Google Analytics For Marketers By Mark Widawer Limits of Liability & Disclaimer of Warranty The author and publisher of this ebook and the associated materials have used their best efforts in preparing this material. The author and publisher make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy, applicability, fitness, or completeness of the contents of this material. They disclaim any warranties expressed or implied, merchantability, or fitness for any particular purpose. The author and publisher shall in no event be held liable for any loss or other damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. If you have any doubts about anything, the advice of a competent legal, tax, accounting or other professional should be sought. This material contains elements protected under International and Federal Copyright laws and treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. Page 1 of 18
Contents Contents...2 About the Author...3...4 What is Google Analytics?...6 How Google Analytics Works the Basics...6 Creating a Google Analytics Account...7 Adding the Google Analytics Code to your Website...8 The Google Analytics Marketing Funnel...8 Setting Up Marketing Goals...9 Setting up Marketing Funnels...11 Figuring Out Where Your Customers Are Coming From...12 Eight Free Ways to Grow Traffic...13 Figuring Out What Your Customers Do On Your Site...14 Improving Conversions...15 Rewrite Your Headline...15 Add Audio...15 Eliminate Leaks...15 Add Trust...16 Test! Test! Test!...16 Analysis Never Ends...16 Resources...18 Page 2 of 18
About the Author Mark Widawer is an Internet Marketer, Traffic Conversion specialist, Google Adwords Qualified Professional, and successful ebook author. Mark is best known for his best-selling ebook, the Landing Page Cash Machine, which brings the mystery of website sales and traffic conversion to the masses. He is also the creator of The Million Dollar Template landing page template system, and the List Power course on list building. Mark has been working on the internet and with electronic commerce since 1995, where he invented the first personalized electronic stock quoting service -- predating any similar service on the Internet -- while he was with the Los Angeles Times. He built his first websites in 1997, and ran his first pay-per-click marketing campaigns in 2003. Since then he has studied with Perry Marshall, Alex Mandossian, Joe Polish, Jim Edwards, David Garfinkel and several other top marketers. You'll find Mark at http://www.landingpagecashmachine.com and http://www.themilliondollartemplate.com and he blogs at http://www.googleicious.com Page 3 of 18
Bob Seeger said it best in one of his songs when he penned the phrase I feel like a number. In many aspects of this life, we all feel like a number. Call customer service for almost any business and they want your account number. Fill out an application for almost anything and you will immediately have to give your Social Security number. It is simply a fact of life that numbers more easily reflect your identity and other key information about you than does your name. And those numbers don't necessarily identify who you are as an individual, but who you are as a member of the marketing public. This is precisely the reason why stat systems such as Google Analytics have found such an important place in Internet marketing. These systems provide valuable information to Internet marketers on such questions as: How many visitors do you have at your website every day? How many of these visitors are coming for the first time? Where did they come from? This can be not only in terms of where they came from within the Internet but also where they are geographically. What brought each one to your site; why did they come? How many of your visitors go from being browsers to being buyers? When do they buy? Why? What income value does each visitor have during the first month? How much is each visitor worth during a year? A lifetime? How much is your average sale? This is an important statistic especially for larger websites. What does it cost to get you one new visitor? What does it cost to get you one new sale? What is the percentage of people that visit but never buy anything from your website? There is a strong correlation between knowing why people visit your site, what they do when they are there and what it all means in relation to how you advertise and construct your pages. Without stat systems like Google Analytics, it just isn t possible to compile the amount of data that it would take to form these types of conclusions. Page 4 of 18
Without knowing what your visitors think, feel and want, it is difficult to formulate a marketing strategy that reaches its maximum potential; if you don t know what your visitors want; it becomes increasingly difficult to give it to them! And there's no way to really know all about your customer unless you track and measure their activity. This is where a system like Google Analytics comes into play. Analytics is a free service offered by Google that can give you detailed statistics about the visitors who come to your website. There are over 80 different reports built into Analytics, but as marketers we really only need to concentrate on a few of them. I'll show you which ones. And we'll also see how you can use Analytics to set goals and find out how well you are meeting or exceeding them. On the other hand, if you're failing to meet your goals, you'll at least know where your site isn't doing its job, and be able to concentrate on fixing that problem. The goals you can track could include such things as sales, opt-ins, page hits or downloads of files. Using Analytics, you can easily see which ads and pages perform well, which ones don't, and maybe even be surprised to discover new high value traffic sources you didn't know you had. Now that we have scratched the surface of Google Analytics and all that it can do, let's dig into the nuts and bolts of this statistics system, integrate it with your site and see all of the things it can do for you. Page 5 of 18
What is Google Analytics? Google Analytics stat system evolved from the very comprehensive Urchin statistics system. In fact, Google bought the company that produced the package, and made it available for free as Google Analytics. While "Urchin on Demand" is still available for sale, Google Analytics is totally free and will give you information that can help you grow your businesses. Google is a unique system because it offers a wide variety of solutions to different people. If you own a blog, it could be most important to see the overall amount of traffic to your site (blog-specific stats packages won't give you as much visibility into what your users really do). Large corporations with brochure-type sites might be more interested in understanding the places where customers come from so that they can improve marketing to the other regions. But they're not really going to have an easy time understanding (nor do they often care) about which pages on their site lead to a sale. But for the Internet marketer, that's EXACTLY what they want to know. "What makes me money?" is the unapologetic question we need to ask. How Google Analytics Works the Basics Google compiles and summarizes all of its data onto a dashboard-style display which is very user friendly. From there, you can dig down deeper to answer questions about your site. There are different dashboards for executives, marketers and webmasters. In addition, Google Analytics can be combined with Google AdWords; this tandem helps you to see how your website and your advertising dollars are working for you. But... how does it get the data in the first place? Google Analytics does its magic by having you add a tiny bit of code to each of your web pages. (See the next section for details on how you can add the code to your site.) That code actually sends Google the information it needs every time someone lands on one of your pages. But we won't get too far under the hood here... You don't need to know the techie stuff to start making more money with Analytics. So Google Analytics then tracks visitors anonymously to determine how they interact with a website, including their point of origin, what they do on your site, Page 6 of 18
and if they completed any of the site's conversion goals. In addition, Google Analytics monitors your sales data and combines it with campaign and conversion information, and provides analysis concerning the success of a particular advertising campaign or traffic source. This information is then presented in easy-to-read, yet comprehensive visual reports. Google Analytics is able to accomplish all of this without affecting the performance or the appearance of a website. Because of the information provided by Google Analytics, you will be able to more effectively bring visitors to your site and convert the extra traffic into more sales. Creating a Google Analytics Account When it was first introduced in November, 2005, the demand for Google Analytics so far out-paced the ability to supply it that many interested parties had to wait weeks or months for access. Google has since opened up the program to anyone, and so you can sign up immediately (like right now), so long as you have a Google account. If you don't have a Google account, don't worry -- signing up is free and immediate. Let's do that first: 1. Navigate to the Google Accounts signup screen. 2. Enter your Email address and desired password. In addition, you can select to have your login information remembered on the computer (don t do this on a computer in a public place such as an Internet cafe) and you can also choose to enable Web History. Web History is a feature that will provide you with a more personalized experience on Google that includes relevant search results and recommendations. After choosing which options you want, simply enter the word verification, read the terms of service and privacy policies, and click the button that says, I accept. Create my account. 3. Google will automatically generate a verification Email to the address you provided. Once you receive the verification Email, simply click the link to accept and your Google account will be created; you will then be redirected to your new account page. Now that the Google Login is set up, let's get to Analytics. 1. At the Google account page, click the Analytics link under My services." (Or, just navigate to http://www.google.com/analytics) This will take you to the Google Analytics home page. From this page, you can sign up for Google mail or AdWords by clicking the links. Page 7 of 18
2. On the home page for Analytics, click the Sign Up button. You will enter information for the website URL, the name you wish to give it, the country and the time zone. Once you have entered this information, you will click Continue. 3. At the following screen, enter your name, phone number, and country in the appropriate fields and click Continue. 4. Next you will be directed to the terms and conditions page. After reading the agreement, click the box that says, Yes, I agree to the above terms and conditions. And then click the Create New Account button. Congratulations. You're now the proud owner of a Google Analytics account. Adding the Google Analytics Code to your Website Google makes it pretty clear to you that you're not going to get any data about your website until and unless you add the tracking code to your site. And they do that by giving you the tracking code immediately after signing up. Now you'll see a page that includes a section of raw code and tracking instructions. Click in the box to select all of the code, then copy and paste the code segment into the bottom of your content, right before the </body> tag of each page you are planning to track. If your website is automatically built with templates, then you can put the tracking code in the template rather than on every page. It's far simpler. Here's an example. I use Dreamweaver to edit my websites. Usually, I work in "designer" mode which shows me how a page is laid out, almost exactly like it would appear in a browser. I can also look at the HTML code for the same page. That's what you're seeing here. So now I'll go and select all of the code that Analytics just gave me, and I'll paste it into the page, just above the body tag. Now just do this for each of your pages that you want to track (probably all of the pages on your site) and you're all set. The Google Analytics Marketing Funnel Funnels are a part of Google Analytics that should really get you excited. As a marketer, you want to push past the numbers and see what you need to do to generate more sales; funnels help you do exactly that. Page 8 of 18
A 'funnel' is a group of pages which a visitor will navigate through to reach a conversion goal such as opting into a list, or making a purchase. As you would expect, the name comes from the shape of the graph; the entrance point is 100% of the visitors and each following page will have less until you reach a conversion. Because of the narrowing numbers at each level, the result looks like a funnel. Not too complicated but the results are incredible! What is the benefit to you? With funnels, you are able to see how well your site is designed and how it makes you money or costs you money. Your site should draw visitors to the end result of buying something. If the site is confusing or flawed, it can drive them away; funnels help you see what is going on. For example, you might already know what your conversion rate for your entire website is, but do you know where in your sales process you're actually losing the sale? Let's say that your conversion rate is 1% from visitor to a sale. Well, you're losing 99% of your traffic to some other kind of action. They're leaving without buying. The only way to fix that problem is to find out where they are leaving. That's what this Funnel Visualization Report can show you. As you can see, the graphic shows users coming on to the website at the upper left corner and where they go next; in this example 74% move on to the next step (down) and the other 26% left the site entirely, or went to some other part of the website that is not part of the defined sales funnel (to the right). It is interesting to note that the next drop-off is from 74% to 10%... hardly the kind of follow-through that you want. This drop off can be the result of a complicated, busy or flawed page design, poor sales copy, unattractive offers, or maybe even something totally unexpected. But at least now you know where the problem is and you can go look in the right spot for a solution. To find out where your greatest drop-offs are, you can track drop-off rates on pages leading to a goal using the Defined Funnel Abandonment Report in the Content Optimization section of Analytics. Setting Up Marketing Goals To create a new funnel, you first need to decide what your goals are, and what the path to that goal is. Let's say you have a squeeze page that leads to a sales page of an ebook. Selling the book is your ultimate goal. Page 9 of 18
You might have a site that has the following pages: /subscribe.php Squeeze/Optin Page /letter.php Your Sales letter that they see only after opting in /download.php Your download page that someone would see after buying These would be the steps of your sales funnel. And if you have already installed the Analytics tracking code on all of those pages, then all you need to do is tell Analytics which pages represent steps in your funnel, and you're done. Here's how you do that. 1. Log in to your Google Analytics account and click Analytics Settings. 2. Find the profile for which you will be creating goals, and click Edit. 3. Select one of the four goal slots available for that profile and click Edit. 4. Enter the Goal URL. Reaching this page marks a successful conversion. For example, a registration confirmation page, a checkout complete page, or a thank you page. And in the case of our example, it's the Download.php page that represents a completed sale. 5. Enter the Goal name as it should appear in your Google Analytics account. Page 10 of 18
6. Turn the goal On or Off. This selection decides whether Google Analytics should track this conversion goal at this time. Generally, you will want to set the Active Goal selection to On. Setting up Marketing Funnels After you have set up a goal, creating a funnel is easy. On that same page, just below the Goal setup, you can define the funnel. In this case, it's those three pages. Here's what you do. 1. Enter the URL of the first page of your conversion funnel. This page should be a page that starts the progress to reaching your goal. 2. Enter a Name for this step. 3. If this step is a required step in the conversion process, select the checkbox to the right of the step. Your Defined Funnel Navigation report uses this setting to count visits through your funnel steps. 4. Keep repeating each step until you have finished defining your funnel. You can have as many as ten steps and as few as one. 5. Note that these are the pages that lead up to the goal and do not include the goal itself. So, we won't add a step for the download page. Page 11 of 18
6. Next, you can enter a goal value. This number is used in Google Analytics' ROI (Return on Investment) calculations, so it is something you will want to know. Enter in the sale price of your ebook here. Leave those other two choices (case sensitive and match type) at their defaults. 7. Click Save Changes to create this goal and funnel. What you have managed to create is a method for seeing your site in action. There isn t any guessing about what happens on your site from now on -- now you can see it on your screen. You'll know when someone opts in, when someone makes a purchase and who gets out before you have the chance to reel them in. Now, you can run any of the Goals reports to see exactly what is happening on your site that have to do with generating revenue. Now that we know what your customers are doing when they get to your site, let s take a look at how they got there. Figuring Out Where Your Customers Are Coming From For all of you Internet marketers, this might be the most beautiful thing about Google Analytics. Without knowing your visitors and customers, you can only guess about where and how to advertise for your site. Think about it... if you don t know where your customers are from or what interests them, and how those specific customers act on your site, how can you possibly know where to go to attract others like them? This is what makes the whole thing tick for Internet marketers. Google Analytics is great for E-businesses because it creates geographical reports. This feature allows you to see what part of the world your customers originate from and allow you to better market to the areas you are not reaching successfully. There are a lot of features in this application so I think it is wise to tell you how to use a few. First, click marketing optimization under All reports. Then click visitor segment performance and after that, you can click on referring source. Google Analytics will show you how the visitors found the website either through search engine, links from another website or direct link. The graphic above gives you an idea of how this information looks. Page 12 of 18
Click on the double arrow (one arrow points up and the other down) that points upwards on any of the sources. Another box will appear and it will list options for you to combine several features. For example, if you would like to know which countries the visitors came from, click "country" (and you can click "city" as well). After making the selection, a new page will reload and shows you the appropriate statistic. You will receive statistics that show how many visits from different cities in your selection range occurred for the timeframe you selected. This report can tell you more than just a city where your traffic is coming from. Are you getting your hits from Google, from Yahoo and some other search engine? You will also want to look at the keywords you are using and find out what you can change to get more bang for your buck. Want to know what sites are referring traffic to you? You can figure out which sites are linking to you and sending you indirect traffic with Analytics; by using the traffic reports. Just click Traffic Sources and you'll see a page that summarizes more about your traffic than you probably have ever seen... in an incredibly easy-to-read layout. So you can now see the traffic trend for your site (up, in this case); where traffic mostly comes from (in this case it seems that type-in traffic, then referring sites, then search engines). You'll also get to see the keywords that people are using to reach your site. Clicking on any of the links on these pages will drill down deeper into your data. Plus, there are nine total traffic reports you can look at so you can learn more about your traffic. Now, you might be a bit frustrated at the beginning. If your site doesn't get a lot of traffic, then your data will be a bit sparse and not very meaningful. Wait a few weeks, and then come back and you'll finally start seeing some important trends that you can learn from. Eight Free Ways to Grow Traffic It's not directly related to running Analytics, but getting more traffic sure would help you get more data to look at. Here are a few suggestions of some uncommon ways of building traffic. Send out link-exchange emails to owners of sites related to yours Search on Google for your main keywords and "add url" or "add link" or "link exchange" to find sites that do link exchanges. Page 13 of 18
Comment on the blogs of others in your area of interest Answer questions on sites such as http://www.answers.yahoo.com Post answers in various forums (including your site) Add your URL in the signature of your emails (when someone reads your email online in Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo mail, you'll see traffic from those sites) Post Videos to sites such as www.google.com/video and www.youtube.com Post to social networking sites like www.digg.com, www.del.icio.us, www.furl.com, www.reddit.com, and www.stumbleupon.com All of these are absolutely free methods of building traffic. Figuring Out What Your Customers Do On Your Site You are also able to track the paths that your customers and visitors take to get to your website; this becomes a strategic advantage as you try to determine the best ways to spend your advertising dollars. By analyzing the habits of your customers from different traffic sources you can determine what is working in your marketing strategy as well as how functional your site is. By using the geographic reports, you are able to identify the entrance points to your site and where the visitors are coming from. This can also be a product of your funnels as you attempt to see what paths your visitors are following through your site. This feature is referred to in Google Analytics as funnel visualization. For example, how many visitors to your site start the process to make a purchase but stop because the process is cumbersome or confusing? How many are actually getting distracted and pulled out of your purchasing process by a link to another page? Funnel visualization can show you problem areas in your site so that your webmaster can create solutions that improve the flow from product identification to purchase. Page 14 of 18
Improving Conversions What is the purpose of all this research and planning? It's to turn your site traffic into paying customers, and that is the result of tracking conversions and creating funnels, or paths which you design and your site visitors follow.. In online advertising, a conversion occurs when a customer clicks on your ad and it leads him or her directly to result that you desire, such as an optin or sale. Measuring your conversions allows you to find problem areas in your site and then fix them one by one. After something is changed, it can be retested to verify the change you made was a good one. By doing this, you are building and proving a good, profitable site. Just as tracking conversions allows you to see the success of your ad campaigns, using funnels allows you to evaluate the efficiency of your site. If any of the funnel pages are overly complicated, or not user-friendly, the results will become apparent in lower conversion rates. So how do you increase your conversion rates and lower drop-off rates? Here are five suggestions taken from the Landing Page Cash Machine ebook. Rewrite Your Headline Often times, your headline is the single most influential factor in determining if someone reads your page, and therefore continues on from that page to what you want them to do, whether that's an optin or a sale. Learn good copywriting techniques -- and especially how to write a great headline. (David Garfinkel's Breakthrough Copywriting http://www.breakthrough-copywriting.com program has some excellent headline templates that can triple your sales or better.) Add Audio My friend Rick Raddatz says that audio is even more influential than a great headline. Tests that I've run have shown me that if it's not the most influential element on a page, it's almost always the second most important element. And at an easy-to-swallow free 21-day trial, I'd recommend trying his Audio Generator (http://www.audiogeneratorfreetrial.com) system to add audio to your web page. Eliminate Leaks A sales page or optin page with a link to another site is going to leak visitors. Remove outside links unless absolutely necessary (and I can't think of any necessary reasons). You might also consider removing internal links (links to pages inside of your site) as well. Page 15 of 18
Add Trust There are lots of ways to add trust to your website. Try adding logos of organizations you belong to, like accreditation bureaus or professional certifications or organizations. Show your real physical address, phone number, and email address on your site. Being a 'real' person goes a long way towards establishing trust. Test! Test! Test! Nothing is right or wrong unless it's tested. And that's the truth about web marketing and web design. So, use the split test feature in 1ShoppingCart (http://www.1shoppingcart30daytrial.com), Hypertracker (http://www.tcslinks.com/hypertracker) or any other tool you have access to. Google even has their own tool -- the Google Web Page Optimizer -- that is free and can test for you. If you've got nothing else, go ahead and use it. You can do simple split tests (test page A against page B) or you can do more complicated tests. There are better ways, but Google's approach will work just fine for you, and even integrate well with Google Analytics. So, test one page against another to see which one performs best. You'll never know until you test. You could be doing something on your page that is driving people away... and you'd never know unless you tested it against something else. Analysis Never Ends One of the great things about Google Analytics is that you don't have to know the question before you find the answer. There are so many fascinating reports built into Analytics that you're likely to discover something new quite by accident. From there, you can dig deeper to find the reason why. "Hey, I notice that 80% of the people who visit my privacy policy page end up leaving the site from that page. I'd better figure out why." "Isn't that interesting... 10% of the people who find my gardening website using the keywords 'how to grow daisies' end up buying my ebook, even though I don't even buy any 'daisy' keywords.' Maybe I should!" "I wonder why I have a flood of sales from Kazakhstan... and coincidentally... my return rate has skyrocketed recently." Page 16 of 18
There are mysteries locked in your website. Analytics will help you to reveal them. And if you pay attention to what you learn, you've got the tools now to help your site grow better and faster. To Your Success, --Mark Widawer Page 17 of 18
Resources Breakthrough Copywriting - David Garfinkel ran a copywriting seminar that top copywriters paid thousands of dollars to attend. This package of CD audio recordings and DVD videos can turn you into a great copywriter quicker than you'd ever expect. http://www.breakthroughcopywriting.com Copywriting Templates - David Garfinkel's templates turn lengthy copywriting projects into short and fun afternoons. Oh, and you'll crank out sales letters that sell better than anything you've ever written (and probably better than a $20,000 copywriter could produce, too). David has just a few of these left, but you can find it here: http://www.world-copywriting-institute.com/ah-templates The "Million Dollar" Landing Page Template System - Beyond telling you how to build a landing page, this "Million Dollar" Landing Page Template actually IS a landing page. Much like the templates provided in this page, the MDT takes you step by step through setting up your sales letter web page. Instantly get more sales from your website by getting your Template here: http://www.themilliondollartemplate.com The Landing Page Cash Machine - Over 90 pages of tips and advice on how to improve your landing pages and squeeze pages almost instantly. http://www.landingpagecashmachine.com/ Audio Generator - Add audio to your website and increase conversions by 30% or more. Free three week trial for my readers. http://www.audiogeneratorfreetrial.com 1ShoppingCart - The most popular shopping cart among Internet marketers, 1SC has split testing built right in so you can test one landing page against another to find which one converts best. It's got lots of other marketing smarts built right in, too, including Autoresponders, Broadcasts, and Affiliate management. Free trial for my readers.http://www.1shoppingcart30daytrial.com Hypertracker - If you've already got a cart and can't use the testing tools built into 1ShoppingCart, try Hypertracker. It's a stand-alone testing site that will easily handle split testing for dozens or hundreds of websites. You can try it out free, here: http://www.tsclinks.com/hypertracker Page 18 of 18