Setting up Benchmarking in Google Analytics

April 13, 2008

I recently got an email from the fine folks at Google about some of the functionality that they are releasing into Google Analytics for Beta testing. One of these was the option to use benchmarking in your Google Analytics and I can think of a few reasons why Benchmarking is important especially as you further develop your web presence.

The biggest reason is “How does my online business compare to the competition?” and benchmarking provides you a way to see how you stack up to the industry standard because it is hard plan where you want to grow your business when you cannot track the health of your business. So how do you set this up?

Login to your Google Analytics Account
Click on the Website Profile you want to add benchmarking to
Click on the “Visitors” category in your dashboard
Beneath that select “Benchmarking (beta)” option
Lastly, click “Accept” and activate this feature

If you want to see more Google says that it may take some time to see the benchmarking data come through. That then you can compare your website, web portal, e-commerce store, etc to industry verticals when analyzing your web presence.

Luc

Posted by Lucas | Filed Under General, Google Analytics, Tips, Tricks and Tools, Trend Analysis, Web Analytics, Web Intelligence | Leave a Comment

Setting User Defined Segmentation in Google Analytics

April 3, 2008

With all the writing that I have done on analytics in general and Google Analytics more specifically I have never really covered anything about setting up User Defined Segmentation in Google Analytics.

What is User Defined Segmentation?

User Defined Segmentation is a way of setting up variable in your web presence in a way that triggers your analytics platform to save it as a stored result. You do this by setting up a cookie using the _utmv (User Defined Segment Variable) cookie and giving it a value in your code.

You can set the value of this cookie in one of the two following ways depending on whether you are running Urchin.js or GA.js

In Urchin.js it is set using the following function…

__utmSetVar()

In GA.js it is set using the following function…

pageTracker._setVar()

How do I setup User Defined Segmentation in Google Analytics?

You need to setup User Defined Segmentation from your website and from your Google Analytics account.

From your Google Analytics Account

You need to go to your Visitors Page and then click on User Defined to see the traffic that you are tracking

From your Website

You need to insert the following code into your web page(s) to “define” the users in Google Analytics. Lets say we wanted to track people who signup to a newsletter on a website. You can set it in the following ways…

Urchin.js

<body onload=”javascript:__utmSetVar(’myUserDefinedVariableHERE‘);”>

Or, in GA.js

<body onload=”javascript:pageTracker._setVar(’myUserDefinedVariableHERE‘);”>

From here you need to login to your Google Analytics account and go into “Visitors” and “User Defined” to view the tracking of the User Defined Segmentation.

Posted by Lucas | Filed Under General, Google Analytics, Tips, Tricks and Tools, Web Analytics, Web Intelligence | Leave a Comment

Growing Traffic from Google by 493% per month!

April 1, 2008

The name of the game in website development is growth. The growth of web-based business systems, growth of revenue and of course growth of visitors and traffic are all important to website development in terms of running a profitable online business. I used Google Analytics recently to track the success of people finding my website using Google searches and noticed a growth pattern…

Month 1 – 6 Google-related hits
Month 2 – 28 Google-related hits
Month 3 – 222 Google-related hits
Month 4 – 471 Google-related hits

Rate of Change in traffic (Month to Month)

Rate of Change between Month 1 and Month 2 = + 476%
Rate of Change between Month 2 and Month 3 = + 792.8%
Rate of Change between Month 3 and Month 4 = + 212%

Average Rate of change = + 493.6%

Posted by Lucas | Filed Under General, Trend Analysis, Web Analytics, Web Intelligence | Leave a Comment

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
Add the following code to your web store and shopping cart pages…

<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

Posted by Lucas | Filed Under General, Google Analytics, Site Optimization, Tips, Tricks and Tools, Web Analytics, Web Intelligence | Leave a Comment

How Do SEO, Web Design, Web Development Web Analytics and Web Intelligence work together?

March 18, 2008

You hear a lot about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Web Design, Web Development, Web Analytics and a little bit even about Web Intelligence. But how do they all work together to improve your business?

Web Property (aka ‘Presence’) Management – Similar to the idea of property management that real estate companies use. This where all things related to your web site, web store, portal and anything “web” begins. Keep in mind this is a simplified article that discusses how all these practices work together
Web Design and Web Development – These two terms go hand in hand in the world of the web. Web Design is the initial creation of an online presence whereas web development is the ongoing development of that online presence. Before you can have SEO and web analytics to drive web intelligence you must first have a website.
Search Engine Optimization – After the site is built you usually need search engines to pick it up, index it and rank it and continue to do this. This is also related to search engine marketing (aka SEM)
Web Analytics – Once you have the site optimized and running you can then start to track your visitors. Many people track visitors simply based on click stream analysis (the process of measuring a site’s worth in clicks) but lately organizations and individuals are moving away from this form of measure because it is not effective in understanding the needs of your customers online and it offers no insight into customer’s activities and behaviours.
Web “Business” Intelligence – Lastly, Web Intelligence allows you to then make improvements actionable for future business decision making by analysing trends on your web property to improve and drive the success of the online business.

This general overview of how SEO, Web Design, Web Development, Web Analytics and Web Intelligence work together should give you an understanding of where you are at in the development process and what you should think about as you progress and your web presence develops more and more into a long term business system or sales channel for your operations.

Luc

Posted by Lucas | Filed Under General, SEO / SEM, Site Optimization, Web Analytics, Web Design Resources, Web Development, Web Intelligence, Website Usability | 1 Comment

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