Helen Birch

Helen's bio

Helen Birch is an experienced analytics consultant who has been working in the industry for 5 years. Helen helps clients to design and implement bespoke analytics solutions and has worked consulting with organisations such as Bourne Leisure, Cancer Research, More Th>n, Reed Exhibitions, RBS and UKTV. Helen is a Google Analytics Certified professional and manages the Foviance relationship with Google.

Over the last few months we’ve seen the new Google Analytics platform (v5) build momentum with a string of new feature releases, and last week it was the turn of real-time reporting to be included as the latest addition to the family.

In my previous role with an analytics vendor, I would often have clients come to me with “Real-time data” on their list of requirements but in reality very few were in a position to be able make actionable decisions based on the data that quickly; to a greater extent that is still the case today. As analysts we struggle already to make the best use of the vast quantities of data we already have. Would increasing that with real-time reports across the system only exasperate that?

In certain situations real-time data can be a very powerful tool in the analyst’s kitbag. I’ve been testing the real-time reports for a few weeks now and whilst there is still room for improvement, I’ve been able to help a client find out some great insights on events that have been occurring which otherwise would have been a lot harder to discover.

Here’s 5 practical examples of how you can use the new reports which I think help to demonstrate when real-time analysis can be beneficial. One of the key uses for me is being able to give marketers greater visibility on how events external to your site such as Social, TV and advertising campaigns influence your website audience, in order to optimise performance and prove ROI.

1. Measuring the impact of social media

You’ve just sent a tweet out or blogged a new post and want to see how many people are interested and picking up on your content. Use the content report to see live stats of how many people are coming to your article and the referral report to see how many people have come from these sources.

Real-Time Traffic Sources report showing referrals in Google Analytics

2. Understanding the response to  TV advertising

It’s 6pm and your new advertising campaign is due to be broadcast on TV. You want to see what the impact is to your brand during and after the commercial.  Use the overview report to see how overall traffic to your site is increasing and view the activity timelines by the second and minute as your advert plays to monitor change.

Real-Time overview report showing activity timeline

Drilldown into the Traffic Sources report to view increases in traffic from direct channel and brand search terms and use the locations report to view which geographic regions people are visiting from.

3.  Assessing the interest in breaking stories

You’re a publisher with dynamic content and news stories which change frequently throughout the day. Use the content report to see which stories are generating the most interest and use this information to help optimise the content you promote elsewhere on the site.

Real-Time Content report showing page level activity

4. Measuring the performance of product campaigns

You’ve launched a new product and are running a paid search campaign to promote this. Use the Traffic Sources report to see how many people are responding to your marketing. Drill down into the traffic cpc medium to see which keywords people are responding to help optimise your campaigns. Secondly when any new campaigns go live get peace of mind that these are being tagged up correctly by using the reports to verify data is being captured by Google Analytics.

5.  Verifying tag code is working correctly on new pages

You’ve just put new pages live on your site and want to be certain that the tag code is working and Google Analytics is capturing data.  Now there is no need to have to wait, simply view the content report and search for your page and watch as you test the page out on the live site.

And if that’s not enough to convince you there’s always the novelty fun factor. Aside from the fascination of sitting watching visitors as they arrive on your site, big brother style, Google Earth has been integrated into the location report so you can zoom around travelling the world with your visitors. Now that’s just plain cool!

I’d love to hear your ideas on how you think these new real-time reports could help your business.

Today marks an exciting point in the evolution of Google Analytics with Google announcing their entry into the paid analytics market with Google Analytics Premium.

One of the key strengths of Google Analytics has always been its intuitive and easy to use interface, which has been a strong driver in its popularity amongst both analysts and marketeers. But for some clients, where assurances around reliability or high volume traffic or data ownership are critical then Google Analytics has been found lacking.
The new Premium product looks to address the needs of these larger enterprise organisations such as high volume data collection, service level guarantees and support which previously have been a barrier for Google when considering an analytics vendor.

The main benefits of Google Analytics Premium fall into 4 key areas

• More Data

Significantly higher data limits with the ability to export large volumes of unsampled data.That’s important if you need make decisions based on all of your data, such as integrating web analytics data with other sources like customer data or offline advertising data. Or if you have been using the API for complex queries and hitting problems with the 10k row limit.

• More Tools

Advanced analysis tools exclusive to premium customers such as attribution modelling which allows you to better understand the value of your marketing channels on conversions. Attribution modelling is great for allowing you to see the impact of awarding different marketing events different amounts of credit, based upon their role in a conversion. We’re really excited about this, as this will make analysing the full customer journey easier. Trying to reconcile multiple advertising sources when data sits in disparate silos is complex and time consuming. So incorporating tools to help make this modelling easier into your analytics eco-system is a welcome addition.

Other features such as making more custom variables available will enable clients to increase their level of understanding of visitors on site behaviour by increasing the ways you can segment your visitor audience and dive deeper into the data.

• Dedicated support

Support teams to help you when you need it. Your own dedicated account manager and 24/7 technical support for emergency situations. So if something does go wrong you know you have an expert at the end of the line who can help.

• Peace of Mind

Reassurance from guarantees and SLAs in place around data collection, reporting and processing time, and importantly you own all of your data

Google Analytics Premium is available for a fixed annual fee and is currently available in the UK, USA and Canada, rolling out to other countries later in the year.

As a Google Analytics certified partner we’re delighted to be able to welcome the new premium offering into the market and look forward to working with our clients and Google Analytics Premium in the future.

More information on Google Analytics Premium can be found on the official microsite

During the recent Google Analytics User Conference in San Francisco, Google unveiled its latest version of Google Analytics which is currently in beta testing.We’ve been reviewing the new platform so here’s a look at some of the new features: 

• New improved interface
• Custom reporting
• Event goal type
• Tag cloud visualisations for keywords
• Custom dashboards

New Improved Interface

A number of enhancements have been made to both the administration and reporting interfaces, in an effort to make them easier to use and navigate. The menu navigation has been revised and reports are now grouped together in a more intuitive fashion. A new expandable menu means that you no longer have to wait for the screen to load when switching between reports – a big plus! 

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Custom Reporting

The Custom Reporting interface has seen further improvements too. An update to the reporting template makes it easier for users to quickly add dimensions and metrics to their reports. An autocomplete list is now used instead of the drag and drop interface. Filters are now standard within the Custom Reporting interface allowing you to better segment data. 

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Unfortunately you still cannot specify which column the report is sorted by, hopefully this feature will be included in a future release. 

Event Goal Type available when setting up Goals

This is one enhancement which I know will please a lot of my clients; the ability to finally define your goals using events. Previously, we’ve ended up using virtual page views instead of events when tagging up on-site activities just because of the requirement for setting up a goal. Now you can select ‘Event’ as the goal type and choose which events result in a goal conversion, based on a number of conditions.Non-ecommerce site owners should find this feature of particular benefit when assigning goal values to these events and making use of the $Index. 

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 However, as with other non “URL Destination” goal types (e.g. time on site, Page/Visit) you can’t associate a funnel visualisation with the new event goals. In this instance you will still need to use virtual page views when wanting to look at dropout routes for path to goal. 

Tag Cloud Visualisations for Keywords 

The introduction of the “Term Cloud” view, will display keyword data as a tag cloud visualisation which will be a great little time saver. Whilst not as visually appealing as other tools commonly used, such as Wordle, the ability to quickly see at a glance which keywords are performing within GA rather than having to export the data into another tool will be welcomed by many analysts. 

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Custom Dashboards

The dashboard functionality has been completely overhauled in the new release. It now allows users greater flexibility and more control over the presentation of data. The use of a widget-based editor provides users with further customisation and flexibility. Users can pick between four visualisations to best represent the data:

• Metric,
• Pie chart
• Timeline
• Tables 

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The ability to create multiple dashboards ensures they are tailored for different audiences and aspects of the site. 

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The new version is currently in closed beta and will be rolled out in phases to current users in the near future. 

Anyone who would like to be considered for testing the new version can sign-up here for the beta testing program

Google Analytics came out shouting “We are coming to get you” at the big 3 vendors (Oct 22nd) with the announcement of its new enterprise class features due to be released in the next coming weeks. Advanced Segmentation, custom reporting, a data export API and the long awaited integration with AdSense all feature on the list to really add some serious weight to the GA offering.

After IndexTools was acquired by Yahoo! and they announced that they would join Google in the “free tool” market space, we have been watching with eager eyes to see how Google would raise their game and from what we have seen so far it is a big improvement. The big win for most analysts will be the new Advanced Segmentation feature, which enables you to create your own dynamic custom segments based on multiple dimensions and/or metrics so you can properly slice and dice your data as you want it. Say goodbye to fixed dimensions and multiple profile settings and filters. If you want to find out more, Avinash Kaushik has written a great post teaching you how to become a segmentation ninja. Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation: Now Be A Ninja!

Custom reporting is also another big benefit with a drag and drop interface similar to that of IndexTools allowing you to choose the dimensions and metrics which you want to see in your report. Concerns over data privacy will also be put to rest with the introduction of a data export API, giving users more transparency over the data which Google holds. There is also some new eye candy for all you marketers out there with a funky motion chart to give a new twist to data visualisation.

Some of the features such as AdSense integration are still in private beta for the moment, but I can’t wait to get stuck in. Mamma’s got a brand new toy to play with!

The internet is often seen as the cheapest channel to serve, more cost effective than telephone or face to face customer service. Some websites hide their contact information, in the hope that it will force people to persevere with a bad user experience on the website. It’s a false economy. When companies cut too many corners, their service costs rise unnecessarily.

For example, I booked train tickets online recently. When they arrived, they were missing my seat reservation. I knew I’d entered my preference into the website, so I called the company to be told that I had to go to the station to reserve my seat, even though I’d already bought my ticket online. There was no hint about this on the website, and the company ended up paying for its website, call centre and station staff to sell me one measly ticket.

I had a similar experience with an airline too: I selected my seats on the UK site of a well-known US airline. When it came to the final confirmation, my order wouldn’t go through. The site threw out error messages but wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. When I phoned them up, it turned out those tickets weren’t available to UK customers. Again, the company paid for bandwidth and operator time, only this time they didn’t even sell a ticket.

In both cases, I would have preferred to resolve my problems myself by logging into my account but I couldn’t find out how to do that. Nor was there a support number I could call to resolve website questions within minutes.

Many people will end up negotiating their entire transaction by phone or in person because they can’t resolve minor issues with a website, or at least because they do not have faith they will be able to if they arise. Publicising a phone number can reassure customers. By supporting them as they use your website, you can cut the number that are forced to switch to a more expensive service channel and also cut the number that defect to rival websites that offer a better user experience.

By Helen Birch

Chiltern Railways has become the first to pilot tickets based on 2D barcodes sent to mobile phones. Customers received a multimedia message on their phone including a barcode which was scanned at the ticket entry gates. 2D barcodes, which often look like frozen television interference, have enough redundancy to cope with scratched or dirty screens. Chiltern Railways sold 6000 tickets online during its three month trial period.

Although this technology is new to the UK, Japan Airlines has been using it for domestic flights for two years.

As use of this ticketing technology expands, operators can learn much more about their customers than they could before. They could potentially couple information about customers’ travel patterns (using phone-based pay as you go or season tickets) with metrics on how they use the website. Users could buy and receive tickets using their phones and without having to use a computer at all, in which case tracking the online part of the transaction could be tricky. Many phone browsers have poor support for Javascript and cookies, which hampers attempts to measure webpage use. But the real world ticket use is relatively easy to track, and each transaction will conclude with customers registering information including their address.

Camera phones have been used in a promotion by McDonalds in Portugal, where scanning a barcode in an advert takes the user to an offer website. That’s reminiscent of the Cue Cat barcode reader that was given out for use with desktop computers during the first dotcom boom, and which was supposed to be able to scan any domestic product to take you to the manufacturer’s website. The strength of a mobile phone is that it requires no additional equipment, and it can be used on the move.

With these two techniques, mobile phones can be used to extend an understanding of web analytics into printed advert response and the use of tickets. Customers might be wary of companies gathering so much data on them, but if it can be used to drive improved services and smoother transactions, they will likely agree.