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Archive for September, 2011Sep 30 2011 First Rate COO Receives a Bail……out….That’s right. For my farewell gift, I had the pleasure to “bail” First Rate COO, along with the Team Leader and the Lead Consultant Thanks for the fun, guys. It has been a great 4.5 years and I will definitely carry those moments everywhere I go. Good luck. (More pics after the videos)  Auckland Sky Screamer  Victims & Me
 Loading  LOL nervous  Final countdown  We attracted quite a crowd Related Posts:Sep 30 2011 Google Analytics PremiumGoogle Analytics Premium has just been announced by Google. Here’s the launch video: We have listed the main benefits below: Extra Processing PowerExtra processing power means more data, more quickly. With Google Analytics Premium, you can gather, analyze and share more data than ever:
Advanced Analysis ToolsAdvanced analysis tools deliver deeper insights: Analysis options unique to Google Analytics Premium provide a deeper understanding of consumer behavior:
Uptime GuaranteesService Level Agreements give you an uptime guarantee from Google. Your site activity is reliably recorded and available to you at all times. Google will compensate you if they don’t deliver.
Pricing and AvailabilityThe product is offered on a flat-rate annual fee and is currently available in North America, United Kingdom and Canada. The product is not yet available in New Zealand or Australia. Related Posts:Sep 28 2011 Google Analytics Partner Summit 2011
I’ve recently returned from Palo Alto from the Google Analytics Partner Summit. This year the summit was held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Whilst I can’t share any specific information as far as GA is concerned, what I can share is that upcoming changes are going to be big. One thing that really impressed me is just how much was being shared with the GACP partners. Furthermore, any concerns or questions raised were addressed and answered on the spot. I’ve come away feeling genuinely excited to be working in the analytics industry on a platform as impressive as Google Analytics. Another really nice thing was that we also got an update on Google+ and Android. It’s amazing how Google is pulling all this together and it has been a real pleasure hearing directly from the engineers and product managers. And of course Avinash Kaushik did not disappoint and had the crowd laughing uncontrollably on several occasions. Given that there isn’t really all that much to see and do in Palo Alto, I spent a couple of days in San Francisco which was excellent. One of the locals whom I met at the Summit showed me around town which was really nice. I even managed to take a pic of the bridge without any fog:
Here’s the list of speakers from the 2011 GACP Summit, responsible for draining my laptop battery to near-death levels on both days from all my note-taking:
I’ve learnt a lot and passed on my learnings to the team. We are keen to help your business maximise your return from Google Analytics. Please contact us for a no-obligation chat. Related Posts:Sep 23 2011 Don’t Bet the Farm On It – AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE)The Adwords Campaign Experiments tool (also known as ACE) was originally released as a beta in early June 2010. Now that the tool has been tested and implemented into the Google Adwords interface for some time, we felt it was appropriate to share some best practices on its uses and provide an overview of how it works. For those of you not already familiar with the tool, it presents an alternative to the traditional PPC Marketing approach of making best practice changes to the account first, then comparing the results (before and after) later on. How it WorksACE allows you to make Ad Group level changes to elements of your account (including keywords, bids, Ad Groups, ads and placements) then split test these alongside the originals i.e. the versions before your new changes were made. You can specify the amount of traffic you want your control group vs. new group to receive (we recommend sticking to the default 50:50 option to keep post-experiment calculations straight-forward), and also the length of time that you want the experiment to run for. In order to achieve statistically significant results you’ll want the experiment to run for at least one month, however smaller accounts may benefit from a longer time period. At the end of the specified experimental period AdWords will display all of the associated metrics including the degree of statistical significance the results have brought about. The screen shot below shows where you can set up the campaign experiment – under the Settings tab for a given campaign.
Why use ACE?In short – to minimise your risk. Most AdWords accounts do eventually get to the point where the best practice playbook has been exhausted and squeezing out additional profitability (or even maintaining it in the face of tough competition) requires a degree of aptly labelled “experimentation” in sensible doses! The ResultsDepending on your goals for the experiment, some of the metrics provided may excite you more than others. For example, a decrease in impressions while maintaining the same level of clicks is a good result if your aim is to improve the Click Through Rate (CTR). Within the Adwords interface, ACE uses coloured icons to summarise statistical significance. A grey up-down icon represents that a metric has not changed by a statistically significant amount during the course of the experiment. Upward or downward pointing arrows are used to show that a metric has increased or decreased by a statistically significant amount. The degree of statistical confidence is broken down further for this group as follows:
In the example screenshot provided below, a statistically significant decrease in impressions has been experienced (represented by the three downward pointing arrows in the impressions column of the experiment row). Conversely the Clicks, CTR, Avg. CPC and Cost columns show grey up-down icons, representing that these metrics have not changed by a statistically significant amount.
We’d like to hear about your experiences using the Adwords Campaign Experiments feature. Please post your anecdotes in the comments section below. Related Posts: |
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