Optimizing online forms using Google Analytics Goal Funnels
So your site has a contact/signup/purchase form and the conversion rate for completions of your forms are low. What’s a webmaster / web marketer to do? Recently I ran across this issue and I realized other sites may very well have this same problem. Luckily with Google Analytics there’s a great...
RSS 2.0 New Tools to Debug Your Google Analytics Tracking Code
Raise your hand if any of this sounds familiar to you:
- You just set up your tracking code and you’re wondering if it’s correct–and you want to know right now.
- You have decided to migrate your tracking to the new asynchronous syntax–but you want to know if your syntax has any errors.
- You finally decided to customize the tracking code for cross-domain tracking–but you’re worried that you might break your tracking.
- You want to make sure that your campaign is set up to the correct goal.
Enter: The Google Analytics Tracking Code Debugger and a new debug version of our JavaScript code.
The Google Analytics team has launched a debugging version of the Analytics Tracking code called ga_debug.js to verify your tracking code setup. To make it even simpler, we also created a Chrome extension which uses the ga_debug.js script, which allows you to use the new ga_debug.js without re-tagagging any of your content. You can also use this extension to verify what information is sent to Analytics with each page.
How does it work? First, the ga_debug.js script provides a testing version of the tracking code which will print common syntax errors and tracking analysis messages to the browser’s JavaScript console. Secondly, the Chrome extension which automatically enables your page to use the debug version of the JavaScript without any need for you to retag or recode your pages.
How do you use it? The most simple thing to do is to download the Tracking Code Debugger extension for your Chrome browser. Next, turn on the extension by clicking on the icon to the right of the address bar on Chrome.
Finally, visit a page that contains the tracking code you want to test and open up the Chrome JavaScript console to see the messages (detailed instructions). That’s it!
If you want to go use ga_debug.js without the Chrome extension, read all about how to do this in our newly revised Troubleshooting Guide on Google Code. You can use the script on your testing environment to verify extensive tracking code changes. Make sure, however, that you don’t use this version of the tracking code on your production website–the script is meant for debugging and analysis, not speed, so you should always use this as a testing mechanism only. If you want to learn more about the kinds of errors this script can help you find, see Common Tracking Code Errors/Typos in our Troubleshooting Guide. While the ga_debug.js script doesn’t catch all possible errors yet, we think it’s off to a great start and will get even better over time.
Happy testing!
Brian Kuhn on behalf of the Analytics Team
ShareOptimizing online forms using Google Analytics Goal Funnels
So your site has a contact/signup/purchase form and the conversion rate for completions of your forms are low. What’s a webmaster / web marketer to do?
Recently I ran across this issue and I realized other sites may very well have this same problem. Luckily with Google Analytics there’s a great feature called Goal Funnels which can track users through a flow process and put it in a easily readable funnel diagram. To take advantage of Goal Funnels we’ll need to take a few steps in order for GA to start tracking your forms.
There’s a second feature of GA that we’ll be using to put all this together and it’s called Virtual Pageviews (VP). VP’s allow you to trigger a page view generation on a page so that you can see that event or action in your Content reports inside GA. For form elements on a page, what you’ll want to do is add a javascript “onclick” function to trigger the virtual pageview generation.
Here’s an example of a standard field you’ll find in a form:
<input name=”mail” size=”25″ type=”text” />
To trigger virtual pageviews for this field, you’ll modify your code like this:
<input onclick=”pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/signup_form/email’);” name=”mail” size=”25″ type=”text” />
You’ll notice the “/signup_form/email” part of that code. That part of the code is what you’ll name the virtual page. I chose something that describes the event I’m tracking. You can name yours whatever you prefer. I could’ve named it “signupform_email” also but I used the slash instead to separate out the category and label. You’ll also want to do this for your submit button.
<input onclick=”pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/signup_form/submission’);” name=”submit” type=”submit” value=”submit my info” />
After you’ve modified your form with the all the virtual pageview tracking code, you’ll need to go back to the reporting interface and define your goal. Choose URL destination as the goal type, select “Head Match” for Match Type and in the Goal URL field enter your virtual pageview path. So if you created something such as:
You’ll want to put “/signup_form/submission” in the URL field in your goal definition. Next you’ll want to add a Goal Funnel.
Make sure your first step in your funnel has the “required” checked so that users are required to at least complete the first step of the funnel in order to count as a conversion. For each field, you’ll enter your virtual pageview URLs into them.
After you’re done, what you’ll be able to see is how many users make it through EACH step of the form, where they drop off, where they go after and how many complete the form.
ShareWebtrends acquires Transpond to go beyond measurement
Web analytics service provider Webtrends has acquired social marketing company Transpond to broaden its offerings beyond measurement. Financial terms of the deal, signed August 10, were not disclosed.
Webtrends, a digital marketing firm that has focused heavily on web analytics, wanted to leverage its data to take action, said Casey Carey, VP of product management at Webtrends.
Transpond’s platform, which gives brands the means to create, publish, manage and track engagement with their content across mobile and social media, will allow Webtrends to continue to expand into creating multichannel and digital marketing campaigns for clients.
“It’s a natural next step for Webtrends to move from being a web analytics company, to being focused on digital marketing optimization across the web,” said Carey.
The company will also create the Webtrends Apps product line through the acquisition. The Transpond brand will be discontinued, said Carey.
Peter Yared, former CEO of Transpond, now serves as VP of apps at Webtrends, said Casey, who added that no layoffs will occur as a result of the acquisition. He added that Webtrends plans to make new hires across the board, including business development, sales, services and support. It will keep Transpond’s San Francisco office.
Webtrends launched its Facebook analytics program earlier this year, said Casey. Marketers starting to make investments in that space, such as Coca-Cola and Wendy’s, approached the company, which became acquainted with Transpond around the same time.
“We got to talking and realized that by joining forces in more than a strategic partnership, we could provide significant value to today’s digital marketers,” said Casey.
“Over the last three years, the market has matured significantly — our customers now want to do multichannel integrated campaigns. For a long time, there was a lot of experimental ad money getting chucked at Facebook and the iPhone. Now, people want very measurable ROI,” said Yared. “That helps drive marketing decisions that our customers would want, and their customers want an ‘easy on-ramp’ to get onto mobile and social.”
ShareWebtrends Announces Availability of Analytics 9 On Premises
PORTLAND, OR–(Marketwire – 08/04/10) – Webtrends today released a major upgrade to its Analytics product line: Analytics 9 On Premises. This upgrade, available immediately, brings the openness, power and elegance of Analytics 9 On Demand to the On Premises product offering. Unlike Analytics 9 On Demand, which is a SaaS offering, On Premises is software that clients host themselves.
New Capabilities Now in Webtrends Analytics 9 On Premises:
- Facebook and Mobile Analytics provide the ability to measure activity on these channels.
- Self-service APIs to connect data across all digital channels.
- Real-time data for up-to-the-minute insight and context.
- New intuitive user interface to quickly uncover customer trends and opportunities.
- More powerful, customizable analytics engine for data collection, analysis and rendering.
More Organizations Want to Measure Past the Website
“More brand interactions happen away from our customers’ sites every day: Facebook, mobile apps and social media,” said Alex Yoder, Webtrends CEO. “Organizations need to see across all those channels to understand the big picture. Analytics 9 On Premises helps organizations create more relevant interactions with their customers, all while keeping that customer data on their own IT systems.”
The Best Web Analytics Companies in the US Ranked by topseos.com for August 2010
The best Top 10 Web Analytics Companies in the United States for August 2010 has been ranked by topseos.com, the independent authority on search vendors.
PLYMOUTH, INDIANA, August 5, 2010 — topseos.com, an independent authority on search vendors has named the Best Top 10 Web Analytics Firms for the month of August 2010. With its reputation of being one of the most complicated facets of internet marketing, web analytics is one important part that marketers often shy away from. However, web analytics is an essential part of understanding how websites work and how visitors interact with the website. All the best web analytics services next to hundreds of other web analytics tools have gone through an evaluation system facilitated by a qualified and experienced team of researchers.
“When it comes to the Best Web Analytics Software, it is not all about numbers. Numbers, reports, graphs, trends, behaviors are just a few that need to be taken into consideration and a good web analytics company is one that is able to give its clients a realistic snapshot of the effectiveness of their website,” said Jeev Trika, Managing Partner of topseos.com (http://topseos.com).
The Best Top 10 Web Analytics Companies in the US for August 2010 are:
ShareClicky Adds Video Analytics and Offers Direct Vidder Connection
Web analytics service Clicky has announced the launch of their video analytics service which is part of the overall Clicky web analytics platform. Clicky has integrated directly with video hosting company Viddler and provides the ability to track videos from YouTube and Vimeo as well.
The Viddler integration will go live sometime in August as Clicky notes that the Viddler team has some additional work on their end before the connection is made live. The Viddler integration will not require you do anything different to make sure the video stats reach Clicky.
To use the YouTube connection with Clicky, there is a bit of work involved. You can read about the changes to your blog or website that must be added on the Clicky help site. It addition, the way you embed videos is different than just copying and pasting the code directly from YouTube into your blog. The same goes for Vimeo…you would need to add some code to your templates and then change the way you insert videos into your blog or website.
ShareImminent Piwik 1.0 release may pose challenge to Google Web Analytics
A Frenchman living in New Zealand may give Google its latest greatest challenge with the release of Piwik1.0 in two weeks.
Piwik is an open source web analytics platform that requires PHP-MySQL. The software has been available for more than two years and boasts use on more than 50,000 web sites, its developers say. As noted by my colleague Dana Blankenhorn two years ago, Piwik has been closely affiliated with OpenX, the open source ad serving alternative to Google Ad Manager.
Microsoft formed a multi-year partnership with OpenX last November.
Matthieu Aubry, the lead developer and creator of Piwik, left OpenX last February to focus exclusively on the web analytics platform. ”I quit OpenX in February to focus on Piwik, as it wasn’t OpenX business objective to build web analytics — sorry, no conspiracy,” he wrote. [Editor's note: Aubry did not comment directly on the Microsoft partnership with OpenX. ]
Aubry noted that the feature freeze for version 1.0 culminates in the release of an update on Friday of this week and version 1.0 is officially scheduled for release in early to mid August.
“1.0 is coming in 2 weeks, so most features are there, we will be in feature freeze tomorrow for 0.9,” Aubry wrote in an email in responses to questions from this blogger. ” We have been very busy the last few weeks though, you can see main features looking at the changelog.
“Stability is very strong, we have a no bug policy,” he added in his email. “Recent new features are: open Tracking APIs, custom PDF, worldmap widget (the guy built the GPL open source map for Piwik as it didnt exist), faster UI, new professional design — thanks to sponsors and community feedback. ”
The Piwik blog openly identifies ways in which it will differ from some commercial products — which is useful information.
“Piwik 1.0 won’t provide advanced web analytics features that can be found in other commercial products: custom report generator, custom segments and real time segmentation, funnel analysis, advanced ecommerce reporting, etc. ,” the Piwik blog notes. “Some of these features could be built in plugins, but require significant effort and challenge to make them work with high traffic websites. We are building an open web analytics framework that people will use to later add these advanced features.”
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