As with any aspect of a web site, it is easy to get lost in the data. Webmasters can spend hours in their Google Analytics account examining the charts and graphs, but still not come to any conclusions about what is working and what needs to be improved upon. When measuring the success or effectiveness of a site, the term “conversion rate " is often used. The conversion rate is based on the number of users who complete a desired action on the web site, whether it be completing a purchase, submitting a form, or downloading a file. The purpose of this article is to explain how to use Google Analytics as a tactical tool to provide insight into strategic objectives such as increased conversion rates. For beginners, be sure to read “Introduction to Google Analytics " before continuing.
Google Analytics makes it easy to track the number of conversions on your site, as well as the path the user took to convert, through their conversion goals section. A user can set up to 4 goals for any given profile, each with its own funnel path. To track a goal, there should be a specific page on your site that only displays once the desired goal or conversion has taken place, this is most often a confirmation page or “Thank You" page.
Simple site tracking programs allow users to see the total number of times this page was loaded, but this is not a complete picture. Google takes it one step further, and incorporates the path the visitor took to convert. This path can be used to qualify the user and confirm theories about how and why the user converted.
By defining the path that a user is expected to take to get to the goal, the data takes on more meaning. Analytics allows for up to 10 URLs to be included in the funnel and shows where along the way users abandon the goal and where they went. This tool can be very helpful to improve on the usability of a particular page, if users are frequently abandoning the conversion path at the same page there may be a weak call to action or another path that is more prominent on that particular page.
Because sites can have multiple types of goals, Google assigns a numeric value to each. A site may consider someone who requests a company representative to contact them to have a higher sales potential than someone who signs up for the monthly newsletter. The user who signs up for the newsletter has still converted, but the value of this goal would not be as great as the user who requested direct contact.
Determining the value of a goal can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you have a long sales cycle or a broad range of product prices. The important thing to remember is to make them as relative as possible and monitor the conversions, its easy to adjust the value after some data has been collected. This goal value is used to calculate ROI, Average Score, and other metrics within Analytics.
One of the biggest questions advertisers have when manage their pay per click account is how much they should bid for their keywords. Bidding too high may incur too much cost and advertisers might not be able to sustain a profitable ROI, whether bidding too low might not allow their ads to be positioned at a visible spot.
There is a function in Google Analytics that allows advertisers to see at which positions their keywords receive the most visits, transactions, revenue, conversion rate, and etc.
Simply login into Google Analytics, select a report which has the proper filters applied. Then click on Traffic Sources. Within the expended pull down menu, select Adwords then click on Keyword Positions.
Now just type in the keyword that you want to analyze into the ?Find keywords? box to see the stats on that keyword. Click on the keyword once, then you can start seeing the position break down on the right.
This handy little tool might not be practical for huge companies that have tens and thousands of keywords, since manually analyzing each single one of them would just be overly time consuming. But for small businesses that have a few core keywords which make up the majority of their conversions, this is a great way to get some general ideas on how much they should bid to maximize their investments.
One thing to be careful though, is not to solely rely on the number of transactions to make decisions; instead you should also take the conversion rate, and number of visits into account.
For example: let's assume for the time period you are analyzing, your keyword have spent 90% of the time at position one and only 10% of the time at position three, so most likely there would be more transactions happening at position one than at position three.
But at the same time, the keyword might only be getting a 0.3% conversion rate at position one whereas at position three, it might be getting a 3.2% conversion rate. Assuming there isn't a big different on the number of visits between the two positions, it actually makes more sense to lower your bid and have the keyword on position three for most of the time.
As with any other analysis process, make sure you have a sufficient data collection before making any judgements.
Both Webmarketingblog Webmarketingblog & Rohitwill 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.
Webmarketingblog Webmarketingblog has sinced written about articles on various topics from Copywriting, Site Promotion and Blogging. Nidhi Gupta, the author of this blog is very much interested in Online marketing Issues. So to read more Internet Marketing related Issue please visit