Google Analytics is an essential tool for any website owner. It measures, and analyses, all traffic data relating to your site, and gives a great insight into your users’ experiences. If you’re already using Google Analytics to monitor your website (and if you’re not you should be!) then you’ll probably already have a good understanding of the current tools, but luckily for you, Google is constantly improving its usability. 2015 has already seen several updates, which are set to make your life even easier:
Remarketing Instant Activation
Remarketing in this way is great to show your ads to people who have previously been on your site but did not convert. It’s a form of lead nurturing and by reconnecting with those already interested in your product or service, you can really help to drive future conversions.
The new Instant Activation feature is set to completely revolutionise the remarketing via Adwords. Previously the only way to set this up remarketing in this way was to input code onto the website, but could be a laborious task, but now you can literally set this up in seconds via a single toggle, instead of having to manually update all of your site tags. To get re-started with your marketing, you just need to cover the following four steps:
- In your Google Analytics Property’s settings, choose ‘Audiences’ under the ‘Remarketing’ section.
- Choose the AdWords account where you’d like to share your Audience and click ‘Next Step’.
- Click ‘Enable’ to create your first audience of All Users. You can also come back later and create more complex audiences, like ‘visitors who have spent more than six minutes on site’, ‘visitors who visited more than five pages’, or ‘abandoned cart’.
This step automatically activates Advertiser Features if you haven’t done so already, which also enables Audience Demographics and Interests Reporting. You can manage this setting at any time in the Admin tab, under the ‘Advertiser Features’ section in your Property Settings.
- Click ‘Create Campaign’ and complete the remarketing campaign creation process in AdWords.
Query Word Count Dimension
The AdWords Search Queries report in Google Analytics shows you which search queries resulted in clicks on your AdWords ads. Following requests from users for a way to segment AdWords search queries based on the number of words used in the search term, Google has now added a new dimension to the tool, the ‘Query Word Count’.
Consequently, you can now analyse patterns more easily, without needing to classify them manually. You can learn more about AdWords Search Queries in the Google Help centre.
In the audience tab you’ll find a new beta tool called ‘Cohort Analysis’.Cohorts are sets of users united by a time frame. The analysis tool lets you get a more accurate picture of your relationship with users based on shared characteristics, such as acquisition date, and it lets you compare the behaviour and performance of different cohorts across a variety of metrics, within the time frame of a day, week or month. The time frame can be a day, week or month. For example, you could look at conversion metrics over a 7 day period, and see which members of the group are still converting throughout the 7 days.
This tool is perfect for any site owners who want to know more about their users’ journey. You can learn more about Cohort Analysis in the Google support centre.
Trash Can Data Recovery
Ever deleted something you shouldn’t have done? We all make mistakes from time to time, but now but now you can undo the damage in Google Analytics with their new ‘Trash Can Data Recovery Tool’.
Any time you accidentally delete a ‘view’, ‘property’ or ‘account’ from your Google Analytics account, you can now recover it from the Trash Can. This feature enables you to save deleted items for up to 35 days, but after this time the deletion will become permanent. You can find out more about the Trash Can feature in the Google help centre.
If you would like some help with the analytics for your site, we can help. Our experienced and Google accredited team will work with you understand your audience, your competitors, and how to increase your conversions. Get in touch with us today.
