Get more from Google Analytics by tomorrow morning by following some great configuration ideas posted by Highland Business Research

1. Set up your goals
2. Set up on-site search
3. Creating multiple profiles of the same site
4. Define Filters
5. If you’re selling anything at all, switch the e-commerce tracking on

If you would like assistance setting up your Google Analytics account or perhaps an audit of your data to get an understanding of how you are doing, contact us for a quote!

Absolutely fantastic! Google Analytics has a beta feature out that allows viewing of your web stats by day, week or month. Previous to this beta, if you chose a period of 3 months for example, you saw numbers for the entire 3 month chunk. Now if you were to choose a one year time period you would be able to see each month individually in the date graph.

In this first screenshot you can see where you would change the date view options from day to week to month:

How the first quarter of 2008 appears in day view:

And week view:

And finallly, month view:

Way to go Google! Now if date selection could just be a touch faster we’d be happy :-)

And yes I realize the quality of pictures here is not very good. I’ll have to get Jess the Intern to fix those up this afternoon :-)

Are you new to Google Analytics?

If so, check out the visual goodies I’ve been working on — “Google Analytics for Beginners” Youtube Videos.

I have to admit, the first one’s a bit shaky. Slowly, slowly, I’m getting better!

Google Analytics is in the process of adding some fantastic new features to their web analytics software! So far I have had the opportunity to explore their new Site Search feature which provides details on the search terms people have used WITHIN your website - what are people searching for once they are already on your website?

This new report can be found under the content section of the Google Analytics dashboard once it has been configured in your profile. Some of the interesting reports that are emerging include:

• Percentage of your website visits that involved using your search function vs. visits that did not use it - the first site I have looked at has a 5% usage rate - seems good considering the search function is not located on every page of the website!
• Search Terms - For each of these search terms, you can see a number of relevant statistics that provide insight into how visitors respond to your internal search engine. For example, by checking the Total Unique Searches, you can determine which search terms visitors use most on your site. You’ll also be able to answer questions like, “Which search terms cause my visitors to search again?” by checking % Search Refinements.
• Start Pages - is your search box on every page of your website? Find out which page drives more searches
• Destination Page: Where do visitors who search on a specific term go after searching? If the answer is a press release you may want to rethink your internal search tool and the data it presents!

If you would like some assistance in setting up site search on your website or within Google Analytics, please contact us.