Google Analytics, Web Marketing Campaigns, and Conversion Attribution

In the words of Web analytics command Avinash Kaushik, “I believe in all modesty, that the world of perfect information” exists (clean verifiable data “) anymore.”

And he’s right! In order to steer away from data and belching to actionable results should be in the sea of Web analytics and statistics, the first step in the realization that even today, is available with all the cool gadgets, web analytics data is incomplete and are faulty.

I did not mention this as an excuse for the wrong conclusions and provide strategy ( “If only that tracking code is installed correctly on my blog, I would know to avoid the flashing banner ads flash!”) But rather as a step in analytics towards enlightenment. Yes, data can be flawed, but this should be your call to arms – find out how the data is incorrect (or, in other words, the limits) of the record and what you can do to draw like an analyst to real-world conclusions from these figures.

Let’s look at an example. In order to identify high / low implementation of marketing efforts, Google Analytics will automatically track the source of visitors to your website. These are a few standard media, visible in the reports, “segmentation. The” CPC “segment recorded movement of the” cost per click or pay per click “campaigns, such as Google AdWords. From here you can to see how many visitors who click through from your pay-per-click ad actually bought something from you, a lead generation form, fill, etc.

But! You now know that this data has problems. Remember, you should put your new-found acceptance of this axiom is not used as an excuse, a crutch to lean on, but should inspire them to dig deeper and not those numbers at face value.

And here’s why: There is a certain way in which Google attributes conversions and things like e-commerce transactions to traffic sources. Suppose that a user visited your site several times on different media, and eventually buys something, or a conversion is completed. How do I know what drove these media buying at? * With one exception, the recent changes in Google Analytics campaign or medium through which the user came are attributed. For example:

1. Due to a recent burglary in her house, Jane’s customers shopping for swords.

To start buying them research, she is looking for “home defense Swords” on Google. From the results page, Jane clicks on a PPC ad for ADT Security line of swords. They searched the site for a while, price controls, but not to buy – Jane wants to check out some other brands and options.

2. After review of the highly competitive landscape of medieval living-defense products, lies Jane on ADT and clicks on one of their banners on the Yahoo home page. It comes on the site ADT’s and makes them buy.

In this example, it is quite clear that Jane’s first visit, ADT offers pay-per-click campaign, was probably most responsible for the generation of this sale! However, the acquisition has taken place on her second visit, when she arrived for a referral sites – Yahoo your homepage. Google Analytics will attribute this purchase as a visit by a referral from Yahoo … and the whole time your PPC conversion rate continues to fall, unfortunately, created piece by piece.

Uh-oh. As errors are your data? Can you given a serious business decisions about the effectiveness of marketing campaign, from inaccurate or incomplete information based on? (Or, as Mr. Kaushik would say that the “known unknowns”!) With regard to the seriousness of this can be a serious problem when you sell a product that has very expensive, very complex, or in any other way, a high-involvement purchase will have process – every time a potential customer enters your site, if they continue to research or to buy, to their former traffic source will overwrite data!

(* An exception! For returning visitors that return directly through a bookmark or enter the URL into the browser, each Analytics conversions in the immediately preceding traffic source attribute. In the above example, if Jane’s 2nd visit ADT was visiting from a bookmark, or just having regard to the URL of their first PPC sources, the transformation would be nor the PPC campaign can be assigned.)

So for e-commerce sites with these high-involvement/long purchase cycle products or sites with very high visitor-to-sales ratio, analysts may want to direct Analytics to ignore these secondary campaigns, and each attribute conversions to the first campaign guided the visitors to your website. With links under your control (such as banner ads, external blogs, or links posted on your company Twitter) account, simply add the variable “& utm_nooverride = 1″ in the URL. Thus the original source of traffic will not be overwritten, thus preserving the origin of visitors.

Is this solution perfect? No way. But this knowledge of inherent errors is what you should be as quick as a Google Analytics command. The idea that one more and you can refine your conclusions … that’s what keeps us going.

Editor Tips

Campaign Management: Sometimes when you look at the industry, it seems, people do not have organic traffic as something that is measured on an ROI level, to think. But of course it is also important to measure your ROI on a PPC campaign with an organic campaign. One of the things that is cool about IndexTools that shows the campaign management screen all PPC campaigns, and the results from the organic campaign.

It should be noted that the packages different methods for the determination of their cookies. For example, HBX Analytics requires you to set up a CNAME record in your DNS configuration file to remap a sub-domain of your site to their servers. This CNAME record maps a subdomain of your site to the HBX Analytics Server.

One way to reduce many of these risks, to be installed on multiple Analytics packages. We often Google Analytics on websites, even if they already have an Analytics package to them. This is not to say that Google Analytics is the gold standard.

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