GROWMAP.COM » Web Analytics http://www.growmap.com MAP Your Path to GROW Your Business Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:47:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Don’t Make ANY Changes Based on Web Analytics Until You READ THIS FIRST http://www.growmap.com/analytics/ http://www.growmap.com/analytics/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:40:16 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=1041

The importance of understanding analytics BEFORE making any changes to your business based on the data you see there can not be overstated. Online businesses could seriously damage their sales and wrongly assume they were down due to the economy if they don’t realize Web Analytics data is NOT black and white. What it APPEARS to show and what is REALLY true are rarely the same.

Mike Tekula touched on this yesterday in his post SEO & Analytics: Four Useful Ways to Assess Your Organic Traffic:

We often have a pretty simple and straightforward way of looking at a given metric.  Example: “a high bounce rate is bad.” But a single metric by itself rarely tell us everything we need to know (see #1 above).  A higher bounce rate can actually reflect a positive change.

If your aim is to bring in users who are more likely to be engaged by your content, then an increasing bounce rate combined with an increasing number of pages viewed per visit may be positive.  The traffic source (read: keyword) users arrive through plays an important role here.

We MUST stop viewing any metric as “good” or “bad” because in almost every case “it depends”. If traffic goes up – but it all immediately bounces because it comes from a source too general and the visitors simply aren’t interested in your site, more traffic can be bad.

Even more dangerous is making assumptions about the true sources of your conversions. Most Web Analytics programs including Google Analytics attribute sales to the LAST CLICK. Even if you already knew that do you know what it means when applied to actions you may take based on analytics data? Here are some examples:

You never see any sales generated by your most general keywords. ASSUMPTION: They don’t generate sales so they aren’t important or you want to eliminate ppc spending on them. This action could seriously impact your sales because:

  • Conversions generated by returning buyers may be attributed to Direct if they type in your Web site URL
  • The buyer may have FOUND YOU using the general keyword, found what they wanted, and then returned to your site by searching on a specific keyword phrase. Without the original general keyword they may never have found you but the specific search phrase will be credited with the sale!
  • Buyers searching on one PC and then buying using a different PC will not be tracked to the original visit
  • Buyers may leave to read reviews or check price comparison sites before buying. If you have links from those other sites the sale will be attributed to them instead of the original visit.

Hopefully you’re still with me. (If this isn’t clear do please comment below and ask any questions you may have.) If that isn’t confusing enough, there are real life examples that explain why some merchants believe their affiliate commissions are too high because affiliate statistics don’t match Google Analytics.

When you start driving traffic from Social Networking sites you may see greatly increased traffic, much higher bounce rates, and a decline in overall conversion rates. One way to determine whether a particular metric is a “good” or “bad” indicator is to segment the traffic (i.e., look at traffic from different sources separately). All traffic does not convert equally so you want to look at conversion rates for each source.

Even then there is a serious problem with making decisions based on last click only analytics data. There is really no way to know what is driving your sales unless you track every click – and that is something that most commonly used analytics programs including Google Analytics – simply do not do.

The real solution is to find a way to track every click. In the meantime be VERY CAUTIOUS about making ANY change – whether that is to your advertising, affiliate programs, shipping costs, traffic generation methods, or anything else!

You should record every change you make in a simple change management plan. This can be a spreadsheet, a notebook or any other method of recording data. Write down the day you make each change and specifically what you changed. Whenever possible only change ONE THING at a time.

One other point: changes you make today do not immediately affect your sales. There is a residual effect due to return visitors. Do NOT make the mistake of assuming that if you stop advertising today and sales are fine tomorrow that you made a good decision. Your marketing efforts from last week will still be bringing in sales.

The residual time is generally 10-14 days for low to medium cost products and services. Even if what you sell is VERY inexpensive and you would think most buyers would make immediate decisions there is STILL a delay of 10-14 days before changes you make today start generating sales and a similar time before what you do today stops generating sales.

Products and services that are more expensive and require complex decisions or configuring will have a longer residual time. When you start making changes if at all possible wait until this residual time has passed and you can evaluate the true effects of your last change before you make another.

Applying Web Analytics is a complex skill. Don’t expect to be an expert immediately; it take time to increase what you know. If you haven’t already signed up we recommend the free ten part Mastering Web Analytics ecourse. If you’re new to analytics start there. If you already have some experience you may find the resources below useful.

Questions and comments are ALWAYS encouraged. We want to hear from YOU!

WEB ANALYTICS EXPERTS on TWITTER:

See also a Twitter Channel for Web Analytics Professionals

UPCOMING WEB ANALYTICS EVENTS:

WEB ANALYTICS BLOGS:

The following list starts with those who write for the general public and gets progressively more challenging to understand. The first three are the easiest to follow. Those at the end are more relevant for very large companies (Fortune 500 and major corporations). The comments below may save you some unnecessary clicks.

WEB ANALYTICS ARTICLES:

]]> http://www.growmap.com/analytics/feed/ 32 Why Affiliate Site Sales Do NOT Match Google Analytics Conversions http://www.growmap.com/affiliate-tracking/ http://www.growmap.com/affiliate-tracking/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:28:04 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=1043

Here is a real life example of the differences in how various Web Analytics programs track conversions and why affiliate marketing programs claim so many more sales than ecommerce stores will ever see in Google Analytics or other Web Analytics programs.
If you are a merchant considering dropping your affiliate programs because you feel you are being unfairly charged – or an affiliate who wonders why a merchant doesn’t appreciate their affiliates – this could be why!
My favorite gift store shared this concern:
The problem showing ShareaSale sales is the same one we have been seeing.  A sale would come in and the referrer would be a google search for flasks.  Now we’re # 1 in google for flasks so I’m reasonably certain they found us there.  However, Share A Sale (or one of the other affiliate sites) would claim credit for it.”

With Google Analytics attributing those referrals and sales to a different source is it any wonder many would wonder why affiliate programs were claiming credit for them? It makes perfect sense because of the way analytics and affiliate sites track conversions.

When I checked into the disparity in conversions between various statistics sources I pulled data for a one week period and discovered:

  • ShareASale claimed credit for 11 sales generating $569.92 in revenue and for which they charged $71.86 in commissions
  • Yahoo Analytics for those dates shows 135 visits, 2 sales, and revenue of $54.66 from ShareASale
  • Google Analytics for the same dates showed only 159 visits from any ShareASale affiliate and no sales.

You can imagine how both online stores using affiliate programs and those promoting affiliate products would feel seeing such an enormous difference in visits, revenue and sales. You can also imagine that an online retailer could believe they were paying affiliate programs far more than they deserved IF you didn’t know the difference between how Web Analytics programs and affiliate programs track sales.

Once you analyze how each of these track visits and conversions it makes more sense:

  1. An affiliate program claims credit for a sale if the person making a purchase has a cookie from one of their affiliates any time within the time your account uses. Most are 60 days. If a buyer clicked on an affiliate link a month ago, decided to buy today and does a Google search for that item the affiliate program counts that as an affiliate sale.
  2. If your buyer searches at Google and arrives at your site from a ppc ad or an organic search analytics gives credit to that source. Google Analytics gives credit for the conversion to the source of the last visit.
  3. Yahoo Analytics apparently does not track exactly the same way Google Analytics does. Yahoo Analytics credited a couple of the sales I tracked to the affiliate instead of the last visit source. I’d have to know more about how Yahoo Analytics works to determine what the difference is. If anyone reading this knows more about this please leave a comment. Feel free to add a link to any related resources that might clarify how YA tracks conversions.
  4. This is the cause of the difference each analytics package gives as the conversion source generated for the same sale.

Let us think this through thoroughly. We now know that Yahoo Analytics and Google Analytics do NOT track conversions the same way and it is obvious why affiliate programs claim credit for far more sales than other analytics programs will ever attribute to them.

The big question is this: Did the customer buy BECAUSE:

  1. An affiliate recommended you previously and the buyer recognized your business name?
  2. They only knew about your product because of the affiliate?
  3. They were just searching for flasks today and it had absolutely nothing to do with the affiliate?

If there is any way to truly know which of the above REALLY generated the sale – and more importantly – whether you would lose that sale without either your ppc ads or your affiliates – I don’t know what it is. What do YOU think?

We recommend the free ten part Mastering Google Analytics ecourse because it explains in plain English what Web analytics and particularly Google Analytics can do for you. Even those already using it will learn about new features they’ve never noticed.

WEB ANALYTICS EXPERTS on TWITTER:

See also a Twitter Channel for Web Analytics Professionals

UPCOMING WEB ANALYTICS EVENTS:

WEB ANALYTICS BLOGS:

The following list starts with those who write for the general public and gets progressively more challenging to understand. The first three are the easiest to follow. Those at the end are more relevant for very large companies (Fortune 500 and major corporations). The comments below may save you some unnecessary clicks.

WEB ANALYTICS ARTICLES:

AFFILIATE PROGRAM RECOMMENDATIONS:

AFFILIATE MARKETING for AFFILIATES:

AFFILIATE MARKETING FOR MERCHANTS:

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]]> http://www.growmap.com/affiliate-tracking/feed/ 41 REVIEW: Mastering Google Analytics – Easy to Understand FREE eCourse http://www.growmap.com/analytics-ecourse/ http://www.growmap.com/analytics-ecourse/#comments Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:49:03 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=1031

NOTE: The site mentioned in this post is not working and we know of no way to obtain copies of this book at this time. We have kept this post should that situation every change.


How Web Analytics works is incredibly complex so it is important to get a basic understanding of what it is and how it works BEFORE you start making decisions based on what you see. Since Google Analytics is free it is the most commonly used Web Analytics program.  I encourage anyone reading this far to keep reading because we’ll be explaining analytics so that anyone can understand it.

The first thing I recommend is signing up for the completely free Mastering Google Analytics ecourse offered by ValueGuardian. The link takes you to a sales page that explains what is in their complete book which we’ll be reviewing in the next few days. Simply leave that page or wait for an offer page to appear. Enter your first name and a valid email address and they’ll send you the ten part free email course.

The reason we’re recommending their course is that they explain Analytics in a way that anyone can understand. The lessons come every other day so they won’t overwhelm even the most busy.

Here is what the free email ecourse covers:

  • Lesson 1: Why Web Analytics is important; Why unique visitors is more important than page views
  • Lesson 2: Standard Metrics – A metric is simply anything you can measure. This lesson covers some major metrics used in analytics programs such as visits, page views, referring sources, etc.
  • Lesson 3: How to set up Goals in Google Analytics
  • Lesson 4: Monetizing Your Goals
  • Lesson 5: Conversion Funnels – An easy explanation of an advanced way to increase conversions
  • Lesson 6: Explains the original and “new” versions of Google’s tracking code
  • Lesson 7: Benchmarking – This is new to even me and I’ve taken high dollar Google Analytics training courses. It gives you an advantage I used to have when I could access data for dozens of ecommerce stores: a way to see if changes are affecting only you, you and your competitors, or your niche and any other you want to compare. This is important information especially during economically challenging times.
  • Lesson 8: Top Ten Reasons to track MORE than page views. Why? Because they don’t tell you whether your marketing efforts are working; they don’t even measure unique visitors or real traffic!
  • Lesson 9: What if you could do more: what else can you do with Google Analytics?
  • Lesson 10: Further Study: there is so much more to learn.

When you finish the free ecourse you’ll only have a basic understanding of what Web Analytics can do for you and why you need to know more. The lessons give you a good big picture view of Google Analytics and what it can do for you in plain English.

WHAT THIS COURSE DOESN’T DO

You will NOT be an expert on analytics or know how to install and set up Google Analytics. You will know more about how to use it. To really get the most out of Google Analytics you’ll need either training or to buy the book.

I contacted the author and specifically asked to review their course and book because I already know how complicated Google Analytics is.

I completed the one hour Free Google Analytics Webinar offered by ROI Revolution and also their extensive Google Analytics Webinars which they apparently no longer offer. When I was done I advised the client who paid for it to hire them to properly configure Google Analytics because of the complexity of his business.

Back then there was no Mastering Google Analytics book to guide us. I’ll be reviewing the entire book in one or more upcoming posts so you’ll know exactly what it covers and what it doesn’t. I can tell you that the free ecourse is representative of how the book is written. If you understand those emails you WILL understand the book too.

If you have a blog, Web site, or online store you really do need to know more about Web Analytics so you may as well take advantage of the free Mastering Google Analytics ecourse.

DISCLAIMER: The links for this course contain an affiliate link. If you decide to buy the book we may earn a commission. That is NOT why we’re recommending the course or the book. If you decide you like the book you may wish to recommend it and if you are recommending something anyway you may as well join the affiliate program and use an affiliate link. Just be clear in your own heart WHY you’re doing it.

I know that some object to bloggers using affiliate links because they feel the potential income may color their judgement. There are enough products and services of quality to recommend that ethical bloggers do not have to resort to recommending anything just for the money. If you disagree feel free to leave a comment.

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