Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: This is an average for a range of mainly UK sites tracked with the Analytics SEO software. They include bounce rate, time-on-site and page views per visit.
Implication: Averages across a whole industry are never that useful and you can argue that more industry specific measures are available within the Google Analytics benchmarking feature. Still it's interesting to see the average bounce mark is as high as 46%. What's more significant, we think is the brand engagement measure of 49%. This shows the importance of isolating brand search terms when reporting on SEO or Pay Per Click performance. As anyone active in SEM knows, if you report/review on SEM in aggregate then the brand terms will skew the data.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: This tool allows you to see the most important links on your site. We have two other tutorial this week to help get more out of Google Analytics.
Implication: Follow the tutorial to find out the most important navigational links on your site.
Value: [rating=5]
Commentary: This Google Conversion Room blog article has great, simple examples of major calls-to-action - those that encourage lead or sale.
Implication: Check out these 7 rules - #1 is obvious, but #2 and #3 are are often missed.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: We are now seeing examples of Google retargeting in practice.
Implication: This is a great little article which help reviews the options available or questions to ask before you start retargeting and gives a couple of examples
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: A guest post written for Brian Clifton's excellent Web / Google Analytics blog.
Implication: It gives 3 measures you should seek out to see the real returns from your site. Plus an entertaining video.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: Thank You pages are "persuasion windows" where you have a visitors attention to communicate about your brand and related offers.
Implication: These pages used to be neglected but many retailers have now refined them - this is the state of the art. Many of these ideas could be usefully applied to all form submissions on sites such as newsletter signup and lead generation.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: My review of some of the main action points for this new report on checkout abandonments. Since relatively few sites are ecommerce-based I have highlighted best practice tips that can be applied to all sites.
Implication: The report is structured around the different steps of the process and contains 70 tips. The best feature of the report IMO is a checklist in the appendix which lists all 70 with prompts of what to look for when comparing to the competition. If you run an Ecommerce site print this out and fill it in!
Value: [rating=5]
Commentary: The first post from Dan Barker, our Expert commentator on Ecommerce and analytics. Dan's comments also apply to non-transactional sites.
Implication: This is an in-depth post showing you what is wrong with focusing too much on conversion and advises at the end of the post what you should be looking for instead.
Value: [rating=5]
Commentary: I find many marketers I train on Google Analytics don't know of, or don't use Advanced Segments, yet this is one of, if not the most powerful too within Google Analytics to understand customer behaviour and get better results.
Implication: Check out the 10 types of segments to see which matter most to you. I recommend you start with reviewing search traffic effectiveness and which content new and returning visitors like and dislike.
Value: [rating=5]
Commentary: Predictive analytics isn't something you see discussed much and I suspect most people would be struggling to explain what it is"€¦ I think it's a misnomer since it's most valuable when you go beyond analysis to targeting based on analysis.
Implication: This article comes to the rescue with a clear explanation and some of the applications. It doesn't necessarily need massive investment in an analytics system. Simply building rules based models to target customers based on behaviour or actions can be done as explained in this other post by Michael Whittaker on Using Google Analytics to target customers with personalised messages.
Value: [rating=5]
Commentary: If you don't know Marketing Experiments they're worth checking out for publication of real-world tests of what works in online marketing
Implication: I recommend downloading this for the compilation of 15+ Articles about covering Site and social media optimisation
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: I find that Advanced Segments in Google Analytics are often underused, especially custom segments.
Implication: This post gives one application you can trial, but before this, I would recommend setting up a custom segment to isolate your brand name in search - so you have 2 segments - "Search includes brand name" and "Search excludes brand name". You can combine these with standard paid/non-paid traffic segments for even more insight!
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: Anyone deeply involved with designing user-experiences will enjoy this way of looking at how to engage and persuade customers of a product. You can download a rich PDF of techniques to motivate, constrain and enable web users.
Implication: This is an academic tool but savvy web designers apply the concepts covered like social proof, framing and visual prominence. This is sure to prompt new ways to think and highlight new approaches - like Kairos - a lot of web services now have this contextual help.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: Forms are important for voice of customer surveys and for lead generation
Implication: Read this post for ideas to make your forms and surveys more effective. If you use Google Analytics this recent post shows you how to measure form effectiveness in detail.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: Eran gives 5 different categories of tools to review your options in.
Implication: He also takes you through the options for integrating these tools focusing on the new Kampyle features.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: A video on an interesting new approach to understanding interaction with a page although proprietary to Alterian who are best known for their CMS/E-CRM/Social media tracking systems.
Implication: "Top paths through site" reports are notorious for being difficult to gain insight from because of the diversity of paths and interactions. This approach enables more detailed insight to be captured about interaction with a page although it is unclear how details on interactions with links and copying can be applied in a meaningful way.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: Google Analytics isn't as good as some other #measure packages at tracking home or category page links, so this is a good practical post from Justin Cutroni. As he says "Some people use the standard campaign tracking to track internal campaigns. THIS IS INCORRECT AND SHOULD NEVER BE DONE. Using the standard campaign tracking for internal campaigns will cause problems with your source data. So don"€™t do it!"
Implication: This is a workaround to a lack of the feature tagging links with parameters that are used in site search. It needs a separate profile setting up, so one for analytics pros although Justin's instructions appear sound.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: This tutorial / How To shows how to filter out common network providers - ISPs, and you are left with Universities or larger companies with their own network service. Their are tools for B2B lead identification-generation on site, but they're not free and don't provide much more than what is possible in GA.
Implication: You can simply review visitors from B2B organisations, but could use advanced segments to assess when companies are viewing a particular product or offer page to gauge interest. Of course, reviewing clickthroughs on email campaigns is easier with most Email Service Providers and gives you a lead associated with an individual.
Value: [rating=5]
Commentary: This post mainly describes how to use custom alerts and how I"€™ve found it so far. I"€™ve presented it as a Q&A / step through of the features.
Implication: Think about the alerts you could introduce for your SEO, PPC and other activity.
Value: [rating=5]
Commentary: Due to privacy concerns, Google has announced plans to implement opt-out of GA tracing
Implication: This move follows privacy concerns about all of Google's activities. It's one to watch since a high adoption rate will impact accuracy by removing visits and conversions from these users, it's not clear whether the plugin will be on a site-by-site basis which will reduce takeup on individual sites. But we can anticipate that adoption will be low unless it's widely promoted by an anti-virus manufacturer or someone else with a vested interest. So one to watch, but probably not warrant a switch to another vendor - I understand that the other analytics companies offer similar plugins.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: Pivot tables are an underused feature in Google Analytics, possibly because users can't think how to apply them. Well, this is a great post explaining how to use them to find out the content which is working best for you.
Implication: I often recommend using the "Returning Visitors" advanced segment to see what content visitors like - this provides a more detailed approach and shows how you can use pivots to assess landing pages for seo too.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: This is my review on Brian's new book
Implication: As I explain in the review, the main benefit is to use it to help tailor your Google Analytics setup to your business and the section on using analysis to improve results is also worthy of review.
Value: [rating=5]
Commentary: In this post I review the main challenges from a recent roundtable I chaired for Econsultancy. I also showcase different software tools the participants highlighted.
Implication: Review these chalenges to see whether you share them and read the approaches used by companies to overcome them.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: I've been reviewing the analytics resources on iPerceptions. There are a couple of useful reports recently added. First, they have published a report of customer satisfaction ratings of satisfaction in retail (see extract below) and second a "who is using which analytics tool" report which shows more people are using more than one.
Implications: (1) I have found with clients that one of the main values of the 4Q iPerceptions tool is to benchmark against competitors to show where there is a gap against others in your sector and compare against others. (2) There is a trend to using more than one web analytics tool, thanks, in part to Google Analytics which is considered better for occasional users by many I talk to.
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: Great summary! Although this is billed as being helpful for small and medium businesses, I think this applies well to all businesses.
Implications: Be careful to define the KPIs that really matter to help drive the performance of the business and then simplify these through dashboards tailored for colleagues.
By Dave Chaffey
Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.
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