Since the beginning of the internet, a continuing battle ranges between marketing and IT. Marketing wants more tags on websites, while IT has pushed back, saying too much tagging will slow down websites and make us sad.

But one day, tag management came along and has provided marketing and IT with a quick, easy solution to coexist in peace.

Tag management is applying one tag to every page on your website. This tag then references a management console where you can apply multiple tags to your site pages without slowing down, breaking, or bothering IT (and no one wants to bother IT). The console allows you to create tags and rules for specific pages on your site with the click of a button. This solution speeds up marketing initiatives and empowers your agency. (Not to mention keeps IT happy.)

Do I need tag management?

This question is answered simply by taking an inventory of your current and future tagging and marketing initiatives. Do you have one or more of the following tags on your site?

• Google Analytics
• A/B testing tools
• AdWords or other pay per click management tags
• Ad serving floodlight or spotlight tags
• Affiliate marketing tags
• Remarketing tags
• Site survey tags

You probably do. The likelihood of you adding, moving, or removing these tags for specific advertising initiatives is even higher. Tag management lets you add tags to specific pages and gives user permissions to add and remove tags when necessary, without hurting website performance or impact the IT team. The system promotes playing well with others, which is why our analytics team recommends it!

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Bounce rate is a very common metric to measure engagement on your website. It’s defined as someone who entered your site, saw one page, and then left.

Google Analytics has recently released a new “Adjusted Bounce Rate” tracking feature. Does your site or page need this feature? Let’s find out…

Blogs, sites with widgets, and sites with flash or video embeded are notorious for having high bounce rates. This is simply because the content the user was searching for is all on one page and once they received the satisfaction from the page the user left. This goes into the analytics platform as 100% bounce rate. Such a high bounce rate is very problematic for the website owner because we really don’t know if the user consumed everything they needed to consume in the time they were on the website.

This is where the new Adjusted Bounce Rate tracking provides an answer. By placing a piece of code on your page, you can set a timer once each user reaches your page to see if they spent the minimal time on your website. You decide that ideal minimal time a user should stay on your site in the analytics code.

Here are some suggestions for site element times:

Blog:
Time yourself reading halfway through the blog page and use this time. Why? By the time they read halfway through your blog article, they probably have an idea of what site they are on and have seen your logo.

Video:
Give at least 15 seconds for this timer to make sure users at least start the video on your page. Why? Sometimes videos take a moment to buffer.

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This question has come up frequently as of late because many clients use Google Analytics for their business. In fact, according to Wikipedia, 57% of the top 10,000 most popular websites use Google Analytics. Many companies are quite accustomed to the features of Google Analytics and they cannot help but wonder if the Google Analytics Premium is for them.

To help answer this question, let us define the Free or Standard version. Google Analytics Standard is for websites that produce fewer than 5 million pageviews per month. If your organization has an active Google AdWords account, then your account gets unlimited monthly pageviews. Google Analytics Premium is advertised as an Enterprise Solution.

Benefits of Google Analytics Premium:

• More processing power without limits
• Advanced analysis
• More custom variables
• 24/7 customer support

Below is a table of condensed differences between the Standard and Premium version at this point in time. This list may change with version upgrades.

The Google advertising team hit the nail on the head by stating Google Analytics Premium is an Enterprise solution. Small and mid-size organizations do not produce enough data to meet Google Premium data processing standards. Small and mid-size organizations are not always utilizing custom variables. Small and mid-size businesses are not necessarily implementing any attribution modeling as their marketing channels tend to be small in volume and channels.

The only item that Google Analytics Premium can offer non-enterprise businesses is the 24/7 support. For the most part, all the information to solve issues with Google Analytics is freely available on the internet if you “Google it.” Spend some time searching, you will find your solution. Everyone can agree that Google Analytics Premium is really cool, but if your website is not processing near the Premium data limits, the cost benefit analysis may lead you to stay with the Standard version.

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I will come out and say it, I hate dashboards! Today’s business Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are changing so rapidly that dashboards become obsolete very quickly. Dashboards provide end users with summary metrics that are supposed to lead to accurate decisions. However, miscommunication between the dashboard creator and end user could cause inaccurate decisions. Dashboards miss the communication that is so critical between the analyst and the decision maker.

Web analytics platforms come with easy to configure dashboards that are created in seconds (example above). So what? An amateur looking at a dashboard without full knowledge of how data is collected and summarized is more dangerous to an organization than a monkey with a grenade.  Dashboard end users are getting a summary of data; they are unable to see the statistical significance behind the numbers needed to make business decisions. In most cases, you need multiple views of data to conclude a decision you are making that will affect your business.

As an example, the image on the left shows that conversion rates are going down. Anyone looking at the image will state that February conversions are lower than January. However, users do not realize that it takes 3 months to make a trend. In March, conversions increased and are now trending upwards. Analysts understand that data has seasonality, caveats, and needs to reach statistical significance before it can be used in analysis.

Data You Can Use
Organizations need to work with analysts who can turn data into action. Analysts make reports easy to understand, visualize, and provide clear outcomes for decision makers. If you leave decision makers trying to guess, they will steer towards not making any decisions. Thus, lots of wasted time and effort in the organization. Analytic insights are about knowledge that leads to fact-based decisions.

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What is the best report in Google Analytics? This is the million dollar question with a very simple answer: It’s the report or reports that tie back to your bottom line. Google Analytics, when instrumented properly on your site, collects valuable information about your site visitors. However, the reports are not pre-equipped to measure your business goals. That is why it is important to have a web analytics partner.

A web analytics partner will help your team translate your business goals into Google Analytics KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). They will set up the system not only to capture your goals but valuable information around your goals. Web analytics insight comes from a full 360 degree view of what is happening around your goals. For example, if you are a large online retailer you need to understand how many pages people view, and if they review specs and features of products before they proceed to the shopping cart and check out. Having reports that help your business decision makers understand the steps users take in order to purchase, provides your team with better decisions.

Great Google Analytics reports provide your team with information about how well you’re doing. These reports help your team gain knowledge about your customers. You are spending money to get people to your website, why not get the most information about them while they are there? The best Google Analytics reports tell you how well you’re doing and provide knowledge that you can use to test or optimize your site!

Every organization wants to achieve success in digital marketing. There is nothing better than reporting a 300% increase in conversion. In order to get there, you need to take the necessary steps. It starts with an approach towards web analytics that is designed for success.

Let me first define web analytics: it’s the collaboration between analysts, web developers and management on the collection of web data for the purpose of analysis and optimization.

Having experience in implementing some of the best web analytics platforms such as Omniture, Google Analytics, WebTrends and Coremetrics, I know that no out-of-box solution fits your exact business model. All web analytics platforms will start collecting data when implemented, but that data isn’t necessarily reflective of your company’s business goals or online KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). This is why web analytics is a collaboration between multiple teams, to measure the KPIs that matter to your business. It is valuable to have a consulting partner who is able to suggest the best way to obtain the KPIs that matter to your company’s bottom line.

Once you start obtaining data from your site, it is time to analyze and make a hypothesis. It is important to collect the most fact-based data from your web analytics platform, otherwise your analysis and hypothesis are going to fail. This is by far the most important job of the web developer and the analyst, making sure your data is accurate. No analytics platform data will match a competitor’s system, as they collect data differently. However, conversions should match 97%-99% accuracy of your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system or database.

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In “marketer” terms, attribution modeling is determining which marketing channels contributed to the overall goal of a campaign, and how those channels work together to produce the optimal marketing mix for whatever your website or campaign goals are. Marketers have typically used last click attribution to determine vehicle effectiveness without considering what other customer touchpoints contributed to that goal. In “simple” terms, you may be able to contribute an online purchase directly to a Paid Search ad, but do you know what prompted that search or what other channels were exposed to that visitor? Did they first read about you in their favorite magazine, then search for your company name in Google to learn more, but then come back to your site by clicking on a paid ad with a specific promotion? Until now, it has been very hard for marketers to track that path.

Recently, Google Analytics launched a new tool set for being able to determine which channels contribute to an online purchase, email signup, or pdf download. The image below shows a path in their new reporting structure and an example of what value each attribution path brings to this particular website.

On the heels of this new release in Google Analytics, Forrester has recently come out with a new study on user behavior as it relates to the path of an online buyer. Some key highlights of the study, which included purchase data from 15 retailers during the 2010 holiday season:

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• Nearly 1/2 of purchases followed multiple exposures to web marketing efforts.
• Search and Email proved to be the most effective tactics in driving sales, but Display and Affiliate Marketing were also crucial in early steps of the research phase.

A couple weeks ago we talked about utilizing the Google +1 button to stand out amongst your competitors, and this week’s post highlights some extra benefits wrapped in with using the Google +1, along with all the other social share buttons (like, tweet, stumble, linkedin, etc.)

Google’s released some new features in Analytics  and Webmaster Tools that allow you to better track the social activity on your website.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster tools now has a “+1 Metrics” section that shows the amount of people that +1 your pages, and how +1’s affect your Click Through Rate (CTR). The new tool shows the CTR of people with +1 annotations and CTR without +1 annotations. So you can see if those little +1 buttons are really improving the traffic to your site.

They have also added an activity report (number of  +1’s) and an Audience report (demographic and geographic data of your  +1’s). The Audience report can be extremely beneficial, as you can see EXACTLY what demographic you are attracting to your site and market towards them effectively and accordingly.

Google Analytics

A HUGE addition to Google Analytics is the brand spanking new Social Plugin Tracking tool. This tool allows you to track +1’s, Facebook likes, Facebook sends, Tweets, and various other social actions users take while on your site.

The Social Plugin Tracking tool also generates 3 different reports:

Social Engagement — Tracks behavior changes for visits from social plugins (time on site, pageviews, bounce rate, etc..)

Social Actions – Tracks the number of social actions users take while on site (share buttons, likes, +1’s, etc..)

Social Pages – Compares the number of pages to the number of social interactions each page is receiving

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For those of you in charge of your website analytics, you may have noticed that “new version/old version” tab up in the top right hand corner of Google Analytics. Maybe you’ve clicked it, maybe you haven’t. I know myself, when Google announces a new release to their software platforms, it can be a little daunting – the data you you are used to seeing may have been moved, there are new metrics in place, more info to report on – I know, it can be overwhelming. When AdWords was released (2 versions ago) and forced us all to get used to their new interface, I went into panic/hysteria mode…. that being said, I thought I’d write this week’s post on some of the new features of Google Analytics, and hopefully decrease that anxiety that comes over clicking “new version.”

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• While you can no longer see metrics right from Account Home, new links have made it easier to jump to different reports in each of your profiles. For example, from Account Home you can jump right into your Conversions tab.
• You now have the ability to create multiple Dashboards that contain any set of graphs. These can now be set by hierarchy, department, interest, or any rule to allow different departments in your organizations to view what is important to them.
• If you’re looking for some of your typical reports, the names have changed. Network Properties and browser capabilities is now under Technology, Top Content is now Pages, Goals are now Conversions, and Visit Duration and Page depth are now Engagement.
• The UI has changed a bit – you are now going to see somewhat of a cleaner look and feel, though it doesn’t differ much from the previous version.

The team at Google Analytics provides weekly videos, answering questions from users around the world. This week’s post was 36 minutes long ?!?! and knowing how valuable your time is, we thought we’d watch the video for you and report back on the latest news. You’re welcome.

• What is the best way to track social media referrals? Through an advanced, custom segment in Google Analytics. Re-writing your URLs to track these referrals can actually hinder your data, not help it. Also use custom alerts to proactively know right away when major increases from social media channels occur.

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