Diving into Data (Web Analytics) looking for key Insights / Advice of Avinash.

Diving into Data (Web Analytics) looking for insights.
Advice of Avinash:
Segmentation:

New Nirvana Rule: Never report a metric (even God’s favorite KPI) without segmenting it to give deep insights into what that metric is really hiding behind it.
The power of segmenting a metric is that you peek behind the curtain and find out more about the metric. These are the benefits that you will gain:
1.    It is impossible to segment any metric without putting in the effort to understand what we are reporting and the business value that the metric represents. This is hard work but what does not kill you makes you stronger. :~)
2.    Segmenting allows you to quickly hone in on areas of deeper dive from which will emerge key insights that will drive real and meaningful action.
3.    Our senior executives and decision makers don’t understand all the complexity and magic that is a web experience, showing them segmented trends is a extremely effective communication tool (and the best part is you barely have to talk, the picture will tell the story).
4.    You will earn a big fat bonus and promotion.

KPI Attributes:
1) What is good for Jane it might not be good for John. Every web business is unique !!
2) Do not go for perfection: Good is enough !!
3) Critical few baby, critical few !! Few KPIs:Most common: 3. Maximum: 4 KPI for each website analysis.
4) KPI Lifecycle (Half of KPI will die in one year), because your competitor become stronger. So apply Lean Six Sigma Process (Define, Measure, Analyse, Action, Improve or Eliminate). If your KPI do not give you insight, kill it, be brutal and kill it, and then define a new better KPI .

Each KPI must be:
1) Uncomplex
2) Relevant
3) Timely
4) Instantly useful

Do Not forget of Conversion Trinity
1) Relevant
2) Value
3) Call to action

Segmenting Brand and Generic Paid Search Traffic in Google Analytics

Segmenting Brand and Generic Paid Search Traffic in Google Analytics

Thursday, June 26, 2014 | 11:09 AM

Labels: AdWords, Announcements, Features

Many advertisers with paid search campaigns advertise on queries mentioning their brand (e.g., “Motorola smartphone” for Motorola) and also on generic searches (e.g., “smartphone reviews”). Because the performance metrics for ads shown against brand and generic queries can be vastly different, many advertisers prefer to analyze these two groups separately.  For example, all else being equal, searches containing the advertiser’s brand name often have higher clickthrough-rates than those that don’t.

Automatic classification

To make analysis of brand and generic performance as easy as possible, we’re introducing a new feature which automatically identifies brand-aware paid search clicks tracked in Google Analytics. We use a combination of signals (including the clickthrough-rate, text string, domain name and others) to identify query terms which show awareness of your brand.  You can review our suggested brand terms and then accept or decline each of them. It’s also easy to add additional brand terms that we’ve missed. 

With the resulting list of brand terms, we classify your paid search traffic in GA so that you can split your “paid search” channel into two separate channels: “brand paid search” and “generic paid search”. This can be done both for Multi-Channel Funnels (for attribution purposes) and for the main Google Analytics channel grouping. See this straightforward step-by-step guide to get started.

Industry feedback

Back in 2012, George Michie from the Rimm-Kaufmann Group, a leading online marketing agency, called analyzing brand and generic paid search together “the cardinal sin of paid search”. We showed him a preview of our new solution and here’s his reaction:

"I've been arguing for many years that advertisers should look at their brand and generic paid search separately. There are massive differences in overall performance - but also in more specific areas, like attribution and new customer acquisition. 

Google Analytics now makes it a lot easier for advertisers to segment brand and generic paid search into separate channels. I'm sure this feature will help many more advertisers measure these important differences - and more importantly, take action on these new insights."

Getting started

Finally: note that this feature works for all paid search advertising, not just Google AdWords. It will roll out to all users in the coming weeks.

To get started, use the step-by-step guide to set up separate brand paid search and generic paid search channels. We’ve already suggested brand terms for every GA view with sufficient paid search traffic.

Posted by: Frank Uyeda, Software Engineer, Google Analytics

10 Conversion Segmentation Tips to Optimize Your Online Business

June 2, 2014 By Paul Koks

Let’s be honest. How many of you started out with a 100% focus on the overall website conversions or conversion rate?
There is nothing wrong with putting some attention on this metric, but it is not the end of the story.
Conversion segmentation is a must if you want to do great instead of just good.
There are literally hundreds of ways to segment and optimize your website conversions.
I could write a complete book on this topic… maybe in the future. :-)
In this post I will dive into 10 conversion segmentation tips you should definitely give a try!

1. Channel

What traffic sources are delivering your greatest ROI?
Can you do anything to increase the conversion rates of the least performing channels?
Or should you just concentrate on and move your budget to a few of your top performers.
In my opinion, segmentation step one is taking a close look into each of your channels and how they are performing.
Do you feel you already made it through this first stage? I encourage you to think about conversion attribution to drive smarter decisions.
Offline marketing and segmentation strategies can often be (partly) applied online as well (lessons from McDonalds):

2. Landing Page

Another great way to move from zero to hero is by optimizing each of your landing pages. These 10 tips on increasing your conversion rate might come in handy.
Ok, let’s address a difficulty here.
Each of your segmentation options might interact with other ones at the same time. In this case you might want to take a look at specific landing pages segmented by traffic source.
For example, some of your landing pages might perform better in paid channels than others.
Google Analytics secondary dimensions really help you to gain greater insights into deeper segments.

3. Browser

It wouldn’t be the first time that one browser outperforms a few other browsers.
In order to raise specific and overall conversion rates, you need to take a look at your browser’s performance.
It’s a good practice to start looking at the top 10 (filtered on highest traffic) first.
You could compare the worst performing browsers with the top performers.
Especially if you are reaching a lot of visitors each day, you should consider to invest enough budget to optimize the lower performing browsers.
Tip: I have seen major chances on optimizing the older versions of Internet Explorer. While aggregated they might count for more than 10% of your total traffic! And their initial conversion rates are often dramatic.

4. Device Type

Is your website mobile responsive? Do people finish your payment process in mobile browsers as well?
We are in a decade of explosive consumption growth in the mobile and tablet market. You don’t want to stay behind and lose many of your (potential) customers!
I recommend to watch this video of “Google Webmasters” about optimizing the top mobile tasks on your website:

5. Country

Many of you are probably receiving visitors from countries all over the world. At least I hope so. :-)
In order to serve them all in the correct way, you should think about a multilingual and multiregional SEO approach.
There is a lot to win and a lot to lose here.
If you are running an international business and are only targeting English-speaking consumers, you still want to pay attention to country specific optimization.

6. User Type

Do new visitors convert better or worse than repeating visitors?
Based on the performance of these segments, you could choose to adapt your retargeting strategies. Or maybe add a few new ones here!

7. Internal Site Search

Do visitors using your site search module convert well or not at all? Your site search is a great, extra navigation doorway for your website visitors, don’t neglect it and optimize instead!
You do want to show your visitors great result pages so that they are able to perform their desired action.
Besides this your site search brings up a wealth of information you can use to structure your website in the perfect way.

8. Search Keyword

Both for your organic and paid keywords, it is important to look into conversion segmentation.
What are your winners and what are your losers?
I like to bring up a case of one of my affiliate websites in the health and fitness niche. The focus is on growing organic traffic and conversions.
Actually, this site is a big winner after the last Panda 4.0 update. I must be doing something good; traffic has been doubled since then. :-)
Ok, back to the important stuff.
My main goal of this particular website is driving traffic to Amazon. As it perfectly fits a “hot” product niche, many visitors are willing to buy products on Amazon.
I have compared two groups of visitors:

• First group of visitors that land on my website with a query including “best”.
• The other segment consists of visitors arriving on my website without a query including “best”

When excluding the (not provided) group in Google Analytics the data looks as follows:

Segment one – without best

Segment two – with best

And what do we see here? Seach queries that contain “best” are outperforming the other queries by far.

• With “best”: 27% CR (clicks to Amazon)
• Without “best”: 16% CR (clicks to Amazon)

This tells me a lot about the intent of specific visitors and certainly does help me with future plans on expanding and optimizing this website.

9. Day of the Week

In general – it is risky to make this kind of a statement – Monday is the top conversion performing day in many niches.
Well, take a look at your figures and see whether your brand visibility should be adapted during the course of the week.
Take into account that this is not an easy one. On some days people might be searching more and find your website. On other days they might decide to buy.
However, it is still worth to know more about the behavior on specific weekdays and compared to the weekend.

10. Frequency and Recency

If you are familiar with data analysis, you know it’s better not to focus on averages. Instead, look at the distribution of data segments.
Last but not least, try to understand how visitors interact with your website.
Do your visitors convert better if they pay you one visit, two visits, three visits or…? Do they take one day to convert or maybe even longer than a month?
Are there ways to persuade visitors to directly buy your products? This without them leaving your site and doing a competitor comparison first. If they find them better, you might lose a potential customer!
Thanks for staying with me to the end. I really hope these conversion segmentation tips help you to increase your segmented and overall website conversion!
If you want to know more about segments in Google Analytics, I welcome you to read my segments guest post on Online-Behavior.com.
Well, I am more than happy to hear your thoughts!
Please consider subscribing to the OnlineMetrics blog feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader. And as always, if you like the article, I very much appreciate a comment or share!

About Paul Koks

Passionate blogger, analyst and conversion optimizer. Creative mind behind data driven insights, tips and tricks on this website.