Is Event Tracking One of Your New Year's Resolutions?

It's a new year and a fresh start. For some, that means resolutions and goals for 2010. Okay. I realize that dropping a few pounds and not smoking are ideal resolutions but what about goals for your website? To me, setting up a goal would be just as easy as not touching that piece of chocolate cake.

The process of establishing website goals begins with identifying and then tracking specific events on your website. Alas, most analytics programs, Google specifically, give us the ability to track a wide variety of events visitors take on websites and then act on those results to improve upon your website's performance.

The first of the two-step process begins with you, the site owner, asking questions in order to determine what event it is you would like to track. For example, if you have an e-commerce site then you would probably want to know how many sales were  generated last week or last month. That seems obvious. But, have you ever wondered how many people are clicking on Product A on the products page? For non-e-commerce related sites, you might ask yourself whether people are opting-in your recurring e-newsletter or downloading the latest e-newletter in PDF format.

Event tracking really depends on the specific goals and needs of your site, and what you want to track. Nonetheless, you should be tracking some type of event because when a visitor interacts with a video player or game on your website, no pageview is generated, thus making it difficult to measure.

Here are some common events that are tracked that do not generate pageviews:

• Clicks on links that take the visitor to another site
• Clicks on an image or button (ex. Facebook icon or ‘shop now’ button)
• Banner Ad clicks
• File downloads (ex. PDF)
• Page widgets
• E-commerce activity/shopping cart purchases
• Member functions (ex. tracking new member sign-ups, log-ins, etc.)
• Flash, Ajax and Javascript related contentPlay button on a video or audio

Tracking specific events, the second part of the process, is relatively easy. If you are using Google Analytics, then all you need to do is call the _trackEvent() method each time you want to register an event such as how many clicks to an external link or video downloads.  For example, if you want to track how many people clicked on the "follow us" Twitter icon/link on your web page then the code would look something like this:

onclick="pageTracker._trackEvent('Home', 'Follow', 'Twitter');" href="http://www.twitter.com/companyname">

The "Home", "Follow" and "Twitter" identifiers represent the category, action and label so you can view the specific results for this event right in your Analytics account. It's really that simple. For more information on setting up event tracking in Google Analytics visit:  http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/eventTrackerGuide.html

Remember, event tracking is there to help improve your overall online sales and marketing goals and allow you to have a better understanding of your visitors' actions. Now, isn't this a resolution worth sticking with?

I Have the Analytics Data, Now What?

Every business entity today is faced with a problem (or two), whether related to an internal process or customer. Analytics offers up part of the solution by providing us with the intelligence to understand and address the problem while benefiting the customer in the end.  Yet, the data offered up by web analytics providers like StatCounter, Webtrends, Google, etc. can be overwhelming, to say the least. This is especially true if you are a small business owner or new to the business of tracking website visitor behavior.

One look at an analytics dashboard and one can come away feeling lost or anxious to get answers. Ah, but therein lies the key: Intelligently interpreting, disseminating and utilizing the data to derive at conclusions and decisions. Otherwise, the information becomes useless. Here are some suggestions on dealing with your data.

Invest in the analysis, not the technology - You will want to first establish a team of analytical minds that will be able to interpret, disseminate and manage the mounds of data. Free programs (e.g. Google Analytics) are sufficient for the needs of most businesses. So there's no need to fret over the technology. However, you should try to avoid using two analytics programs. Experience has taught me that more discrepancies and questions arise when dealing with multiple sets of data. Not everyone may agree but let's not forget,  the primary goal and a better use of time for the Analytics team should be on the analysis and drawing conclusions. Not on the technology.

Establish Goals - Ask yourself  "What is the desired result?" or "What am I trying to accomplish?" for a particular web page. Whether it's increasing traffic or converting customers, having clear, established goals and objectives will prevent you from performing unnecessary analysis. It will also keep your website on right track to achieving its goals. Note that Google Analytics now lets you create up to 20 conversion goals per profile, a feature released just this week. Now there is no excuse for adding such simple goals as length of time on site and number of pages per visit.

Test and tweak then test some more - Now that you have a team in place and goals established it is time to put the data to the test. Literally. Because what do bounce rates really mean if the data is not coupled with the testing of a message, design, layout or call to action? The results will show how users react to  changes. So, if your goal is to decrease the bounce rate, then did the test show the visitor staying on the website longer or leaving quicker? You want to keep tweaking and testing until you reach the desired result. Otherwise, how can you really make a sound, logical decision pertaining to your website? And there are no excuses for not testing. Google has a free tool called 'Website Optimizer' to achieve the desired test data you seek.

Patience is a virtue - It is generally not a good idea to make changes on the basis of a few days worth of data. Before you delete or pause a keyword or ad, for example, question whether you have enough data to make a sound decision. The longer the date range, the more abundance of data. Thus, the easier the decision. Shorter time frames offer misleading theories and lead to miscalculated decisions. Take into account returning customers, those who find the site via a paid ad, for example, and then return later to the site to make a purchase. You may miss out on important conversion data if you react too quickly due to a small sample set of data. Also, depending on your goal, it may take days or even months for many of your visitors to convert to customers. So, be patient and set a date range that will last as long as your expected sales cycle or return statistically significant conclusions.

Remember, we're dealing with technology so stay 'in the know' by subscribing to the plethora of blogs out there including the Google Analytics Blog, Analytics Market, or Web Analytics World.

AdWords & Analytics are Even Closer

The on again, off again relationship between Google AdWords and Google Analytics has taken another turn in the search engine soap opera but this time for the better. Google has recently announced that it is possible to import goals and transactions from Analytics into AdWords. This is a significant move in the relationship. Think of it as Analytics moving in with AdWords after years of dating.

For years, AdWords users would have to click to and from Analytics to see which campaigns, ad groups, and keywords were returning an investment. For those of us managing multiple accounts, this was nothing short of annoying.

In typical Google fashion, they made this "move in" as easy as 1-2-3, but under one stipulation: AdWords must be linked with Analytics (i.e. each committed to the relationship). Simply:

1. Find conversion tracking under the tools tab.
2. Click on the link "Link your Analytics Goals and Transactions" in the message box.
3. Select the Analytics goals you want to see in AdWords and click "Link".

Presto! AdWords is now including all your Analytics Goals and Transactions. This will allow you to track conversion performance (including conversion rate and cost per acquisition) and use Analytics data with Conversion Optimizer.

Now, if all relationship move ins were this smooth...