Measuring Success

Here I write about Google Analytics setup and usage; Online privacy - debunking the myths; Data accuracy - what is accurate, what is not and how to live with it; Website usability & conversion optimisation - the whole raison d'etre for measurement in the first place; Democratisation of data - spreading the love; Google in general - business practices, approach and strategy.

Dec 15

SEO Tracking – regional Search Engines in Google Analytics

Categories: Plugins & Hacks, SEO & Analytics Comments (40) »

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. This hack is for anyone who manages SEO at a regional level i.e to be able to differentiate regional variations of search engines. For example, the default Search Engine list for Google Analytics shows aggregate search engines – Google, Yahoo, MSN etc., this hack shows regional specific ones for your SEO efforts. April 2011 – New async hack launchedThis hack has been completely revised for the latest GA async code. Further info >> [ Now 100+ additional SEs + GA defaults (140+ domains). You no longer need to re-define the default set of search engines as this hack now prepends new search engines to GA’s list. For details Read the full article…

Dec 09

How to choose between Advanced Segments versus Profile Filters in Google Analytics

As anyone who has looked at the plethora of web metrics data available knows, even for a moderately active website, segmentation is the key to gaining insight. It allows you to group similar visitors e.g. customers, subscribers, contributors, engagers etc. together for comparison. Therefore instead of viewing metrics that are average of averages, the numbers actually mean something. For example, quoting the Average Order Value for all customers is pretty meaningless. Knowing that the Average Order Value for visitors that have downloaded your PDF catalogue is twice that as people who haven’t, is a KPI that values your digital collateral. It allows you to make informed decisions about its prominence, content, update frequency, cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. [ After defining and configuring goals, I view segmentation as your next most important step for your best practice web analytics setup. ] Segmentation is important you – no, critical. So what options Read the full article…

Nov 10

Benchmarking site performance can be misleading

Categories: Metrics understanding, Privacy and Accuracy Comments (6) »

As you may know, I occasionally write articles elsewhere (journalism.co.uk, eConsultancy, DaveChaffey.com). In case you miss these, and because I like to keep my thoughts in one place I also reproduce here a little later. The following is from my September post at eConsultancy. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are important to drive improvement for your website. Although it is obviously interesting and insightful to compare how your website is performing against your peers and competitors, it can be a mistake to place too much emphasis on external industry benchmarks. These external benchmarks can be misleading and often end up with you finding the benchmark that fits your story, giving a false impression of success. KPIs vary greatly by business sector, and even within subsectors there is wide variance: think “flights” versus “holidays” or “food retail” versus “clothing retail”. Even comparing against your competitors with identically defined goals is fraught with Read the full article…

Oct 17

What Google Analytics Can’t Tell You – what rubbish

Categories: Privacy and Accuracy Comments (19) »

I wanted to put this out there to illustrate the type of crap competitors will go to to discredit Google Analytics. The link takes you to an article by clicktale which is a rehash of a previous discredited post by Brandt Dainow last year. Take a minute to read it and the two so called flaws of Google Analytics…

Oct 08

How to track mobile phone users with Google Analytics

Categories: Plugins & Hacks Comments (23) »

Designing a web site for a mobile audience with a 3 inch screen and potentially slower data connection is clearly very different from other users. Therefore studying this segment of visitors can have important implications for your web development. Visits from older generations of Internet enabled mobile phones cannot be tracked by web analytics tools that use page tags – including Google Analytics – as they do not execute JavaScript or cookies. The traditional solution to this was to use a Log analyzer such as Urchin. However the lack of cookie and JavaScript support was precisely the reason so few people used their phone for web access. In many cases sites just failed to work, so tracking the few mobile visitors out there was never a priority – until now. The newer generation of Smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry etc.) have driven the recent proliferation of web usage via mobile devices by Read the full article…

Sep 21

Training Workshop – Using Google Analytics to Improve Your Online Business

Categories: Google Analytics specific, Metrics understanding 1 Comment »

Just letting members know that I will be in Palo Alto (California) this October presenting a Google Analytics workshop with e-nor. Title: Using Google Analytics to Improve Your Online Business This is a two-day training workshop on web measurement aimed at Marketers and Webmasters. Presented by Brian Clifton and Feras Alhlou (e-nor) 19/20 Oct. If you’re looking to get on top of your web metrics, please drop me a line before sign up as I have a 15% discount code for readers, valid until the end of this week. If you would just like to stop by and say hello, I will also be at Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) social event in PA on Thursday(!) October 15, from 6:00 PM If you bring a copy of the book I will happily autograph it for you Brian Clifton

Sep 16

Wow – did you see Adobe coming?

Categories: Google Analytics specific Comments (9) »

Like everyone else it appears, I certainly did not see the announcement of Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture for $1.8 billion coming. However, it reminds me of Telefonica’s $5.4 billion mind blowing purchase of Lycos in 2000. A good sales person can make it sound like a perfect match and a bargain to boot. Yet for me, it does not appear a good fit… In recent years (since November 2005 in fact), the web analytics market has been moving away from big, expensive software projects where you pay simply to collect data. The model is now about collecting data for free – computer memory, disk space and processing power are getting cheaper each year. This has been driven mainly by Google, but also adopted by Microsoft (though that failed) and more recently Yahoo. The model is, collect data for free and instead use your budget on insights – understanding and taking Read the full article…

Aug 18

Your mobile apps are spying on you

Categories: Privacy and Accuracy Comments (7) »

Privacy on the web has always been a contentious issue, as the vast majority of users wish to remain anonymous while browsing. However, little attention has been given to the privacy of mobile phone users. Hence I was interested to read the article on mobile apps from Sarah Perez: www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dear_iphone_users_your_apps_are_spying_on_you.php Compared to computer use, mobile phones have a greater potential to infringe on your privacy for the following reasons: Mobiles are registered to a unique user (legally this is very difficult to avoid) Mobiles are rarely shared (though this is more common in Asia) No such thing as “Internet cafe for mobiles”, user almost always use their own phone Mobiles broadcast their position by triangulating with transmitters typically with an accuracy of 500m radius (though with GPS enabled phones this can be much more precise). Putting the web analytics privacy debate into perspective Since Google, Microsoft and Yahoo entered the Read the full article…

Aug 04

Should you focus on website visitors as individuals?

Categories: Metrics understanding, Privacy and Accuracy Comments (22) »

Leaving aside the issue of privacy, is it valid to track visitors as individuals? From a marketer’s perspective, tracking individuals sounds great in theory – you understand your customers better right? But if you receive 10,000 visitors per day and have weekly marketing performance meetings, that equals 70,000 data points to discuss? Best practice is to consider longer time frames in order to mitigate against calendar anomalies i.e. weekends v weekdays, holidays, the weather, force majeure etc… So for one month that could be 280,000 data points.

Jul 29

Would you value this book in your language?

Categories: Google Analytics specific Comments (4) »

If you have a copy of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics, or are a potential reader, would you prefer it in your local language? I have always assumed that a local language is preferred. However, I ask because when translated, I loose editorial control of the text and screenshots that can result in a degrade in book quality.