Google Launches Google Analytics Application Gallery
Google launched an application gallery to list applications that enhance the power of Google Analytics. There are awesome load of applications that already made on to the list, under various categories
- Business Intelligence
- Campaign Management
- Content Management
- Data Collection
- E-Commerce
- Email Marketing
- Mobile Solutions
- Phone Call Tracking
- Reporting Tools
- Search Optimization
- Site Audit
- Widgets & Gadgets
There are some i’ve already used and liked like Tatvic Plugin for Data exporting, Wordstream keyword management for SEO, Klipfolio Dashboard and Analytics Visualizations and ofcourse Google analyticator plugin for wordpress. There are loads more that I haven’t tried or even knew about. So this is going to be an awesome place I’ll be visiting more often.
Oh btw, developers have an invitation to submit their apps. Isn’t that cool?
http://www.google.com/analytics/apps/
Do you have a list of favorite Google Analytics Apps? If you want to share them, use the comment box below.
12 tools to measure social media marketing
Businesses have been unsure of ways to measure social media campaigns, social media ROI and syncing the stats, if any, to sales data and vice versa. Here are 12 tools that I came across that can be used to track the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.
One important fact one needs to remember here is, Social media optimization is not a number race. Businesses need to focus on growing brand awareness, customer acquisition, engagement, interaction, conviction, retention, sales, profits, and customer satisfaction rates.
So without further delay, here is the list of tools I promised.
Google Analytics: Free tool to track and report on a company’s Web site usage and online marketing activities.
TwitterAnalyzer: Free online tool analyzes a company’s influence on Twitter, including number of daily Tweets, users who are re-Tweeting your messages and their unique reach.
HootSuite: Popular free service manages and analyzes multiple Twitter users and accounts. New iPhone app links HootSuite account to mobile phone.
Radian6: Sophisticated tool that tracks conversations about competitors and share of mentions, among other metrics. Pricing starts at $500 a month per profile and $100 a month per user.
ViralHeat: Delivers real-time data from video sites, microblogging platforms and Web sites. Prices range from $9.99 a month to $139.98 a month.
Bit.ly: Free URL shortener that tracks information such as number of clicks, traffic sources and what time clicks occur.
Scoopler: Free real-time search engine that organizes content being shared on the Internet as it happens through blogs and major social networks.
TweetMeme Analytics: Similar to Google Analytics, the app is useful if you use TweetMeme’s re-Tweet buttons on your site. Prices begin at $50 per domain per month.
PostRank Analytics: Suite of tools to measure social engagement on other platforms and services. Shows messages and comments from other sites that contribute to your statistics. Prices begin at $9 a month.
Twopular: Tracks the most popular trends on Twitter at no charge.
Xinureturns: Provides a free overview of your Web site presence on popular search engines and social networks.
Omniture: Captures, stores and analyzes digital transactions from Web sites and other online channels as well as offline channels such as point-of-sale promotions and call centers. Prices vary per user.
Google Analytics Annotations
Google Analytics introduced a small but very dynamic feature called “Annotations” that is tremendously useful both to analysts as well as executives, who are usually not up to date on granular details about website activity.
This newly launched “annotations” feature enables you to annotate and bookmark major campaigns, ebbs & flows in the graphs regarding events that happened on specific days within your statistics for future reference. This will help to explain a spike or drop in traffic to other members within your organization, without having to dig through the past, thereby saving tons of time.
This is a great feature which will end up saving many people a lot of time. The concept here is that there can be real collaboration between those who put together campaigns and those who see the analytics without that important data. Rather than going through old emails to analyze the traffic surge, or shopping cart conversion increased, users can bookmark this event when it happens for future reference. This will sure make end of month reporting a lot quicker!
An easy annotation that outlines a “cause and effect” for the data consumer can save a lot of time and trouble. Annotations complement existing anomaly detection by capturing the tribal intelligence of your company, which tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all. A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers. This short video will show you how to use Annotations.
Another advantage is that different members within your company can instantly see the results of other teams’ actions. In other words, annotations can be created by anyone involved with the production and promotion of a website for everyone else to see.
- The PPC team can announce major changes to their campaigns.
- The SEO team can annotate changes to the website so that results can be tracked over time.
- The PR team can update dates of events, enabling the tracking of offline activities into Google Analytics more easily.
- The media buying team can provide updates of major banner campaigns.
This should help encourage teamwork, as everyone involved will be able to grasp the whole picture and coordinate activities with other teams’ activities. Google has started rolling out this feature and has indicated it should be live for all users mid January!
Google Analytics Vs Yahoo Analytics
Google Analytics has evolved to become a very important factor in a web. I wonder how we lived without all the data and insights that we are deriving using this tool. Yahoo is getting serious with analytics through the purchase of Indextools. For obvious reasons, Yahoo made Indextools free with a rebrand into Yahoo Web Analytics (YWA). This leaves the users with rich, dynamic statistics derived from the innovative corporate competitiveness – all for free.
Here is a slideshow that compares Google analytics and Yahoo web analytics.
While absolutely anyone can signup for Google analytics, Yahoo has made its analytics available only to Yahoo Advertisers or through Yahoo web analytics authorized consultant. Google’s success mantra is making its products available to the widest audience possible without any constraints.
Share your opinion: Which analytics service are you using? and Why?
Google Analytics For Twitter
Combine Your Google Analytics Data with Twitalyzer
Many tweeters have reported that Twitter is one of their primary traffic referrers to their sites/blogs. but have no idea who your referrers are? Do you wonder how influential these referrers are? You can now load your own Google Analytics data into Twitalyzer in less than two minutes.
How to see your own Twitter referrals from Google Analytics:
1. In Google Analytics, go to “Traffic Sources” then “Referring Sites
2. In Google Analytics, find the referrer “/twitter.com” and click on that link
3. In Google Analytics, change the “Show rows” value at the bottom of the page to “500″
4. In Google Analytics, click “Export” at the top of the page and select “CSV”
5. Go to Twitalyzer home page and click “Browse …” and find the resulting .CSV file on your hard-drive
6. Now click “Combine Data!” to send the file to the Twitalyzer!
Happy Tweeting,
ShriNagesh 
How To Check If Your Google Analytics Is Installed Properly
SiteScan is a diagnostic tool from EpikOne that verifies if your Google Analytics (GA) Tracking Code is installed properly on your website.
SiteScan is designed to help you configure Google Analytics, whether using the “legacy” urchin.js code or newer ga.js tracking code. This diagnostic tool scans for several common configuration pitfalls and organizes the results in an easy to read CSV file. SiteScan identifies pages on your website that have Google Analytics Tracking Code properly and improperly installed. For pages with improperly installed tracking code, the associated error is noted and described in the report. This makes it easy for you to isolate the pages with tracking problems, fix them, and effectively manage your Google Analytics Tracking Code installation.
This is a sample report when I ran the diagnostic tool for web2mom.com
The detailed report was available for download as a CSV file. The file had the following information:
- URL of each page in the blog
- Page was tagged or not
- Google account number of each page
- Errors (pipe delimited) and
- Extra information
SiteScan checks the following on websites with old tracking code (urchin.js):
- Every Page Tagged with Tracking Code
- Every Page Calling the urchinTracker() Function
- Every Page Declaring a Google Analytics Account
- No New Tracking Code Found
- Query Parameters Check to Determine if a Filter is Required
SiteScan checks the following on websites with new tracking code (ga.js):
- Every Page Tagged with New Tracking Code
- Every Page Calling the pageTracker._trackPageview(); Method
- Every Page Declaring a Google Analytics Account
- No Old Tracking Code Found
- Query Parameters Check to Determine if a filter is Required
Limitations
SiteScan Does Not Scan or Complete the Following:
- Directories with more then 1000 files
- Pages that are protected by a Robot.txt file (meaning that if your pages are not indexed by Google, they will not be scanned).
- Pages that are password protected
- Checkout Pages or any area of your website that requires a certain sequence of events or trigger
Want to give the google analytics diagnostic tool a try? Check out www.sitescanga.com http://cli.gs/WSm7au
Good Luck,
Shri Nagesh