Using URL Builder to Improve Analytics Reporting

When using Analytics, Google itself has access to enough information to feed you a lot of data in terms of users’ interactions with your website, as well as where they originated from. However, there are a couple types of marketing efforts efforts that can lead to users accessing your site from sources that Google either can’t identify or can’t segment enough to be useful to you.

The two prominent examples are email marketing campaigns and running multiple ads on a single domain. In the case of email campaigns, google doesn’t have control over your email client, and thus doesn’t know where the email link originated. As a result, without using URL builder, one’s email campaign traffic will likely end up showing up under Acquisition Channels as Direct traffic. When running multiple ads on one website– you may have one banner ad, header, footer, plain text, etc.– google will not be able to differentiate which traffic came from which ad, preventing you from assessing their performance and adjusting accordingly.

In these cases, Google offers a simple tool to feed it the information it needs in order to give you this useful data- URL builder. Using URL builder allows you to create a custom url for your destination page and attribute the desired source information, in turn allowing Google Analytics to better display the exact behavior of users.

 

To access URL Builder click here or search for “URL builder” and ,if you’re logged into analytics, you should see a page like the following:

 

URL builder homepage

 

Taking the example of an email marketing campaign, what you’ll want to do is enter the url of the page that you are linking to in your emails. In this case lets say that I’m sending links to Astral Web’s content page:

 

URL Builder Landing page

I then fill out the boxes as required below:

URL Builder Demonstration image

*when copying and pasting destination URLs, be sure that they do not contain any excess coding or characters- you’ll end up with a non-functional link.

After clicking Submit, we’re given a long link that includes all of the information that has just been entered into URL Builder.

Unique URL from URL builder

This is the link that I’ll want to put into my emails (or ads, etc.) in order to identify them in analytics.

In order to ensure that the link is functional and visible in analytics, paste this link into a separate browser window while you’ve got your viewing your Real Time > Traffic Sources. As you can see below, if the link is functioning properly, you’ll be able to see it almost immediately in Analytics. Furthermore, all the information you’ve input to distinguish the medium, campaign, and target are now identified by Google, and Analytics can give you the kind of information that is really crucial to optimizing your marketing campaigns.

Checking URL builder with Real Time view

If you’d like more information, please check out Ori’s video tutorial on using URL Builder.

 

Important Analytics Data (multi-channel funnel & ecommerce conversion data)

Most internet marketers can easily get lost in Analytics Data (including ourselves sometimes). We would love to share a few quick data views that we like to look at.

 

Point 1 – Tracking information for goals and ecommerce transactions

a. ecommerce and goals – analytics typically gives the last visitor traffic source the conversion UNLESS the last source is “direct”  and “direct” has a prior traffic source.

b. multi-channel funnels – gives tracking of goals and ecommerce the exact traffic sources

 

Point 2 – How to look into multi-channel funnels and get true (not overlaping) assisted conversion (that were not the final conversion)

 

Step 1 – Login to Analytics and click on multi-channel funnels

Step 2 – Click on top of page on conversion segments and create new

Step 3 – Setup new custom segment

Include -> assisting interaction + medium + matching regexp -> cpc

AND

Exclude -> last interaction + medium + matching regexp -> cpc

AND

Exclued -> last interaction + basic channel grouping -> Direct

in regular ecommerce conversion data, the “direct” visit if last in turn, will not show direct as the conversion but the one before. ofcourse it will be direct if only visited as direct

Step 4 – Select New Conversion Segment and click on Apply

Step 5 – For ecommerce, make sure you unclick goals and only select ecommerce

Step 6 – Explore your data

Assisted Conversions

&
Top Conversion Paths

 

Enjoy!

Adwords Keyword Details Auction Insights Report

Adwords has introduced a new addition to its keyword details button with addition great competitor detail.

All you have to do in order to access this is:
1. Click on a single keyword on the checkbox (only one allowed per auction insight)
2. Click on Keyword Details
3. Click on Auction Insights (single keyword only)

You will then see a list of all major competitors for this keyword with the following columns and data:
Display url domain
Impression share
Average position
Overlap rate
Position above rate
Top of page rate

Please see Google Explanations below for each field:

Display url domain – The visible URL included in the participant’s ad in the auctions. This column identifies the participant.

Impression share – How often a participant received an impression, as a proportion of the auctions in which you were also competing. Impression share is the percentage of impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Eligibility is based on your current ads’ targeting settings, approval statuses, bids, and Quality Scores. This number is updated once a day.

Average position – The average position for the participant’s ads when they received an impression (all successful auctions).

Overlap rate – How often another participant’s ad received an impression when your ad also received an impression.

Position above rate – When you and another participant received an impression in the same auctions, how often the other participant’s ad was shown in a higher position on the page than yours was.

Top of page rate – When a participant’s ad received impressions, how often it appeared at the top of the page above the search results.

Recommendations (still testing and playing with this data as this feature has only gone online in the past 2 days (as of May 2012)

1. Learn from your top competition – sort by impression share and learn from the ads that your top competitors build and how you may learn to improve your quality score.

2. Download in excel – Use and sort multiple columns at once for more data, such as, sort by “Top of page rate” and then sort “Overlap rate”.

3. Find new places to promote your products – In one of our cases for an ecommerce site, we take a look at the domains in “Display url domain”, look at these sites and find new shopping sites that we can advertise our products on.

Examples are: amazon.com, bizrate.com, , ebay.com, shopzilla.com

Hope you liked this article. Share your experience with this new feature.

Advanced Segments Examples in Analytics

Revenue above $400 transaction (Advanced Segment)

See below image on how to setup
Click to Enlarge

First-time buy visits (Advanced Segment)

See below image on how to setup
Click to Enlarge

Return buy visits (Advanced Segment)

See below image on how to setup
Click to Enlarge

More Than 5 Days to Transaction (Advanced Segment)

See below image on how to setup
Click to Enlarge