Just another fail I spotted on Google Analytics help forum. This web developer is trying to look for certain bold-ed lines in his code.

Eh??

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Analytics/thread?tid=2c20c0e4a365b4d9&hl=en

Q1: With Google Analytics session timer set to 30 minutes, does a second visit trigger a new session if it is done within 30 minutes from last click/activity?

A1: If a visitor leaves the site (close the tab or browser) and come back within 30 minutes of last click/activity on the site, the second visit would trigger new session IF:

• it is a result of clicking on an Adwords ad
• it is a result of clicking on an organic search result
• it is a result of clicking on a link tagged with UTM variables

BUT, the second visit would NOT trigger new session if:

• it is a direct visit to the site (by typing the URL or using browser bookmarks)
• it is a referral visit (clicking on a link from a 3rd party website) that is not tagged with UTM variables
• it is a result of clicking on a link tagged with utm_nooverride=1

Q2: What if a website uses a 3rd party payment gateway (or shopping cart) with no GA code on it, and it throws the user back to the original website (to a thankyou page / goal completion page) upon conclusion of the payment?

A2: Then there is no need to tag the link back with anything. As long as the user completes the payment process and get back to the original website within 30 minutes, the first session (and campaign information) remains valid. However, if the user takes longer than 30 minutes to complete the payment, the jump back would be counted against the payment gateway as the “referrer”, and the goal completion would be incorrectly attributed towards this referrer website.

Q3: Is it true that any visit across midnight triggers a new session?

A3: Yes, visit across midnight triggers a new session (new visit), with the same campaign information as the first session. Midnight is determined based on the timezone set for the GA profile for which the visit is recorded. Hence, it is important to set your timezone correctly when setting up the profile.

Spotted today in the NZ Herald: Kiwi Data Warehousing Soars.

What does  mean to us?

If anything, recession taught us something by looking at the trends faced by the advertising industry. Most pronounced in the offline advertising, companies are rushing to cut their marketing budget by a large amount. They chose to hunker down in the bunker waiting for the artillery barrage of credit crunch to pass away before poking their heads again.

Interestingly, some went exactly the other way around into panic buying mode. They base the sales on percentage concept, where if the conversion rate goes down then in order to maintain the sales volume the base audience number must go up. This “panic sales defense” move lead to massive increases in marketing spend that returns no sales increases.

Why exactly these things happened?

The primary cause is that a lot of businesses, especially in the “calm New Zealand where time forgets”, neglect the importance of information. In particular, a lot of them do not bother to try to know their customers. For most conservative businesses, any sales is as good as the other. For instance, a lot of businesses spend tens of thousands of dollars on their websites without bothering to spend a few hundred dollars to get good analytics software such as Google Analytics.

But knowing your customers is paramount to your marketing efficiency. Google Analytics, for example, can be configured to attribute your sales to where the customers are coming from. With this you can recognise which source is valuable and which is not so that when it comes the time to cut down some marketing budget you can be sure you are cutting the right one.

Other useful analysis include customer behavior, such as what do they buy, what are the most favourite products (= promotion opportunities), what are they searching for that made them leave your shop (= product gaps), etc. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook also allow you to engage your customers to gain their trust, and most importantly, feedbacks. Not only that, they also form a free 3rd party data warehousing, where you can conduct data mining to see what people are talking about in relation to your, or your competitors’, products.

With free tools such as these and storage data space becoming cheaper every day, data warehousing and data mining should become a common business practice. It should even be a crime to run a business without thinking about who your customers are.

If you can snipe your enemy from a distance, why blindfold yourself and charge with a short rate inefficient scatter gun?

How to easily pass your Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ) exam? Here’s my tips.

First, congratulations to me, I just passed with flying colours this morning!

Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ) Exam results, name witheld to protect individuals

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