How does Google Analytics differ from AdWords Conversion Tracking?

These two products, though separate, are geared toward a similar purpose – helping website owners analyze their website performance so that they can make better business decisions and get great performance results. You can use either one of these products alone, or use both at the same time – they will not interfere with each other’s tracking.

AdWords conversion tracking

In online advertising, a conversion occurs when a click on your ad leads directly to user behavior you deem valuable, such as a purchase, signup, page view, or lead. Google has developed a tool to measure these conversions, and ultimately, help you identify how effective your AdWords ads and keywords are for you.

It works by placing a cookie on a user’s computer when he/she clicks on one of your AdWords ads. Then, if the user reaches one of your conversion pages, the cookie is connected to your web page. When a match is made, Google records a successful conversion for you. Please note that the cookie Google adds to a user’s computer when he/she clicks on an ad expires in 30 days. This measure, and the fact that Google uses separate servers for conversion tracking and search results, protects the user’s privacy.

Google Analytics

If you’d like to take advantage of more robust website analytics, we encourage you to create a free Google Analytics account. In addition to basic conversion tracking for either your goals or ecommerce conversions, Analytics also offers sitewide pageview analysis, advanced goal definition, conversion funnel analysis, and various advanced conversion reports. Just like AdWords conversion tracking, Google Analytics is fully integrated into your AdWords account, allowing you to view your reports and settings from the Analytics tab in AdWords. Learn more about Google Analytics.

How do I use funnels to track dropoff rates on pages leading to a goal?

A funnel is a defined navigation path you want your visitors to follow in order to achieve a goal. Using funnels can help you to understand how your visitors navigate to your goal and how you can improve your site in order to increase goal conversions. The last step in a funnel will be your goal page.

For information on creating goals and funnels, please read How do I set up goals?.

For example, if you have an application on your site, each step in the application process can be steps in your funnel, with the “Thank you for submitting” page as your goal.

You can track drop-off rates on pages leading to a goal using the Abandoned Funnels report in the Goals section. This report will show you what percentage of visitors who begin a defined funnel path abandon it. Going back to the application example, this report can help you identify where in the application process visitors are most often dropping out, so that you may work to improve retention through this section of the application.

How do I set up goals and funnels for dynamically generated pages?

Note: This article is for the latest version of the tracking code. If you are using the older version, please read the following article.

To determine which tracking code you are using, please see Which version of the tracking code am I using? Dynamic URLs

If your URLs include query terms or other parameters, you may wish to make use of the matching options when entering funnel or conversion goal URLs. There are three match types available to you. They are explained below.

Exact Match: This option requires that the URLs entered as your funnel or conversion goal match the URLs shown in the reports exactly – there can be no dynamic session identifiers, for example. Head Match: If your URL is always the same for this step of your funnel, but is followed by unique session or user identifiers, use the Head Match filter and leave out the unique values.

For example, if the URL for a particular user is ‘www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=9982251615’ but the ‘id’ varies for every other user, enter ‘www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1’ and select Head Match as your Match Type.

Regular Expression Match: Uses regular expressions to match your URLs. This is useful when the stem, trailing parameters, or both can vary between users. For example, if a user could be coming from one of many subdomains, and your URLs use session identifiers, use regular expressions to define the constant element of your URL. For example, ‘page=1’ will match ‘sports.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=002,’ as well as ‘fishing.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&language=fr&id=19.’ Identical URLs across multiple steps

You may also wish to track visitors’ progress through a funnel which has the same URL for each step. For example, your sign up funnel might look like this: Step 1 (Sign Up): www.mysite.com/sign_up.cgi Step 2 (Accept Agreement): www.mysite.com/sign_up.cgi Step 3 (Finish): www.mysite.com/sign_up.cgi To get around this, you can call the _trackPageview function within each step (probably within an onload event), as shown below. pageTracker._trackPageview(”/funnel_G1/step1.html”); pageTracker._trackPageview(”/funnel_G1/step2.html”); pageTracker._trackPageview(”/funnel_G1/step3.html”); Then, set up each step of your funnel to be:

http://www.mysite.com/funnel_G1/step1.html http://www.mysite.com/funnel_G1/step2.html http://www.mysite.com/funnel_G1/step3.html The path/filename argument need not represent an existing path or filename. The argument to _trackPageview simply provides a made-up pagename to which Google Analytics can attach pageviews.

Important: if your pages include a call to _trackPageview, _setAllowLinker _trackTrans(), your Analytics tracking code must be placed in your HTML code above any of these calls. In these cases the tracking code can be placed anywhere between the opening tag and the JavaScript call.

A goal is a website page which a visitor reaches once they have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download. Before Google Analytics can calculate goal conversion metrics, you must define one or more goals. A goal is defined with the following information:

URL for the goal page: Specify a page that can only be reached by achieving a goal. In the case of a registration goal, for example, the goal page might be the Thank You page. If your goal page can be reached by visitors who have not completed the goal, your conversion rates will be inflated.

The name of the goal: Specify a name that you will recognize when viewing reports. Examples of names you might use include “email sign-up” and “article ABC download”.

The defined funnel: You may specify up to ten pages in a defined funnel. A funnel represents the path that you expect visitors to take on their way to converting to the goal. Defining these pages allows you to see how frequently visitors abandon goals, and where they go. For an e-commerce goal, these pages might be the first page of your checkout process, then the shipping address info page, and finally the credit card information page.

The value of the goal: Google Analytics uses an assigned goal value to calculate ROI, Average Score, and other metrics. A good way to value a goal is to evaluate how often the visitors who reach the goal become customers. If, for example, your sales team can close 10% of people who request to be contacted, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to your “Contact Me” goal. In contrast, if only 1% of mailing list signups result in a sale, you might only assign $5 to your “email sign-up” goal. To set up your goals, Enter Goal Information:

Log in to your Google Analytics account and click Analytics Settings. Find the profile for which you will be creating goals, and click Edit. Select one of the 4 goal slots available for that profile and click Edit. Enter the Goal URL. Reaching this page marks a successful conversion. For example, a registration confirmation page, a checkout complete page, or a thank you page. Enter the Goal name as it should appear in your Google Analytics account. Turn the goal On or Off. This selection decides whether Google Analytics should track this conversion goal at this time. Generally, you will want to set the Active Goal selection to On. Then, Define a funnel by following these steps:

Enter the URL of the first page of your conversion funnel. This page should be a page that is common to all users working their way towards your Goal. For example, if you are tracking user flow through your checkout pages, do not include a product page as a step in your funnel. Enter a Name for this step. If this step is a Required step in the conversion process, select the checkbox to the right of the step. If this checkbox is selected, users reaching your goal page without travelling through this funnel page will not be counted as conversions. Learn more about the Required Step option in a funnel. Continue entering goal steps until your funnel has been completely defined. You may enter up to 10 steps, or as few as a single step. Finally, configure Additional settings by following the steps below:

If the URLs entered above are Case sensitive, select the checkbox. Select the appropriate goal Match Type. (Learn more about Match Types and how to choose the appropriate goal Match Type for your goal.) Enter a Goal value. This is the value used in Google Analytics’ ROI calculations. Click Save Changes to create this Goal and funnel, or Cancel to exit without saving.

Audience Centric Taxonomies: Talk to Them Like You Know Who They Are

K Biju — September 12, 2008 – 9:53am For many organisations, providing a single way to navigate information resources is unlikely to meet the increasingly complex needs of a diverse audience of users.

Forcing users to locate resources in a fixed manner is usually the main culprit in most failed taxonomy implementations. This problem is especially pronounced when users are migrating from their own information ‘silos’ to organisation-wide repositoies. To reduce resistance from users and to ease the transition into an environment that is more conducive to knowledge sharing and collaboration, multiple taxonomies reflecting the preferred discovery patterns and terminology of different user groups are highly recommended.

Those who have implemented taxonomies may immediately balk at this idea, since it could lead to a maintenance nightmare. However, we found that it is possible to both customize taxonomies for different user groups and to keep maintenance efforts to the minimum. Of course, this must be done with the proper planning, understanding of user needs and the right tools.

And this is where Synaptica fits in perfectly. A key differentiating feature of the Synaptica taxonomy management tool is its ability to provide ‘audience-centric’ views to diverse sets of users, yet maintaining a single ‘master’ taxonomy. This nifty feature builds upon the foundation of a master taxonomy by allowing alternative preferred terminology to be defined for multiple audience segments via audience ‘extensions’. Terms that are not relevant to a particular audience can be suppressed and additional details or depth that are needed by another audience can be developed – depending on which ‘extensions’ are being deployed onto the navigation platform (Intranet, portal e.g.).

Synaptica automatically manages the relationships between the master taxonomy and its extensions, thereby enabling consistent searching using diverse taxonomic views. More importantly, it makes maintenance seamless as changes in any term will result in automatic updates across all ‘audience-centric’ views, eliminating the need to duplicate efforts across multiple taxonomies.

With the help of the Taxonomy Services team at Dow Jones Client Solutions, various organisations are using, or are planning to use this feature in Synaptica to enhance the information discovery process and experience. For example, in a typical corporate setting, users from different departments can continue to browse their contents using familiar terminology and views, even though they are really using a larger enterprise-wide taxonomy. Such functionalities help to lessen user resistance while fostering knowledge sharing at the same time.

In a wider context, such as that of a digital library designed for the Public, ‘audience-centric’ views can be designed to provide optimized browsing for varied audience segments. For example, the browsing needs on a topic such as Health and Medical Sciences would be very different between the general public and academic/researcher segments. These are just some of the taxonomy design and maintenance considerations that Synaptica addresses.

What this all means is that with the help of an experienced taxonomy design team and the right tools, knowledge managers can truly lay the foundation for improved information discovery and sharing without having to worry about details that can already be addressed by using existing tools and best practices.

To learn more about Audience Centric Approaches please see this paper:’Audience-Centric Taxonomy: Using Taxonomies to Support Heterogeneous User Communities’. This paper describes how the National Library Board in Singapore intends to utilize audience centric taxonomy to provide enhanced information access to its multilingual, multi-cultural user community.

This post was co-written by Tan Pei Jiun, a Dow Jones Senior Taxonomy Consultant based in Singapore.

ImageFlickr stephanieasher

What is the difference between head, Exact, and Regular Expression Match?

There are three diferent match types that define how Google Analytics identifies a goal or funnel URL (or both).

Exact match: This option requires that the URLs entered as your funnel and goal URLs exactly match the URLs shown in the reports. For example, there can be no dynamic session identifiers, query parameters. Exact matches can also be regular expressions.

When setting your goals, it’s ideal to remove the hostname from your goal URL. For example, if your goal is www.domain.com/1/thanks.html, enter ^/1/thanks\.html as your goal.

If you are using an exact match for a goal (i.e. http://domain.com/page.html), any trailing spaces will cause the goal to be invalid. If you are using partial matching (i.e. ^/page.html), trailing spaces are not an issue.

Head Match: If your website has dynamically generated content, use the Head Match filter and leave out the unique values.

For example, if the URL for a particular user is http://www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=9982251615 but the ‘id’ varies for every other user, enter http://www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1 and select Head Match as your Match Type.

Regular Expression Match: This option uses regular expressions to match your URLs. This is useful when the stem, trailing parameters, or both, can vary between users. For example, if a user could be coming from one of many subdomains, and your URLs use session identifiers, use regular expressions to define the constant element of your URL. For example, page=1 will match http://sports.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=002 as well as http://fishing.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&language=fr&id=119.

How does ‘required step 1’ affect my goals?

You can choose to make the first step in the funnel mandatory, by selecting the ‘Required step’ checkbox next to the funnel on your Goal Settings page.

If this checkbox is selected, users reaching your goal page without traveling through this funnel page will not be counted as conversions in the Funnel Visualization report. Only users who reach the goal URL after viewing this first page will be counted as conversions. For example, visitors that start at Step 2 and complete the funnel will not show up in the Funnel Visualization report, whereas a visitor who visits Step 1, skips the remaining steps, and visits the goal page, will show up as a conversion. The visitor can visit Step 1 at any point during the session, and it does not need to be an entrance page to count as a conversion. You can view the Funnel Visualization report for data on the funnel path.

For example, if you are tracking user flow through your checkout pages, do not include a product page as a step in your funnel.

Note that the ‘Required step’ checkbox only affects the Funnel Visualization report. It does not keep a goal from showing a conversion in any other goal report.

The number of unique features that the LinkPointCart shopping cart contains has become too numerous to limit to one features page. Please click on the links below to learn more about the many features LinkPointCart has to offer. If LinkPointCart does not support or offer a particular feature you desire, please let us know and when possible, we will create your reasonable request. Unlimited Products and Orders Secure SSL Shopping Cart Setup is easy—No programming required Free Support Customizable Free Real-Time Shipping Calculates Sales Tax Real-Time Credit Card Processing(Both Linkpoint Basic and API Payment Gateways!) eBay Compatible Custom Languages Pay Pal Compatible Multiple Payment Methods Works great with Front Page and Dreamweaver Order Management System Coupon and Special Offer Discounts Works with any Hosting Platform Customer Statistics Affiliate Program Support CheckOut Summary Display Supports Multiple Email Order Notification Error Checking Emailed Customer Receipt Additional Upgrade features available, including QuickBooks integration, inventory control, coupon management, gift certificates and more… Unlimited Products and Orders- Regardless of the size of your business, LinkPointCart is the shopping cart for you. You simply build “buttons” using our button builder which you insert into the existing product pages of your website. Virtually unlimited support for height, width, sizes, colors, materials, etc.. Place unlimited items in the cart with a single button

Secure SSL Shopping Cart – LinkPointCart uses its own secure certificate, so there is no need to spend additional funds to acquire your own. Your customers can shop with the knowledge that their transactions are being processed with up to 256bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) data protection (The highest allowed by current web browsers)

Setup is easy – No programming required. You simply complete the 8 steps in our Cart Settings and then use our Button Builder section to create the Add to Cart buttons to copy and paste into your existing product pages. LinkPointCart does all the extensive programming so you do not have to. LinkPointCart is hosting platform independent, so if you cannot run CGI’s on your server you can still use LinkPointCart. The program does not rely on cookies, Java, Java Scripting, or plug-ins that your customers may or may not have; thus increasing your product compatibility. Use standard “form style” text buttons, your own custom images, or graphics from the extensive LinkPointCart Image Library.

Free Support – LinkPointCart provides support buttons for each step of the shopping cart setup, as well as extensive FAQ’s, email and phone support.

Customizable – The shopping cart order form/checkout pages are fully customizable with background image/color, logo, buttons and font/text-color input. For more advanced users, there is even the ability to add your own custom header and footer. LinkPointCart always provides a link back to the last page where your customer was shopping and generates a unique invoice number for each order.

Free Real-Time Shipping – Calculates all shipping, handling and sales tax charges. Including real-time shipping queries for FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service.

Calculates Sales Tax – Supports tax calculations for single or multiple state rates. Through our advanced tax options, LinkPointCart can support tax calculations for city, county and zip code tax rates as well. Also supports tax-exempt and shipping-exempt items.

Real-Time Credit Card Processing (With both LinkPoint Basic and API Payment Gateways!) – Sign up with either of these gateway services to enable the real-time credit card processing. Integration is easy, simply input your gateway login information into the cart and no additional programming is required.

Custom Languages – The ability to display your shopping cart in any language that is supported by UTF-8 and HTML elements. The shopping cart will automatically display the best language to your shopper based on their browser language settings.

eBay Compatible – The ability to list and complete payment for your eBay auctions. Winning bidders will be presented with an add button via email. Upon successful payment the cart will update the eBay auction status automatically.

PayPal Compatible – The ability to offer payment by PayPal can be offered as the sole checkout method, or in addition to credit card and/or electronic check payments.

Multiple Payment Methods – The shopping cart payment page will display any payment methods that you offer to your customers. Including all the major credit cards, electronic check and even PayPal.

Works great with Front Page and Dreamweaver – LinkPointCart provides easy instructions for adding the shopping cart to your online store designed with these web editing programs as well as many others.

Order Management System – Securely view and update the status of an order. Automated email order confirmations and ability to send emailed status update emails with shipping tracking numbers.

Coupon and Special Offer Discounts – LinkPointCart provides the ability to setup coupons based on dollar or percentage discounts on an individual product or on the item quantity. These coupons can be given out and redeemed by an unlimited number of your customers. There is even the ability to setup item discounts for each individual product, which are automatically applied, based on dollar or percentage discounts and the quantity or dollar value ordered.

Works with any Hosting Platform – LinkPointCart is a web-based product, which makes it hosting platform independent. The cart will work with any hosting provider that enables you to copy and paste simple HTML into the pages of your website. No access is needed to the CGI bin of your hosting company.

Customer Statistics – Customer Login Feature for returning customers, cart page view statistics, cart drop-off rate and sales statistics including tax and shipping totals.

Affiliate Program Support – LinkPointCart supports most affiliate programs such as Commission Junction. The cart provides a location to add the HTML that your affiliate program provides to have the cart carry through the affiliate program information.

CheckOut Summary Display – The shopping cart contents may be displayed when an item is added to the cart. A total of quantities and prices are kept at all times.

Customers may increase/decrease the quantity of items in their cart, or remove them altogether with a single button for starting over. Orders can be modified any time prior to final checkout. Choice of ordering and payment methods for you to offer your customers

Supports Multiple Email Order Notification – Order notifications are sent securely to the e-mail address or addresses of your choice.

Error Checking – Includes comprehensive error checking of customer input. Validates that credit card numbers and e-mail addresses are in the proper format.

Emailed Customer receipt – The shopping cart displays a printable receipt automatically when your customer completes a successful order. An emailed copy of the receipt can be automatically sent to them as well.

Additional Upgrade features available, including; QuickBooks integration, inventory control, coupon management, gift certificates and more.

QuickBooks .-Provides a download of your order information into QuickBooks IIF file using this utility. This file can be easily imported into QuickBooks to save you time with data entry.

Inventory Control – Inventory control can notify you when you are running low on inventory, or to prevent your customers from buying items that are out of stock. There is even the ability to allow items to be ordered on Back Order.

Coupon Management .-This feature provides the ability to setup unlimited coupons based on dollar or percentage discounts on an individual product or on the item quantity. These coupons can be given out and redeemed by an unlimited number of your customers.

Gift Certificates .-Provides the ability to sell an unlimited number of gift certificates that act as prepaid cash. Sell specific gift certificate amounts or allow the value to be created by your customers.

Custom Header and Footer .-Enables more advanced users to create and upload your own custom header and footer to be carried through the shopping cart checkout pages.

Electronic Software Download (ESD) .-This feature enables the sell of electronically fulfilled products such as ebooks. Our system creates a unique URL on the customer’s receipt to all for the immediate download and fulfillment of the ESD products that they have purchased.

Recurring Billing – Recurring billing provides the ability to charge your customer(s) automatically at any given interval.

Tax Information .-Some merchants may be required to charge tax based on the customer’s county, or city. This feature enables the ability to add individual tax rates based on county or city location.

How can I help verify that I’ve set up my goals correctly?

One way to check if you have written your Goal URL correctly is to see if the page is being tracked. Search the Top Content report for the goal page to confirm the page is being properly being tracked and counted as goals. Please see the examples below for further information.

I. Exact Match/Head Match:

Search the Top Content report (found underneath the ‘Content’ section) for the request URI of the goal URL.

For example, if your goal URL is www.example.com/cats/prettycatcheckout.html, then the Request URI is everything after the domain name ’/cats/prettycatcheckout.html.’

If the request URI appears in the Top Content report, then the goal URL is written correctly. Howe ver, if it doesn’t appear, please see troubleshooting tips here.

II. Regular Expression Match

Search your Top Content report using your regular expression. The report filter allows regular expressions, so your goal page should appear if your regular expression is written correctly. If the goal page doesn’t appear, please see the troubleshooting tips here.

Tip: If the goal page doesn’t appear in your Top Content report the first time you search, try modifying your search until it does appear. Then use the search result from your modified search query as your Goal URL.

Enabling E-Commerce Reporting in the Profile

The first step of tracking e-commerce transactions is to enable e-commerce reporting for your website’s profile. To enable e-commerce reporting, please follow these steps:

Log in to your account. Click Edit next to the profile you’d like to enable. On the Profile Settings page, click edit next to Main Website Profile Information. Change the E-Commerce Website radio button from No to Yes. Receipt Page Format

The second step is to ensure that the tracking code is included in the receipt page in the standard fashion. This may be done using a server side include, or other template driver, or can simply be hand-coded into your HTML code:

<script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”); document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”)); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-xxxxxx-x”); pageTracker._trackPageview(); </script>

Next, somewhere in the receipt below the tracking code, call the _addTrans() and _addItem() functions. Begin with a call to _addTrans() to establish a transaction. _addTrans() takes the following arguments: Order ID,Affiliation, Total, Tax, Shipping, City, State, Country. For each item that the visitor purchases, call _addItem(). _addItem() takes the following arguments: Order ID, SKU or Code, Product Name, Category, Price, Quantity.

Here is a complete example:

<script type="text/javascript"> <p>var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);</p> <p>document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));</p> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-XXXXX-1”); pageTracker._trackPageview(); pageTracker._addTrans( “1234”, // Order ID “Mountain View”, // Affiliation “11.99”, // Total “1.29”, // Tax “5”, // Shipping “San Jose”, // City “California”, // State “USA” // Country ); pageTracker._addItem( “1234”, // Order ID “DD44”, // <span class="caps">SKU</span> “T-Shirt”, // Product Name “Green Medium”, // Category “11.99”, // Price “1” // Quantity ); pageTracker._trackTrans(); </script>