Onsite personalization example with Google Analytics

April 28, 2010

I have had quite a few requests to confirm that you can read custom variables so I thought I’d just show a quick demo. I also recommend you take a look at the video from the Google Analytics team that describes this feature (fast forward to around minute 29:00).
As the name implies _getVisitorCustomVar() only reads [...]

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Unique visitors, 0 visits and pages in web analytics

April 23, 2010

It’s always good to pause and ask yourself if the data you are looking at makes sense. Particularly with the awesome powers of advanced segmentation in Yahoo! Web Analytics and Google Analytics you are likely to come across cases where the data looks weird when you set up custom reports. The likely explanation is that [...]

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Onsite targeting with Google Analytics

March 30, 2010

A logical progression from segmenting your data in web analytics is to then be able to target those segments. For example, you might want to show a special offer only to loyal repeat customers and not to others.
In a very informative webinar last week by the Google Analytics team on custom variables, one particular example [...]

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google.com organic referrer update

March 30, 2010

Back in April 2009 Google announced a change to search referrals coming from google.com. The old familiar format when you search on google.com
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search
would be replaced with:
http://www.google.com/webhp#hl=en&q=flowers
Initially, some people were concerned that the use of the hashtag # in the URL would cause issues with web analytics tracking, but Google found a way to make sure [...]

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Repeat Customers

March 29, 2010

What’s the only thing better than customers? Repeat Customers. According to the book Flip the Funnel the conventional wisdom is that it is far more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to retain existing ones. Many companies now base their strategy on increasing purchases from repeat customers, which in the case of Zappos [...]

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Optimization tips for smaller online retailers

March 12, 2010

In terms of web analytics and statistics more data is always better. Ask 1000 people who they’ll vote for and you get a 3.1% margin of error. Ask a 100 people and the margin of error goes up to 9.8%. Since you are asking fewer people you are less confident about saying something about the underlying population.
Same thing for [...]

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Homepage segmentation

March 4, 2010

You already know that the homepage is one of the most important pages in your online store. Many, if not most visitors, will land on your homepage, and a big chunk of your revenue will pass through the homepage. Unlike a product detail page who’s job it is to sell a particular product, the homepage [...]

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Advanced segments

March 1, 2010

Nice collection of Google Analytics custom segments from Google South East Asia. For an online store I would add:
Visitors who used site search. (click to add to your GA profile)

Why? Particularly for paid search campaigns I would like to send my visitors to the most relevant landing page. A high percentage of site search usage [...]

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Upcoming webinars

February 25, 2010

I will be speaking in a couple of upcoming webinars for online retailers:
1) Friday 2/26/2010 at 4pm ET / 1pm PT. Internal Site Search analysis for online retailers. Many thanks the Shawna for the invitiation!
2) Tuesday 3/2/2010 at 2pm ET / 11am PT. Make Analytics Work: Spend Less, Make More With Segmentation. Many thanks to [...]

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Why you need a custom error page

February 12, 2010

First, what is a 404 error page? Google provides a great definition:
A 404 page is what a user sees when they try to reach a non-existent page on your site (because they’ve clicked on a broken link, the page has been deleted, or they’ve mistyped a URL)
Having a custom error page helps your visitors. Broken [...]

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