June 25th 2010. Google Analytics Workshop from Freshegg presented by me – Nikki Rae, Simon Nixon and Jason Buck.  We are aiming this workshop to anyone who is interested in learning how to use Google Analytics to understand how visitors behave on their site and then how to use User Experience Design techniques to fix problems and give Users a great experience!

You know that you should be measuring the traffic on your site and you may even have Google Analytics in place, but what next? With 100’s of reports available in Google Analytics, how can you decide which ones you need to choose and in fact, what do they all mean? Ultimately, we want to you go away with a real handle on how you can make more money through your website by understanding and using Google Analytics.

Using Google Analytics for Profit

• How effective is your marketing at bringing qualified leads to your site?
• How effective is your site at converting these leads to sales?
• How can you improve user experience to increase conversion?

Google Analytics Training

Together, we will walk through the Google Analytics interface. We will show you how to:

• Find ‘quick wins’
• Make recommendations for campaign tracking
• Use Google Analytics to understand visitor behaviour
• Discover why your qualified visitors are not buying your products by looking at which of your pages are ’stinky’ and which pages are ’sticky’
• Use techniques like card sorting to better organise your content, prototypes to quickly sketch up your ideas, personas to bring your audience to life and user-testing to iron out the problems before you go live.

By the end of the session, you will be able to understand which reports in Google Analytics will be the most useful to you and how to interpret the reports to gain the most actionable insight.

Who Should Attend

The workshop is ideal for anybody who wants to know how to use Google Analytics to improve their marketing strategy and understand how visitors interact with their website. This includes Online Marketers, Web Masters, Campaign Managers, Website Owners/Managers, SEO’s and more.

Venue & Location

June 25th, Brighton Racecourse. Located on the outskirts of Brighton’s vibrant city with views across the Sussex Downs and Brighton Marina. We’ll not only feed your mind we’ll feed your body too!   Directions.

Nikki Rae: is Fresh Egg’s resident Web Conversion Specialist and G.A. Guru. She’s a fully qualified Google Adwords Professional, Google Analytics IQ Certified and was instrumental in enabling Fresh Egg to achieve Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP) status. She trained in Google Analytics under the former head of Google Analytics EMEA, Brian Clifton, who even mentions her in his book “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics” and regularly speaks on topics such as analytics, conversion and web business management. Nikki is a regular guest blogger for econsultancy.com and she also blogs for her own siteAnalytics Training which has practical tips on applying Google Analytics.

Jason Buck: has been helping organisations build and measure websites since 1998. Jason’s skill is in understanding and articulating an organisation’s objectives to make the best online services and tools for both the organisation and the people who use them. His clients have included Rolls-Royce, a number of award winning agencies and the UK Government as well as writing for various magazines and blogs.

Simon Nixon: prides himself on translating complicated business problems into plain English. He built his first website in 1994 and been on a wide and varied journey with a range of digital projects spanning the private and public sector in-house and agency ever since. His passion is involving customers in the design process through User Centred Design and regularly comments on the digital industry.

Refreshments
“When I invite a woman to dinner, I expect her to look at my face. That’s the price she has to pay”

• Registration – Fresh filtered coffee, choice of mixed teas and a selection of mini cinnamon, apple and fruit pasties.
• Mid-morning – Coffee, fruit and Yorkshire teas and a selection of luxury chocolate, oatmeal and fruit biscuits.
• Lunch – two course hot or cold buffet lunch including tea and coffee, juices, chilled water and soft drinks.
• Afternoon – Teas and coffees and plates of fresh homemade sponge and fruit cakes. Iced water and mints available throughout the day.

Agenda Workshop June 25th 2010

09:30 – 09:45 Registration
09:45 – 10:00 Introduction
10:00 – 11:00 Google Analytics for Profit
11:00 – 11:15 Break
11:15 – 12:15 Google Analytics for Profit
12:15 – 13:15 Lunch
13:15 – 14:45 Useful + Usable = Used
14:45 – 15:00 Break
15:00 – 16:30 Useful + Usable = Used
16:30 – 17:00 Open Floor & Networking

Cost is £195 + VAT including refreshments.

How to Register for the Workshop

If you want to join us for what promises to be a fun and interactive day where you’ll hear us talk about these techniques and our own experiences and get the chance to do them yourself, then contact:

Nikki Rae Nikki@freshegg.com or call us on 01903 24 77 88

The two main url builder tools that I am aware of are:

1. Google Analytics URL Builder

2. Justin Cutroni Link Tagging Tool

What’s great about these Google Analytics tools is that they are simple, yet effective.  They make life a lot EASIER!

I was asked if I would take a look at a new tool called Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder which again is perfect in its simplicity. Like the original URL builder, you can tag your URLs as standard.  However, you can also;

1. Decide if you want to add utm_nooverride=1 to the as part of your tracking.

2. Decide if you want to use ? or # in your URLs.

Conveniently, then you can shorten your URL or if you want to 301 the page, it will provide the code you need to stick in your .htaccess file.

I have also come across a tool that goes one step further and is a hybrid of the three afore-mentioned tools as it also offers the ability to export and edit in excel.  Well done Av Eivind Savio for your Google Analytics Link Builder.

There is nothing more frustrating than trying to work out which page of a site is the one  actually referring to yours.  Google Analytics tells us the name of the domain, but not the exact referring URL.  There is a filter that can be used to give you what you need.

Field A -> Extract A – Referral  (.*)

Field B -> Extract B – (Leave Blank)

Output To -> Constructor – User Defined $A1

See image to help.

To view, go to visitor reports and select ‘user-defined’

Went to a Women In Media event hosted by Wired Sussex. The subject was ‘networking’ and this session was presented by Jenni Lloyd from Nixon McInnes – Social Media Experts in Brighton.

I enjoyed the relaxed vibe of the event (based at The Sanctuary Cafe in Hove) and the choice of croissants, cereals and fruits supplied for our breakfast.  Yum. With copious amounts of Orange Juice and Coffee (however, not together in the same cup!).

Jenni discussed how networking can feel uncomfortable because you are approaching someone as they have something you desire.

She also led on to discuss that it helps if you know why are networking whilst giving great examples to get the message home.

1.   Learn from my peers and be recognised by them – linkedin.com

2.   International recognition as experts in our field (presenting at international conferences)

3.   Broaden my interests – Upcoming

4.   Staying in touch and keeping sane – friend twitter.com/Emm who is at home with 2 kids but wants to stay intouch with her colleagues

5.   Need a new job – www.linkedin.com

6.   Sell things – mashupupevent.com (Haven’t linked as site down at time of writing)

7.   Bring local people together – projectbrighton.com

8.  Want to stay in touch with people I used to work with – facebook

9.  Want to talk to like-minded people –  Likemind Brighton

10.    Want to find influencers and maybe join them – Twitter

11.   Want to capitalise on my expertise – http://tv.winelibrary.com/

12.   Publicise my unioque business – English Cut

13.   Want to be a thought leader and build my own brand – http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/

Thanks Jenni – it was great!

Google Analytics have publicly announced ‘Google Analytics Notations’. Quite simply, this is the ability to add notes to graphs within your Google Analytics Interface and it is simple genius.
I have struggled for soooo long to try and get GA users (clients and administrators) to keep a record of changes so that any unusual behaviours can be cross-referenced for an explanation and managing this task is not easy and has not always been successful.

Now, Google Analytics have kindly, with a click of a button, given us the facility to add it straight into the system which is saving so much time and confusion and here is the button….

which opens up into this…

Really easy, huh?

You can * them for easy finding, share them or keep them privately all to yourself – it’s up to you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Well, how interesting! Google is moving forward with helping us to track social media sites and functions within them – perticularly where their own products are concerned. It was announced to day on YouTube Biz Blog that Google Analytics are intergrating with YouTube brand channels to offer further insight into data previously provided by YouTube Insight.  Go on Google – keep it up.  I’m off for a nosey now….