Last month I attended a couple of Google Analytics classes and they explained that one of the most underused areas of Google Analytics is Intelligence. It was introduced in 2009 and yet many claim to not know about it or just don’t use it.

Intelligence is so smart that it keeps track of events behind the scenes, and when something unexpected happens it sets up an alert to let you know, “Hey, something occurred that you might want to investigate, even though you’ve already played 72 holes so far this week.” These alerts are on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. So when you don’t have time (should have used my 9 iron) to go in a view all the reports in Google Analytics, a quick glance in Intelligence can give you snapshot of any anomalies that have occurred. (more…)

Ardala Evans

Ardala is a Project Manager working with the client Services Team at Vertical Measures. She supervises the completion of the monthly tasks for the clients. She also works directly with clients to provide reporting on their projects and ranking reviews.

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Recently, I’ve been delving deeper and deeper into the world of analytics for online marketing, measuring everything I can about traffic, social media, search rankings, and more. In my excitement, I even wrote posts about how to measure your online marketing strategy and blog growth using specific tools and spreadsheets to monitor key numbers in your online campaign. Using these methods, you can see your site’s overall growth in key areas. (more…)

Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is a Web Strategist and author of the Vertical Measure’s Guide Blogging for Business.

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In my previous blog posts on Google Analytics, I have tried to show some of the simple ways that business owners can use the information available to see what is most relevant to them. How they can calculate their ROI on internet marketing, use site search to better understand their customers ,and evaluate the performance of their website content to make sales .

Unfortunately, all of these previous articles have relied heavily on tables and number crunching to understand your website, which perhaps isn’t everyone’s favorite subject. These rows upon rows of numbers and percentages may be scaring you away from getting highly actionable data to improve your website and marketing efforts.

However, there is a solution, and its name is ‘Motion Charts!’ Motion Charts are a very powerful tool within Google Analytics but unfortunately are pretty well hidden, so t hey don’t get the attention they deserve.

I admit that I don’t use Motion Charts as much as I should do, and tend to just look at the numbers, as this is quickest and easiest for me personally. However, because of the way the charts display their information, even if you are happy with tables of numbers, they can help make new connections between data and spark new ideas for improvements for a website. When people in the office suddenly became interested in what I was doing when they saw Motion Charts on my screen, I knew it was something powerful that could help many business owners.

Like I say, Motion Charts are pretty well hidden inside Analytics, and as the majority of people work their way through the left hand navigation through Visitors, Traffic Sources and Content, so they never even know they are there. Motion Charts aren’t so much a report, but instead a way to display the data. On any report that you are looking at you are given the option at the top of the page to ‘Visualize.’

Once you click to visualize you will be taken to a new screen that looks something like the following. I think you’ll agree it’s already more interesting than endless rows of numbers…

To improve this visualization further, click Play or drag the time slide-bar and you can really see the data come to life!

But what does this all mean and why is it useful? The graph is actually showing you 5 different pieces of data at any one time, all of which are completely customizable. In addition to the time slider and the x and y axis, you also have the color and size of each dot, which in the above example represent bounce rates and new visits respectively.

Being able to see all five pieces of data in one glance can help you see different connections and easily compare one dot to the next in terms of size, color and location on the graph.

So long as you set up the motion charts correctly and know what you’re looking at, these charts can take a lot of the pain out of understanding your Analytics. Depending on what each chart displays, you may be able to quickly diagnose problem areas or keywords of your website without ever having to see a table of numbers.

However, the key is in setting up the motion charts to display the information that is most important, which can be an art in itself. Obviously every website and business is different, but the following are some of the motion chart set ups that I find most useful, as well as what they show and how you can use this information:

Keywords

X axis; Pages / Visit

Y axis; Visits

Color: Goal Conversion Rate

Size; Bounce Rate

With this motion chart you should be easily able to see which keywords are performing best and worst for your website in terms of bringing sales and visitors to your pages. Small dots will have the lowest bounce rates and are likely to see more pages per visit, so should be located to the right hand side of the graph. Cold blue dots represent those keywords that are not converting to goal completions, whereas the warmer red the dots will be your higher converting, and most valuable keywords. Combine this information with each dots’ vertical placement on the graph and you can get a very good idea of how much good traffic leading to sales each keyword brings.

Top Content

X axis; Unique Pageviews

Y axis; Pageviews

Color: $ Index

Size; Bounce Rate

Much like the previous motion chart, this set up will show you which pieces of content are leading to conversions, and which have high bounce rates, obviously not enticing visitors to spend time on your website. The most viewed pieces of content will in the top right corner of the chart, and less popular content will be in the lower left hand corner. Again, warm and small dots are good, and large blue circles will signal underperforming content. If your business is able to get many small red dots in the top right hand corner of the chart, you know you are onto a very good thing!

All Traffic Sources

X axis; Pages/Visit

Y axis; Visits

Color: Per Visit Goal Value

Size; Bounce Rate

To keep everything logical, I try to leave the colors as representing the value of visitors and the size of each circle being the bounce rate for each motion chart, so you should again be able to find your most value traffic by small red dots on the graph. However, the flexibility of motion charts means that you are by no means restricted to this, I just prefer to keep things organized in this way, as this is the information I find most relevant in improving website conversions.

In addition to this, the Y axis in this example is most important as it shows the number of visits, i.e. the sample size, for the data being represented. A small red dot at the bottom of the graph may show just one visit that converted, but a small red dot at the top of the graph represents high numbers of very good traffic. As with everything in Google Analytics, the information that’s most important and what to look at for each website changes greatly for every business. However, with the visualize button and motion charts, even if you aren’t the best with tables and numbers, you should be able to grasp a better understanding of your traffic and what provides the most value to your bottom line. You can then use this information to know which activities to increase, and which areas or keywords to focus on to maximize profits.

James Constable

James is a Campaign Manager at Vertical Measures, looking at client’s Internet Marketing from a strategic viewpoint to get them the best possible results for their business needs and budget. His blog posts revolve around strategy, analytics and keyword selection.

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Tim Ash: One of the most common problems is visual clutter. Landing pages are dresses up with large graphics, Flash animations, and pictures of people. Usually these page elements have nothing to do with the conversion goal on the page. Visual design needs to be very restrained and minimalist in order to subtly focus the eye on the right parts of the page. It should not be a crowded bazaar with everything competing for your attention. In other words, everything can’t be equally important. It is your job as a marketer to help me prioritize.

Tim:  If you have low traffic to a landing page, you can’t do any testing at all in a reasonable time frame, so your only choice is to do a best-practices scrub of your page (via expert consulting like our Express Review service). If you have at least ten conversion actions per day, you can at least do a/b split testing. If you have over fifty conversions per day you can consider some multivariate testing. But even if you have a lot of traffic, multivariate is not inherently a better way to go. We often start with a "radical split test" to create very different versions of a landing page. Often the split test produces the big conversion improvement because it is competing against a bad page, and because we address all known problems in our alternative designs. The messaging of the resulting winning page is then fine tuned through multivariate testing. This allows us to get the right headlines, copy, and calls to action for the intended audience.

Tim: Keeping your promises is very important. It is not so much about having the right keywords, but rather about making a seamless experience from the keyword, to the search result, and through to the landing page. If I am typing in "best digital camera", I expect a landing page that has comparative information about different models and am in the research stage of the process. So do not try to sell me something and tell me you have the lowest price and free shipping. I have not chosen the product yet, so I don’t care about those things. If my search involves a product model name, then I am further in the buying process and may care about those things. So you basically have to properly manage my expectations and put yourself in my frame of mind to determine the appropriate content for the landing page.

Elise: What inspired you to write Landing Page Optimization?

Elise Redlin-Cook

Elise is the Content & Marketing Manager at Vertical Measures, an internet marketing company in sunny Arizona providing services ranging from content marketing, to social media marketing, link building, and advanced SEO. She’s fully immersed herself into the world of content marketing and content strategy and is the managing editor of this blog.

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This week’s interview features Jeff Quipp, the founder and CEO of Search Engine People Inc (SEP), one of Canada’s largest search marketing firms. Jeff is an online marketing strategist, and has over eight years of search engine marketing experience.He is a frequent speaker at internet marketing panels and conferences worldwide and is recognized as one of the pre-eminent authorities on search and social media marketing. As you may know, this month’s Vertical Measures Webinar is centered around Analytics and Conversions and I thought it perfectly fitting that I speak with an expert such as Jeff, to get some straight answers on the subject.

Elise Redlin-Cook:  Hi Jeff! As you can tell, I’m really anxious to get to the bottom of this. So, What is the most common mistake you see on landing pages? 

Jeff Quipp: The most common mistake would have to be no call to action. It’s such a simple thing to implement, and can have such a tremendous impact, yet its overlooked a large percentage of the time.

Jeff: Absolutely! The highest converting keywords are those nearer the end of the buying cycle, meaning more specific terms. Someone searching for “cars” as an example, is very early in the buying cycle, if at all. They haven’t yet decided on a make or model, and in fact may not even be looking to purchase at all, so we’re not sure of their intent. On the other hand, someone looking for 2010 Nissan X-Terra Dallas is much more likely to be looking to buy.  If they take it one step further and query “purchase 2010 Nissan X-Terra Dallas”, then we’re very sure their intent is to purchase a Nissan X-Terra. So typically it can be said that the more specific the search query, the further along in the buying cycle the searcher is. In addition, words like ‘purchase‘ or ‘buy’ are buying signals, and generally mean that the searcher is at the all important ‘take action’ phase.

Jeff: I do. We’ve developed (and continue to build out) our own proprietary solution (which we call AdTracks) that permits us to track the effectiveness of all client media spends (online or offline), and compare them against one another. Clients can make it as generic or as granular as they wish. They can track individual Yellow Pages ads, newspaper ads, and even Google keywords and the like if they wish, or campaign level performance such as newspaper in general, radio in general, television in general. AdTracks tracks phone calls, form submissions, emails, and more, all in one convenient interface. AdTracks even gives credit to those media that assist with a sale (eg. a television ad that drives people to search for it via Google).

Elise Redlin-Cook

Elise is the Content & Marketing Manager at Vertical Measures, an internet marketing company in sunny Arizona providing services ranging from content marketing, to social media marketing, link building, and advanced SEO. She’s fully immersed herself into the world of content marketing and content strategy and is the managing editor of this blog.

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