Too many w’s for you? Web analytics measures metrics of what visitors do when then come to your site and from where they came. However, they do not tell you at which stage of the buyer behavior process your visitors are or why he or she came to your site.

So you know if a visitor comes in from a particular campaign, and you see what pages that visitor views and know that conversion doesn’t happen. Now what. The data can’t tell you why and you surely can’t reach out through that visitor’s screen and ask them.

Or can you?

I suggest to people the best way to figure out what your visitors are thinking is to ask them. This must be done through some sort of survey tool or fill-out Web-based form. Granted, most people shy away from these, unless they really get something out of them. That’s why the survey must be short and unobtrusive. Don’t clutter the screen, but ask 2 or 3 questions with prompts for the user to make it easy. Simple. Measurable. Done.

Less than a week after I return home from SES, I’m visiting BlogWorld’s conference site and see the following pop up on my screen:

Web site survey for trying to determine the visitor’s intent. You can’t know why the visitor came unless you ask. Plain and simple.

Well done, blogworld.  Can I speak now?

Visitor sessions are not all that Google Analytics changed. The following week, Google Analytics added five new reports that focus on showing when multiple channels that contribute to goal conversions. My Search Engine Watch article recaps all of Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnel Reports and how they all come together.

Why Multi-Channel Funnel Reports Are Cool

Plain and simple, these reports go a long way to hinting in which stage of the buyer behavior process a site visitor may be. If you’ve heard me speak about analytics before, you heard me say this:

Web metrics can tell you the what, when, where and how, but they can’t tell you why.

Visitors come to your site for many reasons. Some want to buy, some just want information. That information could be about your product or service or your value-added services. Or it may be the visitor already is a customer and wants to the decision to buy. The point is, unless you ask your visitor, you simply don’t know why they came.

By showing the all of the ways visitors arrived at your site through each individual visit, you can a feel for which referrals bring more conversions. Under previous reporting methods, the last referring medium got all the credit for the goal conversion.  Now, you can visualize just how many touch points there were with a site visitor before conversion.

Your campaigns are like players on a sports team. One referring source may bring in more traffic, another may bring get all the credit for conversions, but they all play a role. In soccer (or futbol, if you prefer), a striker who finishes is just as important as the midfielder whose tricky footwork got the ball to that perfect point so the striker could put it away. Both celebrate the goal. Both record statistics that eventually get lumped together as “points” on the stat sheet.

Your campaigns should be treated similarly. You may see a lot of direct visits getting the “last touch” to convert a site visitor. But was it unassisted? For a new customer, it is highly unlikely. However, without these new reports, and GA’s change in counting visitor sessions, knowing this would not be possible.

But My Data Are Different! Now What?

Granted, this will change your aggregate numbers. Brandt Dainow noted recently that the number of visits will now go up even though your traffic stays the same. He also quotes many responses that he’s seen complaining about this change. His blog quotes people who seem to be complaining that time on site has gone down, new visits are down and repeat visits are up. Of course, there are several who complain that their old data is now useless.

All of these statements are essentially true. The old data was useless because it was inaccurately reporting visitor behavior before. The art of Web analytics is to better understand what your visitors are doing so that you can properly measure if your business objectives are being met. If you read inaccurate data, you can’t measure properly. I’ll quote Brandt’s post:

Bob searches in Google for “buy books online.”  He then clicks an AdWord to Amazon.  After 10 minutes he leaves Amazon and runs another search, this time for “buy reference books online.” He then follows a different AdWord back to Amazon and makes a purchase.

Under the old system this would be treated as one visit. The sale would be attributed to the first keyword and the first AdWord.  The second AdWord and search term would be reported as producing zero visits.

Under the new system this is now treated as two visits. The sale is attributed to the second search and the second AdWord.

First off, I agree completely that there is a significant difference in how these are counted. Apart from that, I think the change is wonderful. There’s always been discrepancies between AdWords data and Analytics data. This new way of measuring visits (sessions) is more precise. I can now see there have been multiple costs attributed to this sale. If I’m tracking customer acquisition cost along with my goal amount, I now have a much better set of metrics.

Affiliates Can Be Tracked More Accurately, Too

After my Introduction to Analytics session at SES San Francisco, I spoke with three individuals from an affiliate marketing company who were wondering why their stats went all awry. We discussed the new change to the visits and how multiple affiliates would now be tracked differently. The response between the three was mixed. One got it instantly, while the other two were irked. They merely gave the first affiliate the link. Why? That’s all Google Analytics told them. Now, they would see multiple visits from multiple affiliates. By the time we were done talking, they knew they had some changes to make, but seemed to welcome them. Why? Because the data are now more accurate.

For sites that only paid the first click or the last click, there is a greater opportunity here. The “assists” are out there. And now they’re in plain view.

As many have said before me, this changes everything. Reading metrics about the whole of your site just doesn’t make sense. You don’t know at what point the visitors are at in being ready to buy. Maybe a site visitor was looking for your a job and your HR department. Who knows. One thing is certain: looking at multiple visits helps you know how long a customer truly takes to convert and what sources they use to make that happen.

Can you tell the difference between a visit and a hit?

Find out the answers to these questions and more from yours truly during the Introduction to Analytics session at Search Engine Strategies New York March 22, 2011.

The New York City SES is one of  - if not the – largest conferences on Search Engine Marketing you’ll find. If you’ve never been to an SES before, New York is the event to get your feet wet. Various tracks help keep you focused. For the novice, there’s the introductory track. I, however, will be kicking off the Analytics track.

Analytics is where it’s at. I’ll be taking a look at examples of campaign tracking, visitor behavior tracking and touching on how to track off-line campaigns. We’ll keep it simple and sweet and have time left over for questions when we’re done.

Join me in New York!
(No, I won’t wait for you at the top of the Empire State Building…)

Apps are apparently where it’s at. After launching the Google Apps Marketplace, Google has now extended the concept of apps for Google Analytics.  Meet the Google Analytics Application Gallery. Currently, there are 32 apps that range from helping you visualize your data better, to integrated plug-ins for WordPress and Firefox.

The concept of the Google Analytics Authorized Consultants has migrated into Google Certified Partners.

Developers – Welcome to the new app marketplace.  What to have at it?  Here’s how.

Piwik: Open Source Web Analytics

For those who have read my previous caveats and subsequent complaint about Google Analytics, you’ll understand why I’m so hopeful on this product.

What’s so great about Piwik?

What makes Piwik so great?  It has all the features you’ve come to expect from other analytics solutions.

• It is activated by Javascript you add to your pages.
• The analytics are updated in real-time.
• The user interface and the reports are completely customizable.
• There’s pretty graphs for management.
• It has its own APIs with output in many standardized formats including JSON and XML.

Additional Features:

Piwik runs locally.
This means no waiting for connections to remote servers that may be down.  While you can configure piwik to live elsewhere, it can live right within your own site.  Certainly it can live on a named virtual host on the same server.

You own your data.
It does not live on a third-party server. It’s yours.

It’s easy to install.
This works on two levels. The initial install was lightweight and easy. Unzip, set file permissions and point your Web browser for the step-by-step walk-through. I remember thinking it was as easy as WordPress. Then today I upgraded.  I went from 0.5.2 to 0.5.5 by clicking the link that asked me to upgrade automatically. The upgrade was just as easy, too.

Overall, I’m Impressed

OK, it’s still a bit rough around the edges. But it has the basics down well. The ease of customizing reports and your dashboard screens is impressive. I’m looking for a little more advanced reporting.  The drill-downs are nice, but I still want to see features like profiles, tags and advanced visitor types. Like I said, it’s a great start and  I can’t wait to see what’s still to come.