Web Analytics Implementation

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.

The web analytics implementation process can often be a long and grueling process which includes numerous resources and environments. When you’re trying to focus on items such as accurately trying to integrate with a CMS or ecommerce solutions, forgetting the little things can often occur. Here are a few items worth double checking before you declare the implementation 100% complete (Download Checklist – PDF):

Local IP Exclusion: Have you blocked local IP addresses as well as your vendors’ so that their activity doesn’t get included within your results? If your site receives tens of millions of page views monthly this won’t have a huge impact, however for websites that receive only 1,000-10,000 page views, this will skew the data.
Sub Domains: Not all analytics solutions automatically track activity on a sub domain of a website, so make sure you either have activated the sub domain in the code or in the analytics admin area. Here’s how you do it in Google Analytics:

_uacct = “ACCOUNT NUMBER HERE”;
_udn = “DOMAIN HERE”;
urchinTracker();
Email/Download Links: Contact forms and newsletter email registrations aren’t the only way to measure the number of leads and conversions. Don’t forget to apply appropriate tracking for links to emails and downloadable collateral. Here’s an example of how to track a link in Omniture’s SiteCatalyst:

a
onclick=”s_linkType=’o'; s_linkTrackVars=’s_events’; s_linkTrackEvents=’event#’; s_linkName=’Contact us email@domain.com’; s_events=’event#’; s_lnk=s_co(this); s_gs(reportsuite);” href=”mailto:email@domain.com”>email@domain.com
/a
Development vs. Production: During the publish from the development to the production environment make sure you’re referencing the correct attributes and files on the production server.
Paid Search: Analytics providers often don’t automatically attribute Paid keyword referrals to PPC unless there is an admin setting turned on or the referring URLs have appropriate parameters appended to them. Forgetting to setup Paid Search tracking can result in the inflation of natural/organic search referrals.
Tagging Error Pages: Error pages are part of your site as well and a great way to determine if there are any navigational issues throughout the website, so make sure they’re tagged.
Internal search: Want to know what users are looking for on your website? Without being able to identify the internal search queries, this task becomes increasingly difficult. EpikOne has a useful post on how to track internal search queries using Google Analytics.
QA and Testing: This should be an obvious one not to forget but after a long implementation, QA and Testing often don’t get integrated into the implementation plan.