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[G410]Google Analytics Data Api

by Chris Malta & Robin Cowie, Chr

Your web site is your connecting point with your customers, and you can learn a lot by analyzing the traffic that comes through it. According to John Marshall, CEO of web analytics company http://ClickTracks.com, ?Web analytics is the process of measuring various aspects of your web site in order to understand how you can improve your customers? experience.?

Quantifiable Goals: What Analytics Measure

Before you run out and purchase a web analytics tool, take a good look at your web site and figure out what area you're looking to improve. Analytics provides a tremendous amount of feedback, but the data you need to zero in on is dependent upon your goals.

If you're tracking an ad campaign, such as PPC, SEO, email, or print, you might be very interested in the following data results:

?Keywords. Web analytics tools measure the visitors you gain from various keywords. It's important to separate the results from your PPC ads versus your SEO results, so you understand where your traffic is coming from.

?Click activity. Some of the more advanced web analytics tools monitor suspicious PPC activity, to help you guard against click fraud.

?Coupon Codes. When you place advertisements in print ads, coupon codes can help you gauge their effectiveness. You simply provide a coupon in the ad that gives your customers a code to enter in order to activate the coupon. Your shopping cart system can pick up that coupon, and every time someone uses one, you know they found you through that ad.

?Bounce rate. This is the percentage of people who click through one of your ads, and leave within a few seconds of arriving at your landing page. A high bounce rate may indicate that you need to be examining how well your landing page correlates to your ads.

?Visitor segmentation Analytics tools can compare the behavior of one group of visitors against that of another. Groups are usually broken down by factors such as whether they came through a pay per click ad or an organic ad, or whether they found you through your search campaign versus your email campaign, etc.

If you're trying to understand how your users experience your web site, or tracking your sales process to determine how well your site is converting, you might be more concerned with these measurements:

?Unique visitors. This refers to individual computer users, as opposed to the number of times that users come to your site. It's a measure of how many people are spending quality time on your web site.

?Conversion rate. This number tells you what percentage of your users actually make purchases on your site. If your conversion rate is low, that usually indicates a problem somewhere in your sales process.

?Funnel report. This measures conceptually how deep visitors progress into your site. Web analytics track visitors through the checkout process stages to see at which stage you're losing them, so you know what pages you need to modify.

The fundamental thing that web analytics can achieve for you is performance improvement. It enables you to observe your customers? behavior and understand which elements of your site are working, and where adjustments are needed, to deliver the best possible customer experience. Advises Marshall, ?Tracking your traffic lets you recognize what your buyers want and give it to them. Start by defining what you're trying to improve, focus on the relevant data, and make your decisions based on what that data is telling you.?

Where do your website's visitors come from? Is your website ?attracting? the right or the wrong types of customers? Is your website equipped to provide what your content offers? If you own or manage a business or informational website, ask yourself these questions and then don your detective garb and start thinking:

When it comes to improving your website, is there a surefire way to measure your ?next-step? priorities?

?Elementary My Dear Watson?
Your website priorities will usually include the tasks it takes to get qualified customers or informational respondents to your website. In order to do this, it is important to know what the right online visitors are looking for and whether or not you are making your information available to as many qualified visitors as possible. How can you do it? ?Elementary my dear Watson.? Start with web analytics.

Start with Web Analytics
You can find clues to the origins and buying habits of your website's visitors if you know what to look for. Many web analytics solutions are affordable even for small-scale e-commerce sites and can provide visual maps and diagrams of your online visitors' habits. Generally, website analytics solutions are also reasonably priced and the Google Analytics solution---though perhaps not the most sophisticated quietus (what solution really is?)---is at the very least free and effective in terms of providing valuable visitor data.

A Website Analytics Disclaimer
A disclaimer for website analytics solutions is that they certainly can't take the place of you and your ability to plan well. All website reforms based on website analytics data should naturally focus on meeting the goals (whether monetary or informational) that you have for your website, and should in addition assist and prompt website visitors to take some sort of online and measurable ACTION.

Tip 1: Marketing More Effectively with Website Analytics and Keyword Origins
You don't always have to know where your visitors are coming from if you know what they are looking for. A website analytics solution allows you to gain a glimpse of the wants and needs of your online (and very invisible) customers. How does it work? A website analytics solution provides keyword traffic source information. This information when applied to SEO (natural or organic search optimization) or PPC marketing campaigns can be like data written in gold!

Look for a web analytics solution that provides the following keyword origin data:

Keywords and keyword phrases used (via search engines) to access your website

The amount of visits that originated from each respective keyword phrase

The average time that visitors spent on your site in relation to each respective keyword

The number of pages viewed per visit

The percentage of those visitors who bounce (leave the website after only one page view)

The percentage of those visitors who are new visitors

Some website analytics solutions may include additional features that can be beneficial for your website but those features mentioned above may be all that you need to make some well needed changes. Theses changes might include the creation of new keyword based landing pages (or articles), or the redesign of pages or content that are specific to any given keyword.

Tip 2: Marketing More Effectively with Website Analytics and SEO/PPC Management
A keyword campaign is like a kid. It has to be watched. If your keyword campaign, like many, is a conglomerate of both PPC and natural (organic) search marketing techniques, you can use your PPC campaign as a doorway to faster revenue, while centering what remaining revenue you can spare on the generally more reluctant natural results marketing, which in the end is actually designed to create more perpetual and more lucrative ROI. The origin markings within a website analytics solution application for organic or natural result referrals may look something like this:

yahoo/ organic

google/ organic

msn/ organic

Understanding PPC origins can be a bit trickier. For instance, they may include origins that look something like this:

pagead2.googlesyndication.com / referral

Within the Google Analytics website analytics solution for instance, they will in fact be marked as a referral (not ?paid?) but you must be cautious because the term ?referral? can indicate any number of online origins. Sometimes, recognizing PPC referrals simply comes with time, experience and a bit of research (i.e. ?Google? (this is a verb) portions of the origins data to find out more).

Even if your website is for purely informational purposes it's important to stay abreast of website analytics information. It provides clues to the origins and habits of your online users and provides road maps (once deciphered) to website improvements that can help you achieve the goals you have for your website.

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Both Chris Malta & Robin Cowie & Marci Crane are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Chris Malta & Robin Cowie has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet, Free Credit Report Score and Computers and The Internet. Product Sourcing Radio is Created and Hosted by Chris Malta and Rob Cowie of WorldwideBrands.com, Home of OneSource: The Internet's Largest Source of Genuine, Factory-Direct Wholesalers for online sellers.. Chris Malta & Robin Cowie's top article generates over 74000 views. to your Favourites.

Marci Crane has sinced written about articles on various topics from Dating and Romance, Video and Computers and The Internet. Marci Crane is a copywriter for in Orem, Utah. For more information in regards to marketing services that can be improved with. Marci Crane's top article generates over 1600 views. to your Favourites.