Barrack Obama’s Campaign Used the Same Optimization Methods that You Can Access for Free
It’s easy in the small to medium enterprise world to look at huge companies and think they have access to special tools, people, or metrics that cause them to ‘win’.
While some large companies do have custom software, the advances in technology is lowering the metrics gap between large and small companies.
Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics are both free programs that any company can use to make data driven decision. Guess what? Obama’s campaign used these same free tools to determine what combinations lead to higher donations and other visitor engagement methods.
Here is a video (it’s hand shot by an engineer at the talk, so it’s not completely steady) where someone who worked on Obama’s campaign looks at the software and the metrics used to win an election.
4 Hours of Video that Will Increase Your Conversion Rates
Google has quite a few excellent YouTube channels that are relegated to the back corner of YouTube in favor of short, non-informational clips. If you ever want to see all of Google’s YouTube Channels, you can subscribe to the bgTheory YouTube channel, and look through our subscriptions as we subscribe to all the official Google channels.
There are four excellent videos that range from 30 minutes to more than an hour, which contain excellent tips on creating, testing, and analyzing landing pages to increase conversions. Learn form both experts in the field to Google employees about possible ways to increase conversion rates.
The first video is by Tim Ash. If you like the video and would like to learn more, Tim, Brian Massey, and myself are conducting a training session at Pubcon in November.
Enjoy the videos.
Connect Your Google Analytics Goals to Your AdWords Conversion Tracking
Google very quietly rolled out a new feature – use your Google analytics goals as conversions in your AdWords accounts.
It’s been live for at least a week; and very straightforward to use.
Navigate to the conversion tracking screen (in either UI); and there’s a link for ‘Link your Analytics goals and transaction’.
However, when you go to link your AdWords and Analytics goals together, you can only use Goal 1 from your Google Analytics account:
Hopefully, this will be fixed sometime in the future.
Goal Confusion
I looked for a while; but as much as I could have – so if you know the answer or the link please post it in the comments.
Google Analytics treats a goal as the last site entrance, and is attributed to the day of the click.
Google AdWords treats as goal as the last AdWords ad clicked, and the goal as the date of the click (not the date of the conversion).
Therefore, is linking these two together just going to create more goal confusion – or will some nice pattern work itself out?
Google has a help file on connecting AdWords and Analytics; however, on that page the link to the help file “Read about how AdWords Conversion Tracking works with Google Analytics once the two are linked.” goes to a 404, not found page; hence the unanswered questions above.
Future?
I might have to set up another couple profiles and just set up single goals to see how well this works.
Since Analytics is a 1st party cookie, and AdWords is a 3rd party cookie – the analytics would be a better tracking mechanism once the details for how a conversion is actually counted are determined. The business rules laid out by Google will determine if this is actually useful for all.
I’d love to hear comments, links to other articles where this is discussed.
The most important question you can ask your team before installing analytics is…
Many companies pick an analytics program and install it without first taking a step back and asking a very important question. In fact, this single question can make the difference between your analytics system making you money or being a time waster.
Look at everyone on your team (SEO, PPC, designer, CEO, etc) and ask them one simple question:
What do you need to know to get your job done?
Make them list out their needs. The designer will want to know things like browser types, browser resolutions, etc. Your marketing people will need to know conversions by traffic sources and keywords. The SEO is looking at referral traffic information. Let everyone list out their needs.
Then look at the list and ask each of them, “What is it worth to our company to pay for this information?”
If you have a team of one, and you use wordpress to run your company, knowing which versions of flash are being used is probably not information that’s worth paying to obtain. If you spend $10k a month on PPC and SEO outsourcing, you might not want to pay $15,000 a month for analytics data.
Armed with your list of critical information – interview the potential vendors
When you interview the vendors, do not forget the most critical information to your company. The vendors will show you interesting features that you may have not considered. Every time you see it, don’t be overly impressed and think that you can’t live without that data.
For every feature you did not consider, ask yourself, “Will we use this to make changes to our marketing or website?” If yes, then follow up with “how much will knowing that information affect our bottom line?”
If a new feature costs an additional $5,000 per month, and it’s ‘interesting information’ but not ‘actionable information’, then do you really want to pay for it?
Don’t Get Buried in Data
Any analytics program can bury you in data. You could see what browser resolutions are being used in Singapore when the user has java installed but does not have flash installed. If you receive one visitor a month from Singapore, is that useful data? Is the data even useful to begin with if you had ten thousands a month from Singapore?
There are times you will look at analytics and say, “That’s interesting.”
Interesting is not always actionable. Too many ‘interestings’ will cause you to lose an entire afternoon without making a single decision.
Free Isn’t Always Best – But the Price is Nice
Google analytics is a good analytics program; but it doesn’t have the data everyone needs.
If you need real time stats about your website because you make changes to your homepage throughout the day to direct visitors to the hottest selling items – Google analytics can’t help you.
If you need data warehousing capabilities so you can segment traffic sources from any timeframe based upon their conversion funnels – Google Analytics can’t help.
If you do not have an analytics program, Google analytics is a great place. For many companies, Google Analytics has everything they need. However, you won’t know that until you ask your team first.
Conclusion
Start with your team – they should know what they need to make decisions.
Ask the most important analytics questions that exist:
- What do you need to know to get your job done?
- Is that information actionable?
- What is it worth to our company to pay for this information?
Then ask the vendor, can you provide that information, and how much will it cost.
Making decisions based upon solid analytics data can increase your profits dramatically.
Paying for data you don’t use is a drain on your bank account.
Analytics is just a tool. The way the tool is used is what matters.
When you hire good talent, make sure they have the data they need to help your company succeed.
How to Create Google Analytics Profiles that Lead to Profitable Actions
Google Analytics is a powerful analysis program if set up properly. Inputting the tracking code on Google Analytics does not mean you’re done. It means you’ve taken the first step, but you are no where near tracking the full amount of data you will need to take proper action on all of your data.
Google Analytics captures data in profiles. A profile is just a set of statistics about your website based upon what you’ve told the program to capture. For instance, you could capture all visitors in one profile, but just your Yahoo PPC buy in another one, and just your email blasts in a third profile.
By segmenting data into multiple profiles, you can now fully analyze how just YSM or your email blasts visitors interact, view, and convert on your website.
Planning, creating, and using segmented profile data will help give you actionable insight to increasing profits.
Installing Analytics and Creating New Profiles
First, here’s a quick set of reference materials that will help you install Google analytics and profiles. If you already understand profiles, feel free to skip to the next section. Note, if you do not have the goal copy plug-in, scan this section and install that plug-in for Firefox.
Open and install your Google Analytics account: Tutorial (Note, breeze (i.e. flash-like) presentation).
Create your goals in your first profile. Tutorial (Note, breeze (i.e. flash-like) presentation). In addition, if you have a multi-step conversion goal, institute goal funnels:
In addition, if you have site search, track it. Tutorial (Note, breeze (i.e. flash-like) presentation).
Use Firefox, and install the Goal Copy Plug-in. (Note: There are some SEO plug-ins that cause conflicts with Goal Copy. If you are having issues using this plug-in, disable a couple SEO plugins and try again. Since you are not going to use Goal Copy all the time, once you’ve finished inputting your goals into different profiles, you can disable this plug-in and restart the others).
Create a new profile. Tutorial (Note, breeze (i.e. flash-like) presentation). Jump to slide 19 to learn more about profiles.
Navigate to the goal section of your new profile and use the Goal Copy extension to paste in your new goals. While you’re here, also input your site search parameters.
Creating Profile Filters to Segment Data
This is where the fun begins.
Google has a help file on creating filters here. If this is your first filter, keep that window open and learn where to input filters. Once you get to the filter input screen, you’ll want to open this other link: actual PPC keyword data. Between these two sites, you’ll see how to create an advanced filter. With this first filter, you can just copy and paste the information which makes it pretty easy.
Next, once you’ve learned how to create a filter, it’s time to revisit what you want to track. This is my favorite profile list (each bullet is it’s own profile, I’ll have one profile that is all PPC traffic, and then another profile that just examines AdWords).
- All PPC
- Google AdWords
- Yahoo Search Marketing
- Microsoft adCenter
- All Emails
- Email confirmation for Seminars
- Seminar follow-up and resources email
- Any other mass email sent
- All banners together
- One profile for each large banner buy
- Social traffic (I use cli.gs with URL builder below)
- Etc…
- Any other specific types of traffic you’d like to track
I find that being able to look at all PPC or all emails is useful to get high level information of their effectiveness. Then, you can drill down into just looking at one just one PPC type (or just one email blast type).
Creating Multiple Profiles
Creating all of these profile types is not that difficult, it’s time consuming. First, you’ll want to follow the steps above to create that many profile types, copy/paste the goals, site search, adjust eCommerce settings etc first.
Secondly, you’ll want to use Google Analytics URL builder to create the links that you input into your emails, banners, etc so that you can track them appropriately.
For instance, if I wanted to track visitors, and conversions, to our site from an email blast promoting the AdWords Seminars, I could build a URL such as:
http://www.bgtheory.com/?utm_source=Seminar&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=boston
Now, in my filters, I could choose to have one profile that only contained information from visitors when the source was ‘Seminar’. In this instance, I could then use the same source=seminar in PPC, banner ads, etc to see how the campaign was doing on a holistic basis.
I could then create a second profile that only contained information from emails. This way I could see how emails in general were converting.
If I wanted to see just how this one email was converting, I could even create another profile that just contained information from this specific email blast.
Due to only having a limited amount of time to dig into analytics, the only times I track just one specific source is if it’s PPC (one for AdWords, another profile for Yahoo, and a third for adCenter), a large banner buy, or something new that I want to see specifically (such as tracking twitter).
Tracking PPC Keywords in Yahoo or adCenter with Google Analytics
Of course, you would not want to enter every single keyword individually into the URL builder and then paste the information into adCenter or YSM. Use your PPC friend, Excel, to accomplish this easily.
First, let’s look at a completed tracking URL for adCenter:
http://www.bgtheory.com?utm_source=adCenter&utm_medium=PPC&utm_term=Keyword&utm_content=adGroup&utm_campaign=Campaign
If we were to break this URL down:
- http://www.bgtheory.com – destination URL
- ?utm_source=adCenter — Where our traffic comes from
- &utm_medium=PPC — Type of traffic (PPC)
- &utm_term=Keyword –- Actual keyword
- &utm_content=adGroup — Ad Group name
- &utm_campaign=Campaign -– Campaign name
If you download your account into excel; building this file is pretty easy. If you layout your excel file by column as:
- Campaign
- Ad Group
- Keyword
- destination URL
- ?utm_source=adCenter&utm_medium=PPC (this column you can edit the source and medium as desired)
- &utm_term=
- &utm_content=
- &utm_campaign=
Next, do a global find a replace and replace all spaces with plus signs (+) or whatever you like to designate as a space.
Next, for the last column, just input this formula:
=D2&E2&F2&C4&G2&B4&H2&A2
Drag that formula down the page. The new column will be your new destination URL that you can upload into your other campaigns. Of course, you could be much more complex with this excel file and layout some fields as static and others as dynamic, but this is a general layout to give you the idea how to build these URLs.
If you now create a profile that only contains data if the medium is PPC and another profile when the source is adCenter, you will now have two profiles to examine all PPC data, and another one where the only data is from adCenter. Now you can see funnels and advanced metrics only looking at that segmented data.
When do you need the data?
There is such as thing as paralysis analysis. Where you just have too much data to know where to start. That is possible with many profiles. The thing about Google analytics is that you can’t completely segment old data. If you were to create these tracking URL, but not create a new profile, you could not see the conversion funnel by just adCenter data.
In addition, you cannot use data from one profile to pre-populate another profile. Profiles only start collecting data on the day you create the profile.
Therefore, I’m a fan of creating all these profiles first, let them collect data. Then when you need the data it will exist. The issue with Google Analytics is that if you want till you need the data to create the profile, you will not ever have the old data.
Where to begin?
This is a lot of information, so let’s recap in easy bullet points:
- Map out what data you would like to segment
- Determine a tracking URL structure (based upon the URL builder inputs) that will let you use unique names as profile segments for those various data points
- Create a profile for each list of of those data points
- Copy and paste the goals and other settings into those profiles
- Create a filter for each profile based upon the data you wish to capture in that profile
- Create tracking links for your new destination URLs
- Change any current links to then new destination URLs
- Analyze your new data to create actionable items within your account
It is worth checking if your email system already has Google analytic integration – some do. If so, you might want to use there medium codes for your other emails so you can track all mails together (if you use mail and your vendor uses newsletter for the medium, all email data will not be in one profile).
Honestly, if you are changing adCenter, Yahoo, a handful of banner campaigns, your email blast, etc – this should only take a day of work for most companies. Some will accomplish this in a few hours, others might need a few days.
What is the data worth to you? If you can now track all banner campaigns to find out the $10k one produces $5k in total lifetime revenue, but the $3k one produces $10k in sales; that knowledge alone could be worth your day.
You cannot analyze what you don’t have.
Planning, segmenting, and changing your destination URLs for later analysis can save you time, money, and lead you to stop analyzing data – but starting to make changes based upon the data.
The goal of analytics is not just data insight. The goal of analytics is insight that forces action and change.
How to view Google Analytics Funnels for Segmented Data
The Goal Funnel Visualization is a critical report in Google Analytics. This report will you see where users are abandoning your conversion activities.
For example, if you had a 3 page form fill, wouldn’t it be useful if you could see:
- Page 1 – 100% enter
- Page 2 – 80% enter
- Page 3 – 30% enter
- Goal completion: 2%
What that data shows you is that consumers are moving down the early stage of the funnel, but there is a large drop off later in the funnel. This is a perfect place to examine for usability, informational, and other issues to see why there is such a large conversion abandonment.
One of the best uses of the funnel (and many of Google’s other charts) is first segmenting users to see how that user type interacts with your site.
For example, you could view your stats only when:
- Visitors are from a social network site
- The user converted on your site
- A user came from an expensive banner ad you’re testing
- The user is on a mobile device
- The user is in California
- The user came from a particular search engine
- The user came from a paid search campaign
- The user bought a specific product
- The user came from an email campaign
- etc…
By only looking at segmented data, you could see that banner 1 is profitable, and RSS advertising isn’t leading to a high engagement. This level of detail will let you tailor your site to visitor types, but also allow you to make better decisions about which ad types are profitable. Understanding if that the $15k/month banner you’re buying from a site is leading to solid traffic is an insight that will help you make better advertising decisions.
The biggest issue with segmentation on Google Analytics? It doesn’t work with certain reports:
If you are trying to view reports that can not be segmented, there is a way around this issue.
- Create a new analytics profile
- Edit settings for that profile
- Go to the filter settings of that profile
- Create a new custom filter
- In the filter field, choose campaign source, medium, or however you’re tagging your URLs
- If you don’t know how to tag your URLs for Google Analytics, use Google’s URL builder tool.
- Save the filter
- Repeat the above step as necessary if you want new sources of traffic added to that profile
Now, that profile in Google Analytics will only contain traffic from that particular source. The biggest drawback is that this will not let you see data back in time. Google profiles only contain data from the day you set the up. However, now you can view the Goal Funnel, and any advanced reports just for traffic from a certain source.
You could set this up so that one profile is just your Google AdWords data, and another is just your Yahoo Search Marketing or Microsoft adCenter data. What to look at organic conversions from just Google, or just Yahoo? You can use a custom profile to see which search engine sends you higher converting traffic.
My favorite use is one profile for bought traffic, and another for each high priced banner or email ad. You could even just see how your email lists are performing by just looking at traffic derived from particular email campaigns.
Make sure you can analyze your data and traffic properly. Custom filters and profiles will give you fantastic insight into your customers to help you make better advertising decisions, but to have the data to know where you need to work for increasing conversion rates.
How to Use Google Analytics Filters to Increase Your AdWords ROI
It’s one thing to have access to data.
It’s another one to know how to make the data usable.
You can use Google Analytics custom reports to segment data in many ways. But how to do you take that segmentation and actually improve your AdWords account?
Here’s one example.
- Create a custom filter by city (watch the video below for instructions)
- In the metrics, instead of using bounce rates, use ‘Total goal completions’,‘Goal conversion rate’, and ‘New visitors’.
- Save the custom report.
- When you’re viewing the report, under ‘Segments at the top of the screen’ (see picture below) choose ‘Paid Traffic’
- You will now be viewing conversion rate and visitor information from paid traffic in each city.
- Look for cities with low conversion rates and high traffic.
- For those cities, you should consider creating a geo-targeted campaign to help reach that audience.
- If you can’t make those geographies convert, you can also block those regions in your campaign’s location settings.
You can do a lot of analytics of the data in Google Analytics and Google AdWords. However, analysis paralysis is common. Before you start the analysis, think about the actions you can take from what you learn. If you can’t take any action – should you even bother to do the analysis?
Google Analytics Advanced Segments:
How to create Custom Reports in Google Analytics
Q&A – Should I use both Google Analytics and AdWords Conversion Tracker?
Yes! Please! I often survey attendees of an AdWords Seminar, and a common theme often emerges.
- Most of the audience uses Google Analytics.
- Most of the audience does not use the AdWords conversion tracker.
They are different tools that should be used differently.
AdWords Conversion Tracking
The AdWords conversion tracker just tracks conversions. You can define a conversion in many different ways (sale, lead form, page view) etc. You can define different conversions within the same account. Once you’ve enabled conversion tracking, you can run reports to see performance statistics by keyword, ad group, campaign, ad copy, landing page, content sites, etc by different conversion types (what keywords lead to contacts vs. shopping cart checkouts).
AdWords conversion tracking passes that stats back to your AdWords account so you can easily access all you conversion information cross referenced with your AdWords data within the single AdWords reporting interface. This is a huge timesaver.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an analytics system. It will give you more information than you need to know about your site and visitors. You can easily define goals (conversions) within your analytics account. Google Analytics will tell you about visitors to your site that came from other sources than AdWords. You can view browser, screen resolution, referring site info, and your AdWords account within Analytics (as well as hundreds of other data points).
Like AdWords conversion tracking, analytics should be used to make decisions. Whenever you decide to implement analytics, the first question you should ask is ‘What information do I need to know to get my job done well?’. You can ask that of the design, marketing, and other departments within your organization. Then look for an analytics solution that fits your needs.
For most small businesses, Google Analytics will fit that need. If you need to make real time decisions, then it will not meet your needs.
However, it is much more difficult to extract data such as what content sites are sending you converting traffic from your Analytics account. From within the AdWords conversion tracker – it’s easy. From Analytics – incredibly difficult.
Use Both Google Analytics and the AdWords Conversion Tracker
Assuming you’re willing to use Google Analytics, and it gives you the data you need to perform your job – then you should use them both. Since these two tools perform different functions, you need a tool for each function. Neither are difficult to install, and the data can be invaluable for increase your website’s effectiveness.
AdWords Conversion Tracking Resources:
- Video: Setting up conversion tracking (watch this first)
- Setting up AdWords conversion tracker FAQs
- PDF guide to setting up AdWords conversion tracking
- Troubleshooting conversion tracking
Screen Resolutions – What do your visitors actually see?
When is the last time you looked at your website in different browser resolutions?
If its been a while, maybe these statistics will make you change your mind:
| Where Users Click | ||
|---|---|---|
| Visible Area | Right of Visible Area | |
| Visible Area | 76.5% | 0.3% |
| Below Visible Area | 23.1 | .1% |
Searchers are still clicking ‘above the fold’ in what is visible when your page first loads.
The issue is, we all have different screen resolutions.
W3.org publishes stats on the screen resolutions.
| Date | Higher | 1024×768 | 800×600 | 640×480 | Unknown |
| January 2008 | 38% | 48% | 8% | 0% | 6% |
| January 2007 | 26% | 54% | 14% | 0% | 6% |
| January 2006 | 17% | 57% | 20% | 0% | 6% |
| January 2005 | 12% | 53% | 30% | 0% | 5% |
| January 2004 | 10% | 47% | 37% | 1% | 5% |
| January 2003 | 6% | 40% | 47% | 2% | 5% |
| January 2002 | 6% | 34% | 52% | 3% | 5% |
| January 2001 | 5% | 29% | 55% | 6% | 5% |
| January 2000 | 4% | 25% | 56% | 11% | 4% |
Just because it’s the published number does not mean that applies to your site.
Here’s a screenshot of Google Analytics for this blog:
In the past month, this blog has been viewed on 128 different screen resolutions. In addition, the most common screen resolution (1024×768) which normally makes up 48% of all visitors, sees half of that typical number (only 21.87%) for this site.
While more people are scrolling overall, and some companies are ‘debunking the fold’; every time I most actions on a site to below the fold, I see conversion rates drop.
While vertical scrolling is getting some traction, horizontal scrolling is not. Make sure you page does not force individuals to scroll right to view additional content.
It only takes a few minutes of your time. Change your screen resolution, surf your site, make notes of areas to test for different resolutions or areas where you are most likely losing conversions or traffic and need to make some design changes.
One idea is to split test your pages where the major change is layout based upon different screen resolutions before you do any major redesigns.
Another option is to use crazyegg to create a heatmap of where your visitors are clicking and make decisions or tests from that data.
You should have some analytics package installed – don’t forget to use the data!
Microsoft’s ‘Gatineau’ Analytics Shows Statistics by Age, Gender, Occupation, and Geographic location
Microsoft has been testing their new free analytics program for a while and a new round of invites has recently gone out to those wishing to try out analytics.
A few important troubleshooting tips if you have an invite:
- You may have to visit the page a few times before the signup process runs smoothly. It looks like the initial errors where the pages were erroring out have been fixed.
- Ensure the email address of the invite is the exact same as the email address in your adCenter account
- Once you have the code and place it on your site, you have to wait for statistics to accrue before you can add advanced options such as:
- Goal setting
- Outbound link tracking
- Event tracking
- Be patent. While trying to write this post, the system has been unavailable about half of the time I’ve clicked on a link within the analytics interface.
The most interesting feature is the ability to segment your analytics by age, gender, occupation, and geography. This is most likely associating website visits to passport accounts and other Microsoft data which is similar to how adCenter’s targeting works.
While Microsoft doesn’t know everyone’s information, and the ‘unknown’ category is by far the largest, the additional data can be quite useful for slicing and dicing data.
Screenshot of segmentation by Age. (click image for full view)
Screenshot of segmentation by Gender. (click image for full view)
Screenshot of segmentation by Occupation. (click image for full view)
Screenshot of segmentation by Geography. (click image for full view)
While the interface is still a bit basic and erratic, the above segmentation data is not available in any other free analytics service that I’m aware of.
Using Microsoft adCenter Analytics combined with Microsoft adLabs can give you some powerful analytics to help engage your audience in new and meaningful ways.
Google AdWords
Seminars for Success
Learn about Google AdWords from experts hand selected by Google.
These seminars will educate advertisers on the creation and management of successful AdWords campaigns.
Upcoming Seminars:
Phoenix AdWords Seminars April 14th & 15th
Chicago AdWords Seminars April 29th & 30th
Vancouver AdWords Seminars May 5th & 6th
Denver AdWords Seminars May 18th & 19th
Minneapolis AdWords Seminars May 26th & 27th
Learn More about the Seminars:
Seminar Information
Official Google Seminar Page
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