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Web Analytics in Action: Alienware Case Study

This week, I’ll be taking a look at web analytics in action on a platform much bigger than my own humble blog. While I’ve been able to share personal experiences setting up and analyzing some free GA reports, I’d like to examine how a large scale e-commerce company uses web analytics to assess its site visitors and, ultimately, drive online sales. The company I’ll be profiling is Alienware, a manufacturer of uniquely-designed PC computers aimed at online gaming enthusiasts. Over the past decade, Alienware has built a solid and profitable customer base through responding to trends identified through web analytics efforts. Alienware’s success ultimately led to its acquisition by Dell in 2006 (Hachman, 2006). Unlike my previous analytics posts to date that have focused on Google Analytics’ free tools, we’ll be looking at tools Alienware used to track its customers through the paid services offered by the analytics tool Omniture. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll focus on a few key areas where Alienware’s web analytics translated into real business results. I’ll also dedicate a short section to my additional thoughts on ways Alienware could further employ web analytics efforts to increase its online sales.

Example 1: Star Wars Promotion

Alienware uses Omniture’s SiteCatalyst tool to view real-time customer interactions on its website, including clicks and purchases about each specific product it sells. This tool was useful during a 2005 promotion in conjunction with Lucas Films in which Alienware created and sold Star Wars-branded desktop PC models, giving customers the option to choose between a black “Dark Side” model or a white “Rebel Alliance” model (“Star Wars,” 2005). Through real-time web analytics monitoring – likely set up through some kind of specialized report to watch this specific promotion – Alienware noticed that its dark side models were outselling the light side models 15 to one. Because of the early detection of this trend, Alienware was able to seamlessly prepare its manufacturing, supply chain, and marketing teams to react to the lopsided orders for these products. (Omniture, n.d.)

Example 2: Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Also because of its web analytics efforts in November of the same year, Alienware had a hugely successful Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend. The company set up alerts to watch for products that were selling above or below expectations throughout the week. By keeping an eye on sales in real time, Alienware was able to make tweaks to its site including which products were being featured (hot-selling products were featured more prominently) and which price points to use (those which received better response from customers were used more widely). Alienware saw a weekend sales increase of 105 percent as a result of its careful attention to customer interactions on its site. November 2005 also went down in history as Alienware’s best month to date, setting record-breaking site traffic, conversion rates, and revenue. (Omniture, n.d.)

Example 3: E-mail Marketing

Alienware used Omniture’s partnership with DARTmail to track the effectiveness of its e-mail campaigns. If you’re looking for a comparison, in the Google Analytics world, this is something that could be monitored somewhat through campaign tagging and tracking. The biggest added feature provided by DARTmail is the ability to identify each specific e-mail address associated with a click. Alienware certainly used this feature to help close sales through follow up campaigns. After an initial e-mail campaign promoting two high-end notebook computers, Alienware identified 36,000 customers who clicked on a link in the e-mail but never ultimately made a purchase of either computer, based on data collected through web analytics. A follow-up campaign was sent to these customers with a special offer as an incentive to close the sale on the computers offered in the initial campaign. This follow-up campaign resulted in $160,000 in revenue – a $4.40 revenue value for every e-mail sent. (Omniture, n.d.)

Additional Suggestions

Clearly, Alienware’s use of web analytics tools in Omniture’s suite provided the company with measurable success, ultimately leading to the company’s acquisition by computer giant Dell. Whether Alienware still retains some independence in its operations now is unclear. But assuming the company is still in control of its own website and analytics therein, I see a few areas where improvements could be made to further increase online sales.

First, I couldn’t find evidence of Alienware’s use of analytics to optimize its site design on an ongoing basis. Obviously, real-time response to customer behavior is important during high-volume, fast-turnaround periods like Cyber Monday and high profile product releases. But during all the other times of year, Alienware could stand to benefit greatly from using its web analytics capabilities to take a look at customers’ behaviors in a long-term capacity. Are there any pages where customers are dropping off at a high rate? Is there an ideal path through the site that Alienware would like its customers to take, and are they taking it? Are there ways to suggest add-on products to increase incremental revenue? It could be that some simple tweaks to overall site navigation could help Alienware increase its day-to-day sales, above and beyond the steps it is taking to react to big promotions in real-time.

Also, I found no reports of Alienware using filters to segment its audience and perform highly-specialized analysis of groups that might be of special interest. For example, Alienware could take a look at site visitors who find the page through a keyword search involving gaming computers. This keyword would indicate a visitor was within a highly-targeted segment to which Alienware should be paying special attention. Other segments could include visitors who are referred from sites that focus on the gaming audience and, if the web analytics software program provides it, demographic segments that meet typical gamer profiles according to age, gender, etc.  Site analysis based on these filters could help Alienware see whether its intended audience is responding to promotions, site changes, and targeted campaigns as expected. It may also show opportunities to take advantage of potentially lucrative gaps in current behavior.

Overall, I think Alienware did a great job of maximizing its profits as a result of web analysis of its current customers. Even though most of the data is a few years old and is centered around a paid analytical tool, it still provides great insight into the capabilities of this type of analysis when it’s done well.

References

Hachman, M. (2006, March 22). It’s official: Dell beams up Alienware. PC Mag. Retrieved from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1941376,00.asp

Omniture. (n.d.). Retail and commerce sites. Industry guide.  Retrieved from http://www.omniture.com/downloads/06_IndustryGuide_Retail.pdf

Star Wars: Revelations – Fan film sweeps net, Alienware ‘Star Wars Edition’ PCs. (2005, April 21). Enforcers HQ. Retrieved from http://www.omniture.com/downloads/06_IndustryGuide_Retail.pdf

Google Analytics is starting to make my head spin!

This week I spent several more hours learning about some of the advanced Google Analytic reporting tools that I have never been exposed to in the past. I have heard of goals and funnels before, but I’ve never investigated how to apply them or why I should even be considering them in the first place. Last week I discussed basic analytics reports and how they can be used. These reports are great for judging basic interest and user behavior on a website, but they don’t really give you a perfect picture of how your site is accomplishing your actual business objectives. This week, I’ll take a look at GA goals, funnels, filters, and profiles – a few more advanced tools that, as some experts say, are what you really SHOULD be tracking (Lofgren, n.d.). The tricky part, as I found through my research, is the actual implementation of these metrics. It turns out that more complicated analytical reporting means more complicated behind-the-scenes set up.

To be completely honest, before this week, I felt confident that I could take on a lot of web analytics functions on my own. But after watching a series of Google-produced videos about setting up profiles, filters, goals, and funnels, I have a new appreciation for the necessity and function of a true analytics professional. Although I couldn’t find any analytics experts being quoted online about how much time a person must invest in analytics for their education to be useful, I would assert that an amateur in the web analytics arena must make this subject more than a secondary focus in the workplace to provide truly meaningful results to his/her company.  That is, at my day job I NEVER would have been able to spare the hours I spent learning some more in-depth (and helpful!) GA tools.

Since I’m sure many readers are marketers on a small team, with a small budget, or for their own small business, I’ll save you some time by breaking down my newly-acquired wisdom about some of Google’s more advanced analytics tools and why they really are worth the time it takes to learn about them. If you like what you see here, I highly recommend finding a way to commit the time necessary to learning more about how to implement these tools for your specific business needs. Just keep in mind that a significant time commitment is required to fully understand these tools and to implement them effectively!

Goals

Goals are the best way to see if your site is meeting its business objectives. GA goals reports allow you to monitor certain activities or interaction levels that might be important to the success of your business based on one of four key metrics – URL, time on site, pages per visit, or event. I really like goals as a way to get an easy gauge of success on your site. Some of the objectives I might have for this blog could include some of the following:

1.     Having readers spend a certain amount of time on my page that would indicate they are interested and actually reading at least one article. I’d say a minimum of three minutes.

2.     Having readers click onto more than one story on my page, indicating that they’re interested in reading beyond the original article they find.

3.     Having readers sign up for e-mail updates when I publish new content.

All of these objectives can be clearly measured and monitored over time by setting up GA goals as follows:

1.     Set up a goal that will be achieved through visitors spending more than three minutes on my site.

2.     Set up a goal that will be achieved through visitors reading more than two pages per visit.

3.     Set up a goal that will be achieved when visitors arrive at the confirmation page after signing up for e-mail updates. (Note: To be completely honest, this e-mail update page is actually fictional, but it’s at least a good example of how this kind of goal could be easily tracked.)

Funnels

A function of GA’s goal reporting, funnels allow you to see whether your visitors are progressing toward a destination URL through a specific path. For example, if your goal is to get your site visitors to sign up for your mailing list, you’d want them to first click on the registration form, then persist through to submit their registration and arrive at a sign up confirmation screen. Your goal would be the final destination URL, the confirmation screen. But you could also set up a funnel that starts by tracking visitors on the registration form page, then ends at the goal URL, the confirmation screen. By seeing whether there is a larger than expected drop off between the two pages, you can determine if you need to make any adjustments to the registration form. You can also test improvements over time in an effort to increase the conversion rate, thereby increasing the total number of visitors achieving your goal of actually registering and arriving at the confirmation page.

Filters

GA filters allow you to look at your entire set of analytics reports for certain subsets of visitors. Depending on your specific business objectives, you may want to know monitor many dimensions of the behavior of a segment of your audience. For example, on this blog, there are a few different groups I’d like to know more about:

·      Visitors who aren’t me – I click on my blog from time to time to make sure things are posting appropriately. Since my site traffic is still pretty low, just a handful of my own visits could be skewing my overall analytics reports because I’m not using my blog in the same way a normal visitor would.

·      Visitors coming from referrals or organic traffic – I’m planning to do some better blog promotion in the future, specifically through social media sharing and improved SEO. I’d like to know how my visitors from these efforts are behaving, so I can filter out other audiences to see how this specific group is using my site.

The great thing about filters is that the possibilities are virtually limitless. You can slice up your audience however you want or need to. The bad thing about filters is that unless you are using the over-simplified, pre-packaged filters, you’ll need to get very technical, very fast! Filters are where GA starts getting quite a bit trickier, but the ability to get a full set of analytical data on a specific segment of your audience could be well worth it.

Profiles

Another GA element that goes hand-in-hand with filters is profiles. As you develop different filters for your site, you will apply them to profiles, and you’ll likely want to set up multiple profiles to do this. Because you can’t retrieve data that has been filtered out once a filter is applied, it is recommended to keep a version of your analytics data, a “profile,” that doesn’t have any filters applied to it. You’ll also want to keep each filtered audience in its own separate profile. Additionally, Google allows for multiple filters to be applied to each profile, so you could develop different ways of overlapping filters on multiple profiles to create very complex profiles. Again, here’s where GA gets quite complicated for the typical, non-technical user.

If I had a budget that would allow me to hire an analytics professional, I would do it in a heartbeat. Google goals and filters have shown me the edge of my confidence in my own comfort level. By doing my due diligence in learning about the capabilities of GA tools, however, at the very least I’ve enabled myself to speak intelligently when asking my IT department for help in setting up these tools.

References:

Lofgren, L. (n.d.) 4 Google Analytics goal types that are critical to your business. KISSmetrics. Retrieved from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/critical-goal-types/

My slow traffic and how analytics is giving me hope for better days ahead

As part of class assignments associated with this blog, I’ll be keeping up with some Google Analytics reporting on blog traffic to this site. I installed Google Analytics on this page only about two weeks ago, and this blog is certainly in its infancy, so my traffic to date has been a little lackluster. It has, however, been telling enough to provide some valuable insights that I plan on using to further increase traffic during the coming weeks. In this post I’ll be highlighting some basic reports and metrics within Google Analytics that I’ve found to be useful in measuring my site’s effectiveness. Also, I’ll take a look at a few reports that will become even more helpful as I collect more data in the weeks ahead. Hopefully, all of this information will provide some insights to my readers who might be looking at developing more robust web analytics for their own sites, whether they are small businesses or other blogs.

Immediate Feedback Google Analytics Reports

The “Visitors Overview” report provides instant feedback about the nature of visitors coming to my site, no matter how few. This report can be adjusted to provide insights over a designated period of time. For now, I’m sticking with the standard 30-day view. Within the Visitors Overview dashboard, pictured below, I can see several metrics that can help me start getting a basic feel for how effective my blog might be.

 

As you can see, as of Sunday, June 24, 2012, I only had a measly 9 visits to my blog site, however, there are a few metrics that show me this traffic is likely at least somewhat engaged.

Pageviews and Pages/Visit – The average number of pages per visit was 3.22. Considering my blog only has five possible pages (a home page and individual pages for each of four posts), I can assume that my visitors are engaged enough to browse my blog pretty thoroughly.

Average Visit Duration – The average visit duration reported was 4 minutes, 55 seconds. Depending on how fast my visitors read, I assume this visit duration is long enough for them to each be reading at least one blog post. Like the Pageviews and Pages/Visit metrics, this also helps tell me how engaged my visitors are.

New vs. Returning Visitors – Most of my visitors so far are classified as New Visitors, meaning they have not been to my page within the past 30 days, but about 30 percent of my visitors have been on my page at least once before. This information is valuable. As a blogger, two of my primary goals include (1) increasing viable traffic to my blog and (2) attracting regular followers to my blog. By using the New vs. Returning Visitor metric, I can easily see how I am achieving both of these goals. Ideally, I want to maintain a balance of new and returning visitors to my blog to assure me that I’m attracting a sufficient number of new visitors while also attracting visitors who are interested enough to keep coming back.

A word about bounce rate: As I review these analytics reports, I’m looking at how these metrics apply to my situation. In this case, I’m choosing not to pay too much attention to bounce rate. This is because blogs typically experience a high bounce rate, and this is a good thing. Google Analytics measures bounce rate as the percentage of visitors to a site who arrive on their first landing page then don’t click on another page before exiting the site. Visitors to blogs often find all the information they need on the very first page they see. It isn’t rare for a blog to experience a bounce rate of 70 percent or higher. (Kayden, 2012)

Digging Deeper for Visitor Insights

Next, as I look beyond the basics in analyzing my blog visitors, the “All Traffic” report, pictured below, yields some interesting insights.

This report, found under the Traffic Sources menu provides a picture of where my blog traffic is coming from. The Source/Medium column reports where the traffic came from (source) and what kind of traffic it is (medium). Each different Source/Medium combination is broken out with metrics covered in the previous section that can be compared to determine which traffic sources are the most effective.

So far, my All Traffic report tells me that much of my most engaged, returning visitors are coming from other blogger.com sites. This may even be attributed to my own clicks on my blog! The next most engaged visits are coming from the secureserver.net referral site, which is the e-mail address I used to send my blog link to a few contacts.  Finally, I can see that a link I posted on my personal Facebook page gained three visits – two from regular web visits and one through the mobile Facebook app. I can see these Facebook visits are all new visitors, so this source seems to be effective in gaining new traffic. Also, because of the nature of the bounce rate and the way that visit duration is calculated, I’ll be excluding these metrics.

Overall, my assessment of this All Traffic report tells me that my efforts are generating effective traffic from what I can tell so far. It also tells me that there is much room for improvement. Over time, I’ll be able to see whether my Facebook  and other referrals are coming back multiple times. I’ll also be able to monitor other referral efforts I make, like posting links to new blog topics on social media sharing sites like Digg and Reddit. Finally, this report shows me that my organic search engine traffic is non-existent.  Perhaps I should spend some time researching ways to optimize my posts for better search engine visibility.

More Detail on Navigation to Understand Visitor Behavior

The last report I’ll detail is the “Pages Navigation Summary” report, available within the Content menu by clicking on the All Pages report, then selecting the Navigation Summary tab. The report, pictured below, provides details about the traffic flow coming into and exiting out of a selected page within a site.

For the purpose of my site, this report initially helped me understand that almost all of my traffic revolves around the main blog landing page. Over time, I think this will evolve as I move to promote individual posts through social media sites and (hopefully) better search engine optimization. I can also see that three subsequent pageviews after the main homepage took visitors to the “Web analytics worth paying for” article, making me think that the content of this particular post is what is most appealing to my visitors. Since this blog’s posts are for prescribed class assignments, I don’t have much flexibility to tailor my content to users’ preferences, but if I did, I might consider posting more content assessing the overall value of analytics tools. In theory, I can attract more visitors and more returning visitors by focusing my posts on content that users are finding most attractive.

Obviously, there are hundreds of reports available through Google Analytics. I think the real task is sorting out which reports are the most important and easily understandable, as well as which reports are the most relatable to your objectives for your own site.

Reference:

Kayden. (2012, February 12). What is bounce rate? Avoid a common pitfall. Web Analytics Blog. Retrieved from http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/what-is-bounce-rate/

Facebook Ads vs. Google AdWords: A comparison

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been quoted as saying:

Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected ... Simply put: we don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services.

(Kim, 2012)

Of course, now that Facebook has become a publicly traded company, its fate lies in its ability to make money, regardless of the intent behind it.  Much of this monetization is powered by Facebook’s advertising platform, something that, in many ways, has a long way to go. Google, on the other hand, has not had a problem monetizing its advertising services. This Internet giant certainly has some advantages over Facebook when it comes to its ad options and services. Here’s a quick comparison of the some key features and how they stack up between Google AdWords and Facebook Ads.

Ad format

Facebook ads follow the same structure: A thumbnail image, 3-5 word headline, URL, and two lines of text. While Google’s Text Ad format provides a similar layout (minus the photo), there are other options available that aren’t found on Facebook, including Text Ads in a variety of different sized groups, Display Ads that look much like traditional Internet banner ads, Video Ads that feature interactive components, and even mobile advertising (Mobile Ads – AdSense Help, 2012)

Pay structure

Both platforms center most of their ad payment around a cost-per-click basis, although you can buy ads on Facebook and Google based on cost-per-impression if you prefer. In general, Google’s cost-per-click ads cost more than Facebook’s cost-per-click ads. Some say that this is not necessarily an indicator that Google’s ads are more valuable, however, pointing to analyses of the true value of a Facebook fan. That is, if you use your Facebook ad to drive customers to like your page, they will actually be worth much more to your company in the long run than a Google ad conversion that simply results in a customer visiting your website. (Resnick, 2011)

Total potential reach

Facebook is indisputably the world’s largest social network, with an estimated 845 million monthly active viewers. That’s 51 percent of all Internet users! Impressive until you compare these numbers to Google’s display advertising network, which includes the search engine as well as its other properties like YouTube, Blogger, Gmail, and more than 2 million other websites. In all, Google ads have the potential to create 180 billion ad impressions per month, reaching 90 percent of all Internet users. (Kim, 2012)

Targeting ability

At first glance, it seems that Facebook’s targeting capabilities outweigh Google AdWords’. Facebook can pinpoint specific users based on things like gender, age, and even specific interests outlined in users’ profiles. While Google ads can’t be targeted to specific demographic profiles, marketers still have the ability to target their ads based on broader categories so an ad will appear if a user is browsing content that is related to its subject. Also, at a basic level, Google ads that appear in the main Google search engine window are being shown to the audience at an opportune time when they are actively seeking information on the subject. In contrast, Facebook ads are shown to users when they are most likely engaged in social activities unrelated to that ad’s subject matter.

Although I wouldn’t count out Facebook’s advertising functionality in a broad, integrated campaign, I certainly wouldn’t recommend centering an ad strategy around it. Facebook certainly seems to be a company built around a social mission – its business plan to capitalize on advertising revenue leaves something to be desired. It will be interesting to see what steps Zuckerberg and his team take to make their company’s advertising options stack up more attractively against Google in the future.

References:

Kim, L. (2012, May 15). Google Display Network vs. Facebook Advertising. WordStream. Retrieved from http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/05/15/ipo-facebook-vs-google-display-advertising

Mobile Ads – AdSense Help. (2012). Google. Retrieved from http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=185668&topic=29561&ctx=topic

Resnick, T. (2011, May 30). AdWords vs. Facebook Ads: A head-to-head comparison. AudienceWise. Retrieved from http://audiencewise.com/2011/05/adwords-vs-facebook-ads-a-head-to-head-comparison/

Building a social media following: Is it what you say or how you say it?

When it comes to building meaningful presence on social media platforms, most marketers would agree that you’ll never make any kind of impact unless you go ahead and get started – that is, you’ve got to show up to the party even if you have no idea what you’re doing yet. But beyond simply establishing a corporate Facebook page or Twitter account, what is the most impactful method of accumulating customers?  The debate over content vs. conversation is in full swing.

On one side of the debate is the idea that you will pull in more regular customers by putting together a content calendar, much like an editorial publication, then posting planned content on a consistent basis. The thought process behind this point of view is that without content, there isn’t a whole lot to talk about. By posting to social media channels consistently, you will establish a readership base much like any news site. (Greenberg, 2009)

The opposite side of the debate asserts that social media marketers who simply schedule and push content are not getting the big picture. Proponents of the social media conversation method acknowledge the need for consistent content, but take it to a different level, asserting that that content must be engaging – a conversation starter. Also, another idea behind the conversation theory is that social media exists because people like having a platform where their voices can be heard, so marketers who do not acknowledge their customers’ voices are missing the whole point of this vehicle. On this side of the debate, marketers feel that you must post engaging content consistently and constantly listen to your customers’ voices when speaking on social media platforms. (Novak, 2010)

I generally tend to side with conversation strategists on this debate topic because I think we miss out on a lot of goodwill feelings from our customers by failing to acknowledge them. This applies to in-person interactions just as much as it does social media interactions. Of course, when it comes to the method of this interaction, a lot of variables come into play. Any good marketer knows not to blindly subscribe to one strategy without first considering his/her business objectives. Ask yourself: What do you hope to achieve with social media? Do you want to be an idea base resource for customers who have never heard of you? Do you want to be a source of entertainment for an already established customer base? Do you want to simply be a news source on a particular subject area? Certainly these scenarios will dictate different levels of conversation-based vs. content-based strategy in the social media arena. Inevitably, your social media solution will be some combination of the two.

Marketing firm Sprout Content provided some tips to create a “Social Media Conversation Calendar,” a tool that unifies content and conversation. In this calendar, marketers plan a date/day of the week, content bucket (including the specific target and intention for the post) as well as writing out possible posts for each of several social platforms. An example is illustrated below. (Williams, n.d.)

This method acknowledges the importance of developing a set schedule (content theory) but also pushing conversation starters and allowing marketers to be organized in advance, freeing up their resources to allow time to respond to the conversations happening on their platforms. I personally love this method and am considering implementing it in my own organization. I’ll probably also add columns to measure the success of each content/conversation item, recording metrics such as “likes,” re-posts, re-tweets, and comments.

References:

Greenberg, M. (2009, October 20). Content is king of social marketing. MultichannelMerchant.com. Retrieved from http://multichannelmerchant.com/social-media/1020-content-social-marketing/

Novak, C. (2010, July 27). Why conversation, not content, is king. SocialMediaToday.com. Retrieved from http://socialmediatoday.com/wordspring/152636/why-conversation-not-content-king

Williams, D. (n.d.). Creating a social media conversation calendar. Content Marketing Blog. Retrieved from http://www.sproutcontent.com/blog/bid/131492/Creating-a-Social-Media-Conversation-Calendar

An ever-changing array of web metrics

The whole idea of web analytics is one that has become increasingly complex (some might call it “detailed”) over the course of the past several years. Metrics have exploded from simply tracking hits on an individual web page, regardless of whether they were unique visitors or not. Now tools like Google Analytics offer free reporting that can provide details about actions and interactions of each individual visitor from time spent on the site to search keywords used to get there.

            With all these types of web metrics, it seems as though we can get our hands on nearly any kind of data regarding the visitors to our pages. I have a hard time imagining ways to improve on what we currently have at our fingertips. This can probably be attributed, in part, to the fact that I’m still learning to make sense of the data that is already available to me! Regardless, analytics developers are still creating new, valuable metrics. Here is a quick overview of two of the newest reports on deck.

LogMyCalls

This is the latest development in Google’s Phone CallTracking App Gallery. The new tool allows users to input data on customer phone call campaigns, integrating this data with web analytics tools at the same time (PRWeb, 2012). One way the app accomplishes this is by inserting unique phone numbers in a web page for different referring campaigns. Calls generated through these numbers can be attributed directly back from those campaigns, providing a specific referral source within Google’s web analytics platform. (Website Integration, 2012) This “Dynamic Number Insertion” leads to more precise analysis of the affect of specific ad campaign elements on web traffic and, ultimately, conversions.

Browser Size Analysis

This is a new metric tracked by the free Google Analytics tool. Browser size has become increasingly important to analysts as the number of different devices used to access the Internet continues to grow. Even certain classifications of devices such as mobile phones or tablets have very different ranges of screen resolutions. Of course, screen resolution can drastically affect the user experience on a website. The new Google Analytics metric not only provides data about how many visitors are coming to a particular page with different browser sizes, but it also offers a visualization tool so that marketers can actually preview what their page looks like in different browser sizes so they can gain a clear picture of whether certain page elements like e-commerce buttons may fall outside the viewable area for some users. (Perez, 2012)

With an ever-changing array of analytics tools at our fingertips, it’s tough to keep up with the latest resources available to maximize our marketing impact. I’m sure we’ll soon see the day where we can track what brand of shirt our website visitors are wearing when they visit our site so we can draw some new conclusions about our demographics. (OK, maybe this is a little far-fetched?)

            In the end, I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that these analytical reports don’t all have to be used at once to be effective at providing insight into marketing tracking and website optimization. In fact, I would venture to say that we don’t even need to look at some of these reports to make a positive impact on our sites’ designs. As we sort through our constantly-changing toolbox of metrics, let’s keep that in mind!

References:

Perez, J. G. (June 4, 2012). Google Analytics adds browser-size analysis. PCWorld. Retrieved from http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/256818/google_analytics_adds_browsersize_analysis.html

PRWeb. (May 30, 2012). Google Analytics adds LogMyCalls to Phone Call Tracking App Gallery. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved from http://www.chron.com/business/press-releases/article/Google-Analytics-Adds-LogMyCalls-to-Phone-Call-3595059.php

Website Integration. (2012). LogMyCalls. Retrieved from http://www.logmycalls.com/website-integration