Measuring Success

Google Analytics has come along way since the acquisition of Urchin was announced in April 2005. In this article I wanted to summarise the achievements made to date and discuss my view as the future for the product.

A brief history of Urchin
Urchin analytics has been around for some time. In fact since 1997, Urchin [...]

This is part II (from a two part series) of articles providing a How-to guide for integrating your voice of customer data with Google Analytics. In Part I, I discussed the approach to take when integrating with Clicktools – a popular visitor survey tool. In Part II, I discuss integrating with a very different type [...]

As I have written before, Voice of Customer techniques are your direct feedback mechanism from visitors to your web site. It provides invaluable qualitative data to your web design, development, marketing, PR and content creator teams. It compliments the quantitative data of web analytics by providing the “why” to the “what” and “when”. However it [...]

For those that are interested there is now a PDF version of the Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics book, purchasable from Wiley:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470290900.html
The book is also available in Korean (via Acorn) and Czech (via Computer Press) – and shortly Russian. Not sure why these specific languages first, but a great deal of interest in those [...]

As a number of you have taken the effort to connect with me over recent months, I wanted to pick your brains on an idea… I have created a small (6 questions!) survey to get your feedback on a dedicated GA webinar based on the content of the book.
The questions are self explanatory and take [...]

This is not really a hack – rather the application of a simple (yet powerful) filter that allows you to compare visits from social networks side by side next to other referral mediums. The result allows you to have a quick comparison of the significance of social networks to your site in your Google Analytics [...]

Google Analytics recognises 41 search engines by default. Although this is constantly being added to, there are of course a great many other search engines in the world – language and region specific, as well as price comparison and vertical portals.
The purpose of this hack, is to be able to differentiate regional variations of [...]

Just to let you know that I have finally gotten round to updating the combined tracking script hack I had for urchin.js to the new ga.js. If you know what I am referring to and simply wish to go straight to the script, the new file is listed here: http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog/ga-scripts/
Essentially the combined tracking script is [...]

My standard word of caution for all “GA Hacks” posts – This is a tech tip and requires you to have a knowledge of html and javascript to implement and use it…
Tracking error pages is something that page tag solutions cannot track out of the box – including Google Analytics. In Chapter 9 [...]

Many thanks to those who have provided feedback on the book so far. A couple of typo’s have slipped by me, so I wanted to post them here immediately. Please add if you find more. I will create a separate corrections page if needed.

page 180, Differentiating Regional Search Engines:

The placement of this code has [...]

Finally after 18 months I am excited to announce that the book has been published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc and is now available from Amazon and other outlets . The book started shipping on March 17th (coincidentally my birthday!) and just made the SES New York conference. Lucky for me as it sold [...]

I have heard the notion of Google being analogous to a bank for a number of years. Recently, Jim Sterne also referred to this bank analogy while we were discussing online privacy at the Orion Analytics panel of SES London . So I wanted share and expand upon this discussion.
Please take a moment to [...]

When viewing Google Analytics reports, I constantly need to remind myself of the difference between goals and conversions (may be its just me that gets confused..!). Whatever, I thought I would share my clarification.

Keeping a local copy of your Google Analytics data can be very useful for your organisation. For example, Google currently commits to keeping Google Analytics data for 25 months allowing you to compare year on year reports. That is adequate for most users, but what if you wish to go further back? Wouldn’t it be [...]

My colleague Avinash recently presented at SES San Jose his thoughts on the current vendor space including: Visual Sciences, Omniture, IndexTools, Clicktracks, WebTrends and Google Analytics. As always, his talks are very engaging and thought provoking. For me though, one slide really stood out – the idea that a HYBRID web analytics tool can’t hunt [...]

My standard word of caution – This is a tech tip and requires you to have a knowledge of html and javascript to implement and use it…

[Update 03-Nov-2008: This hack is for the legacy urchin.js tracking code.
Always refer to the Scripts & Downloads section for the latest version.]

Following on from my previous post Tracking banners [...]

What is the 2nd thing to do when considering a web analytics implementation?

My standard word of caution – This is a tech tip and requires you to have a knowledge of html and javascript to implement and use it…
[Update 03-Nov-2008: This hack is for the legacy urchin.js tracking code.
For the ga.js version read: Customising the list of search engines in Google Analytics.]

Google Analytics shows which search engine [...]

A word of caution – This is a tech tip and requires you to have a knowledge of html and javascript to implement and use it…
[Update 03-Nov-2008: This hack is for the legacy urchin.js tracking code.
Always refer to the Scripts & Downloads section for the latest version.]

Your site may offer a visitor a link to [...]

The Google Analytics business model is unique for the web analytics industry – a deep dive reporting tool suitable for companies of all sizes (see Who uses Google Analytics? ) given away free of charge. But is there a catch to this uniqueness? Well in my view there is none. Of course, given my background [...]

Its actually quite easy to detect which web analytics tool a web site is using – you can simply view the source code and look for the page tags yourself. Of course pure logfile analysers cannot be detected in this way, but those are now much less common due to their inherent limitations.
*This post [...]

What is a GAAC? Google Analytics Authorised Consultants are experts in the field of web analytics with proven backgrounds and a high reputation. As independent companies, they are authorised to provide their professional services around the free Google Analytics product range.
GAACs provide chargeable services such as 1:1 consultation, implementation, training, data interpretation etc.
A warm welcome [...]

So the new generation of Google Analytics is released. Though still in beta, its a significant milestone and one that marks a new phase – Phase II. I talked about Phase I for Google Analytics at last year’s eMetrics summit in London. The initial phase was about shoehorning an existing product (Urchin) into the Google [...]

Last week on April 5th, Google launched Website Optimiser, a free multivariate testing tool. I know it should be spelt Optimizer, but I just can’t bring myself to ruin the English language!
Simply put, multivariate testing is a way of testing the effectiveness of different content combinations on your web pages. By effectiveness I mean [...]

An important series of events for anyone interested in web analytics is Jim Sterne’s eMetrics Summit. There are currently 4 of these per year with the London event held last Thurs and Fri (29/30 March) at the Russell Square Hotel. Unfortunately, due to illness I was unable to attend in person, though Avinash Kaushik [...]

At the Measuring Search Engine Marketing Success session, I had the pleasure of presenting along side Brian Donnahue (IQContent) and Nick Walsh (Net Affinity). Moderated by Danny Sullivan, the session looked at the tools available as well as an overall process for measuring search marketing successes.
It was great to see ‘measurement’ taking such a prominant [...]

Welcome to Avinash Kaushik who joins the Google Analytics team.
Based at the Goopleplex in Mountain View, Avinash will ”work with Google Marketing and assist them with internal analytics for their marketing programs. I’ll also be working with the Google Analytics team on assignments that span speaking, web analytics education and evolution of the GA tool.”
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/03/next-stop-wonderland.html
For those [...]

As usual I will be at SES London this year speaking at a couple of relavent sessions. Feel free to come over and say hello…
A highlight for everyone has got to be the keynote conversation with Matt Cutts on the Wednesday, though I wonder if the “cat woman” will be there again…