Review of Yahoo Web Analytics
Okay, I’ve been promising it for some time after my review of Google Analytics a while back, so it’s now up and running. Really, I promise. For those who haven’t ventured into the wild world of IndexTools/Yahoo Web Analytics, you’re really missing out on some great and unique features. The full article can be found on the Netvantage blog, but to get you started:
Look out world! There’s more to free analytics than Google Analytics, and it’s not a new kid on the block by any stretch. Enter - Yahoo.
Just to catch up the uninitiated, Yahoo offers a web analytics platform which now goes by the name of Yahoo Web Analytics. This is not a new platform or a beta launch, Yahoo actually purchased IndexTools, an established vendor and re-branded it (much the same way Google Analytics came about from the purchase of Urchin). Anyhow, since it came from the paid space just recently, IndexTools comes well equipped with a solid set of enterprise level tools.
What’s changed since the name change?
Very little. Aside from slapping a Yahoo logo on the interface and the reports, Yahoo Web Analytics looks and acts roughly the same way. There has been some scaling back in terms of high end features, like the full blown version of their Bid Management PPC tool going the way of the dodo. Additionally, there are some restrictions on the number of page views you can consume on a month to month basis. For the vast majority of you, though, this will be nothing to worry about.
Read the full article here.
Not so fast with that internal site search!
Over the last year or two, particularly with some of the innovations made available with Google Analytics, internal site search reports have gained a lot of notoriety among industry experts. Of course, there is some evidence to back up the hype. Research has shown that roughly 10 percent of traffic to a site is likely to use internal search. As such, of the “reports you should be paying attention to” this one seems to always pop up in the conversation. I don’t disagree, but I see a danger in people putting too many eggs in this basket when it comes time to make decisions about moving forward with changes to your site. What’s really needed is context.
What do I mean by context? Largely, I’m referring to a better understanding of your existing segments, and where that sits in the overall strategic endpoint for your website. If your site repesents three distinct product groups and services, but you currently receive very little traffic for one of those groups, how will those visitors change how our site is used? To clarify, certain products can be addressed more generally, while others may require far more specificity. Let’s take an industrial equipment manufacturer for example. While they may produce full products like turbines, they may also provide parts. A Yahoo search for turbines may land them on the site’s turbine page, which lets the visitor select between six available models. The likelihood this user will utilize site search for anything more than an occasional case study or supplementary documentation is unlikely.
What if this same site had recently added a parts section to the site, but not yet started the associated Internet marketing push. Strategically, this may have a goal to eventually drive 80 percent of site activity. Further, someone reaching the site having searched “Brand X turbine parts” is far more likely to have highly specific site search needs. With the long term strategic vision of the site in mind, this can save you from making potentially damaging changes to your site, and the functionality of your site search.
Think about it. If your site is still evolving, in the above situation it could be very easy to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to move your universal site search bar to a less prominent location. Currently, it’s of little value, so this would be an easy conclusion to come to without the broader strategic context.
Another instance where you could make a damaging change is by altering the layout of your search results. In the site’s current state, searches were highly specific, so providing less search results per page, potentially with accompanying thumbnails or graphics could be a beneficial move. However, if the search function is going to primarily be used for a broader range of parts, this could be a disastrous change. What if parts users tend to search by partial product numbers? In that case, more results per page would likely benefit the user, rather than forcing them to attempt multiple searches.
So while site search is certainly an important topic to tackle in your web analytics, it’s vitally important to understand what your analysis tells you within the desired end state of your website. It’s too easy to put the cart before the horse and start whipping it, and I don’t think that will end well for anyone.
Google, can we be friends again?
Okay, despite my recent hissy-fit against Google because I didn’t get to play with their new features, I have to make sure that I do my best Fox News ad to keep things “Fair and Balanced” by telling everyone that a high profile person at Google actually caught wind of my whining and approached me to get me set up. Now THAT is customer service.
Today I was granted early access to the new tools, and so far all I can say is WOW. This is big news for free web analytics. I am astonished at Google’s dedication to move this towards more of an enterprise solution, and I wonder what the heavy hitters must be thinking as Google continues to add services that more than meet the needs of not only small business, but major corporations as well.
First and foremost, however, the segmentation problems I pointed out in my previous review is completely solved. Case closed. I will be publishing my Yahoo Web Analytics review here in the near future, and one of the key differentiators was its ability to segment. However, after just a little toying with the new Google Analytics segmentation tool, I will tell you the balance of power has shifted.
Stay tuned, there is more to come.
Onwards to actionable analysis!
Google Analytics: free web analytics tools, part 1
Free web analytics. They’re out there, now learn how to use them to your advantage.
By now you’re well aware of Google Analytics, a true trailblazer in bringing sophisticated analytics to the masses. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can provide important insights to improving your web presence, and it’s popularity is growing. Lost in the (certainly justified) euphoria of Google Analytics is the fact that Yahoo and Microsoft have also launched free analytics tools, and they, too, bring a great amount to the table.
Ultimately, what I’ll aim to do here is give a brief rundown of each tool and supply some of the key points that make each one valuable, and worth instituting on your site (they’re all free, so what can it hurt?!?!) I will focus today on Google, and will be following up with similar installments on Yahoo’s IndexTools and MSN’s Analytics Beta in the near future.
To my knowledge this is will be the first and only comparison of its kind. So let’s proceed, shall we?
Google Analytics - The old guard
It’s almost humorous to put the “old guard” tag on GA, considering it seemed only a few months ago (albeit years in reality) that I began supplementing my Clicktracks reports with Google Analytics data.
How to setup Google Analytics
For those not in the know, you can get Google Analytics working on your site for the bargain basement price of nothing by simply:
1. Having a website
2. Signing up for a google email account
3. Going to http://google.com/analytics
4. Walk through the registration process. You’ll need to know your URL, time zone, name, phone number, and country
5. Then Google will supply you with a snippet of javascript code, you’ll need to copy and paste this into your site (this is actually quite easy to do - see below) find instructions here) and then go to your account and simply verify that it’s working (this may take a couple hours…so be patient).
Instructions for installing Google Analytics code:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55488
If you’re using Wordpress, simply Log into your dashboard and browse to Presentation > Theme Editor > footer.php and place the code directly before the close body </body>
Benefits of Google Analytics
Like the other analytics packages available, Google Analytics provides your standard baseline website tracking and reporting. This means you can track all of the following:
- Visits (counts each individual visit)
- Unique Visits (only counts returning visitors once)
- Bounce Rate (users who see one page and then exit immediately)
- Page Views
- Pages Per Visit
- Average Time on Site
- New vs. Returning Visitors
- User geographic origins
- Traffic origins (did users come from a search engine, bookmark, advertisement, etc.?)
- Most visited pages
- Points of entry (where users enter the site)
- Exit pages (where are users abandoning the site)
- Goal tracking (did users complete our contact form or buy a product?)
- User paths through the site
Google Analytics provides the ability to track all of the above, and also provides some ability to track the above items for specific user segments. For example, if you wanted to track how visitors from a certain area of the country behaved compared to visitors from another area, you would select the “Dimension” dropdown in a report and then select the segmentation you would like to explore.
Google Analytics Segmentation Example
Advantages of Google
I use all of the analytics tools I mentioned earlier, and all of them have their advantages. I feel that Google is the easiest to use for the most novice users. Google has very straightforward reporting, and for the most part the interface is simple and uses terminology that people can understand. Unlike the other solutions, I feel a complete novice could simply click around in Google Analytics and begin gaining some valuable insights from the data. Some other elements of Google that I find superior to its contemporaries include:
- Trending tools - GA offers really simple one click access to trending information. Want to see if your visitors are spending more time on your site this month? You are only two clicks away from seeing that information. Or you could add it to your…
- Dashboard - Google allows you to take any report and add it to your dashboard. So if there are specific metrics you want to monitor regularly, you can simply add them to your dashboard for ready access whenever you login.
- Overlay - One of the things I missed moving from Clicktracks (who now offer javascript as well) to javascript collection methods was the inability to visually track page clicks, or as some people refer to it, “click density analysis”. Here, GA provides a “site overlay” which shows you where users are clicking on each of your pages. This can quickly identify trends in how visitors are using your site, what content they are drawn to, and what they are missing. In our example below, you can see that Joe’s blog is just as popular as mine. I need to start writing better stuff, I guess.
Joe and I are tied at 18%
- Graphical interface - Google Analytics really is easy to use. The interface, true to form for Google, is extremely clean and doesn’t offer any unusual navigational items. Straightforward links and dropdowns rule the day. This contributes to the overall ease of use and is another reason I recommend Google Analytics to beginners.
- Expandability
- Initially, I was somewhat put off by the perceived lack of high end features available on GA, but over time they have continued to make it a robust solution adding things like E-commerce tracking (check this out for all the details http://www.epikone.com/blog/2008/01/13/google-analytics-e-commerce-tracking-pt-1-how-it-works/) and goal funnels (gory details available at http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55515)
- Integration with Google AdWords & Online Marketing
- Probably the best part of Google Analytics, in my humble opinion, is its seamless integration with Google AdWords. If you’re running a campaign on AdWords (and who doesn’t these days?) you’re not doing your due diligence if you’re not doing analytics. With GA, it’s very simple to keep tabs on the effectiveness of your various keywords and ads. You can actually set this functionality up very easily through the AdWords interface, itself by going through the “Analytics” tab in the top navigation which will walk you through the process of setting up GA.
- One pitfall that you can run into, if you’re an agency, is that you’ll want to setup a unique GA email account to correspond with each client’s campaign. Otherwise, GA can struggle to clearly align data from one source to another. This can be a bit tedious, but it’s worthwhile in terms of accuracy.
- With a little extra work, you can also track any other Internet marketing campaigns you may have going. By using the Google URL builder, you can create tracking for any other paid search marketing, banner ads, or other campaigns you may have going, and easily track them under Traffic Sources > Campaigns. Here you can track how well your various campaigns and channels are converting to sales or leads, and how many visitors are “bouncing” off your site. This gives you great information for tweaking your campaigns and assuring that you, or your client’s money is spent wisely.
- Probably the best part of Google Analytics, in my humble opinion, is its seamless integration with Google AdWords. If you’re running a campaign on AdWords (and who doesn’t these days?) you’re not doing your due diligence if you’re not doing analytics. With GA, it’s very simple to keep tabs on the effectiveness of your various keywords and ads. You can actually set this functionality up very easily through the AdWords interface, itself by going through the “Analytics” tab in the top navigation which will walk you through the process of setting up GA.
Drawbacks to Google Analytics
- Limitations on features
- Unlike IndexTools, Google puts limits on some of its features. If you have an extremely complex site the four funnels and goals GA limits you too may not be enough to cover all of the elements you wish to track.
- The dashboard is great, and it’s easy to use, so why only one of them? In many cases it’s worthwhile to segment out your dashboards into pockets of information that work best together. Unfortunately, that can’t be done within GA.
- Tedious setup for tracking other campaigns
- It would be unfair to only call out Google on this, as every tool I’ve used has some issue here, but if you’re running large PPC campaigns on Yahoo or MSN, it can be very time consuming to tag all of your keywords. I’ve put together a spreadsheet that helps speed the process through the concatenate function, but it’s still a pain.
- No notes!
- One of the most important elements of analytics is testing. If you change some pages as a test, it’s good to have easy access to a log of changes within the analytics tool. Google doesn’t provide this, fragmenting your workflow if you do frequent tests (and I do!)
- More segmentation, please!
- While I love the overlay tool, I was definitely spoiled by Clicktracks’ ability to combine this tool with segmentation. With Clicktracks, I was able to see the different click patterns of members vs. non-members or a new visitor vs. a return visitor for a given page. VERY valuable information I can only hope will be coming to Google soon. I suppose this is why Clicktracks is a paid service…
- Even within some of the more basic reporting, it would be nice to be able to combine multiple “dimensions” to really slice and dice visitors. For example, if I wanted to view visitors from a certain location that entered at a certain page and did not bounce…I can’t do that. There are many occasions where I need to severely segment data and GA doesn’t offer me the ability to do so.
Conclusion
Google Analytics is an awesome tool. No ifs ands or buts about it. It is a sophisticated, powerful tool that can support the needs of even Fortune 500 Companies. However, it does have some limitations that prove rather troublesome for those in need of true high end analytics…but let’s be realistic. This is a free tool, so considering how much you get for the NOTHING that you pay for it, not utilizing GA on your site just doesn’t make sense.
Further, in terms of ease of use and the overall support available within the Help Center is top notch. In my experience, it is very rare that you will not find answers to your questions there. If not, you can still get customer support from Google usually within 24 hours. This, again, is remarkable given the price tag. Particularly for people just acquainting themselves with web analytics, this would be my recommendation as a first step for a tool that is easy to use, powerful, and provides enough information and support as your needs and knowledge of the product evolve.
Next up - IndexTools. Stay Tuned.
Microsoft’s new offerings
Just getting a chance this week to take a gander at Microsoft’s new beta analytics offering. I installed it on the Netvantage site yesterday and was playing with the interface today.
I have been planning a review for some time comparing my thoughts on IndexTools vs. Google Analytics, so this will just spruce up the overall content and add to the intrigue for those who have used some of these tools or are considering selecting one.
Considering it’s still in beta, I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve seen initially from Microsoft. In a couple days when I have a larger data sample, I can’t wait to tinker with it some more and share some useful initial thoughts.
