Finding the most valuable data for your business within Analytics can be tedious work. You may also find yourself navigating in discouraging circles, enduring distractions that cause you to forget what you were analyzing, or completing the same tedious steps to generate the same report every month. Google Analytics has provided several basic tools to help eliminate these scenarios. I will outline these tools using the data for my own Leopard Nation website.
1. Segments
It can be very easy to get caught up in the overall data provided on the dashboard or in any standard report. However, the key to fully analyzing the data of your business lies within segmenting…
Big Numbers Lie – Ego Edition
Big Numbers Lie – Always
Lessons Learned about Big Numbers
In a phenomenon that is not just peculiar to the digital marketing industry, people love big numbers. Big numbers communicate a sense of accomplishment, movement in the right direction, and that things are “good.”
Context sheds light on big numbers
However, I have learned one important principle during my years in online marketing, and that is that big numbers always lie. They lie because they lack context. The more context added, the more numbers become smaller, more understandable, and then finally: small numbers that tell the true story, and communicate the Why? How? and What? which all enable you to…
Using Data to Make Better Decisions
Marketing Woes
A couple of news stories hit the wire that really captured my attention this week. Mostly in the social Media Marketing arena, the first article was about how retailers are closing their FaceBook stores. Gamestop, JCPenney, Gap and others were the first to explore retail on Facebook. Only a year ago analysts and Social Media experts were excited about the potential of F-Commerce (FaceBookCommerce). “There was a lot of anticipation that Facebook would turn into a new destination, a store, a place where people would shop,” noted Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research.
Another Social Media Channel
Another article that hit…
Becoming a Data-Based Business: Knowing What to Do, Why and When.
Finding the “It” Factor
One of the more interesting things about running an online marketing agency is trying to find common factors among those employees and associates that are able to excel and understand the online marketing world. Trying to find that intangible “it” so that when the time comes to hire and expand, we can get the right people. You see, it’s more than being able to perform a task – it is constant evaluation, investigation and testing hypothesis. It’s an analytical mind with a bit of artistic flair. Finding people that can not only “get it”, but then operate as a consultant and have face-to-face charisma with…
I couldn’t believe it when i saw it, but here it was. A national retailer sent me the analytics reports that their SEO company was giving them. In exchange for paying this SEO company thousands of dollars per month for SEO and analytics, this retailer was getting nothing more than screenshots of Google Analytics; screenshots that showed Unique Visitors, Page Views, Time on Site and Top Content. In 2011, I never thought I would still be seeing this, but I can’t believe how prevalent it is, and how much customers accept this artificial substitute for real business-based analysis. On top of that, to simply deliver screen captures and deliver…
An interesting move from Google has search marketers reacting in anger, amazement and disgust. Google, after years of providing search referral information, has decided that users that are “logged-in” to Google will no longer have their search terms show up in website analytics. This move has marketers fuming, as this is an important metric to measure in terms of developing a clear understanding of the search words that people use to find the site and those that lead to conversions. many marketers evaluate those terms in order to better understand the visitor and build content and better user experiences. However, to make this move even more odd, is that Google…
Color, Contrast and Text Size
3 of the most important elements in designing the content of a webpage are color, contrast and font size.
These three elements are amazingly useful when used properly, and mean the difference between action or ignorance. Understanding the important part that these three elements play in capturing the visitor’s attention is critical to today’s online marketing.
Google Analytics finds the Interface
Google is the most recent company to understand the critical role that something as basic as color, contrast and text size have to do with creating a successful user experience. By updating their analytics interface, they have now overcome one of the primary obstacles to gaining great data…
Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day
Release date is set for March 29, 2011
Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day
is now on the way to the printers. The release date is March 29, 2011, but you can pre-order your copy today! This exciting project was the work of over 14 months of research and development for presenting a start-to-finish guide to internet marketing. The book covers the testing of your current site or the considerations to starting a new site, and the development of marketing campaigns to extend the visibility of a business.
What Others are Saying…
Already the book has received great reviews from other peers and experts in the industry: “Matt Bailey is one of my favorite speakers…
Your Search Engine Rankings Reports are Wrong
Search Engines do not like ranking report software. Period. In the past, some search engines allowed an API access key to be used for ranking report software, and it can still be utilized today. Without utilizing the API key for the reports, you could be blocked from accessing the search engine. Software-automated queries drain resources, bandwidth, and inflates ad impressions, which is used to compute quality score for Pay-per-Click Ads. In response, Google is particularly aggressive about blocking repeated queries from the same IP address. Google would rather keep advertisers happy then overly aggressive SEO’s who check their rankings incessantly.
Personalized Search
With the advent of creating accounts at the…
Bounced visitors are worthless right? Not necessarily, they may be loyal to you, and visit many times.…
Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day
Written by Matt Bailey, President of SiteLogic. Matt presents the start-to-finish guide for marketing online, answering many questions that most businesses don't know to ask!
