By using a combination of Google Analytics events and custom reports, tracking the off-site conversion is a little easier. Does this give us a direct link from the visitor on the website to the actual conversion (if the conversion is off-site)? No. But it’s the next best thing – and it’s certainly better than guessing – or only paying attention to campaign click-throughs.

Manually Tracking Outbound or Download links as Events

Events are not new to Google Analytics, but they are definitely underutilized. By using an onClick on the exit link (or download to a form, etc.) you can easily track those exit links as events and then tie them back to campaigns.

When you track an event, you specify the event category, action, label, and value. A more detailed description can be found in the GA event tracking guide. In post we’ll only be talking about using events for tracking outbound (exit) links or downloads.

If you want to track an outbound link as an event, here’s how to do it:

Once that is in place, go into Google Analytics reports. To view events go to content >> event tracking.

Here is how it looks in the reports. “Outbound” is the category. “Click” is the action. In the below image, if you click on “click,” you then go to the event label screen shown in the second image below.

“Application Link” is the event label in this example.

This report then shows you the number of times the outbound link was clicked. Be sure to use the same naming convention with your category, action, and labels. Otherwise you’ll end up with outbound, Outbound, and exit (when they all mean the same thing). Think campaign URL parameter names (email, e-mail, and E-mail) – keep it consistent. By the way, I chose “outbound” for the category and “click” for the action above because that is what is used by default in the gaAddons script (introduced below).

So there you go. Simple, right? Now you’re tracking your outbound links as events. Well, hold on to your hats, here’s where it gets good.

Automate Tracking Outbound or Download links as Events

Stéphane Hamel, web analytics consultant, wrote a great script called gaAddons. This script automatically tracks outbound, download, and mailto links as events (and more). It’s so important for higher education, in my opinion, for a few reasons:

1. So many of our conversions happen off-site.
2. Creating onClick’s manually is sometimes difficult to do for many reasons (content creators might not know how to do it, they might simply forget to do it when new content is created, or, maybe they just don’t have the time to go back into current content and create manual onClick’s on existing outbound or download links).
3. Even if you can track events manually, if you’re not careful with naming conventions, names can be separated (ie, specifying outbound and Outbound differently, etc.)

This script overcomes all 3 challenges.

Using the script is easy. There are step-by-step instructions for using gaAddons on the documentation page of the gaAddons website. Make a quick change to your Google Analytics tracking code, download the javascript file to your server and reference it, then reference jQuery and you’re done. No need to go back and manually put those onClick events on existing links. No need to remember to do it on newly created content.

If you’re still using the old version of the Google Analytics tracking code, there is an older version of the gaAddons script that can be used with the old version of the GA tracking code. Hopefully everyone has upgraded to the newer version of Google Analytics tracking code, however. There are so many advantages of upgrading to async. Also, in the gaAddons version 2.0 (to use with the new version of Google Analytics tracking code) there are so  many more options available. Of course you can track outbound, download, and mailto links as events, but you can do so much more with it.

Create Custom Reports to Make it Easier to tie to Campaigns

So, now that your outbound or download links are being tracked as events, you need to be able to easily see how your campaigns are doing driving people to those “events.”

This is where we’ll take advantage of custom reporting.

The way events are currently reported in Google Analytics is clunky. It’s great that they are there, but beyond just seeing those events, it’s hard to determine if campaigns are driving people to those events.

So we create a custom report to more easily show this data. To set up a custom report, in the left nav in Google Analytics, click on custom reporting >> manage custom reports. Then click on “create new custom report.”

Here’s how to set up this specific report. I call it “events by campaign.” You can call it anything you’d like.

You can also use the shared custom report by clicking here.

This custom report allows you to see all at once if campaigns led to any events. Here is the first page of the custom report:

So all your campaigns that led to an event are listed. (not set) means no campaigns led to those events.

Then, if you click on “campaign #1,” you drill down to see which specific events were credited to campaign #1.

Now you can both see your important outbound (exit) links as “events” and then easily tie those events to campaigns.

So there you have it. Not perfect (we’d all love to see how many off-site conversions our campaigns drove), but it’s better than guessing – or just looking at click-throughs.

What do you think? I’d love to get your feedback about tracking important outbound and download links.

Last week Karine Joly launched the “State of Higher Ed Online Analytics” survey to get a better idea of where we are as an industry with our use of web analytics.

Complete the survey today!

Enter your email address at the end of the survey to receive an executive summary in July highlighting the survey results.

Thanks to Karine for putting together the survey and starting the revolution!

Survey closes on May 24th.

When it comes to web analytics and, specifically Google Analytics, Brian Clifton is at the top. The book is the second edition, but it is so much more than just an update of the first book – it’s almost a complete re-write. So much has happened since the first book came out. You can read all about it over on Brian’s blog.

Full disclosure: I was lucky enough to read the book before it was published and offer feedback and comments. I’ve never done that before, but what an excellent learning experience!

So, let’s get down to the book. The name of it says “advanced” but you don’t need to be an advanced user of Google Analytics to get a lot out of it. It takes you from the very basics of what web analytics is, how to get started with both web analytics and Google Analytics all the way to advanced topics and techniques.

Great content for higher education website owners.

Google Analytics vs. Urchin. There’s an entire section in the book about Urchin – the differences between Urchin and Google Analytics and how to choose which one fits best with  your organization. There have been a lot of questions lately about which one is better and what the differences are. This section spells out everything.

On Data accuracy. There is a large section that goes into data accuracy and implications. There is a great part about data misinterpretation that’s essential for newbies and really a good reminder for everyone. This section makes me think of when we deliver reports to leadership. We’re asked all the time why numbers don’t tie out, why unique visitors doesn’t mean “people,” why we don’t want to show hard numbers. This section has some great answers to those questions and much, much more. Photocopy the section and leave it on your boss’s chair.

Reports and implementation. The middle of the book goes into reporting and correct implementation. It’s here you’ll get the nitty-gritty of what each report means and tips about how to implement correctly – including advanced implementation techniques. There is an entire chapter dedicated to “best practices configuration.”

Key performance indicators and real-world tasks. My favorite part of the book talks about key performance indicators and goes into KPIs by job function – the marketer, the webmaster, the content provider, etc. This is where most people get stuck with web analytics – what do I measure? I have all this data to look at and I’m not sure where to start. Start here.

A couple of great KPIs that caught my attention:

• % Brand Engagement – # of visits with branded search terms + # of direct visits/total visits from search engines+total # of directs
• Conversion Quality Index – % goal conversions from referrer X/% visits from referrer X

From the book,

… the conversion quality index (CQI) is all about measuring how well targeted your campaigns are at driving conversion on your website.

Monetizing a non-e-commerce site. One of the things that is the key to getting leadership buy-in and getting things done is the ability to monetize as much as possible. Monetizing a non-e-commerce site is a section we should use to “kick it up a notch.” It talks about assigning goal values and enabling e-commerce reporting for our non-e-commerce sites.

I’ve been experimenting with the first technique (assigning goal values) and using average page value ($Index). This is a great metric that shows if a specific page is generating conversions. For example, if you go to the content report and sort by $Index, it will help you prioritize pages. What specific pages are contributing the most to your conversions?

But what if our *goal* is offsite? In higher education there are so many instances of our *goals* happening off our website. Sometimes they are on a sub-site within our domain. Sometimes they are on a completely different domain – a third party vendor or the like. How do we track to the conversion? There is a section explaining how to do it.

Those are just highlights. There’s so much more.

<update>

One thing I forgot to mention, which should have been front and center and I apologize , is the fact that this book goes deep into all the added functionality of GA in recent months and since the first edition of this book came out a couple years ago. The one new feature of GA that I’m most impressed with is their Intelligence section. I’ve worked with other tools that you can set up alerts with (if our visit rate goes below X, notify me), but I’ve never worked with a tool that will basically do that for you. Of course you can set up custom alerts, but this is different. It alerts you when things are *out of the norm* automatically. We’ve found this so useful. Brian goes into describing exactly how that happens how GA knows something is out of the norm – or how they describe – is a *significant change*.

</update>

For those of us in higher education who use Google Analytics, this should be required reading. Everyone knows that “web analyst” just doesn’t exist in higher education. We’re all jacks of all trades. This is probably the biggest reason this book is so relevant to us. Heard of a technique but just aren’t sure how to go about actually doing it? Brian talks about a technique and then steps you through how to implement it. It does tend to get a bit technical in parts, but for us, that’s a good thing.

• 10 Firefox Extensions for Web Analytics – I don’t know about you, but I’ve all but abandoned other other browsers (except for cross-browser comparison testing) just because of the breadth of extensions available for Firefox. In this post, you’ll be introduced to ten essential extensions for the web analytics freak in all of us (come on, I know there’s one in you!). Although we all probably have WASP and Greasemonkey installed, there were others in the list I hadn’t even heard of and installed immediately.
• 16 Useful .htaccess Tricks and Hacks For Web Developers – There are some great tips here. I especially like the custom error page creation and the SEO friendly 301 redirect. Another one i found very useful was the linking protection (#6).

Stuntdubl Business Search Marketing Consulting – Stuntdubl is an SEO expert site with a twist of humor thrown in. Thanks to @glenngabe for tweeting a link to this blog and introducing me to Todd Malicoat and his fantastic site. If you’re serious about SEO, you need to subscribe to Stuntdubl.

• 9 Reasons You Need Social Media Marketing in 2009 – This is a great post which states that social media is the new search engine optimization. Straight from the post: You’re banned from using the company email and internet until you read the Cluetrain, and can name at least 10 social media sites, and which 3 are likely to drive the most traffic. If you’re in a corporation that won’t listen, or change anything because of what lawyers say – you deserve your miserable cubicle dwelling existence for not standing up and pitching things better.

You’re banned from using the company email and internet until you read the Cluetrain, and can name at least 10 social media sites, and which 3 are likely to drive the most traffic. If you’re in a corporation that won’t listen, or change anything because of what lawyers say – you deserve your miserable cubicle dwelling existence for not standing up and pitching things better.

Indexed – This has got to be one of my all time favorite blogs. It’s very simple and not about any particular topic. Each post is an amusing chart, hand-written (or hand-written font written!). Take a look, subscribe to Indexed. You won’t be disappointed. Thanks to @avinashkaushik for the link from a tweet.

Here are a few that are definitely worth adding to your reader (depending upon what tool you use).

Omniture Blogs – If you use Omniture in any capacity, the Omniture blogs are a must read. I mostly read Adam Greco’s blog about SiteCatalyst, since that is what we use most, but I’ve found a lot of the other blogs useful as well. Here are a couple highlights from this month:

• Products Variable – Great post about setting up product variables in Omniture SiteCatalyst. For our website, we actually use the product variable to pertain to a program (degree or certificate) that we offer. We’re finding success using the product variable this way and it’s actually helped us make decisions for a couple campaigns.
• SiteCatalyst Widgets – Omniture recently created functionality to feed dashboards into widgets to display in iGoogle, Google Toolbar, Windows Live, and Yahoo Desktop Widgets. I’ve created a few iGoogle widgets and I’m finding them very useful, especially because iGoogle has become such a part of my day it makes life a little easier.
• Understanding VISTA Rules – Ah, VISTA rules. If you’re an Omniture user, you know that VISTA rules can seem like an enigma. This is a great post if you’re unsure how VISTA rules work and the pros and cons to using them.

Article Number One. First, read The Disturbing Truth about Google Analytics on iMediaConnection. The post charges that much of the way Google Analytics collects its data is inaccurate and therefore the calculated metrics (i.e., time on site) are inaccurate. The comments were generally negative. Brian Clifton, author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics, even said the post was incorrect. Very interesting post and comments overall.
Dainow asserts that the way GA measures visits is wrong because it is including bounces within this metric. I’m confused. Isn’t a visit a visit regardless if it’s also a bounce? According to the Web Analytics Association’s standards it is. I’d want to count a visit whether it’s 1 page or 14 pages. The bounces are just your single page visits.

[Post Update]
Thanks to Brian Clifton for clarifying what Dainow was asserting. From Brian’s comment below:

He [Dainow] is stating that for metrics such as time on page and time on site, that GA includes single page visits. The unwritten standard in the field of web analytics is to exclude single page (bounced) visits and the last page of a visit for such calculations …

… So most web analytics tools omit the last page visited for these types of calculations. And if the visit is only one page then then the entire session is omitted. A single page visit is still tracked as a visitor, just excluded from time metrics.

So he was *not* stating that bounces should not be counted as a visit. Whew … I’m glad for that!
[End Post Update]

I’ve given my thoughts on bounce rate before (depending upon the type of site, counting bounce rate by time might make more sense), but not counting single page visits (bounces) in with total visits doesn’t make sense to me.

Article Number Two. Another interesting article to read is Google Analytics — Yes, it is a security risk on TheRegister. With the Obama website hack as a backdrop, the basis of this article is that Google Analytics is a huge security risk for any website. I’m not sure I agree with that. Yes, any time you have a third party javascript, you’re at the mercy of that company to refrain from doing evil with it, but that’s true with any business relationship. When you pay your invoice for any company, when you go to the mall and hand over your credit card, or when you buy that book through Amazon – you’re always at the mercy of that company.

A couple points to consider – on secure pages, use the secure code. Don’t put the code on your admin pages (for those of you using a blog or some kind of content management system).

Higher education blogs have mainly focused on how Twitter can help as a marketing, recruitment, advising tool. There are so many great uses for Twitter both in higher education and for corporations.

What about us Twitter-users as individuals, though? How does it affect what we do, our sense of community, our sense of professional involvement?

It’s fantastic to talk about Twitter as a tool to help our students and customers. I’m completely on board with that.

Let’s do something that I don’t like to do a lot on this blog, though.

Let’s talk about us!

There are so many people I’ve talked to that just don’t get Twitter. They see it as a waste of time, a distraction with no possible advantages except for goofing off.

I cannot agree *and* disagree more.

Twitter is a communication tool. Like any other communication tool it can be used to do anything *you* want it to do. It can be used as a time waster or a professional development tool. It’s up to you.

Last Friday at lunch, I was talking with some friends of mine at work about the usefulness of Twitter. One said that he was trying to encourage his wife to use Twitter, but that she just didn’t get it. She didn’t understand how anyone can possibly get any useful information out of, “just woke up and about to take a shower … bummer … no clean towels.”

The great part about Twitter, though, is that you can choose your friends. That’s why it’s so important to read others past tweets before following them. If you don’t think you see anything useful, no harm done. Just don’t follow them. Remember, it’s not the tool, it’s how you use it.

I follow many people, some I know, some I don’t. I follow friends from home (Syracuse), friends from work (Penn State), and *friends* I’ve never even met before. All of the *friends* I’ve never met before are either people I consider either professional peers or experts in fields in which I’m interested (marketing, usability, web analytics, web design, web development).

Twitter is a two-way street, though. Not only can you learn from your *friends* but they learn from you! How cool is that! Everyone is an expert at something. Offer your expertise!

Why do I use Twitter? First and foremost, I use Twitter to meet new people with the same professional interests that I have. Because of Twitter, I’ve learned so much from people I’ve never even met. It’s a troubleshooter’s dream. If you’ve made sure you’re following people with your interests, you can always throw questions out to the community. Users respond within seconds or minutes. I’ve even tweeted about being frustrated with Microsoft Word or with Omniture SiteCatalyst. Within seconds I had some *friends* replying to offer help. What’s great is that when your friends ask questions, you can offer them help as well.

Some people use Twitter for social purposes only, and that’s fine too. Although I’ve learned a lot professionally, I’ve also learned so much more about my friends and the people with whom I work. I know more about my co-workers children, when my friends aren’t feeling well, what they watch on TV, the list goes on.

Keeping business and pleasure separate. But what happens when you have social *friends* and professional *friends* – how can you keep the two separate using Twitter? When I’m at work, I may not care who’s had their second cup of coffee, but I do care about new features Google Analytics just implemented … or a web analytics report that a *virtual* colleague just made available … or when a friend has an idea for a new module that may help our Drupal install … or whatever I may be doing at work that day. That’s where Twitter clients come in handy.

Twitter clients. Like IM clients, Twitter has a lot of clients to help you … well … tweet better. Arguably the most popular Twitter client is Twhirl, a client I’ve used extensively and love. But there are many more. That blog post is quite old and more have popped up since it was written. For instance, my new favorite Twitter client is TweetDeck, which is still in beta.

Why TweetDeck rocks. TweetDeck lets you segment your friends. You usually know what type of things your friends tweet about. Figure out what you want to pay attention to that day and create a group centered around that topic. For instance, if you’re at work and your a Drupal developer, you may want to group your *Drupal* friends together and pay more attention to their tweets at that time. This doesn’t mean you can’t see all tweets. It just means that you now have one channel dedicated to the *friends* who usually tweet about Drupal. Very cool.

Creating groups in TweetDeck:

I can create as many groups as I want and choose which ones to display.

Ok, so I downloaded a cool Twitter client, but how do I find people to follow? There are a couple of ways. First, you can *friend* people you know are on Twitter. Then look through their list of friends. You can choose to follow your friends of your friends.

Another way is to search for topics that interest you. Use Twitter search and type in keywords that match your interests. You’ll get all tweets that include your search word. For example, here’s a recent search for the word omniture:

I can then click on any Twitter name and scan the profile and tweets of that person. If I like what I read, I click follow. It’s that simple.

Another way to search is through hashtags. A hashtag is word you embed in your post with a “#” in the front of it. You can then search for the hashtag to see posts pertaining to your topic.

I follow many people in the web analytics community who tag their tweets with #wa. I can simply go to Twitter Search and search for #wa.

Just like the first search I did for omniture, I click on a Twitter name of someone who’s tweeted something interesting and read their profile and tweets. If I like what I see, I follow that person.

Conferences and communication. Another fantastic use for Twitter is at a conference. If attendees can agree on a hashtag to use, they can then tweet through their sessions. It’s kind of like live blogging, but on a smaller scale. I can tell you from experience that it’s invaluable for those who are *not* attending the conference. For instance, I was able to stay up-to-date with what was happening at the recent Stamats conference in Florida. Attendees tweeted through their sessions and used the #stamats08 hashtag. You get real-time updates on the action.

The bottom line. I guess the point of this post is that Twitter is whatever you want it to be. It’s a professional development tool. It’s a networking tool. It’s a time-waster. Most people who don’t *get it* think that users are only updating their status with mundane things like, “going for my second cup of coffee.” That can’t be further from the truth. If that’s not how *you* want to use it, then don’t. The burden is on the user to search for friends. Choose wisely.

So, what do you use Twitter for?

Sidebar: For those of you aren’t familiar with Omniture, it is a proprietary web analytics tool. It’s like Google Analytics, but more robust and, therefore, more complex.

Since there are so many schools that use Google Analytics, I thought I’d share my thoughts. If you don’t want to read through the entire Yahoo thread, Paul listed a summary of the comments on this blog post. I’ll give a readers digest version here – focused mainly on features higher ed sites might use.

• Segmentation and drill-down. With the new advanced segmentation in GA, this might not seem like a big advantage for Omniture anymore. Omniture’s Discover tool is advanced segmentation is incredible. Not only can you segment on many variables, you can drill down almost indefinitely.
• Calculated metrics. For example, simple calculated metrics like bounce rate can be set up. More complex metrics can also be set up like page views per click-through for any campaign, for example. You can also share your calculated metrics.
• Custom, multiple, shared dashboards. Setting up multiple dashboards is a great feature. You can also share your dashboards which is great, too.
• Near real-time reporting. When trying to test things out in GA, the wait is frustrating.
• Partner Integration. This can be great if you use a site like OpinionLab, ForeSee, or iPerceptions for site feedback or surveys.
• Importing outside data from your internal databases. This is a great advantage.

These are all great features, but do you care?

Some of the replies within the thread mentioned business objectives and needs, and I that’s the key. The bottom line when answering the question, “should we use Google Analytics or should we use Omniture (or any other proprietary package),” is to first answer the question, “what is our purpose for using a web analytics tool?”

What are the things we would analyze that would lead to specific action on our website? How many people do we have dedicated to web analytics? The answer for most of us is probably one. Actually, it’s probably about 1/2th, 1/4th, or even an 1/8th of a person.

It’s true that some of us (including myself) in higher education work in unique places where we do spend a lot of time on many campaigns, tracking, reporting, analyzing, uploading external data, etc. For these sites, Omniture is the answer.

Most higher education websites, however, have one webmaster, one or a couple of people doing all things for the website. They do minimal campaigning. Google Analytics is fantastic for them.

The bottom line is business need. I don’t think anyone would argue that Omniture is more robust than Google Analytics, but for most higher education websites, it doesn’t matter. For the most part, the use of web analytics in higher education hasn’t reached that level yet.

There are always exceptions, but for most higher education websites, Google Analytics is the answer for now.

So, here is my list for the month of October, 2008 (I know, I know, it’s already November) …

Giraffe Forum – Since all websites are customer service sites (yes, even ours), everyone should read Giraffe Forum. This blog has incredible posts and a wide range of topics all centered around customer-centric thinking. Some of my favorite posts are:

• Block reading: how we read the web – We don’t scan a webpage, we scan blocks of a webpage.
• How to manage out of date content – This is a must read – we *all* have outdated content we need to kill or archive.
• Web 2.0 is about giving up some control – I felt so strongly about this post, I added some ideas and posted my own Web 2.0 and losing control post.

I know I’ve mentioned a couple of the above posts before. The blog is great. Add Giraffe Forum to your reader now!

Social Media Explorer – If you are a Social Media person, this is a great blog for you.  Jason Falls writes incredibly well written and thoughtful posts. There are some guest bloggers writing as well. What’s great about his blog is that he gets *a ton* of comments. It truly is the social media explorer – true conversations around the topic. Great stuff. A couple of my favorites posts are:

• What is the ROI for Social Media? – After reading the post, you may wonder why I, as an analytics freak, like it. Read the entire post and all the comments, though. It’s a phenominal post with very insightful comments and replies.
• We Don’t Need More Social Networks. We Need More Purposed Social Networks – Find a niche and then focus, focus, focus. The post tells the story about a social network geared toward “affluent boomer women.” A fantastic case study we can all learn from.

Add Social Media Explorer to your reader now!

Go now and subscribe to both blogs. It will be well worth it, I promise.

• Choosing the right classification words – Giraffe Forum – This is a great post dealing with the way users search on keyword phrases, even when the phrase isn’t technically correct. For instance, the official term on government websites is climate change. According to Google, a monthly search average for climate change is 300,000 while the monthly search average for global warming is 2.2 million. It gets even more interesting when “low fare” is compared to “cheap flights” search volume. Worth the read.
• We Don’t Need More Social Networks. We Need More Purposed Social Networks. – Social Media Explorer – I couldn’t agree more with this post. We need more focused and specific social networks. Although this post isn’t specific to higher education, it’s true within higher education. It gives a great example of a social network specifically for middle-aged affluent women.
• The Ultimate Google Analytics Plugins, Hacks, & Tricks Collection – GrokDotCom – I only use Google Analytics for my blog, but I know that the majority of higher education websites (no, I don’t know that for sure, I’m making an assumption here) do use Google Analytics. Quite a comprehensive list.

Do you have any favorites from the week?