Quantcast
You are here: Home / Archives for Web Analytics Implementation

Debugging Google Analytics code (II): A Tutorial Video on Fiddler’s Inspector and AutoResponder functions

February 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Fiddler is a tool that many web developers are common with. It is my favourite tool for debugging existing tracking code and testing new code.  This video shows two useful functions for this purpose: Inspectors and the AutoResponder. 

Fiddler is a free Web debugging tool. You can download it at fiddler2.com. Fiddler logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the internet. That means you can view just about everything that is exchanged in the background while you’re browsing the web.

What makes Fiddler so great

Apart from the functions shown in the video below, I love Fiddler because of at least one more reason: It is not dependent on any browser. Tools like Firebug, Chrome’s Web Developer Tools or the Chrome Extension “Google Analytics Debugger” (see the first article on how to use these tools) all just work within one or the other browser. But Web Analytics code is usually JavaScript code. And JavaScript works differently from browser to browser. That does not mean that Fiddler should be seen an alternative to Firebug. Both tools have their purposes and go very well together.

The following video shows how to use Fiddler for Web Analytics purposes. You will learn:

  • How to test existing code with Fiddler’s “Inspectors” feature. The use case will be the test whether a click on an application button really triggers the desired Virtual Pageview call
  • How to try out new or different tracking code without having to upload anything to your server (no IT needed!).

 


Filed Under: Errorlytics, Google Analytics, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Implementation, web analytics tools

Tracking on-site campaigns with Google Analytics: Part 2 – The pros and cons of Event Tracking

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Welcome to part 2 of this series on how to track on-site campaigns, for example, teasers on your homepage. After taking a deeper look at In-Page Analytics in part 1, we are now going to dive into the world of Event Tracking and Virtual Pageviews and offer you a script that will track all the clicks on your homepage by default.

One of the best things about In-Page Analytics was that you don’t need to add any code to your page or alter your links. With Event Tracking or Virtual Pageviews though, there is no way around some additional coding.

Event Tracking or Virtual Pageviews?
So what’s the difference between Event Tracking and Virtual Pageviews again? To make a long story short: With Virtual Pageviews, you can track Pageviews for “virtual” URLs (you can decide their name), even though there is no real pageview. For example, anytime someone clicks a link on a teaser, you can tell Google Analytics to record a virtual pageview like “/teaser-click-to-url-x”.

Almost the same happens with Event Tracking. To stick with our example, when somebody clicks on a teaser link, you can tell Google Analytics to track this as an Event. The major difference is that Event Tracking doesn’t create fictional Pageviews and thus doesn’t inflate your Pageview-based data. Imagine that every click on every teaser on your homepage was tracked as an additional Pageview. That would skew your data a lot because it also has a major impact on other data like Bounce and Exit Rate, Pageviews per Visit etc…

I prefer Event Tracking
That is the main reason why I do not use Virtual Pageviews for this purpose. Be aware though that Event Tracking can also skew your bounce rate and Time on Site/Page metrics, for example when you use it to track outbound links (usually bounces). Luckily, Google Analytics has recently published a way to work around this with “Non-Interaction Events”.

In the full article, you will find advice on how to properly implement Event Tracking for on-site campaigns, including a javascript that automatically tracks all the teaser links on your homepage or category pages, and we will analyze 7 advantages and 5 disadvantages of Event Tracking as a means for tracking on-site campaigns.


Filed Under: analytics, Google Analytics, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Implementation, web analytics tools, Website Optimization

Tracking on-site campaigns with Google Analytics: Part 1 – The pros and cons of In-Page Analytics

October 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Your homepage is usually your most important landing page. But it is not an easy task to find out how the page’s teasers or “on-site” or “internal campaigns” are performing, especially for content-heavy websites. In the first part of this series on how to track on-site campaigns, we will look at some general issues and then show you 5 pros and 9 cons for Google Analytics’ “In-Page Analytics”.

I work for a company that has a homepage clogged with teasers and links. It looks like this:

Image of e-fellows.net website

 

The teasers change once a week, so every week there’s the question: How well did each teaser perform?

If it were teaser links in an email campaign, the solution would be easy: Just tag all the links with your campaign parameters, and make sure your email service provider offers click tracking.

Why shouldn’t I use regular campaign tags?

Some people also use these normal campaign tags (utm_source etc.) in their on-site campaigns. That is not recommended because you lose the original source of the visitor as soon as she clicks on an on-site campaign link: The original source gets overridden by the parameters of that link.

Paid solutions: Mouse Movement and Click Heat Maps

So what is the solution? You can of course resort to full-scale click-tracking tools like CrazyEgg or PicNet Mouse Eye Tracking (both are paid solutions, PicNet offers a free trial on some pages). Be aware though that this means putting a lot more Javascript on your page which often needs IT buy-in (often hard to get), can impact the page loading time, and you have to use yet another tool. I also think it’s a little obtrusive to track each and every click and mouse movement of your visitor even if they are not (easily) individually identifiable.

Analyzing teaser performance with Google Analytics

You’re not lost if you just want to stick to Google Analytics. In my opinion, there are several proven methods to analyze on-site teaser performance:

  1. In-Page Analytics (a.k.a. “Website Overlay”)
  2. Event Tracking or Virtual Pageviews (actually two methods, but they work similarly)
  3. URL parameters that specify the referring link (like http:\\www.mydomain.com/article?ref=home)

All have their pros and cons. To spoil the show, I use In-Page Analytics for some purposes and Event Tracking for others. I used URL parameters for a while, but almost entirely stopped doing so because it makes reporting a lot more complex and causes other issues. But depending on your goals and your resources, all three solutions may be viable options for you.

In this series on how to track on-site campaigns, we’ll look at all three methods in detail. This first post will focus on In-Page Analytics – a powerful and often neglected tool that is available out of the box and can help tremendously on most websites, although it also has many downsides especially when you have dynamic content, outbound links or links to subdomains. To read the full article, visit “Tracking on-site campaigns” with Google Analytics in Web Analytics World’s guides pages.”

Filed Under: analytics, Google Analytics, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Implementation, web analytics tools, Website Optimization

Web Analytics Implementation Consultants – Tips from the Inside

February 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment
A couple of weeks ago I’ve written about Web Analytics – Getting Help from External Resources or Not? And about the implementation consultants (either from the web analytics vendor themselves or the external consultant) having done these implementations many times before. This time I’ll talk about the advantage of having an independent external implementation consultant rather than one from the vendor.

So why is that?

The web analytics vendor will usually try to sell you his tool AND a couple of consulting hours on top of that. But do you really need them or should you rather seek help from an independent expert?

Something to think about:

  • Do you want/need an individual solution?
  • Do you want someone who takes care of you, takes his time and pays attention to your problems?
  • Do you want someone who is capable of both talking to your technical department and to the marketing?
Do you think the consultant from your web analytics vendor could provide all that?

In reality (and I’ve seen it many times), here is what you will most likely get:

  • Not enough ressources – they usually don’t have the ressources to help all their clients properly
  • A standard solution for your business model (one size fits all, and they’ve done the same thing before for your competitor)
  • A standard training – hopefully at least with your own data
  • Expensive support (compare their prices to the price of an independent consultant!)
Ideally, an independent consultant should get you a more indivualized solution and support – at least he will offer you a selection from a range of tools he is experienced in.

But is the independent implementation consultant so much better? Not necessarily so – here is some advise to get a good one:

Concerning his experience you should ask him the following questions:

  • What kind of tools has he implemented already and how often?
  • Does he know about the advantages and disadvantages of the differnt tools (don’t heasitate to question him on that!)?
  • Does he know the difference between Google Analytics and the chosen web analytics tool (he should be able to answer this question)
  • Has he done a project for one of your competitors before? (that is a difficult one)
You should look out for references concerning projects he handled before and whether he is accredited for the tool he offers you.

To offer you an insight into the quality of his work he should disclose his project plan and his working methods. In general, he should start with an analysis of your website, your business model and also with a workshop to define your goals and requirements. You should take a close look at what kind of documents he provides and see what he says when you want him to coach one or more of your employees during the conception and inplementation phase.

Because they are independent they know the tools (usually more than one), they know the advantages and disadvantages, and they are not bound in their praise by any loyalty to the company that has designed the tool and pays their wages.

There are a lot of real experts out there. Get one of them to save you some time and money (and it will, even if you think the daily rate is high, take less time.)

Matthias PostelMatthias Postel is an expert for web analytics and conversion optimization. He looks back on more than 15 years of experience in the online business. Matthias Postel is also founder and managing director of the iCompetence GmbH in Hamburg, Germany.
Follow iCompetence on Twitter (@iCompetence)

Filed Under: Web Analytics, Web Analytics Implementation

Read this now…or miss the deadline

August 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment
We’ll get to the deadline at the end of the post.
In the meantime, let me explain why Manoj was kind enough to invite me to write a bit about the latest edition of Semphonic’s Implementation Toolkit for SiteCatalyst. Specifically, Manoj wanted to know how the toolkit goes beyond documentation provided by Omniture. It is a good question.
To begin with, I think there is a philosophical difference between our take on this subject and that of Omniture because we are a vendor neutral web analytics consultancy. As such, we look at implementation issues from a practitioner’s point of view. Some of you may be familiar with some of our white papers about Omniture, as well as my work with CMSWatch to know that this independence strongly influences how we view web analytics practice. So we tend to “call ‘em , like we see ‘em. ” For instance, that you’ll need to use Omniture’s cross tabulation functions to achieve the type of management reporting you were used to having through HBX Active Segments; or we carefully describe the syntax for each function you’ll need for capturing Flash, Ajax and DHTML and provide instruction on how to set up variables.

We concentrate on other practitioner concerns, such as walking through the items you’ll need to have Omniture enable. We find that folks sometime forget about this until the last minute… for instance enabling visits and visitor metrics for Commerce variables, enabling pathing on prop variables other than Pages, specifying the traffic and conversion variables you would like to see sub-related or co-related.

Quality assurance is a big focus of ours in the Implementation Toolkit…again this is something we’ve seen from our time “in the trenches” that people tend to rush through; hence, we’ve made our 20 point Quality Assurance check list available…the same one we use ourselves .

The other thing we concentrated on in writing the Toolkit is to make the content as easy to understand as possible…even for non-implementers. In fact, we have gotten some great feedback from web analytics project managers who have said that the Toolkit has given them the background they need to manage their technical resources when doing an implementation.

So, that’s basically how I see the Toolkit as being different than Omniture documentation. Of course, you might go the route Stephane Hamel suggested in his review of the Toolkit, and use the Toolkit in tandem with Omniture’s Fusion Playbook.

Either way, take a look for yourself at: http://www.semphonic.com/analytics/impguides.asp

I should mention that we’re running a contest right now to give away a copy of the Implementation Toolkit. Here’s the deal:

You email us your most challenging Omniture implementation or HBX Migration question. We’ll select the toughest question and answer it at X Change <http://www.semphonic.com/conf/index.asp> , and send you a copy of the Toolkit as a reward for having the hardest, most difficult question. You don’t need to attend X Change to win, but it would be nice, right?

And for those of you who ask a question that isn’t the toughest…we’ll answer them too, and send you our response directly.
Don’t forget to provide your name and organization name with your email. Wewon’t use this information for any reason other than to contact you if you won and to answer the question you submit. Remember we can only answer one question per person, so make it a good one!
Send your entries to: analytics@semphonic.com

All entries are due by 11pm PST, Wednesday August 6.
And, if you’d like to purchase the Toolkit straightaway and receive a 10% discount, just go to http://www.semphonic.com/analytics/impguides.asp and use Manoj’s promo code: manoj1008
Filed Under: HBX, Omniture, SiteCatalyst, Web Analytics Implementation

Benchmarking the Web – Bizak

May 7, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Launched last week, Bizak is a new tool that both computes the profitability of internet startups and creates industry benchmarks with that data for comparative analysis.
Founded by TOKiBiz, Inc. and based in Boston, Bizak enables entrepreneurs to calculate the profitability of their business according to website analytics and key performance indicators. With visitors, revenues, and costs data, Bizak automatically computes revenues per visitor (RPV), costs per visitor (CPV), earnings, earnings per visitor (EPV) and valuation. Each one of these calculations can then be compared to other startups and industry benchmarks. Additional information on the benchmarks computed can be found on their analysis page.
Bizak anonymously aggregates this data to create benchmarks according to industry, business type and revenue source. Startups (and investors) can then compare their performance to not only other companies in their field but also to any combination of the three. For example, you can view the average benchmarks for a startup in the retail industry, who operates a wiki and makes money off of Google Adsense. You can change any or all of these parameters and get a new benchmark for every line of data.

Comparative Analysis

Bizak is currently in beta while startups contribute and compute their data to create statistically significant benchmarks. During this time startups can register with Bizak to compute their benchmarks. Once enough data has been aggregated then the comparative analysis and visual comparison charts will be launched.

Once the comparative analysis is launched investors will also be invited to join Bizak. Investors use Bizak to discover new Web 2.0 investment opportunities. Investors will be the only subscribers who have the ability to view the analytics for specific companies and also compare those numbers to industry benchmarks. Startups can only view their own data and benchmarks – they cannot view data for other companies.

Internet Statistics
From its first week online Bizak has accumulated an initial amount of statistics on the revenue models of internet startups. Of those who have contributed projects/websites to Bizak 43.75% of them use Google Adsense as their primary revenue source. In comparison, none (0%) use Yahoo Search Marketing or Microsoft Search Advertising. 16.6% use in house advertising, 12.5% rely on product sales for revenues, 8.33% affiliate marketing, 8.33% service or consulting feeds and 8% utilize a subscription model.
Filed Under: entrepreneurs, internet marketing, investors, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Implementation

Web Analytics Metrics: Travel Sites

September 10, 2007 By Leave a Comment
In this multi-part series we are going to analyze numerous websites across different categories to help our readers better understand what metrics they should be measuring for their own website. Metrics cannot be reported without a proper web analytics implementation therefore it’s important to be as thorough as possible because it’s better to over collect data than under collect.

Today we are going to be looking at metrics to track for travel websites and for this post we have selected 2 travel sites which we are going to analyze. The first is a travel portal for visitors in British Columbia Canada, BCTravelGuide.ca and the second is a website dedicated to Caribbean vacations, Sandals.com.

BCTravelGuide.ca

Instantly we noticed that BC Travel Guide is categorized by Regions and Activities in British Columbia therefore it is important for this site’s owners to be able to understand the popularity of these various categorical segments. Metrics needed to be tracked for each segment include visits to each individual region/activity, the amount of time spent per region/activity and the referring sources. Measuring these metrics will help this website’s owner better understand which sections visitors find most engaging allowing them to capitalize on the popularity with additional offerings or advertising. Furthermore these metrics also help site owners understand the areas visitors find least interesting and are therefore are performing the poorest.

BC Travel Guide also offers 2 calls to actions located on every page which allows visitors to list their BC Travel business for free in BC Travel Guide’s directory. A few different metrics can be measured here including a comparison between the 2 calls to actions as to which attracts the most clickthroughs. Secondly, it is very important to measure the clicks down to actual conversions (in this case the number of free listings created). I would recommend creating a funnel which measures All Site Visitors >> Clicks to “Free Business Listings” >> Listing Creations.

BC Travel Guide also has an “Advertise” call to action and similar to “Free Listings” this site should measure the number of clicks to this call to action and the number of real requests to advertise (emails, form completions). This site also has a great opportunity to experiment with design and location of their “Advertise” call to action with a simple A/B Test.

Finally we noticed that the last step of this site’s navigational process is to land on a listing for a given Region/Activity combination. For end users who have their businesses listed in BC Travel Guide I am sure it is important for them to know how many visitors are actually looking at their listing as well as how many are clicking through to their website.

Sandals.com


From the menu above from Sandals.com you can see that they offer their visitors many different options to book vacations. By implementing the ability to track the performance of each site section Sandals.com will have the ability to comparatively see the popularity of each section. Additionally in their analytics suite they could run a page popularity report for an entire year and quickly pick out seasonality trends for each site section.

Many travel websites allow visitors to check rates and availability for their destinations. Each element of the ‘Availability’ form on the left is an opportunity for Sandals.com to better understand their visitors. The web analytics should be setup so that users have the ability to segment the reports by all destinations and resorts as well as check in/check out dates. Why is this important? Imagine that through analytics reports analysis that you are able to figure out that visitors enjoy booking Caribbean cruises from May to June. By leveraging this wealth of information Sandals.com could offer more information on cruises or even discounts during this time, making visitors’ site experience extremely remarkable.

The next metrics are both related to conversions on Sandals.com. The first is Sandals.com’s toll free number. Although phone numbers can be difficult to track using web analytics, the leads that they generate can be captured by a CRM and be imported back into your analytics suite. If your toll free number is unique only to your website, then the number of leads generated by the number can be attributed directly back to the w
ebsite. The site’s second conversion is a “7 days Sweepstakes.” Not only should you capture the number of people who actually entered the email address, but the email address themselves for promotional purposes later on.

The last couple of metrics that I’d like to point out for Sandals.com to measure are: the number of log-ins (total and by users), time between log-ins and activity after login. Creating a community is an excellent way to offer targeted content to your visitors as well as remembering their preferences. However if you are noticing a very low number of log-ins then you should consider offering more content outside of the login or more perks for creating an account.

Filed Under: KPI, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Implementation