Get your FREE Copy of Google Analytics Reporting Suite
March 31, 2008
I just came across this tool for Google Analytics Reporting Suite today that uses Adobe AIR to allow you to manage your Google Analytics Reporting from your desktop. It is worth checking out as you can use it to launch your Google Analytics tracking from your desktop and of course it is a FREE tool available for download. Enjoy!
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Tracking Third Party Shopping Carts using Google Analytics
March 28, 2008
As I wrote a few months ago Google Analytics allows you to track e-commerce transactions. I wanted to write an article to further elaborate on e-commerce tracking when it comes to Google Analytics for a while now so here it is. Because Google Analytics has changed in the last few months with the biggest change being the move from Urchin.js to GA.js, I felt that it was fitting to discuss the use Google Analytics on third party shopping carts.
Using different Web and e-commerce software together always poses a challenge to business owners looking to develop their businesses further and until Google owns the online world this will always be a problem. Different APIs working (and not working) together pose big business problems and cause them to continue to look for better solutions. That being said I am going to give you a simple and straight forward way to track third party shopping carts in Google Analytics…
- You are going to need to edit the html files of your e-commerce site
<script type=quot;text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script><script type=”text/javascript”>
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-xxxxxx-x”);
pageTracker._setDomainName(”purewebanalytics.com”);
pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
Note: To customize the _setDomainName function you will need to update the code with your company’s URL
If you’re website uses a third party shopping cart that is hosted by the vendor (meaning you redirect your customers from yourdomain.com to myvendorscart.com in the checkout process) you will need to customize Google Analytics tracking further in the following way. Remember that myvendorscart.com is a dummy URL I am using for the purpose of this article and it is NOT a valid third party shopping cart platform…
Add the following code to your web store and shopping cart pages (Must appear above the code mentioned in step 2)
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-xxxxxx-x”);
pageTracker._setDomainName(”none”);
pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
Next, change the links for your web store to your vendor’s shopping cart using _link attribute and change the code on your web store from…
<a href=”https://www.myvendorscart.com/?store=parameters”>
Purchase Now
</a>
To this…
<a href=” https://www.myvendorscart.com/?store=parameters” onclick=”pageTracker._link(this.href); return false;”>
Purchase Now
</a>
Notes:If you use forms on your shopping cart pages then you will need to make a change to the form itself similar to this…
<form name=”post_form” method=”post” onsubmit=”pageTracker._linkByPost(this)”>
… Your form code goes here…
</form>
If your web store pages use calls to _trackPageview(), _link(), _trackTrans(), or _linkByPost() your Google Analytics tracking code MUST be placed above these calls and the code can be placed after the <body> and before the Javascript call.
Attention: Keep in mind that this code is compatible if you are running the GA.js Google Analytics Tracking Code on your web store and that if you are using the Urchin.js version DO NOT use this code as it is only for web presences running GA.js.
I seem to be writing a number of follow-up articles lately like the one I published the other day “Using Internal Site Search in Google Analytics” because these are topics that are important to a wide number of owners of e-commerce and web presences in general. I hope that the benefit you as well in your e-commerce and web-based businesses.
Luc
Using Internal Site Search in Google Analytics
March 27, 2008
In an article that I wrote back in February of this year entitled “Calculating Internal Site Search Metrics in Google Analytics” I talked about various metrics that Google Analytics uses for its Site Search feature. I decided to write a follow up article to discuss actually creating an internal site search that Google Analytics can track.
Internal Site Search is an interesting concept that allows, you, as the website owner to view the behaviours of visitors to your website when they search on your web site. It’s another useful tool that is open to anyone who has the time and wants to understand how their customers, visitors and audience in general use their website’s search capabilities.
In order to use internal site search you need to enable this feature in Google Analytics by taking the following steps…
- Login to your Google Analytics Account
- Click “Edit” beside the website profile you’d like to add internal site searching on
- Select “Do search my website” option on the following page and leave the other options as they are defaulted to.
- Set a query parameter
- Click Save
In your results page without setting up internal site search you cannot segment the search traffic on your website. Wouldn’t it be nice to know what your customers searched for when they were on your website.
By choosing, “Yes, strip query parameters out of URL” this tells Google Analytics to remove your search results from showing up in the Content Reports of your Google Analytics account
Or by choosing, “No, do not strip query parameters out of URL” this tells Google Analytics to include your search results from the internal site search into your Content Reports in Google Analytics. By default this option is set for you when you enable Site Search in your Google Analytics account.
When using Google Analytics method for doing internal site search it is important to understand just how and where Google Analytics pulls the data from to calculate internal site searches.
Luc
Robots.txt and your Website
March 24, 2008
I was stumbling through Google Webmaster Tools earlier today and I noticed that they have a neat tool to help you when it comes to analysing your Robots.txt file. To get to this tool perform the following steps…
- Login to Google Webmaster tools
- Click on the website you’d like to analyse
- Click on “Tools” on the left hand side of the page
- Click on “Analyse Robot.txt”
It doesn’t matter whether your website is built using WordPress, Durpal, SalesForce.com or one of many others because a Robots.txt file can be installed on any website. Usually a good rule of thumb is to install it in the root directory of the website making it easy for spiders from search engines to crawl through your website.
You can tell which content you want search engines to look at and which content you don’t want them to look at by modifying this file.
Here are some modifications you may find helpful…
Disallow Way Back Archiving
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
Allow Adsense Bot on the entire website
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:
Allow: /*
Disallow Files ending with certain extensions
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: /*.gz$
Disallow: /*.wmv$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.xhtml$
Disallow files in certain directories
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /z/j/
Disallow: /z/c/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /dh_
Disallow: /about/
Disallow: /contact/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /contact
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/
Popular User Agents
* - all user agents
GoogleBot – crawls website and news pages
GoogleBot-Mobile – crawls mobile index
GoogleBot-Image – crawls image index
Mediapartners-Google – crawls pages to determine adsense content
AdsBot-Google – crawls pages measure adwords landing page quality
Yahoo! Slurp – crawls pages for Yahoo!
So when you go to edit your Robots.txt file remember that you can tell the Robots that are sent out by the Search Engines what to search for.
Using Long Tail Analysis in Keyword Development
March 20, 2008
Exploding sales figures of online business (or any business for that matter) takes in depth analysis. When it comes to looking at the keyword that people use to find your website or a web page on your website you must first understand or develop an understanding of how people find the pages on your website. If you are looking to improve search engine traffic then this means focusing on those little keywords that make up the 1 or 2 hits to your website and optimizing the site and pages within the website based from there because they equal 80 to 90 percent of the results.
Keywords with 3 visits and above = 17 hits or 2.9%
Keywords under 3 visits = 629 hits or 97.1%
Total keywords = 646 keywords
