Welcome to another delightful episode of Web Analytics TV! Web Analytics TV, as you well know by now, is powered by your amazing questions. In this wonderful episode we had questions from Australia, Denmark, India, Sweden, Germany andThe Netherlands.

If you’re new to this show, our process is simple.


Step 1: You ask, or vote on, your favorite web analytics questions. Vote on next week’s questions using this Web Analytics TV Google Moderator site.

Step 2: From a secret undisclosed location at the Googleplex Avinash Kaushik & Nick Mihailovski answer them. :-)

In this episode we award the “Ninja of the Episode” and award it to Niklas in Sweden, for a great question about the difference between events and custom variables. Niklas, just email us and we’ll send you a signed copy of Web analytics 2.0.

OK. Here is the list of last episodes questions.

In this action packed episode we discuss:

• (0:23) Best practices for rollup reporting across multiple sites (See answer below)
• (0:53) Reporting secure search in Google Analytics
• (3:27) Troubleshooting funnel navigation reports
• (4:31) Comparing using event tracking and session level custom variables.
• (6:28) Measuring how visitors who interact with a video influence conversions
• (7:35) When data in Google Analytics updated
• (9:55) Representing multiple date ranges by column
• (11:04) Best practices for tracking widgets
• (11:40) Exporting greater than 500 rows from Google Analytics
• (13:43) Comparing days to purchase by medium
• (15:20) Using multiple tracking codes on the same page (see answer below)
• (16:25) Best practices using custom variables to track multivariate test information
• (18:10) Reporting across multiple currencies in Google Analytics
• (19:10) Segmenting 'serious' visitors by loyalty and engagement metrics
• (21:32) Measuring click to call buttons in your mobile websites
• (22:45) The best and most time efficient way to put Google Analytics data into a powerPoint
• (23:47) Tracking cross-sells or up-sells on a product page
• (26:05) Tracking multiple ids or paths per page
• (26:45) Why single page website show time on site metrics
• (28:27) Using the reverse page path report for analysis
• (30:21) Do profile filters impact site search reports
• (32:39) How to get fast traffic in your reports

Here are the links to the topics we discuss:

• A custom report users using secure site search
• Use nextAnalytcs to extract custom views of data out of Google Analytics
• Tracking users without JavaScript using Mobile tracking snippets
• Reporting tools to simplify data access using the Google Analytics API
• A custom report comparing days to purchase by medium
• Using Analytics Canvas to report in a common currency across Google Analytics profiles
• Applying advanced segments to custom reports by Avinash (includes downloadable report)
• Google Analytics PowerPoint integration provided by Shufflepoint
• Using the new flow visualization (to replace reverse goal path analysis)

There was one question asked which we needed to get more information. 

“What is your recommendation to simultaneously track data for a local site & having a roll-up profile to track aggregate data across all sites of a company.”

What we learned was that there are 25+ sites on different domains split across 2 business units. A simple solution is to pull out data using the API to create any rollup reports you need. Another option is to have multiple tracking codes on the same page, and have one code be the same across all the sites. That way all the data is sent into a single report which you can view.

One thing to keep in mind, is that each site will track visitors separately. So visitor numbers will not be accurate across all the sites.

So hopefully this helps you out. As always, if you need help setting up Google Analytics or leveraging the advanced configuration options, we recommend hiring a Google Analytics Certified Partner.

If you found this post or video helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Please share them via the comment form below.

This series would not be possible without your awesome questions. Please submit them on our public Google Moderator site, and while you’re there don’t forget to vote for your favorite questions.  Avinash and I will answer them in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics team