The Google Analytics Blog is always a great source for the latest and greatest features, capabilities and tips that Google Analytics has to offer. Well, last week has been no exception when it comes to dishing out the info on new things happening and what’s to come. At E-Nor, we stay abreast of these announcements and think it’s important to share the wealth of information with our customers and followers. Here is an overview of last week’s Google Analytics Blog posts:
Content Analysis – The Perks of Page Values
Google recently re-introduced a feature that can help users understand the value of content with a new metric titled Page Value (for those of us who remember the $index metrics, you will like PageVlaue). This feature can help you better understand which pages within your site drive the most conversions and revenue. With Page Value, it comes down to a measurement of influence; pages with a high Page Value are more influential than those with a low Page Value. This new metric provides you with added insight into specific pages within your site. Or, if you’re interested, calculating a group of pages, can be determined as well.
Page Value is calculated using the value of transactions and goals. Simply define a goal, assign it a value and monitor away! You can begin the process by going to the Content > All Pages report and look for the Page Value column on the right. Here’s the formula for how the Google Page Value is calculated:
Page Value = (Transaction Revenue + Total Goal Value) / Unique Pageviews for the page
Page Value won’t provide you with total transaction and goal revenues for your entire site, but it does provide some added metric information within your chosen pages.
As part of this recent blog post, Google also provides a couple of hypothetical visits to give you a better understanding of how Page Values are determined. In addition, the post goes further into helpful tips on how to get your Page Values started and working for you.
Bettering Bounce Rates
One important metric for digital marketers and web analysts has always been bounce rate. We want to know when a visitor is coming to the site, and leaves. We want to know why they leave so quickly, and so on. With Google Analytics we can monitor this key metric, and now have the added ability to make adjustments to the tracking of bounce rates, and in turn, better understand them.
Bounce rates help evaluate traffic quality. To better gauge visitors behavior, and the overall quality of their visit, Google Analytics offers the ability to manipulate these metrics through “adjusted bounce rate.” This is done by making a minor tweak to your Google Analytics code which allows for a predetermined amount of time (set by you) to indicate whether a visitor has “bounced” or should be counted as an event. So even though this visitor may not have gone to any additional pages on your site, they can be counted as an engaged visitor (blogs are good candidates to apply this new feature to, since many visitors come to read a post and then they are likely to leave).
To see the Google Analytics code needed to perform this adjustment, check out the recent GA blog post. The blog post also touches on other factors you need to be aware of in how this “adjusted bounce rate” may affect the volume of hits your site sends to Google Analytics (and go over the 10M monthly limit for non Google Analytics Premium accounts).
Re-connecting Through Remarketing
Another exciting announcement on the Google Analytics blog was posted last week about an easier way to re-connect with visitors through Remarketing with Google Analytics.
The Google Analytics blog also recently announced a simpler way to re-connect with your website visitors which highlights a new program that will be launched soon in beta format. Remarketing with Google Analytics can help re-engage visitors by taking analytics data already gathered and tailor ads and messaging specifically for them. Now you can leverage this feature directly from within GA without having to add yet one more tag to your site (and your IT team will love you even more :)).
According to the Google Analytics blog, Remarketing with Google Analytics is expected to be rolled out by the end of the summer and will be available to users who are account administrators with a linked Google AdWords account.
What To Do Next?
So there you have it. Three great opportunities provided by Google Analytics on how to better track bounces, target your advertising message to be a better fit and empower your content analysis with value to pages.
Check out these features and give us a call if you have any questions or comments.
