Google Apps for Your Domain

Every now and then we will share updates from other Googlers about the products they're working on if we think that info will benefit Google Analytics users. Google Apps for Your Domain is similar to Google Analytics in that it offers simple and useful ways to view and share information online. And with these apps, you are actively creating information as well. Marlin Gilbert from the Google Apps team explains:

Like Google Analytics, Google Apps for Your Domain gives you the opportunity to focus your precious resources on campaigns and programs that rapidly grow your business. We built these tools to enable your team to communicate and collaborate more effectively without any additional hardware or software. Everything is online and accessible from any internet-connected device through a standard web browser. And you can customize the tools your company uses with your own special branding, color scheme and content.

Currently, you can take advantage of Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar and Google Page Creator and the new start page feature. For instance:

• Using Gmail, without changing your email addresses, your employees can enjoy a faster and clearer way to read email conversations, and find saved messages with powerful search tools.
  
• Coordinating complex schedules is a breeze with Google Calendar.
  
• Keep your people in touch through Google Talk and use Google Page Creator to make your web page ideas come to life.
• The start page is a central place for your employees to preview their inboxes and calendars, access your essential content, and search the web.

And we are working to make more apps available soon, so you can keep focusing on what you do best.

Google Apps for Your Domain is free, and currently in beta. Learn more and get started here.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Immigration and Hispanic Consumer Behavior

Every 8 to 10 years the issues of undocumented immigration to the US resurfaces. Being it that most of the undocumented immigrants come from Latin America, and particularly Mexico, then the attention has been focused on them. There is no question that immigration policy is important and that it also important that businesses have the workforce they need. Also, it is important that those who want to work in the US can do it without risking their lives in a legal and orderly way. But this is not the core of this posting.

The focus is on the implications for consumer behavior that is affected by the immigration discourse and political ping-pong. Attention becomes focused on Latin American immigrants and even those who have all their documents in order or are US citizens many times become discriminated against because of suspicion and resentment. Those who have dark skin and who have accents become suspect. Common reactions to this marginalization is to stay home and to avoid much public attention. If this is the case, then online activities among Hispanic should be further enhanced by the privacy that online world offers.

Further, brands and marketers that elevate the self-esteem of Hispanics in the US are now in a perfect position to establish lasting relationships with them. Recognizing Hispanics for their important contributions to the economy, and also to the history of the US, are aspects that marketers can use to further their presence in Hispanic communities.

Marketing is about forging long lasting relationships. This is an important time for marketers to be proactive in elevating the self-esteem of Hispanic consumers and at the same time elevating the esteem of their brands.

Tip: Experiment using duplicate profiles

Google Analytics allows you to easily configure, filter, and focus your site's traffic data in powerful ways. And we want you to avoid the few pitfalls that we have seen around configuration of filters, goals, and e-commerce. For example, when a filter is accidentally implemented incorrectly in a profile, important data can get excluded from that profile's reports. Another example relates to goals: creating a goal in a profile and then changing it is common, but the historical data in that profile will always reflect the first goal, which may not be desirable. For the dates they were implemented, these configurations will unfortunately modify data for that time period permanently.

One simple yet powerful way to avoid incorrect modifications is to use duplicate profiles to test out changes to your account settings. This way, you can ensure that you have implemented the settings correctly without affecting the data in your main profile. When you duplicate profiles, the new data you collect appears in several profiles at once, letting you manipulate the duplicate data in different ways. You can then keep the original profile unaltered so it can contain every piece of data collected by the tracking code on your site.

Using duplicate profiles is a great way to explore some of the more advanced functionality that Analytics has to offer without the risk of making mistakes. It lets you experiment without losing the data that you are already using for your analysis.

For example, let's say that you want to implement an Include Filter to include only data from a particular subdirectory. If you implemented this filter in your main profile, you might make a syntax error and inadvertently include none of your data in your reports. Or several months down the road, you may decide that you are actually interested in the rest of the data from your site, but now have no way of seeing it. A duplicate profile will let you ensure that the filter is implemented correctly, and it leaves the option open to analyze the data from your main profile in the future.

Click here for more information about creating duplicate profiles in your account.

Posted by Eliah Gilfenbaum, Google Analytics Team

The Multicultural Marketing Equation

The Multicultural Marketing Equation -- http://hmc.comm.fsu.edu -- a newly released study, documents how our diverse society is likely to evolve in terms of media and technology usage. The study substantiates the surprising fact that emerging minorities are leading the technology adoption curve. And not only are they the pacers of new technology adoption and use, but they are quite different in their values and attitudes.

This is a moment in History that appears to be defining a culturally diverse and different future. Marketers wishing to be at the forefront need to learn about how these emerging minorities are shaping the future of consumer thinking.

Tip: A cross-segment for bloggers

A few people at the Emetrics Summit told us they'd like to learn more tips and tricks for implementing Google Analytics. So in the next few weeks we will begin including tips straight from various members of the Google Analytics team. And we'll kick it off with a tip for bloggers, though anyone can use it.

One of the most important things for a blogger to know is how people find his or her blog. Links and referrals are an integral part of blogging culture. Many blogs display a finite number of links to a post. Of course, you can see referring links aggregated and displayed in your Google Analytics reports, within your Marketing Optimization > Visitor Segment Performance > Referring Source report.

Unfortunately, the Referring Source report shows only the referring domain. You can't see what comes after the domain -- the rest of the referring link -- to see the exact page on the site that contained the link to your blog. There is a way to see this data however: by cross-segmenting a referring source by Content.

Here are the steps to follow:

1. In the Marketing Optimization > Visitor Segment Performance > Referring Source report, click on the red button containing two "up" arrows, located to the left of any referring source in the data table. You will see the "Analysis Options" table.
2. Choose "Cross Segment Performance" and then you will see a drop down menu.
3. Choose to cross segment the entry by "Content."
   

This will take you to a new data table that shows you the rest of the referring URL -- not including any dynamic query parameters (anything after a question mark, for instance). Here's what you'll see:

Here are some other ways you can use Google Analytics to monitor your blog:

• find out what posts readers liked the most by looking at daily visits and popularity of permalinks. (Knowing this can influence what you write about.)
• see if you're keeping your readers by comparing new vs. returning visitors
• find out how people exit your blog, as well as measure subscriptions to your feed using UrchinTracker on your links
• see how long readers spend looking at your content by looking at average length of visits
• monitor visitor activity after you make a post to see when daily visit levels taper off. (That means it's time to post again.)
  

Feel free to share your best practices for bloggers in the Analytics Forum.


Posted by Gauri Deshmukh and Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

What we're reading

There are some pretty fantastic resources on the web for people who use Google Analytics, and those interested in learning more. We want to mention a few blogs on web analytics generally and on Google Analytics that we've been reading. We highly recommend these to all of you who use data to back up your online decisions.

ROI Revolution Blog
ROI Revolution is a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC). This frequently updated blog contains interviews with web analytics experts, as well as Google Analytics tips and in-depth explanations of reports with screenshots. Great reading. Take a look at these two recent posts:
Start at the Beginning: Making Sense of the Google Analytics Toolbox by Meredith Smith
Understanding Google Analytics' Data Over Time Report by Michael Harrison


GA Experts Blog
A European GAAC affiliated with Omega Digital Media and a very informative Google Analytics-focused blog addressing practical questions and offering some pretty ingenious solutions. Learn about a new filter called "Override Bid Term Filter" that will show you the actual search keywords that brought a visitor to your site, not just the keyword that you bid on in your PPC account, in the recent post How to Get Detailed PPC Keyword Data from Google Analytics

This Just In
Written by Justin Cutroni who works at EpikOne, a one-stop, do-it-all GAAC on the east coast, which has its own informative blog. Justin posts helpful, troubleshooting articles that help clarify Google Analytics and make it even more understandable, useful, and accessible. Check out Justin's recent posts:
Google Analytics: How to Tell When Something is Wrong
Google Analytics Configuration Mistake #3: Third Party Domains


Occam's Razor
Written by Avinash Kaushik, head of web research and analytics at Intuit, and a vocal and visible analytics practitioner, advocate, and thought leader. Every web analyst, marketer, webmaster, IT specialist, and executive should read his recent post: Seven Steps to Creating a Data Driven Decision Making Culture


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team