The awesome group over at LunaMetrics, has put together an awesome conference for anyone who is interested in getting a better understanding of Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer. I can easily think of 5 great reasons why you should sign up now!

1. It will be a small conference setting, so you will get individual attention with the experts. This kind of attention is very rare at most conferences.
2. The cost of hiring a consultant to fix the types of problems you are having with your Google Analytics is much more expensive than the $285 fee.
3. You’ll get a better understanding on how your visitors are interacting with your website, and what you can learn from it to improve your site’s usability and conversion rate.
4. Because there is a smaller crowd, you’ll also have a great opportunity to network with other industry experts and Google Analytics enthusiasts. Instead of having to spend $300/hour with a consultant when you have a question, you’ll be able to IM you new GA friend!
5. I’m not being paid (and wasn’t even asked) to promote this conference. I an genuinely this enthusiastic about this opportunity LunaMetrics is presenting you with.

What are you waiting for? Space is limited, so get moving! Here are some links to helpful information about the conference:

Conference Schedule
Conference Information
Conference Announcement
Register!

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

5 Reasons You Should Attend “Getting Ahead with Google Analytics”

When you hand an analytics report to your manager do you get that deer-in-the-headlights
stare?

Trust me, your reports don’t need to be complicated to be useful.

Most managers would prefer a bulleted list of the 5 things they need to do next.
Put all of your statistical jargon and pretty charts on another page.

1. Statistical jargon will confuse most managers and executives.

These people aren’t statisticians or computer geeks. They don’t care that
the frequency distribution was skewed .064 to the left.

2. Pretty charts are a crutch for people who don’t know how to convey actionable
insights.

If you show your manager a chart with no explanation, you’re just wasting time.
If you can’t read the chart and provide an action to take, there’s little chance
your manager is going to invest enough time to figure it out.

3. Above all, make sure the information is actionable.

In general, your manager isn’t going to read your analysis in bed with cookies and
milk. You’re not writing for entertainment, so leave out the fluff.
If a sentence isn’t telling me what to do, then it’s fluff. Delete!

Now, what should you put in your analysis?

Look for information that will help your manager do any of the items below:

1. Save money

2. Increase Traffic

3. Increase Conversion Rate

4. Increase Advertising ROI

5. Decrease Bounce Rate

Writing reports for managers is actually very simple. This is your chance
to tell THEM what to do. Use it!

- Jason Green

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

Web Analytics Reports Even Management Can Understand

I am desperately trying to potty train Sam, my 3 year old son. I know (and I think he knows) the emotional and rational benefits of making deposits in the potty instead of the diaper. Rationally, it will keep the mess away from him and he will get huge rewards. Emotionally, it will make him feel more accomplished and it will thrill his parents. Even though he is aware of these benefits, every time we get near the potty he screams and freaks out. If we actually get him on the throne, he just sits for a minute and promptly declares “I’m done”.

A few weeks ago, during one of Sam‘s freak out sessions, I realized that potty training a toddler is the same as convincing a company to USE their web analytics. I believe that most companies see the benefits. Rationally, analytics can help them to identify “the mess” and, by fixing it, get huge rewards. Emotionally, they can see success points and thrill their CEO. But, like Sam, some companies freak out when they think of using the data or they look at it for a minute, pull a few flat stats and declare “I‘m done”.

Because these situations are similar, I’ve pulled a few tips commonly used for potty training to help get those companies who aren’t quite there yet to start using their analytics.

Establish A Routine

Every two hours I force Sam to sit on the potty. Setting a schedule should help him to gain a level of comfort. If your company has a web analytics tool in place but no one looks at the data, why have the tool at all? It is important to look at the data weekly. Yes, there is a ton of “stuff” there and it can be overwhelming. But, by regularly looking at the charts and stats, you will eventually gain a comfort level with the definitions and data contained in the reports. Once you are comfortable and understand what you see, you will understand the power behind the numbers.

Read A Few Blogs

I’m not sure if there are blogs on potty training… maybe I should start one! But there are tons of blogs on website analysis. Reading these blogs will help you figure out what you need to track and how to track it.

Set Goals

Our goal is to have Sam completely potty trained within the next 6 months. It is not a totally aggressive goal but it gives us something to work towards. If you do not have defined website goals, how will you know if you are succeeding? Define site goals and use your analytics to measure success.

Rewards & Positive Reinforcement

Ahh… the payoff! When Sam does the deed we give him sweet tarts, stickers and potty songs as rewards. If you use your analytics you will be able to figure out what is working and what isn’t working. So, you can fix the bad and cash in on the good. This will increase your site’s usability, generate more conversions (sales, membership registrations, e-mail sign ups, etc.) and, ultimately, decrease cost while increasing revenue. Your boss will be singing you songs of praise and the reward will, hopefully, be more money in your paycheck. (So you‘ll be able to buy tons of stickers and sweet tarts!)

Be Patient

In my opinion, analyzing your web stats is not difficult, it is overwhelming. You can get lost in the data. Don’t get frustrated just keep trying. Eventually you will be able to see the important trends and it will all make sense. That is what we tell Sam and, day by day, he gets closer and closer to the potty.

Convince your company that analytics are important. If you can’t do it now, follow the data for a while and prove the benefit to them. And, in the interim, please feel free to pass on potty training advice. Diapers and pull ups are getting way too expensive!

This was a guest post contributed by Shareen Jordan. Professionally, Shareen has grown up in the internet industry. Over the past decade (and then some), she has worked with most facets of the web, including: development, project management, marketing, testing and analytics. Her diverse background helps her to understand both the possibilities and limitations of online space. As a result, she is able to enhance a user’s experience and increase conversions based on web site statistics, best practices and testing.

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

Don’t Flush Your Analytics

When Google announced ga.js the first time, the web analytics community was buzzing. Yesterday, Google announced the ga.js code again, for real, in real life. Actually, all of the features aren’t available yet (Event tracking?). We’ll be waiting anxiously for the final, actual, real announcement that ga.js is available along with all of its glorious features.

This time, Google has at least made a planned attempt at documentation. And let me first say, this is a great improvement over previous documentation. ga.js will be much better to work with. However, there are still many functions that are incredibly vague or misleading.

Basically, Google is telling everyone to update to this new code as soon as possible. The implementation, at the most basic levels, is very similar to urchin.js. You just put the standard code on all of your pages.

However, if you really want to get the biggest bang out of ga.js, you either need to study the documentation, or when you have a need, you search the analytics blogs for the answer.

This is the reason I started GASetup.com.

Instead of bookmarking all of the web analytics blogs, groups, and sites, then searching each of those sites for your answer, you could use GASetup.com.

GASetup.com has a search box that pulls from all of the major Google Analytics blogs, as well as the Google and Yahoo Analytics groups. I search the web every day for the best analytics web sites, and I hope that combining these sites into a single search box is helpful to you.

- Jason Green

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

Google Analytics, ga.js Code Announced (again)!

Why do we have web analytics? Why do we have reports?

Well it’s not so we can stare at the pretty charts to see what obscure metric we
can come up with next.

The reason for reports is to invoke actions!

We don’t really care that 500 people visited our site today. We want to see
how today compares to yesterday, last week, last month, or last year. It doesn’t
end there. Just knowing these things won’t improve your business. If
you see that you had 1200 visits yesterday, you need to be looking for the reason.
Are your pay-per-click campaigns running? Did you get banned from a search
engine for using black-hat techniques?

OR

Was yesterday a fluke?

When we look at an entire week of analytics, here’s what we see:

Sun: 250 visits

Mon: 340 visits

Tues: 400 visits

Wed:(yesterday) 1200 visits

Thurs: (today) 500 visits

Upon further inspection, we see that we were Stumbled Upon. For those who
aren’t privy, StumbleUpon is basically a toolbar that you install. You can
press a “Stumble” button and it takes you to a random site that someone else has
“Stumbled”.

Generally, when a site gets Stumbled, you’ll receive a flood of traffic for about
one day.

***Warning*** StumbleUpon has the potential to send an enormous amount of traffic to your site. However, it is not possible to do that by only submitting your work. In fact, that will probably backfire on you.

That’s all that happened on Wednesday. Fortunately, this anomaly requires
no further action.

However, if Wed had 120 visits, rather than 1200, we would have a bigger issue.

We would go through the same bunch of questions to find the cause. Perhaps
someone paused our AdWords campaign and forgot to reactivate it?

The ultimate message of this post is that we shouldn’t look at Wednesday and say,
“whoopdideedoo, we had more visits that day.” We need to ask, “WHY.”
Then, we need to ask, “So what do we do about it?”

- Jason Green

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

Why Do Reports Exist?