Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer Feedback Thread

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gav240z

gav240z

New Member
Hi Everyone,
I wanted to take a moment to try and get this thread running. I work very closely with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer and I'm looking for feedback on both products.

What I want to try and do is on a weekly basis collect feature requests or questions about Web Analytics and Website Optimization so that I might be able to help you solve problems using / configuring each product and help improve the product for everyone.

Also if you are not using Google Analytics or Google Website Optimizer I would love to hear why.

- Limitations of the product
- Other concerns / problems / issues

Really looking forward to hearing back from you guys.
 
L

link8r

New Member
I still like using our own developed stuff in conjunction with Analytics.

For example, we can't track telephone or other sales with Analytics, or sales made in a different visit but we can tie this together with our own software.
 
gav240z

gav240z

New Member
Thanks for the feedback.

link8r said:
I still like using our own developed stuff in conjunction with Analytics.

For example, we can't track telephone or other sales with Analytics, or sales made in a different visit but we can tie this together with our own software.
Click to expand...

How do you track Telephone calls in your other system? Do you serve a certain phone number to those who reach your website through Adwords and a different phone number to those who came through oragnic?

When you refer to sales made in a different visit what exactly do you mean here? Are you referring to the campaign cookie being overwritten by a subsequent visit and loosing the original referrer information?

Eg: I visit your site through Adwords and return via Organic search and now I show up as a conversion through organic and you loose the original Adwords campaign data related to that conversion?
 
L

link8r

New Member
Well, its like this. We track incoming visits from all sources, adwords and organic, referrer etc.

Sometimes people signup today and buy next week. They might not return from the same place. Or they might pick up the phone etc. Our own system allows us to track this little bit extra.
 
Redfly

Redfly

New Member
You working on the GWO team Gav?

A reason I have seen AND experienced for not using GWO is quality score. Sometimes it's a constant battle with QS and some clients are afraid to change "approved" pages for fear that an additional QS review will be triggered.

As for feature requests, I would absolutely LOVE for GWO to actually provide template call to action elements according to benchmark performance like the adwords display ad templates.
 
gav240z

gav240z

New Member
link8r said:
Well, its like this. We track incoming visits from all sources, adwords and organic, referrer etc.

Sometimes people signup today and buy next week. They might not return from the same place. Or they might pick up the phone etc. Our own system allows us to track this little bit extra.
Click to expand...

I think this is possible with Google Analytics, but it requires a bit of a work around. The phone calls, we can't help with yet.

It will also not stop organic searches or referring websites from overwriting the original Adwords campaign data.

You can however stop other campaigns for example an email campaign from overwriting the original Adwords campaign data.

You need to append this to all destination url's in said campaign:
utm_nooverride=1

so if my site was http: // www. example.com you would make your landing page url: http: // www. example.com ?utm_nooverride=1

(sorry about spaces in url above the filter on this forum converts url's)

The caveat is as mentioned that if I return through Organic Search or another Referring website you can't prevent the campaign data being overwritten.

Google Analytics campaign cookies last for 6 months. Unlike Google Adwords conversion tracking cookies which only last 30 days. So if a visitor does return up to 6 months later through a direct visit to the site (ie:bookmark) or a campaign with destination url's that contain the utm_nooverride parameter it will still be attributed to Adwords.
 
gav240z

gav240z

New Member
link8r said:
Well, its like this. We track incoming visits from all sources, adwords and organic, referrer etc.

Sometimes people signup today and buy next week. They might not return from the same place. Or they might pick up the phone etc. Our own system allows us to track this little bit extra.
Click to expand...

Should also mention that i agree with your frustration on this issue and will put forward your suggestion for "long tail" conversion tracking (another words being able to see more than 1 source responsible for a conversion).
 
gav240z

gav240z

New Member
Redfly said:
You working on the GWO team Gav?

A reason I have seen AND experienced for not using GWO is quality score. Sometimes it's a constant battle with QS and some clients are afraid to change "approved" pages for fear that an additional QS review will be triggered.

As for feature requests, I would absolutely LOVE for GWO to actually provide template call to action elements according to benchmark performance like the adwords display ad templates.
Click to expand...

I work very closely with the GWO team, but am more focused on Google Analytics right now.

I will have to check about QS issues and GWO, I'm not sure if we have any official documentation I can forward onto you about this. I will pass on your feedback however as a "product adoption" concern.

I will need to get back to you re: GWO templates. Thanks for the feedback though.
 
Redfly

Redfly

New Member
Exactly. Basically, you can select templates based on network wide highest CTR. They are really REALLY effective.

I would love to see something like a list of "buttons" or other elements or even combination of elements that have the highest success rates that we can choose from.

Make sense?
 
gav240z

gav240z

New Member
Redfly said:
Exactly. Basically, you can select templates based on network wide highest CTR. They are really REALLY effective.

I would love to see something like a list of "buttons" or other elements or even combination of elements that have the highest success rates that we can choose from.

Make sense?
Click to expand...

Absolutely, I'll pass this on for you.
 
gav240z

gav240z

New Member
Friday Feedback?

I want to try and capture all product feedback weekly.

Still looking for further feedback this week for Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics.

What do you want to change, what don't you like?

If you are not using Google Analytics or Google Website Optimizer, please feel free to pass on feedback why not.

eg:

Difficult to implement?
Confusing? Daughnting?
Didn't know it existed?
Don't know what it does?
Using another tool?
Using another tool because of XYZ feature?
Not sure how to use it with my CMS?

You name it, I want to hear about it.
 
kflanagan28

kflanagan28

New Member
I haven't used Google Website Optimizer. Is it really worth using ?. What are the benefits to your site. Maybe its just a hang up in not wanting an automated machine telling me how to optimize a site :)

I use Google Analytics a lot. In fact, I think I am one of its biggest fans. I am actually just going through some books and one of the chapters is integrating it into the Website Optimizer. So I am going to check it out.

Is Google Analytics going to be pushed more aggressively i.e. with the recent integration into Adwords ?. It seems to me Google can easily take over the Web Analytics market with this product if they start making more and more difficult to get way from (integrating with all their properties).
 
gav240z

gav240z

New Member
kflanagan28 said:
I haven't used Google Website Optimizer. Is it really worth using ?. What are the benefits to your site. Maybe its just a hang up in not wanting an automated machine telling me how to optimize a site :)
Click to expand...

I definitely think its worth using. Especially if you have pages with a high bounce rate, or pages in your funnel report that look like they may be causing a drop in conversions. It helps take alot of the guess work out of Website Optimisation and you may be surprised by the results.

I think this video is one of the best.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZlGy2auvFo"]YouTube - Google Analytics - Optimizing Customer Experiences[/ame]

kflanagan28 said:
I use Google Analytics a lot. In fact, I think I am one of its biggest fans. I am actually just going through some books and one of the chapters is integrating it into the Website Optimizer. So I am going to check it out.
Click to expand...

Not sure what kind of integration the book talks about, you can use Google Website Optimizer as a standalone product. You don't need to integrate it with Google Analytics.

It does of course help to use the reports in Analytics to help you find the right pages to test.

kflanagan28 said:
Is Google Analytics going to be pushed more aggressively i.e. with the recent integration into Adwords ?. It seems to me Google can easily take over the Web Analytics market with this product if they start making more and more difficult to get way from (integrating with all their properties).
Click to expand...

All Google products can be integrated or used as standalone. You don't have to integrate them if you don't want to.

I want to keep this thread on topic and keep it more related to product feature requests and making it more user friendly.
 
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