Episode # 3 - Rapid Fire Web Analytics Q and A with Avinash and Nick

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 | 1:35 PM

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This is the third video in our recent Rapid Fire series where you share your most burning questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them!

Generally we want to focus on your questions about key metrics and analysis techniques, but this week we get a little technical.

In this episode we discuss:

  • How to group referrals from common sources
  • How to setup Google Analytics to track multiple web sites and view all the aggregate data in one profile
  • Strategies to track websites that support different languages
  • The value of using Google Analytics on You Tube partner channels
  • Troubleshooting discrepancies in Google Analytics Data
  • Best practices for implementing E-commerce tracking for E-commerce sites
  • Simplifying customizing the date range in GA
  • How to track segments of users who interact with internal referrals/cross sell campaigns
  • Tracking Social Media campaigns



Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:
If you found this helpful, we'd love to hear your comments.

If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question or vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Please add your thoughts about the Q&A via comments below. Thanks!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

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7 comments:

Jamie, Baymard Institute said...

These Q&A videos are super!

Looking forward to the next one.

3:19 PM

BenC said...

Nick and Avinash,
I was wondering if you had seen anyone use google analytics as a platform for statistics for a widget or site extension. (Rather than just for 'one's own code) I found your talk about events pretty interesting, but wanted some feedback on my approach: http://blog.olark.com/google-analytics-and-olark-0

(basically letting our customers use plug our olark live chat tool into their GA)

I'd love to hear what you think,
Ben

6:21 PM

Louis said...

It'd be great that you show examples or screen shots rather than people talking

2:43 AM

Joseph said...

1.Woopra is a Web analytics application written in Java. It’s split into two parts which includes a desktop application for data analysis/exploration and a web service to monitor website statistics.
2.JAWStats is a server-based Web analytics application that runs with the popular AWStats (in fact, if you’re on a shared hosting plan – AWStats is probably already installed).

3:48 AM

Lukas Oldenburg said...

Thank you for answering my question! Event Tracking is a way to track my "internal campaigns", but my CMS is so old, our editors will have to add the event tracking variables to each and every link every week (and every week, they put about 50 new links and teasers on the website. But I will keep your advice for our future CMS.

9:08 AM

Artric said...

This is fantastic, but I would love to see timestamps for the major bullet points. I don't always have 20 minutes to view, but might see something that catches my eye.

I definitely appreciate the effort put into this and insight provided!

2:44 PM

Mark said...

Many people in the forums are saying that GA consistently under reports ecom sales by around 20%. Given that a lot of people are complaining about this it's surprising Google hasn't really addressed it.

The excuse from Google is that it's either caused by JS and cookies turned off or third party payment methods such as Paypal. These excuses are as lame as they are unlikely.

Firstly, JS and cookies are usually required by shopping carts.

Secondly, even if it were so, the number without JS or cookies is so low, that it doesn't account for the discrepancy.

The same is true for the Paypal excuse, the percentage isn't anywhere near the 20% GA keeps missing.

Further more, in my own case, I have a goal funnel set up for my shopping cart process, and it tracks the number of customers accurately right up until the second last step.

It is only when they proceed to the final step, (where the ecom tracking code gets fired) that the GA loses about 20%.

EG on my second last step the funnel is showing 2,182 customers. (This is actually matches the real number of sales I made. I have their orders in my hand and their money in the bank, so I know this figure is accurate.)

Unfortunately, when they go to the confirmation page the number drops to 1,859.

Where did they go?

The funnel shows that 3% went back to previous stages of the funnel and 0.5% continued shopping. Great, but how come they still didn't get counted in the end?

It shows that 8.5% simply "exited"

And 4 % simply vanished. IE GA shows no exit for them at all.

What's going on?

I really think Google should address the growing complaints about it's inaccurate ecommerce reporting.

PS Don't keep shooting the messengers. We are your customers. We want GA to work properly, but you have to acknowledge that there are some accuracy issues. I know Google doesn't like to here that,but we won't get anywhere until you do.

3:59 PM

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