7 deadly sins of landing page design

Have you committed one of the "7 deadly sins of landing page design?"

Since it's the page visitors see after clicking your ad, your landing page is one of your most valuable tools. A bad landing page will drive visitors away, while a good one will turn AdWords clicks into customers. This is why we held a webinar on July 1st to expose the "7 deadly sins of landing page design", and explained how to fix them.

Tim Ash, one of our Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants, led this webinar and shared many insights and best practices to help advertisers improve their conversion rates. A recording of the webinar is now available for anyone who was not able to attend.

The recording is also available on the Website Optimizer Youtube Channel, where you can learn even more about improving your conversion rate with website testing.

We hope you will find these resources helpful as you improve your website landing pages to turn more clicks into customers.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Fun And Helpful Updates To The API

Recently, we released important updates to the Google Analytics Data Export API and our developer documentation. Here are some highlights.

1. If you are pulling large amounts of historical data, we've increased the the total amount of data you can request from the API from 1,000 rows to a new the new maximum of 10,000 rows. This is a great feature to reduce the amount of work needed to pull large amounts of data from the API.
   
   
2. The Data Export API uses dimensions and metrics and we've relaxed the restrictions on what combinations of these you can request. For example, you can now request (D1. Visitor) and (D3. Content) level dimensions in the same request. This update allows you to answer questions like:
   
   
   • For page, what keywords had the highest bounce rate (ga:bounces/ga:entrances)?
   • For a group of pages, what large companies (ga:NetworkLocation) were viewing my content and how enagaged (ga:TimeOnPage) was one company vs. another?
   
   
3. Finally, for each profile listed in the Account Feed, we've added the profile's configured timezone and currency settings. Here is an example in XML of the updated account feed.

Documentation:
The Export API exposes data through feeds, and we've updated our API reference section making it easier for developers to understand how they work. Each feed now has it's own section and you can click on each feed's parameters to learn how it works. Here's where the feed documentation section appears:

Of note is that all of the above updates were prioritized based on feedback we received from developers. Thanks! If you have any comments or requests specific to the Google Analytics Data Export API, please let us know through our Data Export API User Group. Also, you can stay up to date with the details of these updates by joining our analytics-api-notify group.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

(Ad)Word of the Day: Ad Scheduling

If you want your ads to only run during certain times of the day or week, consider using ad scheduling, today's (Ad)Word of the Day.

Ad scheduling lets you control the days and times your ad campaigns appear. You may also choose an advanced mode, which allows you to raise or lower your bids for a campaign at certain times of the day.

Ad scheduling can help you better target your ads by selecting the times when you want to show ads. For example, if you offer special late night deals, you can set up an ad group to show those ads only between 10pm and 3am. You can also set different bids for different hours, so if you have better conversion rates during certain hours, you can set your bids higher to try and get more impressions and clicks during that time.

For more information, check out the article on ad scheduling in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

The All-Star Break...we made it!

Good morning everyone....a bright and sunny Monday to you!

Well, we made it! The 2009 All-Star break... hopefully your team is still in contention and the break will provide a needed rest. My Reds are limping into the break and a cloud is forming over the 2nd half.

The All-Star break is designed to provide a brief rest to all teams, celebrate the 1st half successes and reward the best and brightest players. It is also an organizational time to take stock in the team, analyze performance, make game plan changes, and perhaps pump up the team with new talent acquisitions.

Is your bank or CU taking an All-Star break?

You should!

Take stock of your marketing plan, analyze performance against the plan, make changes to your game plan, and take a new look at acquiring new customers, new markets, or new products...

The break is a scheduled rest point for baseball....shouldn't it be for you, too!

Have a great Monday...

Cheers!

Bruce Clapp

New Interface Thursday: Introducing spreadsheet editing

Many advertisers use spreadsheets when managing their AdWords campaigns to streamline tasks such as changing bids, creating keyword lists, and adjusting destination URLs. As a result, we decided to work on a way for you to use spreadsheets directly in your account, and today this feature is available in the new AdWords interface.

You can access spreadsheet edit mode from the Keywords tab in any ad group. You'll find it under the More actions menu.

In the past, you might have used power posting to enter your keywords with bids and destination URLs. Now, with spreadsheet editing, you can accomplish the same tasks from a spreadsheet view. Even if you use another spreadsheet application, it's very easy to transfer your work into AdWords - simply copy and paste directly from your spreadsheet into your account.

Like in a spreadsheet, you can use formulas to edit your keywords and bids. For example, if you want your ad to show on the first page, but your bid is lower than the first page bid, you can set up a formula to address this.

Here, I've set my Max CPC to be 120% of the first page bid (Cell G2). To apply this to all of my keywords, I can just copy and paste. Keep in mind that only the values are saved back into AdWords, not the formulas.

Questions? Attend a new interface webinar tomorrow

We'll be holding another free webinar about the new AdWords interface tomorrow, July 10th at 11a.m. PDT. If you're looking to get up to speed quickly, it's a great way to spend an hour on Friday. If you can't make it tomorrow, we have one on Thursday, July 16th at 10a.m. PDT as well. You can register for either webinar on the New Interface Webinars site.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

New "Data Driven Discussions" video: Avinash and Nick give each other a piece of their minds

Avinash, our Analytics Evangelist, and Nick, our Developer Relations Manager, both come from a long history of working with web analytics and both enjoy a good debate. In fact, I often hear them bickering in a good-natured way - or not good-natured at all with much name calling - about the topic of this episode: what do you disagree about in terms of each other's approach to web analytics?

Web analytics is a highly collaborative practice, more of which we'll cover in future episodes of DDD, and with just a little work, it can be a fascinatingly useful moving target. It's a struggle to balance what can be done with what data is valuable, and as a discipline it should always be approached with a spirit of pragmatism, which both our practitioners touch on in this video while clearly having fun.

It's a lively topic where we learn what's important to Avinash and Nick. Hopefully it also shows that no matter the approach, the most important thing is that the dialogue is actually happening and analysis is getting started. And near the end, you'll hear about one issue they both agree is a big challenge in terms of measurement, and what they think about it's usefulness.

There are more of these videos to come where you can enjoy more fireworks between Avinash and Nick and be inspired. And, please continue to contribute questions for future episodes to google.com/analytics/ddd. We'll get to them over the next few months.


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

AdWords system maintenance on July 11th

On Saturday, July 11th, 2009, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to system maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew