How Bounce Rate and Event Tracking Are Related

Let’s say that a webpage contains an event tracking snippet to track visitor interaction with a video player; when a visitor lands directly on this particular webpage and interacts with the video player and leaves the website without visiting any other pages, this visit is excluded from the bounce rate calculation because the visitor did indeed interact with the video player (where the event tracking snippet was added). In most cases, it doesn’t make sense for visits to be excluded from the bounce rate calculation when an action is performed with a defined event. Now that we have the control of it, we can decide whether the particular interaction should be included or excluded in the bounce rate calculation.

Events can be classified into interactive events and non-interactive events.

INTERACTIVE EVENTS

Events that can be considered as interactive are:

• Clicks on download links
• Clicks on a ‘call to action’
• Clicks on submit button of newsletter subscription and contact form
• Clicks on social media links

When a visitor lands on a page and performs any one of these interactions then leaves the site, we can exclude this visit in the bounce rate calculation as the interaction is considered to be more valuable and not a “true bounce” per se. This works with the default event tracking snippet and doesn’t need a *true argument at the end. This works with the default event tracking snippet and doesn’t need this new feature.

NON-INTERACTIVE EVENTS

Events that can be considered as non-interactive are image sliders, video player interaction etc. These interactions have nothing to do with conversions and it’s just measuring the visitor activity in the website. So these interactions have to be excluded from the bounce rate calculation and here is where this new feature helps. With the usual event tracking snippet, we just need to add a true argument at the end to exclude it from the bounce rate calculation.

Below is an example of event tracking snippets :

_trackEvent(category, action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)
Non-interaction – A Boolean that when set to true, indicates that the event hit will not be used in the bounce-rate calculation.

Below is an example to measure the event that tracks the ‘play’ button of the video with a non-interaction argument.

_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘Videos’, ‘Play’, ‘MJ Moonwalk’, ’5′, ‘true’);
The ‘true’ argument added to the end of the snippet will exclude this event from the bounce rate calculation. Hope this helps!

*The Boolean parameter (‘true’) added at the end of the snippet will include this visit in the bounce rate calculation. Visits that attempt the defined event and leave the web page without visiting any other pages will also be counted as ‘bounce rate visits,’ provided that the Boolean parameter is set to true. Learn more about this new parameter from Google’s Event Tracking Guide on Non-Interaction Events.

Bing webmaster team recently announced new additions to its Webmaster Tools that will display integrated traffic features from Yahoo directly in its webmaster reports. Let’s take a look at how the integration affects the reports in the Webmaster Tool.

What are the areas that are going to be affected?

Bing Webmaster Tool is not as robust as Google’s but it is definitely going to be something to watch out for in the years to come. The majority of the data within the webmaster tool accounts will not be affected by the merger. There are three main areas that are going to be influenced through this combined data sharing, rather than actual integration.

Where can we see the combined data?

If you click the traffic stats or page traffic section in the webmaster tool you’ll be able to see the combined data from Yahoo/Bing:

1. IMPRESSIONS

Impressions will definitely go up because it now takes the combined date for your listings in both Yahoo & Bing. For every search phrase listed in the report, your impressions will reflect the collective number of times your page was displayed, based on the query searched by users in both the search engines.

2. CLICKS

Clicks are also incorporated due to the merger with Bing. It’s advantageous for them to merge and the number will also keep increasing, because of the mutual integration of the Yahoo and Bing.

3. CLICK THROUGH RATES

CTR (click through rate) data is a by-product of impressions and click; it’s based on a user’s click movement on each search engine’s listed pages.

Another significant point to bear in mind is that the new changes will only affect the figures. The real search engine results/positions will not be wholly affected by the integration. As an indicator of showing combined data, you will see both the search engine logos on top of the graphs.

Clicks will now reflect data collected from both Bing and Yahoo! Click through rates (CTR) will reflect the accumulation of the new data, and Impressions will be another category that shows a change based on the merging of data. This now means if you were to examine your data and wanted to see how many times your result showed based on searches, instead of having to use each webmaster tool individually, you can just get all the information regarding queries initiated by searches in one place.

For the majority of users, this information may not be significant, but for webmasters it represents a way to save time by reviewing more data in one place. Moreover, Bing and Yahoo! will still have their webmaster tools just as they always have so there’s no need to run around making new accounts or learning all new patterns to work through to get the data. Eventually, it’s expected that more data will be shared among the two and further enhancements should follow. Until then, this is a great start and will make tasks associated with SEO much faster and smoother for webmasters.

Introduction to Multi-Channel Funnels

Before we begin, let’s define Multi-Channel Funnel. Accurately measuring conversions is crucial for driving sales and is one of the most important features of an ROI based marketing effort. When a visitor converts or a makes a purchase on your site it’s very important to track the route that leads them to take the action. Often times customers do not convert on their initial visit; it sometimes requires multiple visits from different sources to trigger a conversion. Marketers who track only the latter will miss out on important opportunities; this is where Multi-Channel Funnel Reports become a great measurement tool.

Initially Google Analytics only measured the path that closed the sale, but with the Multi-Channel Funnel reports of all the sources and digital channels that have impacted the conversion decision can be measured. For example, if a visitor comes to your site through paid & organic searches, affiliate sources, social media ads (Facebook ads, Twitter sponsored tweets etc.) or digital channels you can begin to understand how these channels work together to create sales and conversions. In the Multi-Channel Funnels reports, channels are your sources of traffic, take a look at the various channel labels as a part of basic channel grouping.

This set of five pieces in the new Google Analytics report i.e. Overview, Assisted Conversions, Top Conversion path, Time Lag Report and Path Length can provide detailed insight on the conversion path over a 30 day period.

How to Analyse the Multi-Channel Reports (Five Piece Report)

MULTI-CHANNEL FUNNELS OVERVIEW:

The Multi-Channel Funnel overview shows the summary of the Conversions data, Assisted Conversions data and the percentage of the conversion path using Multi-Channel Conversion Visualizer.

ASSISTED CONVERSIONS:

Assisted conversion provides in-depth assisted interaction analysis over a fixed period of time; this report also shows as to how organic results assist in creating a conversion.

In the above screenshot you’ll notice that Direct and Organic Searches have assisted 4 conversions. This report also shows how effective your SEO, social media, email marketing efforts are in creating conversions for your business.

TOP CONVERSION PATH:

The Top Conversion path multi-channel funnel report shows top conversion path across different channels. Over here you can find a wide variety of sorting options and can be very useful to analyse which keyword or AdWords campaign are yielding maximum results.

TIME LAG REPORT:

The time lag report helps you analyse the number of days for each conversion to take place and their conversion value.

PATH LENGTH:

The path length shows the number of visits or interactions that are required for a regular conversion to happen – this covers all the sources and channels.

How Different is Multi-Channel Funnels Reports from the AdWords Report?

When looking closely you may notice discrepancies between the CPC data in your Google AdWords account, AdWords campaigns report and the Traffic Sources reports.

Well, that’s because they’re generated from different sources and actually report different information. Google AdWords does provide details on clicks, impressions and helps you to calculate your CTR (click through rate), but creating a user-defined conversion segment using the Multi-Channel Funnels can help you to wholly understand the relationship between paid search and organic channels.

A Few Things to Consider Before Analysing Your Reports

To effectively view the reports and understand visitor behaviour you need to use the campaign tracking method accurately. You can easily set up tracking using the Google URL Builder Tool.

Multi-Channel Funnel reports provides online marketers full insight on the conversion path within a time period of 30 days, unlike the standard Google Analytics “last click” model.

View through conversion data is not included in this report, it only includes a report of the clicks.

Conclusion

These reports provide increased clarity for online marketers, helping us measure our campaign performance and report the value of our services!

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.

A quick summary of the new features can be found on the official AdWords Blog post about the new Keyword Tool, including new flexible search options (keywords and website content together!) and removal of duplicate keywords. In addition to those features, you will have the ability to view mobile search data only. This mobile-specific data will only become more relevant as the mobile search market in North America catches up with the rest of the developed world. The one feature I am happy to see back is the ability to add negative keywords from words suggested by the tool. Access to this feature on the old interface was included with options for adding words to your campaign, but seemed to disappear in the latest version. Having quick access to negative terms will save a lot of time and means no longer adding to 'notepad' first or copying keywords to the Adwords Editor before uploading. The new version is already rolling out, and it is visible in a number of our client accounts already, but is not completely finished. I'm already excited about the amount of hours I will be saving thanks to the new Google Keyword Tool!

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’!

Applying an Advanced Segment

To apply an advanced segment, select the desired website profile and simply Click Advanced Segments on the top right of the Dashboard and select the segments you want. The Default Segments are predefined, so you don’t have to do anything to use them except to select them. The 'All Visits' segment under Default Segments is enabled by default as well.

How to create an Advanced Segment?

Let’s create an advanced segment that includes visits only from US & Canada and Time On Site greater than 3 minutes. Begin by clicking the Advanced Segments pulldown on the top and then click 'Create a new advanced segment'.

To include only visits from US & Canada first look for the metric 'Country/Territory'. It’s usually easiest to type what you are looking for into the search box, but you can also browse the complete list of metrics and dimensions. Now, drag the desired metric into the work area. Now select the conditions 'Matches exactly and specify 'US & Canada'.

Similarly to set the condition 'Time on Site' greater than 3 minutes, add an “and” statement by dragging the metric 'Time on Site' and select the condition 'Greater than 3'. You can combine one or more logical statements to define a segment. By clicking 'Test Segment', you can see the visits that meet the condition.

The segment will now appear in the 'Custom Segments' area of the Advanced Segments pulldown.

On applying one or more advanced segments, you can see the data for the segments throughout all of your reports. Another advantage of advanced segment is that you can also change the date range and see the segments applied to historical data. The segments remain applied until you deselect them or you logoff or 'view reports' on another account or profile.

So if you have not yet tried advanced segmentation in Google Analytics go ahead and log into Google Analytics and create some advanced segments.  The realizations you can begin to undestand will astound you!

1. Creating Filters In Google Analytics

Filters in GA are more advanced and is useful for getting some very refined reports. One of the most used filter application in GA is excluding IP addresses.  This allows us to strip out the internal traffic from the GA report. Individual IP's can be excluded with predefined filters. By using custom filters we can block a range of dynamic IPs . This can be done by defining a proper RegEx format to get the entire IP series blocked.

Are you not a RegEx geek? Not sure about the expressions of quantifiers & repetitions? No worries. Google has a tool to automatically generate the correct regular expression for your range of IP addresses.

How will you make sure that you filtered out all internal IPs? Recently our very own GA wizard Jon has written a post on this titled “making sure specified RegEx format filters all internal IPs”.

2. Setting up Goals in Google Analytics

Goal set up is used to measure the number of conversions that a website is getting.  Most conversions we use help us understand how many form leads are being received.  To do this we need to choose a goal page which loads after the visitor completes the desired action. You may need to track many actions under one goal setup which have different goal pages. If that is the case the goal page should be defined in regular expression format so that Google Analytics will register goals when users complete all the desired actions which you want to be completed.

For example, the following are the pages that come after the desired actions.

/offer/signup.html
/offer1/signup.html
/offer2/signup.html
Exact regular expression will match all the above three goal pages is “/.*/signup\.html” or “signup\.html$”

3. Filtering Data Within The Report Interface

Most Internet marketers love getting the Google Analytics keyword report to see the search terms that visitors used to reach the website. While reporting to this client, we at TechWyse like to filter out brand name searches in the keyword report.

This regular expression (tech\s?wyse) matches the following terms and strips them out from report.

“techwyse, techwyse.com, tech wyse”. This is an example and can be used in any Google Analytics report.

And so this ends my session on using regular expressions in Google Analytics.  I hope it helps!

Some of Avinash’s Valuable Comments at SMX / eMetrics Toronto 2010

For those that could not attend here are some notes from day’s opener Avinash Kaushik.

Understand The Metrics Available On Your Website

• No one really has private data.  Compete is a site that anyone can go to and receive data and compare against any competitor at any time.  Avinash was really showing off the paid version.
• Don’t ‘puke’ data.  In other words,  if you are an Analytics consultant or the lead on analyzing data, don’t overburden those you are reporting to with so much data that they data means nothing.  Instead understand what the goal of your analytics reporting is, discover the most important metrics that can report to this goal and display them cleanly.

• Use keyword clouds to ensure that what you think your website is saying to search engines and visitors is accurate in pure data form.  Specifically, Avinash mentioned the use of Juice Analytics to really get detailed information in minutes.
• Understand who and what your market is.  Avinash pointed especially to the ‘Atlas Institute Study’ from Microsoft during the SMX / eMetrics Toronto 2010 event.
• Understand the length of time that it takes to convert a visitor.  By doing this you will understand how to structure the main landing pages.  If the visitor takes longer to convert you don’t need to go for the hard sell but should instead make offers to remind them of pricing, or encourage drip marketing to keep in the visitors consciousness.

Gaining A Better Understanding Of Your True Twitter Profile & Reach

• Social Media reach.  Do you understand the true reach of your Tweets?  Check out Klout and type in the user name of any Twitter use and this system will show the impact the user has in the tweeting world. 

You can also see many of the finer statistics behind a users Twitter habits and also see trends.

To understand how the Klout score is calculated you can visit this page.

Sheesh – Avinash is putting us to shame!

• On the subject of understanding your Twitter reach Avinash Kaushik also pointed to Graph Edge as a tool that can truly show the reach of your Twitter profile.  Some of the key features include:
  • giving you an understanding of the true size of your network
  • let’s you see if your network is growing
  • who else your followers are following

• When it comes to what you are saying don’t trust your opinion. Instead use a tool like analyzewords.com to measure your sentiment.  This tool will analyze your last 10 or so posts and come up with an analysis like below.

Other Fun Notables

Avinash was rather casual and spoke his mind freely.  He opened and closed the show referencing a Tweet he read earlier in the morning from someone that said they were excited to be seeing Avinash and would be ‘wearing his best boxers.;  Yes folks – that person was our own Jon Dyer.

Another notable was his use of Bing as his preferred search engine during his speech.  We like it too!

He concluded with a wonderful statement about those sites that don’t put emphasis in the content they are delivering visitors – “Bounce Rate – I came, I puked, I left”.

I’ve got lots more to add later on and will include my own commentary – where I can help out progress the thought that is!

A long day and lots more fun to be had tomorrow!