Web Analytics Blog

Using Google Analytics with Adobe Flash?

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:45:00 +0000

One of the most common implementation challenges with Google Analytics has been tracking Flash content. In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every implementation had to be customized. Moreover, there was a lack of standards, and new developers who tracked Flash had to create their own processes to get it working.

At the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco, in a joint collaboration with Adobe and third party developers, Google announced a simplified solution for tracking Flash content called Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash.

This feature is a translation of the current Google Analytics tracking code into the ActionScript 3 programming language that dramatically simplifies the ability to track Flash, Flex and AS3 content. This new Flash tracking code provides all the features of the current JavaScript-based version, including campaign, pageview and event tracking and can be used to track Flash content such as embedded videos, branded microsites and distributed widgets, such as online games.

More information on tracking Google Analytics with Flash here.

Expert web analytics advice here

Advanced Segmentation on Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:31:00 +0000

One feature that I always thought Google Analytics lacked was the ability to properly segment site visitors. So I was pleased to notice that as part of the recent Google Analytics update not only is the interface refreshed but Google have launched a new set of features including:

AdSense now integrated into Google AdWords.
Motion Charts!
Custom Reports!
The Google Analytics API.
Advanced Segmentation.

Although analytics already had some segmentation functionality I found it difficult to implement and use. With advanced segmentation its now really easy to create intra session segments. There are a number of default segments and then ability to set up custom segments

Custom segments are created using an easy to use wizard which allows you to drag and drop dimensions (such as Visitors, Traffic Sources and Content) and metrics ( Site Usage, E-Commerce and Goals) into the segmentation tool. For instance you can segement on frequent visitors by dragging Count of Visits into the tool and defining the number of visits.

Segments can be combined by adding AND/OR statements and tested using the Test Segment function.

Once you've set your segments up you can apply them to reports by selecting multiple segments from the Advanced Segments drop down menu in the top right of the Google Analytics interface.

The real strength of Advanced Segmentation is that multiple segments can be compared side by side as above. For more information on this subject I refer you to an excellent post from Avinash Kaushik at Occam's Razor

Great Firefox Extension for Web Analysts

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:25:00 +0000

Take a look at this extension for Firefox at http://wasp.immeria.net/analyst.htm WASP enables you to check up on your web analytics tags and cookies easily and quickly. So no more excuses for incorrect tags or not knowing what tags are on what page.

THE IMPACT OF COOKIE DELETION ON THE ACCURACY OF SITE-SERVER AND AD-SERVER METRICS A STUDY FROM COMSCORE

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:06:00 +0000

Did anybody ese read the above report from comScore " The Impact of Cookie Deletion on The Accuracy of Site-Server And Ad-Server Metrics: An Empirical Comscore Study By Dr. Magid Abraham And Cameron Meierhoefer" who analyzed the first-party “B cookie” from Yahoo! and the thirdparty ad server persistent cookie from DoubleClick, The study examined the degree to which Internet users clear these cookies from their computers, thereby causing site-servers to deposit new cookies and potentially leading to overstated estimates of unique users in cookie-based site-server data.

The results of the study seemed to indicate that approximately 31 percent of U.S. computer users clear their first-party cookies in a month (or have them cleared by automated software), with an average of 4.7 different cookies being observed for the same site within this user segment. Using the comScore U.S. home sample as a base, an average of 2.5 distinct cookies were observed per computer for Yahoo! This finding indicates that, because of cookie deletion, a server-centric measurement system which uses cookies to measure the size of a site’s visitor base will typically overstate the true number of unique visitors by a factor of up to 2.5 times.

In a departure from conventional wisdom this study found that 3rd party cookies were not deleted more frequently than 1st party cookies. This is particularly interesting as in my work I observe that Doubleclick consistently reports Unique Visitors to be approx 20% higher than JDC web analytics solutions such as Coremetrics and Google Analytics. I believed this trend to be caused by greater deletion of 3rd party cookies - may be not?

Rugs Direct increase sales by 30% using first-click analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:00:00 +0000

RugsDirect.com boosted sales by 30% after implementing Coremetrics` technology that tracks multiple customer interactions to determine which marketing tactic first put a consumer on the path to making a purchase.

Prior to using Coremetrics, Rugs Direct attributed online sales based on the last marketing tactic that influenced the buyer. For example, a customer might have visited a web site by clicking on a paid ad, then visited a second time after clicking on a banner ad, and finally purchased following a click on a link in an e-mail. Under the last-click approach, the sale would be attributed solely to the e-mail campaign.

Coremetrics’ flexible attribution management platform enables marketers to view transactions in the context of multiple customer interactions over time, giving a comprehensive picture that allows them to allocate digital marketing investments appropriately, the company says.

See full article at Internet Retailer

Google Analytics Reverting Back to Original "Average Time on Site" Calculation

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 16:55:00 +0000

Read this from the Official Google Analytics blog

"We recently introduced a new way of calculating "Average Time on Site" that removed visitors who "bounce" from your website (people who hit one page of your site and then leave). This updated calculation attempted to give you a better idea of how long engaged visitors spend on your website. However, many of you prefer the original calculation: the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. So today we are changing it back".

Web Analytics Association Delivers 26 Standard Definitions to Promote Consistency across the Rapidly Evolving Web Analytics Community

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:01:00 +0000

WASHINGTON, DC - August 23, 2007—At Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, CA, today, the Web Analytics Association (WAA) announced a major accomplishment and milestone with the publishing of standard definitions for 26 foundational web analytic metrics covering the areas of visits, content and conversion. The result of a collaborative effort between WAA members, vendors, agencies, practitioners and thought leaders, the new definitions provide consistency of the most widely used terms across the analytics industry. Read more .....

Download the WAA Standards Analytics Definitions Volume at http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cmt/?5

Google Analytics Changes Average Time on Site Calculation

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:49:00 +0000

Anybody notice something strange with Google Analytics estimates for average time on site recently. We have seen them increase significantly at the back end of July. At a lost to explain this I was glad to come across Brandt Dainow's post on this very subject. It appears that Google Analytics have recently changed the way it calculates average time on site. According to Google Analytics tech support:

"Previously, the Average Time on Site had been calculated as the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. Both the total time on site and total number of visits included bounces.

As of July 20, 2007, we began reporting the Average Time on Site as the total time on site for all visits (excluding bounces) divided by the total number of visits (excluding bounces). This change also affected data from earlier dates, not just newer data.

I think this makes a lot of sense particularly if your site has a high bounce rate which would make average session times meaningless - but it would have been nice to have been told.

How to Squeeze More Out of Your Web Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:31:00 +0000

Take a look at this excellent post by Bryan Eisenberg at GrokDotCom

Companies spend serious money gathering and trying to analyze the data they get from the Web — and they want more out of it.

His advice:

Practice Fundamentals — Invest your time and resources in getting the simple things right. Focus on mastering a few key reports to take action on, day after day and score some easy wins. The key to getting value is not in reporting data — not simply in developing insights — but in taking action.

Invest in Training — Any company that's been trying to locate that superstar analyst knows how challenging they can be to recruit and retain in today's market; there isn't a lot of web analytic talent out there. We would say this wouldn't we!

Take a look at the Web Analytics Association. they're doing incredible work especially in terms of education and standards. The Award of Achievement in Web Analytics course the WAA has produced for the University of British Columbia is excellent. Sign up for a course if you can.

Invest an hour a day in the fine analytics books out there. If you prefer hands-on learning, try the WAA Base Camp workshops. and try to attend the Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in October.

comScore Announces New Engagement Metrics Based on Visits per Visitor

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:09:00 +0000

Today comScore, reported the latest worldwide rankings of top Web properties from its World Metrix service. The rankings are usually based on unique visitors and but this morning were also displayed by “average visits per visitor,” using a new suite of “visits” metrics. Included among the new suite of engagement metrics are total visits, average minutes per visit, average visits per visitor, and average visits per usage day.

A comparison of the rankings by average visits per visitor and by unique visitors shows a marked difference between the two. Only five of the Top 10 sites ranked by unique visitors (Google Sites, Microsoft Sites, Yahoo! Sites, Time Warner Network and Fox Interactive Media) appeared in the Top 10 list of sites ranked by average visits per visitor. The remaining sites on the Top 10 list ranked by average visits per visitor appear lower in the ranking based on unique visitors. Specifically, in addition to the aforementioned Asian sites, Facebook.com was the sixth-most engaging site worldwide (as measured by Average Visits per Visitor), but only the 73rd most-visited site in February, and the Web-hosting company United-Internet Sites was the eighth most-engaging property, but only the 79th most-visited site.

Measure Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:10:00 +0000

I just read a post by Avinash Kaushik called Web Analytics Tools: Does User Interface (UI) Matter? take a look at his description of Measure Map which is a analytics solution now owned by Google and currently in alpha. Have you ever seen an interface like this and there is lots of contextual data provided whne you need it. I'll take a more detailed look and get back to.

Challenges for Web Analytics Vendors

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:06:00 +0000

Avinash Kaushik wrote an interesting blog post setting out what he thought the most important challenges to the web analytics vendors will be in the near future. For me they are:

1. Pagecentricity - the web page is dead how do we measure rich internet applications. Although I read recently that Omniture and Coremetrics seemed to started to address this issue already.

2. Web Analytics is not enough - vendors need to find a way of meaningfully integrating survey data into the analysis easily and cheaply.

3 ASP is not enough - there is demand out there to be able to merge javascript page tagging with log file analysis or allowing business to pay a one off software license rather than paying ASP.

4. Privacy - not on the radar for a lot of the vendors but there is a vocal chunk of people who are rightly or wrongly worried about their privacy and new and innovative ways to stay anonymous on the web. We should all be using first party cookies but we could even loose these and javascript tags . Maybe not tomorrow but surely in the near future. When that happens what do we do? Are we putting serious thought to alternative, and safe, ways to collect data?

Measuring RIA Success

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 10:54:00 +0000

Avinash Kaushik gave an interview to Wendi Malley with the WAA Research Committee back= in October on the use of web analytics to measure the effect of RIA on website success. See http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/art/?133. The take home message for me is that the static web page is dead and if we want to measure rich media applications such as ajax or flash based shopping carts, product selectors, booking applications then we need to concentrate on measuring business events. Business events can be measured by placing javascript hooks into applications that log when key tasks have been completed by the users. Using the example of a RIA shopping cart these key business events would be things like submission of shipping details or sucessfully entering credit card payments. The web analytics vendors must be looking a this area but the mean time there may be the need for a lot of customer analysis.

Rich Internet Applications and Web Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 10:01:00 +0000

Take a look at this article from Christopher Parkin, Omniture Inc. which begins to wrestle with the difficult subject of measuring the contribution rich internet applications make to the performance of web sites against online business objectives.

"As companies strive to enhance and optimize the effectiveness of their online channel, more and more marketers and business leaders have embraced the growing trend of adding rich Internet applications (RIA) to their Web sites.

While the visual appeal of the site is undoubtedly improved with these enhancements, the bottom-line value cannot be determined unless companies know how to measure the ROI (return on investment) generated by these applications.

Applying Web analytics technology to RIA can provide insight into the trends and behaviors associated with the interactions of online visitors and can reveal answers to critical business questions such as: How did the application improve sales or conversion—or why didn’t it? What specific features contributed to that outcome?

RIA leverage advanced technologies to provide users a more “life-like” experience—usually involving technologies that dynamically alter the interface without having to refresh the browser. "

See the full article on rich internet applications here

The Death of the Web Page

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 13:07:00 +0000

Bryan Eisenberg annouces the death of the web page in this post. With the increasing use of web 2.0 or even web x.o, RIA technologies, widgets etc the web page and associated metrics are becoming increasingly irrelevent. Setting up a whole load of new challenges to the web analytics community.

The 2006 EMetrics Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:40:00 +0000

Haven't had much time to post lately but for all of you, like me who couldn't afford to go to the Emetrics summit last October don't worry. You can view some of the keynote speakers here. I haven't completed all the sessions yet but there's some really good stuff here from the likes of Jim Sterne, Matt Belkin and Brett Crosby from Google Analytics.

The Old Farmer’s Mascara

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 08:47:00 +0000

Here's a nice summary from the people at The Conversion Chronicles on the subject of why web analytics should be an essential part of online marketing. For the full aricle click here

Finding Your Audience in the Age of Web Analytics

Marketers have always grouped their target audiences into different types of people based on various criteria. For instance, they might group people based on their age, gender, or geographic location. This is so that they can begin to figure out who the best type of person is to market their product to. A young woman living in Paris will obviously buy cosmetics more frequently than an 80 year old man living on a farm. The marketer’s job is to figure out the differences between the people she is marketing to and position her product accordingly. What I’ve begun to notice is that businesses

Name:Email: HTML: Text: are still not grouping their audiences effectively because they haven’t changed their thinking to match the way current Web analytics technology can help them. How Web Analytics Can Help Most Web analytics tools can segment or filter a website’s visitors based on certain criteria, at a general level – much the same as marketers do it now. For instance you can set up your Web analytics tool to view how visitors from a certain country or city act on your website as compared everyone else. You can (by using registration data) determine gender ratios, product/service interests, and actually record behavioral differences between different types of audience. Returning to our cosmetic example, if our Parisian lady had logged into her favorite cosmetics website and given them all the data she had been asked for (name, address, age, interests, survey information etc), you as the website owner could aggregate the data across all your registered visitors and use your Web analytics tools to segment them into groups. You could then present offers to the right people. Our lady might be interested in a certain type of perfume along with thousands of other registered users to your website. It means you could send a tailored email to them because your Web analytics tools have told you that these particular groups of users buy a lot of this kind of perfume. This is very valuable information to know but also the hardest type of information to get. Registrations require that the visitor gives you the information at some point in time and it’s often difficult to obtain. It works though. It’s why companies like Amazon are very successful because they know so much about every customer or registered user that goes to their website – and can present products which match the interests of each visitor. full article...

For help setting up web analytics as an integral part of your online business contact us at www.ju2.com

Is a view the same as a hit ???

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 15:45:00 +0000

Check out this interesting post which discusses the difficulties in sensibly measuring video downloads. "Our HDNet Trailer for an upcoming Dennis Rodman show has been viewed 2339 times. I know I have gone to the site and it has started running at least 20 times that I didn't watch it all the way through. Are those counted ? I can't find anywhere on the Youtube.com site that defines how views are counted. Did I miss it ? And this isn't a reference on Youtube. Its a question for an industry. Streaming video servers and Ad Insertion servers can count exactly how many bytes were streamed to a user which can be recalculated into number of minutes , seconds or hours for each attempt at viewing a video, whether ad or content. And from experience, Ican tell you that a huge chunk of attempts to view are aborted for any number of reasons. Yet I have yet to see any references to views with an average length of viewing or a percentage of video watched competely through.

Just what is a view ? I have a feeling that its pretty darn close to a hit these days."

Clicktracks Press Release

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 15:18:00 +0000

Here's the official press release from Clicktracks regarding their aquisition by eMarketing Firm J.L. Halsey. Fotunately it looks like there will be no internal restrcturing and John Marshall remians as CEO.

ClickTracks Secures Partner for Growth

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 08:57:00 +0000

ClickTracks Merges Now Offers Services Including SEO: "Early this morning I received an email from John Marshall (as did other bloggers and pubs) announcing the merger of ClickTracks into a group of companies owned by J.L. Halsey that includes: Lyris, EmailLabs, and Hot Banana in a deal worth about $10 million. I must say, congratulations to John, he’s a great guy, entertaining speaker, smart and very passionate about web analytics.

The combined resources of the J.L. Halsey companies is sure to help ClickTracks offer a very valuable set of services to each group of customers as well as attract a new set of clients. I am posting about this a little late because I wanted to make sure I had a chance to get some additional questions answered first. Basically, J.L. Halsey made the best offer to allow ClickTracks to grow in the way John had envisioned. There will be some minor up/down pricing changes and training will remain a critical part of ClickTracks’ plans to evangelize and educate marketers on the value of web analytics. One thing I thought was particularly interesting and that I did not see mentioned in other coverage of this news was ClickTracks’ plans to offer a set of professional services including search engine optimization at $200/hr. PPC and Basic SEO are now offered as Premium Training Modules as well.

How did the merger come about? How do you see it affecting the vision you’ve had for ClickTracks? The approach was from Halsey, resulting from their vision of complete set of online marketing services incluing email marketing, search analytics, web analytics and content management. I wouldn’t have done this if it didn’t fuel the vision I’ve had for ClickTracks in the first place. You might imagine that we were approached by several suitors. Only Halsey offered the chance to accelerate our plans and integrate with a family of world class products.

Will ClickTracks pricing be affected in any way, short term or long term? Yes, there will be some pricing changes, both up and down, but I can’t announce exactly what just yet. Our real focus will be on teaching our customer and prospect base how to use and interpret web analytics results.

Will there be more or different training available? Online and/or offline? More training? Definitely! We have just updated our training to include web analytics basics, navigation analysis, data mining and segmentation, campaign tracking, revenue tracking, search engine keyword and ranking analysis and my personal favorite, funnel report interpretation.

We also offer free, monthly online marketing classes with guest speakers like Bryan Eisenberg, Jennifer Laycock, Dr. Ralph Wilson, and every once in a while, they let me teach. They are real live classes with no annoying product pitch, and we foot the bill for the online webcasting and audio connections.What kind of future enhancements are in store for ClickTracks products? Will you be expanding into services or consulting? Anticipating the deal, we’ve expanded our professional services with custom packages to perform click fraud analysis, search engine optimization and ad campaign optimization. I think it’s already up on the web site as a current service.

Thanks John!

45% of UK Households Now Have Broadband

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 14:34:00 +0000

Take a look at the following report http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0607/. Around 45% of UK households now have broadband that's over 10 million people. However look at in another way. The majority of UK households and over 45 million individulas don't have broadband. Now think about how large some of your web pages are. If you webpage is 100kb then that will still take around 25 seconds to download over a narrowband 58k connection. What can you do in 25 seconds? Make a cup of tea? Run 100 metres - perhaps not most of us but you get my point. Are we not getting a tiny bit complacent about thinking that all our customers have high speed connections. How many of your potential customers do you loose because your pages take too long to load? Test your site at http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

A word of warning on conversion benchmarks...

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 08:57:00 +0000

Matt Belkin at Omniture has some sensible words of warning on relying too much on aggregated industry benchmarks.

More on conversion benchmarks...: "Since I wrote about benchmarking two weeks ago, I've received many follow up emails. Many of you said "Amen! Thanks for dispelling the myths around web analytics benchmarking." However, some of you pushed back, saying that "conversion benchmarks are useful if you simply weigh them appropriately". And truth be told, I do not disagree with the second point. Benchmarks can be useful if you weigh them appropriately" - of course, when compared to site-centric data, I give benchmarks very little weight. To illustrate why benchmarks are often misleading at best, take a look at the Fireclick Index http://index.fireclick.com/ I've focused on this index because it's publicly available and everyone can readily access it." Read more

Click Fraud Settlement Approved

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 20:02:00 +0000

Click Fraud Settlement Approved: An Arkansas state judge on Wednesday granted final approval to a class-action settlement between Google and advertisers who alleged Google allowed third parties to drive up fees by fraudulent use of its Web search advertising system. Google will have to pay up to $90 million in online credits to customers and legal fees, according to court documents. The Google settlement hearing is part of a broader legal action by plaintiff Lane's Gifts and Collectibles originally filed in February 2005 against Internet advertising industry players over the issue of so-called "click fraud". However, in March, Google broke ranks with its pay=per-click competitors electing to pay up to $90 million in a settlement. In June Yahoo reached a preliminary settlement in a separate "click fraud" lawsuit filed in California.

Monitoring patterns of clicks from AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns using web analytics can provide early warning of click fraud and give you the evidence you need to obtain refunds from your pay-per-click provider. Contact JU2 to find out how we can help.

Increase Sales and Profitability with Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 13:38:00 +0000

Why analyse your site? Most companies measure their web activity because they have an interest in how well their marketing and advertising budget is being spent. Your average online business manager is likely to be responsible for email marketing, banner advertising, pay per click advertising, search engine optimisation, internal search, developing content, usability and online branding. How can you hope to make good decisions with out data?

Whether you’re in charge of site design and development, usability, marketing, customer communication, customer support, lead generation or online sales you need web analytics to help inform your job. What is web analytics? Web analytics is the statistical analysis of every individual visit to your website. It is a powerful way of understanding how people are interacting with your organisation online. Web Analytics also measures marketing channel effectiveness enabling you to maximise your marketing spend.

Fundamental to web analytics is a technique called conversion funnel analysis which looks at how visitors pass through the stages in your site from the home page through to payment. Funnel analysis looks at progression rates identifying poorly performing pages that loose you customers and sales. Ongoing development and monitoring of your websites key conversion funnels will help you maximise your sales.

Web analytics can measure the performance of your site against your business objectives and provides you with the information dash board you need to drive the sales and profitability of your company.

Want to learn more contact us at www.ju2.com call on 0845 890 8855 or take a look at www.ju2.com/web_analytics.html

JU2 Upgrade Web Analytics Service

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 13:40:00 +0000

Yep - we've been through an upgrade adding Click Fraud Reporting to our other analytical services. Through identification of suspicious click patterns we can now protect you from malicious click fraud so that you can get the most from your pay per click budget. Our full range of web analytical services now include:

Site Overview Analysis
Return on Advertising Spend Analysis
Multiple Conversion Funnel Analysis
Website Overlay Reports
A/B and Time Split Design Testing
Robot Reporting
Search Analysis

Together ju2 offer a powerful range of services to transform the sales and profitability of your business.

http://www.ju2.com/web_analytics_reports.html