Ambient and Transparent

Questions I always hear with regards to SEO and marketing optimization:

• How does Google Analytics improve my search engine optimization (SEO)?
• How can I get more out of my SEO?
• What is the real effect of ranking on search engines for my business?

I am hoping the case study below will shed some light on these questions. If you apply a similar analysis you can help your customer, manager, or whoever is delaying your SEO effort. But instead of answering “the importance of ranking” question, maybe something more quantifiable and measurable might get your decision makers’ attention! How about “how does ranking on a specific keyword, or lack thereof, impact the bottom line?” Answering such questions will help us make the most of our marketing spend during these tough economic times and help us do a more effective job in marketing and campaign optimization.

I’ll use real time data and analysis but won’t mention the name of the website for privacy reasons. Here are the details:

• Website type: eCommerce
• The website used to rank near the top of Google on two competitive keywords until August 2008.
• Historically, these two keywords have driven traffic to the site. For a specific time period, these two keywords drove 5,684 visits and led to 46 conversions for a 0.81% conversion rate.

If you have your Google Analytics eCommerce features properly configured and working, the above data is easily accessible under the Traffic Sources -> Search Engines -> Non-paid report. The inline filter was used to get data for just these two keywords.

• We then start examining the time period when the ranking for these two keywords took a big hit.
• Next, using the date comparison function in Google Analytics, we compared the traffic generated by these two keywords for this year with poor ranking versus last year with better ranking. Here is the result:

The table on the left is for one of their keywords and the table on the right is for the other. As you can see, a significant drop in visits in 2008, 4471 to be exact. So the negative impact of the drop in SEO ranking was less opportunities to make sales on their primary keywords!

• The 4471 visits might be a small percentage of the overall website traffic but when you put a dollar sign next to it, we typically react to it more quickly. Take the 4471 visits and multiply it by your average conversion rate for these keywords, which is 0.81%, and then multiply by the average order value, which is $846.
• 4471 x 0.0081 = 36 lost sales
• 36 x $846 = $30,456 of lost revenue!

Now one can argue that this number is not accurate because of many factors BUT the findings are very actionable! If I were to present this analysis to my boss or client, I would add 2-3 other scenarios:

• Scenario 1, with a higher conversion rate of 1.62% after improving the design and usability of the site, the lost revenue would be $60,852. (ouch!)
• Scenario 2, with a lower average order value and the existing conversion rate of 0.81%, our lost revenue would have been $15,228.
• You could create a table to show the range. The main point is that there was between $15K and $60K of lost revenue. In tough economic times, wouldn’t you rather have that revenue?

Depending on your company size, marketing budget, and other factors, the $30K might be a significant number or it might be a rounding error. But at the end of the day, $30K of lost revenue is $30K of lost revenue, especially in times like these where cutting cost and marketing optimization is more important than ever. By doing similar analysis, you can find other lost sales opportunities, monetize them, and get some corrective actions underway.

I think you can take this analysis to a business owner or marketing manager, and I am pretty sure they would get the SEO effort prioritized.

written by Feras Alhlou \\ tags: actionability, actionable insight, conversion, google analytics, integrated marketing, marketing strategy, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, tips for internet consultants, web analytics

If your site has dynamic URLs then you might have a hard time making sense out of your data in Google Analytics. If for any reason you cannot convert your dynamic URLs to friendly URLs…search and replace filters are the answer!

The screenshot below demonstrates the nightmare some people might experience when they view content reports.

In order to make the URL readable, we have to identfy the parameters that we want to change. In our above example the URL contains three parameters: departmentID, CategoryID, and ProductID. We first create a “search and replace” filter for each department, category, and product. Then we replace each dynamic parameter with easy-to-read text.

• Create the “Search & Replace” Filters

Filter# 1

Filter# 2

Filter# 3

• Now apply all created filters to a test profile and verify data accuracy before applying to your regular profiles.

Your content reports will now look like this:

Note:

• We do not advice using “Search & Replace” approach on e-commerce sites because you will have a very large number of filters.
• The easiest way to never have to deal with dynamic URL addresses is by using friendly URLs at the development stage.
• You can use tools such as Apache’s mod_rewrite to present clean URLs to both your visitors and your web analytics application.
• Clean URLs will have additional benefits such as helping with your SEO campaign and improving conversion rates..

written by Allaedin Ezzedin \\ tags: conversion, google analytics, search engine optimization, web analytics

Earlier this week, I had a very interesting meeting with one of our clients. The client is in B2B and they offer a turn-key product/service. I was reviewing the monthly KPI report with the president of the company and one of metrics showed a significant improvement in conversion (it is a lead gen site). The goal we were tracking was to submit a request for more information.

So we were excited about the increase in conversion and the number of the leads the client is now getting. The increased in leads showed a solid trend, every month of last quarter and in October as well. Everyone is happy! Cost per lead is dropping down, the sales team is busy with leads, etc. We also looked deeper and traced the conversion to one referring site that we started to advertise on heavily few months ago. All is good and we are now thinking of increasing the ad spend on this one particular site.

Maybe not so quickly! One thing I learned from reading all the Web Analytics books and blogs is that you always want to question the data and verify data accuracy and assumptions quantitatively and qualitatively. We started by reviewing the stats from the referring site and they more or less matched up with the stats in our analytics tool.

We are now very close to celebrate, until we started to look at the actual lead submission data. The client was reluctant to give us access to the qualitative data (or maybe we didn’t articulate its importance as effectively as we should have). It turned out that in a 3-day period we had 13 leads (through our lead gen form) and 12 out of the 13 were not relevant at all, they were actually submissions from suppliers pitching their own services to our client! Unbelievable! If we had 100 visits generating this number of leads our effective conversion rate has now dropped from 13% to 1%!!!

So what is the actionable insight here? Improve the analytics process to include review on lead submission data (or a sample of it). We have since improved our KPI reporting and made it part of the process to verify the quality of the leads, and not just the number of leads. The good news is we have a very specific action plan to improve the conversion rate off this referring site and attract future quality leads. And the other piece of good news is that we have other campaigns are generating very good leads (so the client is still happy with us :))

As our friend Avinash reminds us, it is not just about reporting or analysis, it is about data accuracy.

written by Feras Alhlou \\ tags: actionability, actionable insight, conversion, web analytics

Yesterday I attended the Conversion University conference at Google here in Mountain View. Avinash had a couple of very informative sessions on creating a “data driven” culture in your organization (or your clients’ organization). I really recommend you get his book, Web Analytics - An Hour A Day, if you haven’t done so.

These sessions will soon be available on YouTube and the sessions from the previous Conversion University Day have been available for a while now. Even if you are not using Google Analytics, the sessions are still very applicable.

There were a number of very informative sessions on Adwords, Google Website Optimizer (GWO), GA Hacks , a number of case studies, as well as a review of the new features that will be rolled out soon in Google Analytics.

There were also a number of very friendly and helpful Google engineers and specialists that were around to answer questions from the audience in the breaks and in the lab time.

Many thanks to Brett, Jeff, and the others who put this event together.

PS. Lunch was excellent too!

written by Feras Alhlou \\ tags: conversion, google, google adwords, google analytics, google website optimizer, web analytics

In a recent E-Nor analytics webinar I touched on the topic of landing pages. I interact with a fair amount of Internet marketing consultants and I see a lot of effort focused on driving traffic to websites and building custom landing pages. And I see efforts focused on enhancing landing pages (redesign, new marketing copy, different call to action, etc.) but little effort to measure and analyze key metrics on these landing pages.

What I recommend to site owners and consultants is to direct some of that energy from just driving traffic (and just focusing on cost per click and click through rates) to examining how users are engaging with the landing page.

Measuring and analyzing KPIs such as bounce rates and conversion rates, especially after a level of segmentation (based on visitor type, campaign, etc.) is done will yield amazing results. If you are not setting up goals on your site and not tracking conversions, now is the time to do so. A/B testing and multi-variate testing are also invaluable methods to find out what works best.

Would love to hear your comments on your experiences with landing page metrics and what worked for you and your clients. Thanks!

written by Feras Alhlou \\ tags: conversion, google analytics, google website optimizer, web analytics

If you happen to be reviewing your Google Analytics reports and digging for some useful piece of data to help you improve your website’s visitor experience, you’ll definitely want to make use of the new features that were introduced today by the Google Analytics team. Check out the following post for more details http://analytics.blogspot.com/2007/06/you-asked-for-it-you-got-it-new.html and put these features to use.

One of the features that we found very useful for a B2B client of ours is the time-of-day conversion. You can review the hourly report and see the highest converting time of day and optimize your marketing spend based on these findings.

written by Feras Alhlou \\ tags: conversion, google analytics, web analytics