Testing your Google Analytics Installation
November 22, 2007
As I wrote yesterday you should test your Google Analytics install once you’ve created the website profile and installed the tracking code on your website.
SiteScan isn’t the only tool around to test your Google Analytics install but it does work. If you’ve recently installed Goolge Analytics or you installed it ages ago this web application will tell you if your tracking code is installed correctly, if you’re Query String Parameters are good and checking SSL versions of the Google Analytics of the Tracking Code are installed correctly on secure pages. A report is also provided for your own information but it is well worth the time checking it out.
Check it out at www.sitescanga.com today!
Creating a Website Profile in Google Analytics
November 21, 2007
In order to use Google Analytics, you need to first create an account and add a Website Profile. As I posted about recently Google Analytics needs a few things to work correctly that include…
- Your Website
- A Google Analytics Account
- Setting up a Website Profile in Google Analytics
- Installing a Google Analytics Tracking Code into your Website
Creating a Website Profile in Google Analytics is really simple to setup.
- Log into your GA account
- You will look on the Analytics settings page (Hint: it’s the page you are brought to when you first sign in)
- Go to the “website profile” area of the site you want to install Google Analytics tracking on (if this is your first time logging into Google Analytics you’ll need to setup a profile for the site you want Google analytics running on)
- Click on the “Add Website Profile” link below the “Website Profile” area
- You will be brought to the “Create New Website Profile” page where you choose whether or not it’s a new domain (for the purposes of this article go with new) by selecting “Add a Profile for a new domain” or “Add a Profile for an existing domain”, then the web address of the website you want to add and the time zone you want the site recognized as by Google Analytics when its tracking.
Like the last Google Analytics article you will be brought to the Tracking Code page where you will then install the Google Analytics Tracking Code and click “Finish“. If this is your first time creating a Website Profile then it will take some time to activate the tracking code after you install it on your website. Hope you enjoyed the article and post any comments or questions you may have about Google Analytics.
Luc
How to Install a Google Analytics Tracking Code
November 21, 2007
Keeping with the fact that I decided to write a series of tutorials on how to use Google Analytics I realized that I never wrote an article about how easy it is to actually install Google Analytics. Google Analytics itself works by grabbing information from your website using what is known as a “tracking code”, a little piece of JavaScript that grabs whatever data you’ve asked Google Analytics to grab and it looks like this…
<script src=”http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js” type=”text/javascript”>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
_uacct = “UA-XXXXXXX-X”;
urchinTracker();
</script>
This tracking code is provided by logging into your Google Analytics Account. Simply do the following to get your own analytics tracking code…
- Log into your GA account
- You will look on the Analytics settings page (Hint: it’s the page you are brought to when you first sign in)
- Go to the website profile of the site you want to install Google Analytics tracking on (if this is your first time logging into Google Analytics you’ll need to setup a profile for the site you want Google analytics running on)
- Under “Settings” click the “Edit” link beside the website you want to install the tracking code on and this will bring you to a page called “Profile Settings”
- On the “Profile Settings” page click on the “Check Status” link at the top right hand side of the page which will bring you to the tracking code page
- Copy and Paste the Google Analytics tracking code from this page and install it just before the </body> tag on your webpage and click the “Finish” button at the bottom of the Google Analytics Tracking Code page
It’s just that simple you get Google Analytics working for you! In the next article I’ll show you how to test to ensure that the Google Analytics Tracking Code is working properly with a third party tool.
Luc
Landing Pages that Answer your Customer’s Questions
November 20, 2007
In case you didn’t know, any landing page should answer a couple of questions when your customer finally gets there…
- What’s the offer? - What are you offering your potential customer? It’s pretty straight forward right?! The offer should be in line with the way in which the customer found the page.
- Who’s Interesting in what you are offering? - You can’t sell ice skates to polar bears and even if you could they don’t go online or have credit cards. In knowing your core audience and optimizing the page towards them your page views may go down but your conversion rate will probably increase over time.
- Why are they interested and why are they going to move further into the sales funnel? - The offer is only part of the equation but you have to know why your customers are interested and knowing this design the next step towards them buying.
- How does your customer get started? Once you’ve lead the customer to the landing page you need to educate them as to the steps they need to take.
Ask yourself these questions when you design your next landing page because it’s all about “the customer”.
Luc
Analyzing the Path your Visitors Take on the Web
November 19, 2007
A key to running any successful business is understanding how people find your business and growing those opportunities and the same holds true with online businesses. This is called “Path Analysis” and it’s typically done one of two ways (okay there is a three way too).
Goal Oriented (Linear) Path Analysis - As it sounds conversions are based on the completion of a “Goal”. The Goal could be signing up for a newsletter, making a payment or buying the latest Bob Marley CD that’s on sale online but regardless it is clearly defined.
Click Opportunity based Path Analysis - This one is a little more confusing. Click Opportunities are based on the given page where a user is being sent to and takes into account all links on that given page. This requires a more abstract approach towards looking at data because the only goal is getting someone to the correct web page and what they do after that is up to them. Online media companies prefer this approach towards path analysis because page views are the “gold” of the business and as long as the audience is navigating the website, reading white papers or articles and other content then it doesn’t matter where they go.
Hybrid Path Analysis (The third one!) - This type of path analysis involves a mixed approach towards path analysis because some goals may be a part of the website and it may also need the analysis of Click Opportunities because the goal of the website may be to attract a readership and sell a product.
If you are one of the brave designing your own website for your business then this should be a primary concern and you can answer the question by asking “What is my website trying to do?” then you aren’t doing too bad.
Luc
