010)
• Track all newsletters
• Track which ads are most effective (e.g. Widget 1 vs Widget 2)
• Track campaigns (e.g. Spring Discount)

The tagging fields we suggest to track these would be as follows:

• Source: newsletter_date (allows individual newsletters to be tracked)
• Medium: email (allows entire email marketing to be tracked
• Adcontent: widget1 or widget2
• Campaign: spring_sale or widget_2launch (you can tag multiple campaigns in a single newsletter)

Generating Tagged URL

Now comes the fun part! Use the Google Analytics tagging tool to generate a URL for EVERY newsletter link back to your site. Make sure you get them all! Place them in your newsletter software package to ensure that any tracking link that it applies embeds the fully tagged link.

Some newsletter products, like our Whichabam! Email Marketing Tool, automatically tag links back to your site with Google Analytics code.

The Result

With these links now tagged we can not only see the benefit of email marketing but understand what customers are engaging with and focus further on these items to increase conversion. Not just with your email marketing, but also by increasing the presence of these items on your site as a whole.

There is so much valuable data gained from newsletter campaigns!  Take the small amount of time to tag before you send, otherwise you are just blindfolding yourself unnecessarily.

Understand your successes so that you can repeat them!

In order to make improvements we need to understand what people are currently doing on your web site, how they found you, and whether their visit was successful in converting the visitor. This means that it is essential to measure every visitor interaction accurately. The way your site is designed will directly affect this!

Here are my five top tips for improving measurement with good website design.

1) Use Distinct URLs For Your Web Pages

Web analytic programs such as Google or Yahoo! Analytics record page views using the URL as an identifier. If your website is designed in Flash or perhaps using page elements that change within the same URL, it can be difficult to measure what visitors are doing. If you cannot see whether they are viewing different sections or pages of the site then you have no understanding of whether visitors are engaged or not and in the worst case, site visits will all be appearing as bounces (off the page) because the URLs has not changed.

I should also point out that your SEO strategy should tie in with your URL page naming. This is a critical component of good optimization and should not be overlooked.

2) Ensure You Are Tracking Your Goals

In order to ensure that you can measure whether someone has carried out a predefined goal on your web site, you need to make sure that it is easily trackable by your web analytics package.

Here are some examples of conversion goals;

a) a click on a specific page

b) a download of an information sheet

c) or submission of an email lead

When you design your web site you should make sure you are able to track goals easily.  For examplel, to track a file download or the submission of a lead, send your visitor to a “thank you” page. By recording the number of successful visits you will know whether a goal has been reached.

There are more complex methods for tracking links within pages.  Some examples include, using a javascript (onclick) however, these require code on the actual pages, rather than setting up with your web analytics software at a profile level.

Make sure that ALL contact is tracked. There is a huge temptation to plaster ‘mailto:’ email addresses and phone numbers all over a website. Ensure you record events as goals (yes- phone calls can be recorded as goals in an analytics profile!) otherwise you will not be realizing the full value of your online efforts.

Try and maintain a consistent, high quality goal. You will be trending data over periods of time and if you change your goal settings, you may not be comparing apples to apples at a later date.

3) Place Tracking Code in an Includes File

All pages of your website should be tagged with your web analytics tracking code. In order to make this as easy as possible, design your site with “includes” in each page that reference your tracking code in a single file (or possibly multiple files if you are using content grouping – see below) with your tracking code.

If you place your code within the individual pages themselves then it can be a nightmare making site wide modifications. Make it as easy as possible to manage tracking codes by having them managed withing an include file.

4) Group Your Content Together For Better Merchandising Tracking

When you have a number of different products or services on your site there is great benefit in understanding how a category or group is doing as a whole. For example; shoes compared to shirts, specific brands of shoes, phone accessories or even vacation houses by the lake, compared to the mountains.

You can track this in a number of ways however, all affect the design of your site.

a) Design categories within subfolders for easy segmentation.

b) Use URL renaming at a profile level or

c) Use your tracking code with custom variables to allow easy content grouping.

Your developers need to know these details when designing layout and structure.

5) Use Landing “Style” Pages For Improved Performance

When you are designing your website layout there should be considerable care in ensuring that you use individual pages that define your services in detail. Some call this building effective landing pages, I call it common sense.  By focusing your content on a page around a single service or product your search engine results will more likely reflect what visitors are searching for and when they reach your site they are likely to “stick” rather than bounce off your web site.

If you vaguely group multiple services together on one page you risk search engines diluting your ranking and visitors not really understanding that you provide EXACTLY what they are after and bouncing off to other web sites.

75% of new customers have major issues with usability and content. By using keyword analysis we can understand what visitors are looking for and suggest adjustments.

Design your website with search engine traffic in mind and have a landing page approach with your site content.

Conclusion

These 5 tips are intended to help make sure your site design is measurement and conversion friendly. By bringing these factors into the design process at an early stage you will be more successful in understanding your website performance and be able to make improvements!
This is what we do as part of our SMART PLAN process and shoudl be what your internet marketking or web development company is doing if they are interested in building your online success!

I have created this post to help you identify ways to improve your content using Google Analytics.

Find Poor Performing Content

A quick and easy way of understanding how your content is performing is looking at whether your landing pages cause visitors to “engage” rather than “bounce” to another site.  Lets create a quick and easy report to show pages that need attention:

Click on “CONTENT : TOP LANDING PAGES” then sort by “BOUNCE RATE”

As we can see, there are a large number of single pages and we should filter these out because they take away from more significant data.
To filter these go to the bottom of the report and add an Exclusion filter for ENTRANCES greater than (say) 10.

What we see in this report is all pages that have been viewed 10 times or more and sorted by bounce rate. It is always a good habit to use more than one metric to draw conclusions from. So take a peek at the pages with the highest bounce rates and lowest average time on page.

Tips to Improve Bounce Rate

Once you have determined pages viewed most by highest bounce rate you can then examine the poorest performing pages.

Here are some key items to consider when improving bounce rate.

1) Is there too much text?

Keep your message on each page punchy and clear. Customer conversion is not about bombarding a visitor with too much information. Provide it in the right format and amount.  Visitors love bullet points!

2) Do you have a clear call to action?

Your site design should incorporate a clear path to conversion. We call this a Sales Funnel and it all begins with leading your website visitors in the first step in the right direction. Make it easy for your visitor.

3) Is the page visually appealing?

A high quality design that is conversion focused makes all the difference. There is no excuse for poor quality web design these days, heavens knows the number of web developers out there! If your website looks like a friend of the family designed it…. then more than likely your visitors will have the same impression about your level of professionalism

My advice is to spend the money and make sure that your development company understands search engine marketing and especially conversion.

4) Web Designers Should Leave Their Creativity At The Door

For web designers – leave your creativity at the door.  I commonly see web designers over design things which actually distract from the core marketing message that the site is trying to communicate.

5) Does the page clearly show what visitors are searching for?

Check the keywords that the visitor searched for that caused them to land on each web page and make sure that your content reflects what they are searched for.

Visitors are bouncing for two reasons; Either they have come to a page that doesn’t accurately reflect what they are trying to find (we can't do too much about this – except adjust any paid advertising keywords or ad copy) or they have come to the right page and they have not found what they are looking for or been engaged enough to go further into your site!

Summary

Within a few minutes you should now understand how to find poor performing pages and learned how to decide whether the page itself is engaging. Now you need to identify a couple of things to improve and monitor the results.  It should be a cyclical process!

To take this one stage further we suggest using Google Website Optimizer to test out the changes you make! This tool will tell you the exact improvement that a new variation of your content can provide.

Google Website Optimizer is a service we include in our WyseLabs product!  Feel free to ask us for more details.

Before the internet, Yellow Pages had provided an excellent way of ensuring that your business reached into a large number of homes. With the advent of the internet age however, more and more people are turning to the web to research products and services.

Let me clearly state that we are impartial when it comes to advertising channels. At TechWyse our campaign analysts report traffic and conversion data as we see and measure it no matter what the medium.

In our experience there are some businesses that still have a high success rate with the Yellow Pages. These seem to be more trade based. For more specialist and professional services the generations from baby boomers to today’s youth lean on Google rather than let their “fingers do the walking”.

As campaign analysts a frequent question we get asked is:

“How many visits and leads have I received from yellow pages.”

.. and as a measurement expert, here is my answer!

Tracking of Yellow Pages Online Sources

It is very easy to report this on a basic level. All yellow pages traffic from their web site comes in as a referring source.

To create this report:

1) Click on Traffic Sources

2) Click on All traffic Sources

3) Scroll down to the containing filters and type “yellow”

4) Click on the goal tab to understand the number of leads the yellow pages has provided.

Tip – Use the Greasemonkey GARE script created by our friends at ROI Revolution along with Caleb Whitmore to spice up your goal report with actual conversion data rather than just percentages!

This provides you with an idea of how effective the online Yellow Pages sources are being for you. We recommend that you calculate your cost per lead compare to your other traffic sources.

Advanced Yellow Pages tracking

If you really want to understand how effective Yellow Pages in its entirety (visits and calls from the book as well as online sources) then you need to use phone call tracking and a separate website URL or “vanity” domain in your Yellow Pages ad. Lets look at how each works:

Tracking Phonecalls

At TechWyse we have phone tracking as part of our Ultimate Measurement service. This service controls the telephone numbers displayed on your website. It will change according to how a visitor has found you.

By allocating a specific telephone number to Yellow Pages and using this in your ads in the Yellow pages book as well as on your website, you can measure exactly how many telephone calls have come into your business.

Identifiable URL or Vanity Domain

In order to track the visits to your website from your print ad in the Yellow Pages book we need to use a separate incoming source to separate out these visits. This is not difficult. For TechWyse we use www.techwyse.ca to redirect through to our main .com site.

By looking at the incoming visits from this domain we can see how many visits and leads we have received from our ads.

Conclusion

Using the above techniques we can understand what our Yellow Pages marketing brings us in terms of visits and leads.

As for all marketing spend the success of the campaign should be assessed in terms of the volume of business it brings to your business. Measuring and comparing cost per lead and return on investment allows you to make data driven decisions on where to allocate budgets for maximum return.

How to set a Goal Value?

Let's get the 30 second setup out of the way and then move onto the benefits you receive. You need admin access to your profiles to do this, and let me stress that this applies to a lead generation style site, rather than an ecommerce. If you are tracking ecommerce transactions then sales data is used to monetize your profile, so DO NOT add a goal value or you will mess up the ROI reporting!

Step 1 – Edit your GA profile.

Step 2 – Edit each of your goals.

Step 3 – Add a dollar amount in the “goal value” area

Step 4 – Save and repeat for each goal in the profile

Thats it… 30 seconds right?!

Now let me complicate things a little. There are different ways to approach the dollar figure you use for this setting:

Approach 1 – Assess all leads the same and apply the same nominal value to each. (Recommended for the majority of sites).

Approach 2 – Assess different goals with a separate nominal value that tries to represent the actual business value of that goal being reached. Calculating this will take longer than 30 seconds.

Careful! It is advisable to keep this goal value consistent over time so that when you pull reports you do not receive skewed cost reporting, For example, if you drop the value of an email lead to your site and then compare traffic source per visit value before and after this change then you are going to see a subsequent drop in results for the same number of leads. You might therefore assume that your source or site is suddenly performing poorly, but it is because less money is being applied to that traffic source.

Why Set Goal Value?

Remember our analysis is all about actionable reporting right? By setting goal values in Google Analytics your data will include more metrics including 'Per Visit Value', $index and extra Adwords metrics such as revenue per conversion and ROI. With these extra reporting tools you are able to better report on traffic sources, campaigns and the value of your content pages. Each time a goal is triggered the value of that goal is applied to the traffic source that the visitor came from. Also value is applied to the path of pages that led the visitor to complete the goal. Therefore, when we pull reports we are able to see a monetized version of the your websites success.

Let me show you a few examples…

Evaluating Traffic Sources Using Per Visit Value

Per visit value is an extremely valuable metric for understanding where your most valuable visitors come from. It is calculated automatically within your profile (total source value divided by total number of visitors).

The report below shows a time comparison for a Pay-Per-Click traffic source. It demonstrates the positive effects of a campaign daily budget change. An action to draw from this report is to have confidence that the change was positive, continue to apply this increase and consider a further increase.

Evaluating Geo-Targeting Using Per Visit value

The report below ranks the US states that have resulted in conversions for TechWyse so far this year. We can see a huge number of calls to our Pay Per Click telephone number has skewed the value a little for Massachusetts but it definitely puts some food for thought into our geo-targeting for the next little while.

An action that we might draw from this report is to increase our ad budgets in DC, Missouri or Wisconsin to bring the number of visitors up and hopefully sustain the conversion rate.

Evaluating Content Using $Index

Pages that have been viewed on a path to a visitor converting are assigned value. By ranking pages by $index you can gain an idea of the part they play in a visitor converting. The report below demonstrates the benefit that the “case studies” page is providing on a newly launched site.

A suggested action to draw from this information might be to run an optimizer test with a version of the site template with a case studies button in the left column. Measure the results and place it live if it increases conversion!

In conclusion, monetizing your website using goal value can provide an additional level of detail that can really help in making improvements to your content or marketing strategy.

Best of all it takes 30 seconds to implement!

There are many articles and news releases telling us all about this. Here is Google’s basic video and a more detailed video (annotations info at 24mins 29s) on all recent feature releases.

I feel it is important to understand WHY this is such an amazing feature and how you might go about using it!

What Are Annotations in Google Analytics?

One of the ongoing issues that many people had with Google Analytics in the past was the inability to add notes to the analytics timeline.  Why was this feature needed?  Often when reviewing the analytics of an account we see spikes or drops in traffic but have a difficult time understanding why this may have happened.  With annotations we can now simply add a note that (for example) a radio campaign was started on January 5, 2010.  The analyst then is able to understand why a rise in traffic may have occurred. 

 Why Do We Like Annotations?

When one of our analysts is examining a campaign they previously had to sift through work orders from our design, Pay Per Click and Organic Optimization teams to understand exactly some of the analytics data they are seeing. For example; the pay per click team may have made campaign updates that had resulted in an increase in converting traffic. Or the organic optimization team might have focused on a new key word and caused a traffic spike. An analyst needs to understand these sorts of things when making evaluations. Annotations allows us to do this.

If you are a smaller corporate running your own analytics profile you probably know everything about your campaign. You understand when adjustments have been made and can correlate the results in your analytics profile shortly afterwards. But I would wager one of my dogs (the one that pees on the floor all the time)….that four or six months down the line you won't remember the exact changes put into place that produced the results. So this tool will be just as useful to you as a larger businesses or analytics companies such as ourselves with teams of people making multiple changes on a website at any given time.

In Summary

I strongly recommend that you work the addition of annotations into your change processes. Each time the site is updated, a campaign change is made, or an offline marketing campaign is in the pipeline, note this (or have the team making the change note it) so that you can see it in the timeline.

Remember analysis is all about actionable reporting on insights that have been delicately uncovered and sometimes that slight change can sneak up on you and have a profound affect on results!  The result? A better understanding of what is working and what is not.

Thanks again Google!