Practical uses for conversion goals in Google Analytics

This week, the tracking of blog traffic activity through Google Analytics (GA) continues.  As I attempted to drive traffic to the blog, I learned that you cannot measure the true success of a website without properly setting conversion goals.   As part of my learnings this week, I confidently set up six goals on my blog in three of the four types of goals: URL Destination, Visit Duration and Pages/Visit.  With a limited amount of content, I chose to postpone establishing an event-based goal.

 

Blogger Jamie Least describes URL destination goals as the way Google Analytics monitors the URLs you are tracking—more specifically, specific URL’s that are directly tied to your website’s KPI’s or conversion rates.  Through the use of URL destination goals, I wanted to compare the number of times that a visitor to my blog site reached the blog posted from February 4^th versus how many times that the post from February 18^th was viewed.  I wanted to determine if people who visited the blog would go back to read previous posts versus only reading the most recent blog post.  At present the contest is “too close to call”, with only one visit going to the February 18^th post, while no one clicked on the February 4^th post.  I have a theory on why so few page views were tracked – filters.  There will be more discussion on that topic later.

 

From a business perspective, it is important to determine whether a visitor has completed some type of high-value task tracked through Google Analytics. This task could be filling out a “contact us” form, visiting a customer service page providing consumers with information on “how to pay your bill”, or downloading a file.   The data from tracking these tasks can be presented to help improve the performance of the website.  We might learn that the “contact us” form is getting several people to submit but an error occurs preventing a conversion.  The link instructing customers on how to pay their bill may not be located in a position on the site to be noticed, resulting in low page views.  Also, after tracking the data, we might learn that the file customers are trying to download “times out” after five minutes.  These are all actionable improvements that can be uncovered by properly setting URL destination goals.

 

Often the task can be purchasing a product which usually concludes with some type of thank-you page. As long as the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) is accurately set up in Google Analytics, the company can keep track of these tasks.  Also, if the website is an e-commerce site, the business can apply a goal value to the tracked action.  This is an important metric to remember when you need to present website performance reports to executive leadership. 

 

Visitor duration goals can be used to measure your engaged visitors by determining how many visitors stay on your website longer than the average time on site.  In the case of my blog, I set up three versions of this type of goal tracking: “5 minutes or less”, “3 minutes or less” and “60 seconds or less” to determine the level of engagement that the blog readers have with my posts.  At present, again the results are “too close to call” with only a few visits logged.  There is a story as to why the site traffic is low – More on filters a little later.

 

For businesses, visitor duration goals can help determine if products or services offered on a site are more or less favorable and encourage consumers to spend more time shopping on the webpage.  For instance, if a website is generating a large amount of traffic but appears to be failing on meeting a visitor duration goal, then the site is likely not providing the type of content, products or services that your target audience is interested in consuming.  Adjustments to the product or service offerings are likely in order.   

 

The Pages/Visit goal can also be used to measure the engagement of your visitors.  With this metric each individual is tracked for the amount of pages they view per visit and will only complete your goal if they are above or below the number you set in the tracking. In the case of my blog, I set this goal measurement tool to determine whether people were clicking to other pages and past posts on the blog or if they were abandoning after only one page view.  Again, thanks to a limited amount of traffic to my blog site (and filters); there was not enough data to determine a true sense of engagement.

 

Businesses that properly set up pages/visit goals can determine whether their website viewers are engaging with the site and more likely to trigger some sort of action.  Again, in this case, a goal value can also be applied to the metric to appease executives looking for deep insight on web site activity.

 

You may have noticed that I might have mentioned filters a few times in this post.  You may even have picked up the subtle hints that I accidently set up filters that disrupted my ability to track traffic to the blog site.  In my excitement after reading about goals, funnels and filters this week in my Web Metrics and SEO assigned reading, I set up a filter with the thought in mind to specifically track the traffic coming from LinkedIn and Facebook.  But that is not what a filter does.  Just as it sounds, filters throw out traffic that matches certain logic.  I should have added a new profile for traffic coming from each social media site.  Profiles enable us to segment the data in different ways including traffic sources and help us gain a much better understanding of the traffic coming to a site.

Final thoughts... “How could understanding the difference between profiles and filters have helped?”

In the case of this week’s blog post, simply understanding the difference between profiles and filters would have saved a great deal of traffic that would have been reported to this blog.  Blogger Daniel Waisberg provides some really good insight into the way that you use the two, "A profile is the gateway to the website reports.  It determines which data from your website appears in the reports. Filters can be applied to profiles in order to segment the data; for example, it is possible to create a profile only with visitors from USA, only from new visitors, etc. Since profiles use the same account and Web property IDs, data for multiple profiles can also be seen in aggregate."

Give me your feedback and let me know, "how using goals, profiles or filters may have helped" you in the past.

Using Google Analytics to Measure Your Blog's Performance

Here is an official notice to all the readers of this blog.  As of now, your activity on this blog site is being tracked. But do not worry.  Your personal information is not being collected.  Nor will I use your activity for any devious ways to take over the internet.  Through Google Analytics (GA), I will be using the data collected to make this a better blogging experience for me and the readers of this blog.

With GA, I have found a resource that allows me to become more intelligent in developing content and driving traffic to this blog.  I have begun to familiarize myself with key data points presented through GA and just beginning to discover “just how deep the rabbit hole goes.”  (This is my one reference to “The Matrix” for the day.)

New vs. Returning Visitors: This data stream helps you determine whether the content on the blog is building loyal followers who are coming back to the site for more of your wisdom.  If after a few blog posts you begin to notice a very high percentage of new visitors, but a very low percentage of returning visitors, this means that the content you are presenting is likely not piquing the interest of your visitors.  Change is in order with your content and marketing strategy.  A blogger, Mitz, offers up 9 Ways to Build Traffic to Your New Blog. Rule number 1 is to make sure that you are publishing quality material.

Visitor Flow with Map Overlay:  Once the blog develops a large number of followers, by using ‘geotargeting’ capabilities this report could be very beneficial if you wanted to solicit potential advertisers.  For instance, the Map Overlay will tell you where your visitors are when they view your site.  The data can be broken down into country specific views, showing the various regions, cities and metro areas that your visitors reside in. When entertaining regional advertisers who sell goods or services in specific areas, you can use the Map Overlay feature to determine if your web traffic matches the sales footprint of a potential advertiser.  Below is a sample Map Overlay.

Language: When blogging, it is important to be aware of what language your viewers prefer to be communicated with.  As part of the Visitor Report, Google Analytics presents the preferred language by visitors to your site.  If your blog has a regional following, for instance among Texas or California residents, then a large percentage of visitors may actually prefer to view your content in Spanish.  According to the U.S. Census, there are four states where at least one-in-five residents spoke Spanish at home in 2007 – Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas.  Also in 2010, there were 37 million Hispanic Americans who spoke (or read) Spanish in the home. If it turns out that a large percentage of your blog’s audience prefers Spanish, you may want to consider having a Spanish-focused version of the site with content catered to that community.  It will be ideal to determine whether you will need to simply translate the content or bring on experienced writers who can create culture-based content.

Referring Sites: I have always believed that regardless of the content presented on a website, referral traffic should be evaluated regularly.  Having insight into this can help you when you are determining the level of content on your blog and the way that you drive viewers to it.  There are many questions that this data can help shine light on, including:

·         Is there a common category of websites sending traffic to my blog? Looking at the sites that a majority of your viewers are coming from allows you to use specific affinities and interests to help you in the content development for your blog.

·         If there is an e-commerce function to your website or blog, are there sites that make sense to engage in a marketing partnership? Referring sites data can identify the websites that are sending heavy traffic to you that should be considered for marketing investments.  A free link on a page might drive a decent amount of traffic, but an advertising banner or page sponsorship has the potential of driving a much higher stream of customers to the website.  Also from a blogger’s perspective a partnership could easily consist of agreeing to be a guest blogger on another person’s blog in order to appeal to the other person’s followers and build credibility for your blog.

·         Is there a link to my blog on a website that I am unaware of and is it driving good traffic? In some cases, there are links to your blog on webpages that you didn’t initiate the partnership.  It is good to review these sites and the navigation trends on your site to determine if the viewers are sticking to the content presented on your site.  For instance, there may be a link to your page on a ‘dog grooming’ fan page, but when you review the referring traffic to your ‘web analytics’ themed blog you find that the bounce rate of this traffic is very high.  In this case, your link is on a site that is not relevant to content on your blog or website. Your options are to either request that the link be removed or add a bit of relevance to your site on the topic.  Depending on the topic, it may not make sense to adapt to a theme like ‘dog grooming.’ Of course there is another option.  You can do nothing as long as you are not paying for the traffic coming to your blog site.

Keywords: Reviewing the keywords that are bringing organic traffic to your blog can be very helpful when developing content for the blog.  With Google Analytics you are able to drill down and watch the overall activity based on the search engine keywords that were used to find your website.   You can use this information to tweak content so your blog ranks in higher positions at the search engines.  But blogger Bill Bolmeier also reminds us that keywords are an attribute of your content and “if you over do it, the search engines will whack you by ranking you lower if you try and trick out your site with tons of keywords, which is known as keyword stuffing.”

In-Page Analytics:  One of the features that I really appreciate about Google Analytics is the ability to review a visual assessment of how users interact with your blog pages. Through this tool, you can determine if your blog has a user-friendly design that allows your readers to easily find the content they are looking for within your website.  The tool also helps determine whether your readers are being motivated to achieve certain actions like commenting on a blog post, ‘liking’ a specific post, clicking on an image or video within a page, or sharing the content through a social media channel icon on your page. Another useful aspect of In-page Analytics is the “Avg. Time on Page” stat that will demonstrate how engaging the content on a particular page is to the viewers. 

Final thoughts... “How could Google Analytics metrics have helped ?”
Usually, I end every blog post with a section on how the topic of the day could have helped me in the past.  But in this case, the content speaks for itself by describing how to use stats presented in Google Analytics like “New vs. Returning Visitors”, “Language”, “Referring Sites”, “Keywords” and “In-Page Analytics” to make this blog more successful.  To quote you data hounds out there, the answers are all in the data. It is up to us to use it wisely.

Give me your feedback and let me know, "how using Google Analytics metrics may have helped" you in the past.

Google Adwords or Facebook Ads - Choose Wisely

Before you prepare to launch an online advertising campaign using Google Adwords or on Facebook, ask yourself one question.  “What do I hope to accomplish by advertising using Facebook or Google Adwords?”  Your answer will determine which tool is best for you.  Both platforms have the potential to produce great results for a company that understands the right way to use them.

If you don’t remember anything else, set this to memory: If the goal of your online campaign is to sell something, Google Adwords is your tool of choice.  If you wish to build brand awareness and visibility for a particular product or service, then Facebook ads may be the better too for you.  This is because, consumers on Facebook are generally not in the mindset to purchase anything when presented an ad. 

According to blogger Alexis Thompson, Google AdWords responds to the demands of consumers as the platform allows businesses to advertise to people who are already looking for a specific product or service.  In most cases, customers have become familiar with a particular product or business and are looking for it by name.  Google’s ad system serves up ads that will likely match their query with high probability.  Then they are likely to click on it.  Consumers primarily use search engines because they are looking for something in particular.  To ensure that they see your ad, all you have to do is meet that demand by bidding on the right keywords.

According to data from Google, AdWords serves an average of almost 30 billion impressions per day - 29,741,270,774 impressions per day to be exact.

 

On the flipside, Facebook ads are presented within the environment of the social media site.  During a consumers’ session on Facebook, they are likely to be presented ads for products or services that they aren’t exactly looking for but could be interested in.  This hopefully leads to a position within the consideration set.  As Thompson describes, in this case the demand is created by the ad instead of the consumer unlike with Google Adwords.

According to statistics presented by Cara Pring, “89 percent of marketing agencies said they would use Facebook to advertise for their clients in 2012 – either by purchasing ads, creating pages, or other methods of engagement.”

Despite the major difference of how you plan to use advertising through Google Adwords or on Facebook, the usability of the two platforms is actually quite easy and accommodating.  Both platforms come with capabilities including:

·         Geographic targeting:  Both allow advertisers to pinpoint down to the city level the target audience they hope to reach.

·         Start and stop any time:  Begin a new campaign and suspend the advertising activity at your convenience.

·         Pay per click:  Pay for performance when the ad drives traffic to a specific destination.  (Executives love this!)

·         Real time analytics

·         Set a daily budget.  No need to worry about exceeding a set marketing budget.

·         Direct traffic to website or landing page

 

Final thoughts... “How could Google Adwords or Facebook ads have helped?”

Since Facebook ads rely on the data provided in their members’ profiles to target the ads we create, I immediately thought about affinity marketing.  There is a great deal of data that a marketer can use to pinpoint a specific target including hometown, gender, university attended, employer, and interests.  Let’s say that my company wanted to market to the female alumni of a certain university, but only those who live in Texas.  Facebook ads would allow us to present ads to this distinct target audience.  There is some real potential in using Facebook ads to engage and build awareness among affinity groups.  It could be an easy alternative to purchasing a direct mail list.

Give me your feedback and let me know, “how could Google Adwords or Facebook ads have helped” you with a past marketing strategy.

Content vs. Conversation: No clear heir to the throne

In the real world, you may have a variety of things to say about life, business or practically any topic you can think of. But just because you have the ability to say it, it doesn’t mean that anyone is listening, wants to discuss your topic further or is willing to share it with others. It doesn’t mean that anyone will be engaged enough to interact with you on this topic. In a competitive online marketing environment, the same can be said in the long debate over what is more important, content versus conversation.

I can’t go as far as either Michael Greenberg or Catherine Novak who offer up compelling stories as to why they believe content or conversation is king.  I wouldn’t even say that there is a definite line to the throne for either.  It’s more of a democracy where the two complement each other.  But I do think that conversation has a little more weight in the marketing arena, especially when there is competition involved.  Ultimately, what‘s the benefit of having great content about your product or service if you can’t get your target audience to tune in and pay attention to it?  As Novak notes, we need a good “conversation starter.”  Often it takes time to stimulate a conversation into an engaging relationship.

Let’s examine the impact of conversation on content in the perspective of two rival retail electricity companies.  There’s not much differentiation within the product category, as both sell a commodity product - electricity.  Both have a great deal of similar content and boast how their customers can have a low price and help save the environment with a 100% wind electricity plan.  The messaging and content could easily be attributed to either company.  But their “conversation” tactics are how the two companies differ.

Company A has all their content about their renewable energy products and relatively low pricing on their website.  There’s even a page on their website that provides energy conservation tips and other helpful hints.  But this company has not embraced the full potential of social media. Consumers are finding the website through paid and organic search.  But there is no conversation with customers until they begin the purchase process on the website.  That’s if they actually make it there.

Company B has all the same type of content on their website.  But instead of a static page with conservation tips and hints, this group delivers the information through their blog on the website.  The company has also adopted a robust social media strategy that includes:

• Daily insightful keyword specific posts on Facebook and Twitter that link back to relevant content on the website or in blog posts; and
• Monitoring social media posts for special phrases like “high electricity bills” in order to insert themselves into the consumers’ conversations. 

Both actions engage and direct consumers to the website for more information on how they can save on electricity costs by switching to Company B.  In this case, the conversation with the consumer starts even before the customer gets to the website and leads to well-informed conversions.  Plus, these conversations are likely being shared to others who will be led to the content on the website.

Once the customer makes it to Company B’s website, the conversation is validated by the credible content.  Thus bringing us back to my comment earlier about the two (content and conversation) complementing each other.  The conversation aspect of social media provides fast, real time interaction with users.  It works to engage with them and whets their appetite for the more detailed content on the company’s website.  From my perspective, it takes both to achieve true success. In a world with cluttered media and less differentiation among some product categories, a good conversation can lead to great sales numbers.

Sarah Kessler wrote in a blog post,

"If social media continues to become focused on real-time conversations around professional content, it could become a more powerful distribution channel than print, television, radio or static web pages ever were."

 

Final thoughts... “How could conversations leading to content have helped?”

I am currently in the retail electricity business in Texas where there are over 40 retail electricity providers competing for roughly 5 million homes in Texas.  Many of which have very similar messaging.  In many cases, you can fill in the following blank with the name of at least half of the providers:  “(Electricity Company name here) offers Texas consumers affordable power and a variety of plans to meet your needs. “  But it is the way they initiate conversations with consumers that will stimulate the greatest success.  To answer the question, I’m living in this world now, striving to follow the example of Company B.

Give me your feedback and let me know, “how could conversations leading to content have helped” you with a past marketing strategy.