Google Analytics and AdWords: Better Together

Regardless of the year or economic climate, it's always been important to optimize the return on your advertising investment--but now it's more important than ever. Google Analytics specializes in providing you with the metrics you need to make informed advertising decisions.

By linking your Google AdWords and Analytics accounts, you can optimize your AdWords investment even more effectively with increased trackability and customized reporting. Check out this short video and learn more about the benefits of linking your accounts.

To learn more about advertising more effectively with Analytics you can watch the "Google Analytics in 60 Seconds" videos - a series of videos that illustrate simple tips such as how to optimize keywords and how to use placement targeting.

Posted by Cynthia Benin, Inside AdWords crew

Tracking Google Sites with Analytics

It only makes sense that Analytics should be able to track sites created by another Google product, Google Sites. Google Sites is an easy-to-use online application to make team websites. Multiple users can collaborate on editing the site at once online, and it's all hosted by Google for free.

Installing the tracking code for your Google Sites website requires just a few simple steps. After creating a new account and profile for your website within Analytics, another JavaScript code snippet will be generated with a new tracking ID for your site (the tracking ID from within the code snippet is always in this format: UA-XXXXXXX-XX). You can just paste the new tracking ID into your Google Sites settings page under Other Stuff > Statistics.



Once you set up Analytics for your Google Site website, you'll have to remember to apply the code to all the existing and future pages for your website. For full instructions on configuring your site with Analytics, please follow these instructions.

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Do more with less -- Part 1 of 3

As you're starting your advertising for a new year, we'd like to share some strategies that can help you refocus your campaigns for the current economy. Over the next couple of weeks, we'll show you some different AdWords tools and features that can help you make the most of your marketing dollars. You can also visit www.google.com/domorewithless to find a list of Google resources that can help you achieve your advertising goals -- even in a downturn. This week we'll focus on how you can get more conversions (sales, form fills, account sign-ups, etc.) from your website.

When the economy's down, it's more important than ever to make the most of your paid search traffic. One way to increase your sales without increasing your budget is to convert a higher percentage of visitors to your website. That way you can pay for the same number of clicks, but have a higher percentage of them turn into customers. So, how can you do this?

This is where Website Optimizer can help. Website Optimizer is a free tool from Google that allows you to compare multiple versions of a webpage and statistically determine which version performs the best. For example: you can create two different landing pages, one with four small pictures versus a page with one large picture, and scientifically determine which design has the highest conversion rate. Sometimes small changes, like changing the size of an image or the wording of a special promotion, can improve conversion rates by 10, 20, or even 50%. And, since Website Optimizer uses actual visitor data, it can take the guesswork out of site improvement and give you confidence that you're improving your conversion rate.

Website Optimizer is very easy to implement and only involves inserting a small bit of Javascript code into your webpage and variations. If you are not sure what to test, start with these guidelines:

1. Simplify your page: try creating a variation that has less text, fewer input boxes, or a shorter header.


2. Move your call-to-action to a more prominent location: try creating a variation where the button you want your visitors to click is in a different location (at the top of the screen? more centered?).


3. Change the color of your call-to-action button: try creating a variation where your Submit/Buy button is a higher contrast color (like a bright red or green).
   


4. Change your promotional text: try creating a variation that emphasizes a different promotion to see if it affects sales (10% off versus free shipping).


5. Change the number of options the visitors see: try creating a variation with fewer product categories or fewer links to see if visitors have an easier time navigating the page.

For more ideas on what to test, check out Website Workout videos and learn how four companies improved their conversion rates using Website Optimizer. Also, if you're a testing and optimization pro, you'll be happy to hear Website Optimizer allows you to perform both A/B tests and multivariate tests on your webpage for free.

Check out the Website Optimizer page to learn more about the tool and how you can set it up for your website. Next week we'll talk about how you can get more conversions from your current campaigns.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Brand YOU Day

As marketers, we all understand the importance of branding, but how do you craft YOUR brand as your bank or credit union’s marketing department?

A solid internal brand can transform marketing from the “arts and crafts” department to the strategic thought leaders … from the “ad guys” to an indispensible planning resource … from an expense to a valuable INVESTMENT.

As with any brand, your department’s brand needs to be differentiating, relevant and speak to a need.

Be Differentiating: The Marketing Department should be the ONLY one-stop resource for all information within your market.  Among other things, you should be the expert on:

• How your current customers perceive and use the bank
  
• How potential customers perceive your bank and use their bank
  
• What a potential customer looks like and where they live
  
• What the competition is doing (or not doing)
  
• What the financial trends are in the market
  

Each planning session, it should be your department that leads the conversation with the management team and the Board on market conditions and a basic SWAT analysis to establish a mind-set and get everyone on the same page.

Be Relevant: Banks are more in the forefront of American’s minds that they’ve been in generations.  And people are crafting their opinion of you and your peers by what they see on CNN and the local news.

The bottom line is that YOU are the sculptor and guardian of your institution’s image.  No one else in the bank, not even the CEO, is as concerned about the perception of your bank as you are.  From the front-line interaction to the sales collateral to the external communication - you are responsible for the customer experience at every touch point.  What could be more relevant?

Speak to a Need: Remember who your internal target audience is … the CEO, CFO and Board.  Of these, most have a finance background and focus.  So, speaking about creative awards will not necessarily address what is important to them.

You need to speak in your target’s language … cold hard numbers!  A solid understanding and sharing of your marketing ROI will go a long way to adding value to your department’s brand.  Consider this … if your CEO has only $1 to invest in the institution, where will they get the best return?  An investment at today’s rates?  More technology, branches or personnel?  Or a sound marketing program that can generate 120% plus ROI?

We just need to take our own medicine and put the same emphasis on our internal brand as we put on our bank’s brand.  Imagine what it could do for your involvement in key decisions, job security and your overall marketing budget.  

As always, please share your thoughts as a comment below.  Or if you think I'm full of it ... please share that too!!!

Take care,

Eric

Join the Discussion... with Comments

In the spirit of New Year's resolutions, one of ours is to work even harder in 2009 to hear what you have to say. My resolution to work out more frequently at the gym has already gone out the window (the Golden Globes took precedence last week), but I promise that listening to you is a resolution we'll follow through on! To help kick things off, here are a few ways you can get your questions answered and provide feedback to the Google Analytics team.

• As of today, you can post comments on new features and developments directly in the blog
  
• For support questions or more in-depth conversations, use the help forum
• For feature requests, you can use this form
  
• To get hands-on implementation support, speak to an Authorized Consultant
  
• Lastly, to share best practices, key learnings or case studies, email ga-feedback [at] google [dot] com (no support questions please)
  

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

New seasonal templates for display ad builder: coming soon!

Celebrate Valentine's Day and President's Day with ad templates dressed up specially for the occasions. In a few days, we'll offer seven new templates in the display ad builder -- each with elements and animations designed for the upcoming holidays. Seasonal templates are a fun, effective way to make your message more relevant to customers, no matter what you're advertising.

As a sneak preview, we've included some screenshots of a few upcoming templates. Keep in mind that customization options for each template will vary, so we encourage you to check out all the options once you're ready to create your ads.

(Click screenshots to enlarge the images.)

The new holiday templates will be offered in all of the display ad builder's 13 languages. We'll update the blog once the holiday templates are available to you.

Posted by Heather Lane, Inside AdWords crew

The short answer is.. you don't have to change your snippet

If you've added a profile recently to your account or read a help article that discusses the tracking code, you may have noticed an addition to the tracking code snippet. You do not need to change the tracking code in your existing pages, although doing so will add a layer of functionality that I'll explain in a minute. Here is the updated snippet, with the additions in bold.

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-50020-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
</script>

So why the change? Adding the try and catch to the snippet removes the possibility that your visitor sees a JavaScript message that doesn't apply to her. It's a fairly rare occurrence because messages like these (frequently in the form of an alert box) can only appear if JavaScript messaging has been enabled on the browser. Most browsers have JavaScript messaging turned off by default, but sometimes people unintentionally turn it on. For those visitors who have enabled messaging, the try and catch will have the effect of halting any messages from the Google Analytics tracking code snippet.

As a best practice, we're including the try and catch in the snippet and updating our help materials to reflect this change.

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team