Enpiem Internet Marketing Blog

If you carry out multiple visits to your own/clients website throughout the day this can distort your Google Analytics reporting statistics so it is a good idea to implement a custom filter that excludes your own traffic.

In order to do this, follow these steps within your Google Analytics account:

• Click on ‘Edit Profile’
• Click on ‘Add Filter’
• Name the filter something like ‘Block Internal IP’
• Select ‘Exclude All Traffic From An IP Address’ from dropdown menu
• Enter your IP address in the box ’ Regular Expression for the IP addresses’
• Click ‘save changes’

When entering your IP address, enter a backslash character BEFORE each dot character so an IP address such as 163.212.171.123 will appear as 163\.212\.171\.123. Use of the backslash character prevents dots in the IP address from being treated as wildcards. Google provide more information on this at: https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55582&hl=en_US&utm_id=ad

If you aren’t sure what your IP address is – use the following website http://whatismyipaddress.com/ and it will locate your IP that can be modified with backslash characters and implemented in your filter.

Enpiem Internet Marketing use Google Analytics and logfile applications including AWStats as part of our Website Data Analysis service. Contact us to discuss your website data analytics requirements and how we can help you make more from your website traffic.

Whilst Google Analytics will allow you to isolate paid/unpaid traffic sources within core reports, there are a number of reports where you won’t be able to see your PPC traffic as a separate source. One important report is to be able to isolate goal conversions by hour for PPC traffic only. This will allow you to manage your bidding strategy according to the most productive hours for conversions (a function not offered in Adwords itself).

In order to be able to isolate your PPC traffic from other sources and determine information such as goal conversions for PPC, you will need to create an additional website profile in your Analytics account for your domain, and then filter out all traffic that isn’t PPC.

Creating the PPC only filter is relatively straightforward. Click on ‘Analytics Settings’ then on ‘+ Add New Profile’. Then choose the second option ‘Add a Profile for an existing domain’. Locate the name of your new profile and click on ‘Edit’ and go to the ‘Filters Applied to Profile’ section and click on ‘Add filter’ option.

Choose ‘Add new Filter for Profile’ and give your filter a name such as ‘PPC Traffic Filter’. Then select ‘Custom Filter’ from the drop-down list and make sure that the second radio button is marked (this option is called: ‘include’). The ‘Filter Field’ drop down should have ‘Campaign Medium’ option selected and in the ‘Filter Pattern’ box enter: cpc|ppc. ‘Case sensitive’ should be selected as ‘No’. Then click ‘Save changes’ and that’s it!

Before you’ve finished, don’t forget to recreate the goals you had set up in your regular Analytics profile – this will allow you to track goal conversions for just PPC as well as the regular performance metrics from Adwords and Analytics. Google Analytics will now collect the same data as before, but discount every other source apart from PPC data. When you go to ‘Goals’ and ‘Total Conversions’ you can select the ‘Graph by Hour’ option and data you see will be for PPC traffic only. You can then manage your day-scheduling and bidding strategy around these

Enpiem Internet Marketing offers a full Paid Search Marketing management service from keyword discovery to ongoing management, optimisation and reporting. Contact us to discuss your paid search requirements and how we can help your business succeed online.

For those without the kind of budget to gain access to Hitwise or sufficient traffic volumes to appear in Alexa, the Google Analytics benchmarking tool provides interesting insight into how you rank amongst your peers.

To access Google Analytics benchmarking data you must have opted to share your site data anonymously with Google. This is done from the ‘Edit Account settings’ page and the ‘Google Analytics Data Sharing Settings’ section. Your data is then collated with other site information in an anonymous, aggregated format. Be aware that it could take up to two weeks for the benchmarking data to appear in your Analytics account after the data sharing settings have been changed and saved.

Accessing the benchmarking information is from the ‘Visitors’ tab and the second option ‘benchmarking’ (below Overview). If the function has been configured correctly you will be presented with six small charts showing top-line site metrics with the familiar blue bar but also an additional grey line showing the ‘benchmark’ value for each metric alongside your own. The metrics shown with benchmarking values are:

• Visits
• Bounce rate
• Page views
• Average time on site
• Pages-per-visit
• Percentage new visits

Below each chart you will see the total/average metrics for the data-range selected. Below this figure you will see the corresponding benchmark metrics followed by a +/- symbol and the percentage difference between your average figure and the benchmark to show how you either exceed or fall below the industry average. You are not able to save these charts to the Dashboard view or apply them to other metrics such as search engine referrals to see how your site performs against other sites for search traffic.

So how are these comparisons of use? You can assess how your site performs against similar sites on given days. For example – do you find traffic is slow on a Wednesday? With the benchmarking report for visits you can ascertain if this is a trend shared by other sites in your market or are you an exception? You can also select a different vertical market to plot the traffic trends for that market then determine if you could promote your products or services to a section of that online community to take advantage of higher traffic on given days/weeks/months.

Benchmarking is done at an account level so it will be applied to all profiles within the account. For example, if you have an additional profile that excludes all traffic other than PPC traffic this will also have benchmarking data. Google determines the traffic volume you are receiving and puts you into an appropriate group so you can compare your data with similarly sized websites.

Enpiem Internet Marketing use Google Analytics as part of our website data analysis service. Contact us to discuss your website data analysis requirements and how we can help you make more from your website traffic.

In addition to the usual metrics and default charts in Google Analytics, there is an interesting feature that many users overlook when monitoring their website traffic – the ‘Visualise’ function. This is a feature that uses a motion chart with multiple user-defined metrics to identify trends in the data in an animated format.

So how can you use the Visualise feature? We have a client that runs display advertising on several websites and also contributes written article content to those sites on an ad-hoc basis. When reviewing the effectiveness of both channels for their marketing plan we needed to try and identify the effect both types of content had on driving traffic to their website. Did article content deliver users that spent more time on the site? Did advertising clicks lead to a higher sales conversion rate? And which site brought the best quality traffic? The visualise function was able to show us this information and allow us to dig deeper. Some commentators have criticised the tool as little more than a ‘cool gimmick’ with no practical use, but we disagree. It brings data to life and does what it suggests – helping the user identify trends faster.

Taking our client example, we went to the ‘traffic sources’ tab and selected the ‘referring sites’ option. This showed the standard summary chart with the ‘visualise’ option above it. Clicking on the Visualise option brings up the motion chart where you can select your chosen metrics to analyse. In our case we defined the X axis as the average time on site and the Y axis as number of visits. We chose to assign unique colours to each referring site and associate the dot size with time on site as well. Using the month of December as a period of activity we lowered the playback speed and watched the activity unfold over the month.

At any day-point in the chosen range you can pause the animation and mouse over the dots to get summary information. Clicking on a dot also places a name-tag on that dot which follows the dot around allowing for easy identification. We noted the relevant days for content publication or display advertising campaign launch and tagged the relevant referrers dots and watched as they varied day-by-day. By ticking the ‘trails’ option you can see a static line for each referrer with a date stamp so you can see how the activity varied over specific days.

We were able to quickly identify the change in visitor volume against time-on-site during these key moments for content submission or ad campaign display. In this particular case article content delivered longer time-on-site visits. However, varying the metrics to factor in goal conversions showed that one particular site proved significantly more effective at converting visitors through display advertising. Have a look at the Visualise function in your Google Analytics account and see how strategic and tactical questions can be answered by varying the metrics.

Enpiem Internet Marketing use Google Analytics tracking as part of our website data analysis service. Contact us to discuss your website data analytics requirements and how we can help you make more from your website traffic.

In addition to the tracking and analysing of website visitor data with applications such as Google Analytics, it is also important to set up a Google Webmaster Tools account (which is free) as well. The Webmaster Tools service is a two-way dialogue between you (the webmaster) and Google. You benefit from accessing Google data about the indexing of your site and how Google users find your website. Google benefits from your guiding their indexing application (Googlebot) to more effectively and efficiently interact with your site and its content. So what will you be able to do with your account?

• > Sitemap management – creating an XML sitemap for Google provides it with further information on how it should treat your site. The sitemap could include pages that aren’t linked from the homepage and therefore might not be indexed otherwise. It also allows you to specify the importance of each page and the frequency of change to each page (for example an ‘about us’ page might change on once every year but a ‘news’ or ‘frequently asked questions’ page might change weekly or even daily)
• > Search queries – this helps you identify which search queries return your website in the organic listings and which position they are in on Google. In Google Analytics this information relates to the keywords that actually brought traffic to your website rather than those words that were ranked on the results page. This tool can help you focus on specific keyword phrases that should be improved to enhance your organic position and hopefully increase click-through
• > Site diagnostics – shows useful information such as page link errors where an internal link resolves in a missing page (such as an internal link to a page that was deleted or renamed). You can also check for issues such as duplication or missing tags (such as title or description) that would affect listing with the Content Analysis function
• > What Googlebot sees – provides information on how Google’s indexing software views your website and the inbound link keywords and anchor text and page content it reads. This can help you to better optimise your inbound links as well as improve site content to enhance certain valuable terms and keyword phrases
• > Statistics – provides links to queries such as how many pages of your site have been indexed by Google (remember that not all pages on your sitemap will end up included). Crawl stats show the previous 90-days activity by Googlebot and the average number of pages and data analysed

Google Webmaster Tools is a free resource that only takes 5-minutes to set-up and requires validation of your status as webmaster by either adding a META tag to your homepage or uploading an HTML file with an alphanumeric name determined by Google. If you are able to upload either of these to your webserver you are allowed to view Webmaster data about the site.

Enpiem Internet Marketing create Google Webmaster Tools accounts as a standard part of all website development projects and also use these accounts when providing SEO services including on-page and off-page optimisation, link management and copywriting. Contact us to discuss your requirements.

When making decisions about budget allocation for digital marketing or website optimisation, Google Analytics provides valuable information using the Conversion Goals and Funnel function. If you already use Google Adwords you will probably be familiar with conversions and conversion tracking. Analytics goes beyond Adwords in letting you differentiate between sources such as PPC, natural listings and inbound referrers as well as putting a monetary value on goal completion. You can also use drop-out metrics to assess if there are any points in your customer journey that could be improved to reduce churn mid-purchase. Here we will look at the basic steps to take in order to set up goal tracking and conversion funnels in Google Analytics. 

When a visitor reaches a pre-determined page on your website then Google Analytics registers this as a ‘goal’ having been completed. A goal could be the downloading of a document (such as a PDF white paper), completion of an enquiry form or the confirmation of a completed online transaction. It is important to define goals for non e-commerce websites as the data will still help you improve efficiency and return on investment. 

Log into Analytics and on the ‘Analytics settings’ page, click on the action ‘edit’ next to the appropriate site profile and this will take you to the site profile page. Here you will find the ‘Goals & Funnel’ section. On the ‘settings’ column click ‘edit’ and complete the required field information including the URL of your goal completion page (typically a ‘thank-you’ page). At this stage you can provide a goal value such as the revenue for an enquiry form submission or downloaded document. Using your click-to-sale metrics you can determine how many clicks it takes on average to drive a goal and divide this by your per-sale revenue and apply this per-action figure as your goal value. 

If your goal is a relatively straightforward ‘A to B’ process then it won’t be necessary to define a funnel. However, if the goal requires the user to progress through a number of pages before the goal is reached, then funnel definition is very useful. The goal will already be defined as the final step, however you can defined an additional 10 steps prior to goal completion. In defining the steps you can enter the URL and a name (cart confirmation page). You will be able to see this information in the ‘funnel visualisation report’ in the goals tab on your Analytics report. Funnel reporting will help you quickly identify the stages in your customer journey that require optimising. For instance the provision of testimonials or the provision of a customer support live-chat tool could re-focus the prospective customer on completing the transaction. 

Enpiem Internet Marketing use Google Analytics tracking as part of our website data analysis service. Contact us to discuss your website data analytics requirements and how we can help you make more from your website traffic.

If you’ve got multiple links to a specific URL, standard tracking software can often muddy the waters by only showing a single click metric unless you add additional parameters to the link. Was it the link on your navigation bar, the link in your page copy or the image with a link behind it that delivered the user to a target page? Similarly, if you’re thinking about including display advertising to your site – which area will attract more clicks?

This problem requires some way of differentiating between the identical URL links to determine the most effective placement. This issue is partly overcome with packages like Google Analytics, offering ‘site overlays’. The Analytics overlay will identify click traffic within a given date range and also goal value (if you have configured goals in your analytics account).

Going one step further beyond the capabilities of Analytics, one low-cost ASP solution is Crazyegg. The Crazyegg product is excellent for testing new designs, new content, calls-to-action and various display advertising placements.

What we particularly like about Crazyegg is that it goes beyond the limitations of the hyperlink boundary on the page by reporting at pixel level. If your page features an attention-grabbing image but this isn’t linked – the Crazyegg report will show how many clicks it received and where exactly on the image the user tried to click – allowing you to make decisions about page layout and development. Beyond this is will tell you the referring source of the click and the keyword if this was from a search engine!

There are four standard reporting outputs in Crazyegg:

• > Overlay – showing a similar layout to the Google Analytics site overlay, this report shows clicks to the link as well as a breakdown of referrers that have delivered traffic to this link. The information expands and collapses giving a clean presentation to the page
• > List – provides a table of all links, denoting whether they are text or image links, the total number of clicks and the percentage of traffic that link has received
• > Heatmap – is our favourite report, showing your page in shaded tones with lighter ‘hotspots’ where users have clicked. This report identifies the non-link areas as well as the more obvious links and calls-to-action giving a clear indication as to where calls-to-action and advertising should be placed for maximum effect
• > Confetti – shows each individual click as a coloured dot on the exact pixel where it was clicked. An initial table shows the top 15 referring sites that generated traffic along with metrics such as operating system, screen resolution and browser type. If the traffic source was a search engine it will show the engine and keyword as well

Adding the tracking code is a very similar process to adding Google Analytics code to your page. A basic package costs just £5 per month for 10,000 visits tracked, above this is the £11 per month package with 25,000 visits through to £57 per month for 250,000 visits tracked. This is a cost-effective addition to your site reporting toolbox especially for frequently changing site content and sites offering advertising.

Enpiem Internet Marketing use Crazyegg tracking as part of our website data analysis service. Contact us to discuss your website data analytics requirements and how we can help you make more from your website traffic.

Despite your best efforts, as your site grows and your copy becomes more abundant, it soon becomes a challenge for users to find what they’re looking for. As with the source of a great deal of your website traffic, the search engine can continue to be of service to your visitors after they’ve arrived on your website and acts as a familiar tool to retrieve the information they’re looking for.

We were recently asked to add a site search facility to a client’s website and through researching the products on offer decided to implement a search facility to our own website at the same time.

It seems that products and services fall into three categories – enterprise-level site-based search engines, outsourced solutions that ‘mimic’ your website for results presentation and then a blended solution combining on-site query and results with offsite indexing and dynamic presentation of results. These solutions come in a variety of packages from free advert-heavy applications through to programming heavy advert-free solutions with complex advanced-search capabilities.

Our client was understandably keen to keep costs under control but also to maintain a professional feel to the SERP layout. Therefore, we dismissed the free solutions relatively quickly as our client had already specified no text or banner advertising in the results or to lose traffic to another website for results presentation (we certainly didn’t want this for our own site either). We looked at a number of site search products aimed at the SME market which matched both our business models. There are a number of packages that broadly fitted the bill including PicoSearch, Freefind and Google Custom Search.

In the end we chose Google’s ‘Custom Search Engine’. We selected the Google CSE for a number of reasons including: ease of implementation, integration with Google Analytics and scalability. The package we chose was for sites up to 5,000 pages (plenty of room for growth!) and 250,000 individual search interrogations annually.

We were particularly keen to see how the results integrated into Google Analytics and were pleased with what we found in our user-testing. Analytics provides a wealth of information such as the proportion of users that used your search function, search queries used, start and destination pages, day-trends as well as the quality of subsequent site usage metrics such as time-on-site, search-depth and further search refinement. It should be noted that Analytics is compatible with a number of site-based search services, we just kept it ‘in-the-family’.

Blended with general site usage metrics, site-based search is a powerful tool for the site manager but primarily a great resource for your visitors, hopefully improving their time-on-site and your conversion levels. It will also provide vital insight for future site development and content organisation and management.

For advice about adding site search to your website or full implementation of site-based search, contact us to discuss your requirements.