The following was liveblogged at Search Engine Strategies Latino by Dave Rohrer.
Moderator: Jessie Stricchiloa, Founder, Alchemist Media Inc.
Speakers:
Todd Sarouhan, President, GoVisitCostaRica.com Guiherme Gomide, CEO and Founder, Midia Digital Alex Ortiz, Senior Specialist, Google Analytics
Alex
When Google decided to launch Analytics they thought they wanted to Provide content owners to see how users were using their site
Are you asking the right questions? Are visitors signing up on my site? Which marketing initiatives are the most effective? What do people do while on the site? Is the website design driving people away? Are the visitors signing up? Purchasing? Where do they abandon the free trial process? What keywords resonate with prospects and get people to convert?
What drives the best traffic? Email, Search, Banner, SEO, Affiliate programs, referrals
Where does Analytics fit?
Clicks, impressions, cost -> Analytics -> # of widgets bought, revenue - Analytics should sit at the middle of any SEO &SEM work being done
Google Analytics - Free hosted service - Measure and evaluate ROI on your marketing efforts - Evaluate visitor navigation to identify site improvements - Track ecommerce metrics such as revenue, cost, and conversion rates - Find and share the data to make informed decisions o Dashboard overview and trending analyses o Drill down into reports for greater detail o Schedule emails of KPIs
Google analytics was originally designed for analysts and not everyone. The new version is all about helping you get to the data you need and sharing the data with coworkers.
Customizable dashboard helps you understand at a glance: - what are my sources of traffic - how am I doing on various search engines - what are my top keywords for any period?
One click on the timeline and you can compare two different time periods to know if you are getting better or worse.
Getting started: 1. log into Adwords and click on Analytics tab 2. add a small JavaScript code to all the pages 3. Define your goal(s) and steps that lead to them
What are your goals? - Ecommerce o Visitors o Transactions per visit o ROI by product sales and keyword CPC o Returning visitors - Lead Generation o User registrations o Request for quote/information o Funnel conversions, drop offs o Case study downloads - Brand/Product awareness o Visitors o Impressions o Page views per visit o Returning visitors
Convert more visitors to customers 1. 1st step - funnel 2. 2nd step - more funnel 3. 3rd – funnel again 4. Thank you for signing up.
Insights about all your keywords - quickly segment your data and see performance - you can easily get o Take it for a spin and explore the tool on you
Todd
The problem – many pages weren’t converting The solution – used Google Analytics to track and Web Site Optimizer to edit
The Problem - in the month of may we had over 4300 landing page visits in the
The Solution - we added 3 images of our featured hotels with a link to their featured listing.
Targeting Spanish/Portuguese Search Ads by Demographics & Behavior
Testing captions – tested them within - Used Google website optimizer
Google Website Optimizer - powerful and free - tells you when you have - 38% increase
Most websites have a conversion; it can be selling more products or gaining more leads
Guilherme
2 case studies to show today.
Web Analytics: Is everyone doing it right? - very few companies measure results and even fewer take action based on web analytics - the ones that say they measure: either have tons of data and do not analyze
Define what you want to measure - people call it goals or KPIs o sales o forms completed o navigation to a specific page
Case Study – Real estate
Problem: - No extra budget - SEM click volume did not grow - Too much display advertisement, reduced SEM budget - Client needed to increase audience
Action Plan: - set up web analytics - defined simple and straight forward goals o online chats, forms completed, price visualization, apartment details visualization - Monitored the campaign daily - Geotargeting - Set up bid management goals (not fully automated)
Results - SEM campaigns had the lowest CPL - Search engines are now responsible for 55% up from 30% - Client achieved 140% of its goals for the year - Reduced CPC costs by 75% and traffic up by 9 times
Case Study - Online Retailer
Problem - no user base - no history - new website - very tough competition - no web analytics
Approach - put Google Analytics on the site - Defined the KPIs
Initial analysis - high CPA - high bounce rate - low time spent on site per user
Data Analysis - usability reviews/corrections – shopping cart, product detail page - SEM campaign adjustments and fine tuning - Changes in shipping policies
Result - conversion rate went up 49%, average daily orders went up 700%
Take away - you don’t need an expensive tool - keep it simple, don’t choose too many goals or KPIs - analyze it daily - take real action based on your analysis - Use the 90/10 rule – 10% of your time creating reports, 90% of your time analyzing and taking actions
Q: Is there any lag with Google Analytics? A: Alex – it takes about 3 hours to see data. When you first start it will take 24 hours to really see worth while data.
Q: What other features of Google Analytics do you like that you didn’t mention? A: Alex – really likes the geo location reports.
Q: Why is there a difference between Analytics and what the host say? What are the common reasons for differences between different Analytic packages. A: Alex – thinks it’s a great question that he hears all the time. What’s most important is the trend and not the actual number. Each tool uses a range of technology and different data sets. JavaScript cant count robots, spiders and other things that log files can count. Robots and the like don’t run JavaScript so that could be part of it.
