Yesterday, Google announced the introduction of Caffeine – a new, multi-layered, super-technical upgrade to their search engine. Despite their efforts to explain the change textually and visually, it’s still too complex to be broken down into a blog post. The breakdown is that the search will now be faster, fresher and (ideally) more relevant. From our perspective, it just means that ongoing SEO has never been more important.
Google is doing everything in their power to invade every single screen you own. For now, their efforts are focused on your television screen, but next they’ll be moving on to your window screens, fireplace screens and those sifting screens that old-time gold prospectors use.
For e-commerce websites, it is absolutely critical to have a proper implementation of Google Analytics that includes e-commerce tracking abilities. With this added code, you can see what sales you got from what sources and the associated revenue, allowing you as the business owner to make data-driven decisions about where best to spend your marketing money.
One thing that may be overlooked in this process is the “goal”. Commonly used to track micro conversions or macro conversions that don’t result in direct revenue, goals can also be applied to e-commerce websites to give you more data about your sales process.
By defining your receipt page as a “goal” in Analytics, you can then leverage the funnel visualization tool to set up a series of steps you’d like to see customers take on your site, and track how they perform. For example, let’s say you have a simple website that sells one product: Michigan State-themed Snuggies. You then would define your receipt page as a “goal” and then you’d associate the following funnel to it: first, you’d want to look at customers who start at your homepage, then who proceed to the product detail page, then to the shopping cart page, then to the payment details page, then who finally end up at your goal of the receipt page. This way, you have set up your funnel to see how people react to every aspect of your web design: from your home page’s call to action, to your product details page’s product descriptions, to your cart design and checkout process.
The value comes in using this to see which part of the process is broken. Maybe there is a very high fall off from people who view the cart page to those who actually enter their payment information. This could mean that the call-to-action and design of your shopping cart page needs tweaking. At Brand Labs, we saw this happen with one of our clients, which led us to create a modified version of the Volusion shopping cart page that has less distractions and a clearer call to action.
There’s no limit to the insight you can get from this funnel. From home page redesign, to merchandising issues, to navigation issues, the combination of goals and funnel visualizations can help any e-commerce site owner improve their site and drive more conversions.
An all-too-often overlooked feature of Analytics is the Map Overlay, located under the Visitors section. To the untrained observer, this tool simply shows you the regional breakdown of where your traffic to your site comes from around the globe, but with a little bit of refinement, you can use it to visually compare how users in different cities, states, and countries interact with your web marketing efforts, and understand how it impacts your bottom line.
While working with one of our clients from our home state of Michigan, we made great use of the Map Overlay to demonstrate a better way to target their PPC efforts. Their brand is strong, drawing customers and users from all over the world to their locations. Through the power of the Map Overlay, we were able to visualize where the site’s international traffic was coming from, and then combined it with their e-commerce reporting to see which countries converted the best.
Now, you don’t have to be a geography whiz to see that the Midwest made the strongest showing, with the Mitten State leading the pack, but this begs the question: if we’re getting most of our sales at home, how can we best reach out to our hometown crowd? We then segmented the e-commerce data for Michigan to see which traffic sources produced what revenue at what conversion rate. Our findings: Michigan residents were much more likely to convert from offline marketing efforts and organic searches; the company’s PPC efforts in the state were not drawing in the desired high-potential visitors they were in states like Illinois and Wisconsin.
Because of this analysis, we were able to re-target the client’s PPC efforts (and budget) away from Michigan to other more valuable states, and focus more of their SEO efforts on keywords that Michigan residents were converting on. Of course, this is just a single, isolated example of the depth of Map View’s utility and it bears noting that there are little gems just like this scattered throughout Google Analytics. We’ll offer tips and tricks as time goes on, but here’s one you can take with you right now: get Google Analytics on your darn site immediately. (We understand that this is more of an imperative than either a tip or trick, but you should listen and obey. You’ll thank us later)
We were just thinking earlier today that there just aren’t enough ways to alert our friends and family to all of the truly exciting goings-on in our lives, and like magic, Google introduces Buzz. Yet another avenue for our ceaseless, self-aggrandizing blatherings intended to completely break down centuries of spoken interpersonal communication until we all become nothing more than walking magazines focused on our own day to day lives. We can’t wait until the day that we never actually have to engage in direct communication with another human being and neither can Google. Enjoy!
Brand Labs is now an official Google AdWords Qualified Company! Let the bells ring out and the banners fly!
… but what exactly does that mean?
Well, it basically boils down to two things. First, we’ve exceeded the required minimum AdWords spend within programs that we manage. As a matter of fact, we overshot the minimum by 50% (because we’re a bunch of brown-nosing Google-lovers). Second, we had to have three staffers take and pass the AdWords certification test. We’ve got five, meaning that we overshot that target by 66.6%.
Now, we’re not math scientists or anything, but we’re pretty sure that those two facts make us 116% more qualified than we need to be in order to be totally awesome by Google’s standards. That’s a pretty high percentage of awesomeness, so you may want to check into our Pay Per Click management program… unless you hate awesomeness and high ROI.
So, a good number of people in our office just spent far too much time playing with Google Wave.
… well, “playing” may not be the right word. What’s that word that means, “inviting each other to participate in a new technology of which we have yet to determine the usefulness”?
Anyhoo, Google’s new tool, which is intended to improve productivity and communication on a mass scale, has yet to prove itself within the walls of this office. I will personally give five dollars to the first person who can explain to me (in any sort of compelling way) why I should be using this darn thing. Fo’ reals.
… and I refuse to incorporate “blip” into my vocabulary. Suck on that, Google.
Our friends at Google have just introduced a new service called Google Dashboard. Using it you can find out just what information their superintelligent omninetwork has collected about you with the ultimate goal of enslaving you for their as yet unrevealed and certainly nefarious purposes (editor’s note: this may or may not be a gross mischaractariztion of our benevolent overlords).
Yesterday, Google announced the introduction of Caffeine – a new, multi-layered, super-technical upgrade to their search engine. Despite their efforts to explain the change textually and visually, it’s still too complex to be broken down into a blog post. The breakdown is that the search will now be faster, fresher and (ideally) more relevant. From our perspective, it just means that ongoing SEO has never been more important.
Brand Labs is now an official Google AdWords Qualified Company! Let the bells ring out and the banners fly!
So, a good number of people in our office just spent far too much time playing with Google Wave.
