A closer look at the Google Analytics connector

Monitus Tools

Just wanted to provide a little more info about our Google Analytics connector for Yahoo! Store. If I had to make a choice, I would pick "Overall Keyword Conversion" as one of the most important reports to look at:

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What does this report tell you?

This report gives you a list of all your keywords – both converting and non-converting – along with Transactions/visit and $/visit.

Digging around this data reveals many interesting facts:

  1. First of all, you will likely see lots of non-converting keywords and far fewer converting keywords. That’s pretty logical. But you will see an astonishing amount of unique keywords. Have you heard about the long tail of search? Ask Rob about the long tail and what to do with those non-converting keywords.

  2. You would have thought that people who want to buy directly from you would type in your domain name directly into the browser. Wrong! A significant number of people type in your domain name (or a variation thereof) into Google, Yahoo, or MSN to find you. Bear this in mind.

  3. Look at your top converting keywords. Is your site optimized for those? You may even find that some of your best converting keywords aren’t even on your site!

  4. Misspellings. Do you see misspellings of your products in the report? Again, bear this in mind when crafting content for your site.

  5. In the Keyword column (note: the keyword column’s width is reduced for privacy reasons) you can click on the "+" to see where the traffic from those keywords came from. Which search engine converts better? How effective are your PPC campaigns?

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I realize that merchants lead busy lives, so I hope this information is useful. I will be adding more tips and tricks in the future. Please submit your own. I would like to end up with a Google Analytics to-do list for busy Yahoo! Store merchants.

Incidentally, the ability to see and analyze conversion data for keywords on a product level has been the main driving force behind the development of our Google Analytics connector. Grabbing transaction data (like Order Number and Order Total) on the confirmation page is relatively straightforward with the new checkout manager, but in my opinion the key is to keep referrer data – including keywords – all the way to the confirmation page.