Google Analytics is free and powerful web analytics tool that gives webmasters all sorts of statistics about their website. Over the years Google analytics has really evolved with amazing new features and become a strong product for any small-medium business or even an enterprise.

Recently during a session with one of my client (who runs an online t-shirts store), I went over some of the analytics feature that he wasn’t using. In fact he was totally clueless that many of those even existed. Even though these features have existed inside Google Analytics for quite some time now, but an average webmasters never bothers to check beyond their total number of hits on a day, traffic sources and so on.

So I decided to do a quick post highlighting some of the ‘less-used’ features of Google Analytics and why you should start using them.

1. Google Analytics Alerts (Intelligence): Google Analytics intelligence comes with a set of default alerts that will show you interesting trends in your analytics data, 24/7. When something happens out of ordinary, it is important that you get access to that information fast and focus on making strategic decisions, instead of sifting through an endless pile of data. The Automatic Alerts stores historical data as well so you can go back in time and look at some of the automatic alerts which has been triggered by Google Analytics. This can really help you discover insights that might otherwise go unnoticed. For instance, if your site’s bounce rate suddenly increases or say Search Traffic suddenly decreases, Google Analytics should be able to catch that and alert you to dig down further. Google Analytics also gives you the flexibility of adding custom alerts with your own variables & rules. Watch the following video to learn more:

2. Comparing Stats with your Past Data: Everyone loves the calendar feature that lets you see all your stats for a specific time frame (e.g. 22nd July 2010 – 29th July 2010). But sometimes raw figures doesn’t really make much sense if you don’t have anything to compare those with. Fortunately Google Analytics gives a easy way for anyone to compare their stats with a past timeline. The best part is it also calculates the difference in numbers for you and give you a quick overview of the comparison. To access this feature, simply check “Compare to past” in the calendar and it will let you select the time period of your past stats.

3. Customize your Google Analytics Dashboard: By default the Google Analytics Dashboard shows some basic widgets like Site usage, visitor overview, goal overview, content overview, traffic sources overview etc. But lets say if you are running an eCommerce website, you may also want to look at some other widgets on your dashboard like – Adwords overview, Top Landing Pages, Search Keywords etc. So if you like to see any particular widget on the dashboard, simply go to that specific page and press “Add to Dashboard” button on top. Now if you go back to your Dashboard you will see that widget at the bottom of the page. You are also free to drag-and-move all the dashboard widgets in any order you like. If you don’t find a particular widget useful and think that its taking up your dashboard space, simply press the cross (‘x’) on the corner to remove it from your default dashboard view.

4. Segment your Traffic using Advanced Segmentation: Analyzing your data in aggregate is not very useful, as it doesn’t give you the right insights of the many individual factors that builds up the overall stats. Google analytics comes with a very powerful segmentation tool that you can use to identify which segments of your traffic are performing and which are not. This leads to more analysis on the under performing segments and eventually an increased overall site performance. There are a bunch of default segments available, that makes it very easy for you to segment out your paid and organic search data or just perform some analysis on the visits with conversion and so on. Once you are comfortable with the basics, you can also make up your own custom segments and save them for later user. Watch the video below that briefly goes through the GA Advanced Segmentation feature.

5. Setting up Goals: Every website has some business objectives that it wants to achieve. For an eCommerce store it may be the number of raw sales, for a consulting business it may be the number of leads thats comes from the site’s contact page. Google analytics makes it very easy to define and track the business goals of your website. This comes very handy to justify the amount of money/resources that you are spending in order to achieve some of your business goals. For instance, you may have heard that twitter/facebook brings in a lot of traffic to a website and lets say so you have started spending 8 hours day on those sites trying to promote your products. Maybe you have gotten a couple of hundred visitors but without proper tracking it would be very hard for you to know whether it was worth all the effort? Because any typical analytics stats would only tell you that you have received “X” number of visits from Facebook or Twitter. But what it doesn’t tell you is, how many of those visitors has also made a purchase fro your store or has performed a positive action that helped your business in any way. With Google Analytics Goals tracking, you will be able to know exactly that. If you are spending money on PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising), Goals are a must have. You can learn more about setting up Goals in Google Analyics here.

Bonus:

Make it a habit to check your Analytics Data: Many website owners set up Google Analytics on Day 1 and never log back in to check what is actually happening. Having Google Analytics on your website doesn’t help you if you are not making good use of the data and insight it provides. So it is very important that you make it a habit to look at your stats regularly based on which you can further tweak your web strategy and (hopefully) improve your site’s overall performance. You can make Google analytics send you a daily/weekly/monthly report via email, so that you get access to all the stats right from your inbox.

So what is your favorite Google Analytics feature? Share in comments!

I’m very happy to see that Google is finally branching out their events of Southeast Asia in Malaysia. Malaysia’s web community is pretty massive & most of the businesses here that even has the tiniest bit of web presence uses products like Google Analytics.

But sadly even though many webmasters have analytics program installed on their site, they never make the effort to learn to use the data that the system gathers for them. Analytics isn’t all about numbers, it takes you a big step further and tells you more than just how many visitors you got on your site at a given time. Google Analytics can give you valuable insight on your sales, conversion, visitor segments, visitor loyalty, stickiness of your content, achieved goals, Traffic sources, traffic generating keywords/ search phrases, landing page performance and more. In fact the use of Google analytics can be so wide that you can literally use the data to do many unconventional things (if you are creative).

How to Join the Google Anlaytics Master Class, Malaysia & Singapore

If you wish to join the Google Analytics Master Class in Malaysia / Singapore, you can head over to their website and RSVP. Google doesn’t have an office in Malaysia, thus they are using some kind of an event management company that will handle your reservations. I have heard on the twitter-verse that many have signed up already but they are yet to get any confirmation from Google (or the company acting on behalf of Google). So I made a call to the number they specified and they confirmed that they will be sending out the confirmation by end of this week. But looks like they still haven’t hit the limit yet. So you can still sign-up by registering on the respective pages:

Malaysia: https://sites.google.com/site/analyticsmasterclass/malaysia

Singapore: https://sites.google.com/site/analyticsmasterclass/singapore

Agenda & Speakers of Google Analytics Master Class

1:30 – 2:00pm Arrival & Registration

2:00 – 2:20pm Keynote Address
Beth Liebert, Product Manager, Google Analytics

2:20 – 2:40pm The Power of Segmentation
Barbara Pezzi, Director Webmarketing & Ecommerce, Swissotel
Learn how Swissotel leverages Google Analytics advanced segments to truly understand its visitors

2:40 – 2:55pm Google Analytics: Powerful. Flexible. Intelligent.
Stephanie Hsu, Google Analytics Specialist, Google
Google Analytics has come a long way in the last 12 months. Learn what new features now make Google Analytics a truly Powerful, Flexible, and Intelligent measurement tool.

2:55 – 3:10pm Taming the HiPPO
Adrian Tan, Director, Online Marketing Services, clickTRUE
Jeff Shi, Assistant Manager, Campaign Operations, clickTRUE
clickTRUE share their secrets on overcoming the demands of the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO) to drive real value for business

3:10 – 3:20pm Shaping the Funnel
Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Customer Solutions Engineer, Google Southeast Asia
Learn how Amari Hotels used Google Analytics goal funnel reports to optimise their online sales flow to generate more reservations

3:20 – 3:30pm Optimising AdWords with Google Analytics Data
Iris Cheng, Google Analytics Specialist, Google Asia Pacific
Find out how Google’s own Google Analytics Specialists optimise AdWords campaigns for increased returns on investment (ROI)

3:30 – 3:40pm Mobile Analytics for Plasa.com
Justin Lee, PointStar
PointStar share their experiences working with mobile analytics and insights for Plasa.com, Telkomsel Indonesia’s community portal

3:40 – 3:55pm Tea Break

3:55 – 4:05pm Optimising Raffles Hotels and Resorts
Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Customer Solutions Engineer, Google Southeast Asia
Find out how eMarketingEye have helped Raffles Hotel understand and optimise their AdWords traffic with the help of Google Analytics reports

4:05 – 4:20pm Better Landing Pages with Google Website Optimiser
Jon Stona, Regional Product Marketing Manager, Google Asia Pacific
Test different landing page designs with Google Website Optimiser and get more visitors converting on your site

4:20 – 4:30pm Price Testing with GWO – The Holy Grail of Marketing
Rachit Dayal, CEO, Happy Marketer
Happy Marketer share their experiences price testing for Genopal.com with Google Website Optimiser

4:30 – 4:45pm Boomz! Other Data Sources To Help Your Business Succeed
Madona Michael, Account Strategist, Google Southeast Asia
Learn how to augment your Google Analytics insights with Insights for Search, Google Ad Planner, and YouTube Insights

4:45 – 4:55pm Google Analytics Resources
Dinesh Jain, Google Analytics Specialist, Google India
Inspired to start making full use of Google Analytics? Learn more about the available educational resources

4:55 – 5:05pm 10 Things to do Today
Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Customer Solutions Engineer, Google Southeast Asia
Stephanie Hsu, Google Analytics Specialist, Google
By now your mind is racing with the possibilities Google Analytics holds for your business. We’ve distilled everything down to 10 actionable items for when you leave our Master Class

5:05 – 5:25pm Panel Discussion and Q&A
Panelists: Beth Liebert, TBD

5:25 – 6:30pm Networking Session

Event Date & Location

Thursday, 11th March 2010
Hilton Hotel Kuala Lumpur
Ballroom A
3 Jalan Stesen Sentral,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 50470

So who is joining me?

Update: An hour after I wrote this post, I received the confirmation email. And I believe most of the people who registered has also received it. They are still encouraging people to sign up. So don’t wait until the last minute, sign up right away.

What is a Goal?

In simple terms, A goal is something that a site/business wants to achieve. So for instance, If its a E-commerce website, one possible goal can be the orders or sales that take place online. For a consultation firm, the goal can be to get the contact information of the client and so on.

In a typical buying process, a buyer actually goes through a series of steps to complete your goal. These steps, in traditional marketing are often referred to as AIDA model. AIDA stands for Attention > Interest > Desire & Action.

So basically in order to complete a Goal, a prospect will often go through these 4 steps or in other words will go through a sales funnel. At the top of the funnel, you will often find a lot of prospective customers who are probably paying attention to your market & also probably interested in your product, however as they go deeper into the buying process, many of them feel disconnected and lose their desire which results in them taking no action (no purchase/order/sales).

How can Google Analytics help with Funnel Visualization?

Google Analytics has everything that you need to keep track of your Website goals as well as to track whatever that is happening inside your Sales Funnel.

So for instance, a company like Dell comes up with an online offer almost every other day. One of their primary goal is to get as many order as they can for each of the respective models/units. With hundreds and thousands of visitors coming to Dell’s website everyday for various reasons, not everyone is actually becoming their customer (placing an order). Some visitors are probably just browsing, some goes deep into the order page and then leaves probably because they didn’t find the right configuration that they were looking for and some are probably just confused in the order process etc.

Unlike a physical store, where the sales person has the ability to communicate with the buyer and also read his body language to better understand the needs and wants, a website just doesn’t have that luxury!

It’s bascially up to you (the webmaster/owner), to look at what happens during each step of the sales closing process (i.e. conversion / sales funnel) and find a way to make each page in the process as helpful and painless as possible.

So how can Dell identify the visitors that goes inside the sales funnel but doesn’t complete the whole process? How can Dell find out why some of their visitors are leaving their site in the middle of an order process?

Google Analytics Funnel Visualization is the answer!

How to Set Up Google Analytics Funnel

There are plenty of tutorials (including the official help pages from google) that shows you the steps for setting up a funnel in Google Analytics [I included some of them at the end of this article].

So instead, I’ll share a video with you that sort of demonstrate the Google Analytics Funnel Visualization report in just 60 seconds! [Source: Google Analytics Blog]

So are you using funnels in your sales pages? Share in comments!

Below are some articles worth reading. Have a look..

Understanding the funnel - Seth’s Blog

How to Set Up Conversion Funnels in Google Analytics – PPC Hero

Funnel Problems in Google Analytics – LunaMetrics

The True Purpose of Google Analytics Funnel – eCommerece Optimization

Using a Conversion funnel – Bruce Clay Inc.

Conversion Funnel 2.0 – Clickz

Goals and Funnel Visualization Report- VkiStudios

Google Analytics is a completely free tool which allows any webmaster to get different statistical information of their website in the form of reports. Now it may seem very easy to install & use Google Analytics in your website – but using it to it’s fullest potential is something that very few webmasters can achieve.

Google has recently started offering a FREE online course in web analytics techniques and Google Analytics implementation, administration, and analysis tools.

So if you are interested to master Google Analytics, you can easily do so without spending a penny – Just log on to ConversionUniversity.com to master Google Analytics. In addition to the free course materials, Google is also offering a test that you can take online to prove that you are qualified in Google Analytics — Google Analytics Individual Qualification (Google Analytics IQ) test.

The press release by Google states:

The Google Analytics IQ program is tailored for agencies who want to retain and develop employees who are knowledgeable about Web analytics, and for individuals who seek ways to improve their job prospects or further their own personal development. Individuals do not have to be associated with an agency or organization to take the online course or test.

It costs only 50 bucks to take the Google Analytics IQ test. Once you pass (over 75% mark), you’ll be registered as Google Analytics qualified!

So don’t wait up, study the free online course materials and give the Google Analytics IQ Test when you are fully ready. Best of luck!

Basically these videos were shot some time in April 2008 during the ad:tech digital marketing conference.

The videos are quite lengthy, But they are pretty informative and you can take away a lot of golden nuggets from here. So here goes! (If you are reading this via RSS/Email Please go here to watch the videos).

Optimization Strategies – Part 1 by Paul Coutts

Optimization Strategies – Part 2 by Geoffrey Stirling

Measuring &Tracking for Success – by Ashish Vij

Increase Your Advertising Reach – by Nicole Resz

Online Video Advertising – by Ryan Hayward & Robert Victor

The old Google Analytics Help Group will still be accessible for information searches, but is closed for new posts.

So what do you think of this new forum? I personally think that its a very good initiative by the Analytics Team. But I guess more participation from the users is necessary to make it a success. Currently its still very empty and as you can see in the screen shoot below a lot of questions are going unanswered without any replies.

How Does Google Analytics Track Flash

If you use the given API, Google Analytics should be able to track various uses of Adobe Flash in a website, including the number of viewers, whether the creative attracts new users and the effectiveness of the flash at getting visitors to take action.

The Official Google Analytics blog has included a short video which shows this cool flash tracking feature in action:

Currently Google provides tracking libraries for both Flash and Flex which can be downloaded as a ZIP file here. The libraries include:

• Flash visual component
• Flash AS3 library
• Flex MXML component
• Flex AS3 library

You can learn more about how to use them through this developer documentation.

The entire AS3 code base has been made open source under the Apache 2 License. So If you are a developer and wish to improve the current code and add new features, you can contribute to the code base. Or, if you are working for a company that is running a content platform, such as Sprout, you can very easily merge the Flash tracking codebase into your existing platform.

Thanks to Googler Avinash Kaushik who was kind enough to give me access to this Public Beta features of Google Analytics. Avinash is currently Analytics Evangelist at Google and he is also the author of the #1 book on Web Analytics, titled “Web Analytics – An Hour a Day“. [You can check out the book in Amazon].

New Features of Google Analaytics

The features of the old Google Analytics was somewhat limited for advanced tracking. Which is why many users (especially big organizations) spends money on other paid web analytics service like Omniture.

Some of the new exciting features of Google Analytics are:

1. Auto User Interface refresh
2. Google AdSense can be now be integrated into Google Analytics
3. Advanced visualizations such as Motion Charts is now available
4. Make Custom Reports
5. Advanced Segmentation Options
6. The Google Analytics API.
7. Automatic importing of AdWords cost data into Urchin.

The two public beta features that I was given access to are – Advanced Segmentation & Custom Reports. The rest of the features are still in private beta and only available upon invitation.

Advanced Segmentation

This is something that I was looking for in GA for a long time. Consider all that GA provided you previously were plain “facts” or raw data. E.g. – How many people visited your site, how did they come to your site, Which keyword they searched for etc. What can change these data into rather useful “information” is if you can actually combine some of these together and come up with a more meaningful query that may help you to make some sense of it.

For example, What if you want to know – How many people searched for your brand name and came to your site from United Kingdom and has made a Purchase? Or How many Visitor came to your website from a particular Adgroup that you were running in Google Adwords during a specified period of time, say from 12:00 Midnight until 6 am.

So all these advanced query involves operators (AND, OR) and Conditions which can help you to take few raw data and then combine them according to your specific needs. Many experts were already doing it manually using spreadsheet and combining/comparing all the data using formulas and doing a lot of mathematical calculations. But with google’s advanced segmentation feature, I guess any average Joe can now become a Web Analytics Expert!

Some Default Segmentation Presets

Custom Segmentation

So basically now you can mix and match and play with different variables provided and come up with your own custom Segmentation. This will definitely help you to know your visitors & market better and create a better online marketing plan.

Custom Reporting

This is something that I’m yet to explore, but it seems like a easy-to-use interface that lets you build customized reports based on your own needs & requirements. This was a highly demanded feature by the webmasters and I’m glad that Google has finally decided to implement it.

If you want to get a more detailed overview of Segmentation & Customized Reports of Google Analytics, I strongly urge you to check Avinash’s post. On his blog, he has provided step by step screen shoots of some of his segmentation ideas like the following:

Idea #1: How to segment out your own Brand Search Keywords.
Idea #2: Find out the % Visits with a high “Degree of Engagement”.
Idea #3: How to Segment Precious Customers.
Idea #4: How to Use Segmentation to do Ad-Hoc Analysis.

My Two Cents

My hat tip to the Google Analytics team for coming up with some of these wonderful features. Especially the advanced segmentation is really going to help me save a lot of time that I spend now combining data from different metrics in Excel and then coming with a custom report for my clients. Hopefully we will be able to see more exciting feature from GA in near future.

Update: Check out this video that shows you to create and use Advanced Segments in Google Analytics to isolate and analyze specific parts of your traffic.

Last year back in April, Yahoo acquired IndexTools, who was a major provider of analytics software based in Hungary. So basically Yahoo has bought over the business and technology that IndexTools had and repackaged it with Yahoo’s own technology as – Yahoo Web Analytics.

Yahoo! Web Analytics (beta) will provide powerful data and insights reporting that will help webmasters to evaluate their marketing performance and tweak their website designs. They’ll get custom real-time reports and graphs that will help them to slice and dice metrics like sales, page views, and sources of traffic and ultimately identify ways to boost up their visitor’s satisfaction.

And as you might expect, Yahoo Web Analytics also includes full integration with other Yahoo products. For instance, you can easily analyze the effectiveness of Yahoo search marketing campaigns and track how well each of your products within your e-commerce shop are selling. This analytics product can easily be compared to Google Analytics, the free analytics service from Google that has similar integration with its own products such as – Google AdWords.

Some Screen shots of Yahoo Web Analytics: (Credit: Visual Revenue)

Yahoo! Web Analytics – Dashboard

A Look at Yahoo Web Analytics Sales Summary Page

Yahoo! Web Analytics – First time visitors vs. Returning

Yahoo! Web Analytics – Custom Report Wizard

Some Features of Yahoo Web Analytics

• Customizable dashboard with the metrics, benchmarks and gauges that meet your specific needs and preferences.
• Allows you to quickly set goals, track progress and identify danger points.
• Each person and role within your company can have their own dashboard.
• Allows you to tailor your reports with the Custom Report Wizard.
• Allows you to measure cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-impression (CPM), cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and return-on-investment (ROI)-and adjust your budget if necessary.
• You can find out how visitors react to different campaign landing pages, page layouts, calls to action, and more – then optimize your pages and offers.
• Allows you to advantage of Advanced Live Cost Analysis that collects data from Yahoo!, Google and MSN, and integrates it with the revenue earned on your website
• Ability to measure the ROI of your paid search campaigns, keyword by keyword.
• Track the products – and product combinations – your customers purchase, add to their carts, and preview.
• Track visitor behavior through multi-step processes, like purchases or form submissions, and troubleshoot popular paths to improve task completions.
• You can learn how your website performance develops from month to month.
• Helps you to identify popular paths through your site – viewing user paths as branched, hierarchical maps.
• Ability to monitor events that affect your website, such as site changes, holidays or system outages.

See the complete list of Yahoo Web Analytics Features

My Two Cents

I must say that Yahoo Analytics is looking very promising with all the new features. I’m really looking forward in trying it out myself. So what do you think of Yahoo Analytics do you think it can beat Google Analytics? Reply in comments…