Analytics School – Ten Top Tips
As more and more people get into the exciting world of search engine optimisation and PPC marketing, it gets harder and harder to differentiate yourselves from the herd. For this reason, people have started to look to more sophisticated strategies in an effort to optimise their pages, little things they can tweak to make it easier for their users to spend money on their sites.
This almost always means getting to grips with a particular application that we’ve all come to know and love, that’s right, Google Analytics.
These days more and more people are looking to gain a competitive edge on the competition by analysing their websites to the point of obsession and fine tuning pages daily, using Analytics. This is no bad thing to do – in fact in most industries I’d even go as far as to call it essential –, Analytics provides you with a wealth of information that can provide you with a significant competitive advantage… If handled correctly, that is.
And that’s just the thing, isn’t it? The wealth of information that Analytics provides, the amount of features that the programme offers, the almost limitless ways of breaking down your user data can be overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re doing, and even if you do.
For this reason, the Top Click Media team have kindly decided to provide those of you who are just venturing, bleary eyed into the world of analytics with a few tips which should help you avoid a few of the traditional trap-doors that can catch out new users, and give you a head start on your competition.
So, without further ado, let us introduce… Analytics School.
Tip #1
Keep track of your 404 Page
This is a really useful one. As we all know, when people try to go to an expired or non-existent page within your site they usually see a 404 page. Having analytics code on that page will allow you to see what people typed to get there as well as what they did when they got there, did they simply leave the site? Did they hit the back button? Did they hit the redirect button (if there is one)?
This information is useful in a couple of ways. Firstly, if a significant number of visitors are going to a particular non-existent page, you might want to consider creating that page and then redirecting its visitors to your home page. You could also create some text for that page explaining that the page doesn’t exist but suggesting some alternatives – with links, naturally. You’d then be able to track the number of people that follow those links.
Tip #2
Classify your Users
Analytics obviously classifies users along all the obvious lines like region, time of day, origin of link, time of month, etc., however, it also allows you to create your own classifications of user using the line of code below…
<script type=”text/javascript”>pageTracker._setVar(’Marketing/PR’);</script>
Once you’ve placed this piece of code on a page you can track users who go to that page, or even more granular, users who click a link or select an option on a form. Those visitors will then be assigned a group name and their movements will be tracked. This is useful because it allows you to customise the data that you receive from analytics to suit your market sector.
In this example, visitors are assigned to a segment according to their selection in a form.
<form onSubmit=”pageTracker._setVar(this.mymenu.options
[this.mymenu.selectedIndex].value);”>
<select name=mymenu>
<option value=”Technical/Engineering”>
Technical/Engineering</option>
<option value=”Marketing/PR”>Marketing/PR</option>
<option value=”Manufacturing”>Manufacturing</option>
<option value=”General Management”>General Management</option>
Still not with me? Let me give you an example…
You run an online sports store that has five different categories; rugby, tennis, football, cricket and general. You put code on each one of these categories to classify the users and over time you start to see that the tennis group spend more money than any other. Using this information, you ramp up the PPC advertising you do on tennis keywords to make this even more pronounced. You then realise that, for some reason, a lot of people leave the tennis group and move back into the general category and buy sports drinks. With this information, you can tailor a specific deal – maybe a free six pack of Lucozade with every Tennis racquet?
Tip #3
Track Outgoing Links & Banner Ads
Very simple and very useful – simply add the code below to each outgoing link…
<a href=”http://www.example.com” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/outgoing/example.com’);”>
Once tou’ve done this, you’ll be able to track how many users and which kinds of users are following those particular links. This is good because if provides you with that bit more information about the interests of your clients, which allows you to tailor your site to them i.e., if you find a huge amount of people like a link to an article about Rugby (Might as well stick with the sports angle) then it might be a good idea to actually pay for a news feed or series of articles on rugby to actually put on the site.
As a neat fringe benefit, it also allows you to know exactly how beneficial a link from your site is to another site in terms of traffic.
The same code also allows you to track banner ads – you then know exactly how well your advertising clients are doing out of the positioning on your site, which pages offer the most clicks, which group are most likely to click a banner ad etc. This sort of tracking is really useful for setting advertising prices.
Flash banners obey the same principle but require slightly more complex code, see below…
on(release) {
getURL(”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview
(’/bannerads/advertisername/bannername’);”);
getURL(”http://www.advertisersite.com”);
}
Tip #4
Track Downloads
Using the same principle (but different code) to above, you can keep track of the number of people downloading information, you then, as above, use this to tailor the site to their interests.
The code you ned to do this is…
<a href=”http://www.example.com/files/map.pdf” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/downloads/map’); “>
Tip #5
Track Mail to: Links
Now this really is useful. Conversion tracking only allows you to track enquiries when fed through an order form, or some mechanism with a ‘thank you page,’ to put the code on. However, many pages don’t have such a function, either because it wouldn’t fit in with the design or it’s just not appropriate for the site, instead they rely on a mail to button (or even just a email address link) that opens up the user’s preferred email service.
With analytics you can track this. There are flaws of course, for instance it doesn’t take into account the emails that get started but for whatever reason don’t get finished, also Google has no way of tracking the people who simply copy the email address into an email address bar (yet), but it’s significantly better than nothing.
Here’s the code you’ll need…
<a href=”mailto:[email address]“onClick=”javascript:urchinTracker(’/mailto/jerry’);”>[email address]</a>
Tip #6
Exclude Internal Traffic
How many times have you looked at good analytics data excitedly before realising that the bulk of the impressions are you making changes to the site or checking on things, Analytics can put an end to this. This is particularly good for smaller or more elite companies with fewer visitors – otherwise the stats can be easily thrown off balance by a few clicks from you or your staff.
The function works by excluding a list of IP addresses from being trackable. Literally all you do is put a list of IPs into Analytics, maybe all your staff’s work and home computers and Bob’s your Uncle, they no longer distort your precious data.
Tip #7
Set up Funnels to track the Purchase Route
About the most useful thing I’ve yet discovered in Analytics is the funnels feature – especially when it comes to ecommerce sites. Funnels work by designating a series of page views that when completed in sequence lead to a goal – in most cases a sale.
The best way to use it that I’ve come up with so far is to track your payment pages, simply designate each page in your payment process as part of the funnel ending with your ‘thank you’ page. Analytics will tell you how the number of people who begin an order with you relates to the number of people who complete one and crucially, at which point they abandoned their purchase.
If you’re looking at a sixty percent fall off on a particular page in your payment process it’s pretty safe bet that something on that page is wrong. You can then inspect that page thoroughly and put the issue right.
This function really is a godsend. If you only do one thing with analytics, make it this.
Tip #8
Find out the value of a visit
Analytics allows you to track ecommerce in other ways as well, such as the amount of money actually spent per visitor to your site. You can also filter this information by visitor source which is very useful indeed when trying to work out your advertising budgets and which form of advertising to actually use.
Tip #9
Compare different Segments
Analytics allows you not only to graph various Segments (page views, time on site) but to compare those metrics to each other. By doing this you get to understand the relationship between two different segments much better.
An interesting one to get you started is comparing impressions with numbers of pages viewed. This should be pretty illuminating as it shows the actual number of people that actually use your site as opposed to the people that get bored with it quickly.
Be warned though, once you get going the segment comparison feature can become very addictive.
Still want more? Well, dont worry, next week we’re introducing a new feature called ‘Analytics Tip of the Week.’ Check back on Friday for the first one.
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