E-Commerce Tracking Tips for Google Analytics Users

Do you have an e-Commerce website? If you do, you're most likely using a web analytics tool to gather actionable insight from your current customers. Beyond straight sales numbers, I use the various e-Commerce reports within the Google Analytics interface to determine where our customers are coming from and what marketing campaigns are paying off. I'm going to go through a method I use to help track these items.

But, first, if you are brand new to the idea of tracking Ecommerce on your website, I highly recommend using Google Analytics. It's free and pretty easy to navigate. The setup can be a little confusing, but Google provides a great help article with all of your instructions.

Campaign Tracking

The first step in successful tracking of what marketing campaigns are driving the most sales is setting up a custom campaign. Basically, you want to tag your links so that we can see which campaigns are bringing your site visitors, and in turn, sales. Google has developed their URL builder, which makes this pretty easy. For example, here is what a URL might look like for a newsletter we're sending out: http://www.webucator.com/go/course-of-the-month/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=webuNewsOct12

Of important note, look at the campaign variable, webuNewsOct12. Now, we can track how many sales were a result of this campaign.

e-Commerce Overview Report

Once logged into your Google Analytics account, you can navigate over to Conversions > Ecommerce > Overview > Source/Medium. As seen on the attached screenshot, you can see that our newsletter campaigns were our fifth biggest source of sales in the given time period. (Please note that most of the information is blurred out for privacy reasons, but you can still see the main point.)

This general report will give you that high-level perspective of which sources/mediums are helping your business grow. And again, tied back to the campaign variables you determined in the step above. Maybe you also see a source/medium you didn't know about? :) 

e-Commerce Product Performance

After viewing the Overview report, you might want to tie specific product sales to specific campaigns you are running. Right underneath that Overview report, you'll see the Product Performance report. Now this report will be tied to how you setup your initial e-Commerce tracking code on your site, and will show specific products that were purchased.

To add in a level of campaigns, head over to the specific category group you're interested in, and then click on the Secondary dimension tab. Under the Advertising group, you'll see your Campaign option. Take a look at the screenshot below:

I sorted the campaigns in alphabetical order and now I can see exactly what products visitors purchased from exactly which campaigns I started. This is a great avenue to see if there are any ways to either optimize current campaigns or start focusing your product messaging on different campaigns!

Campaign Tracking

Lastly, one very quick note on campaigns. If you are ever curious to which campaigns are simply bringing you the most traffic (after you've tagged your links), navigate over to Traffic Sources > Sources > Campaigns. This will give you a combined report of any AdWords campaigns you might be running coupled with any manual campaigns you setup with the URL builder.

And that's a wrap for this article! I hope you learned a few, new actionable steps for your Google Analytics account. If you have any questions on these steps, please leave them in the comments below and I'll get to them. And stay tuned for another Google Analytics blog coming up next month! Happy Analytics!

Editor's Note: Bob provides a great foundation for getting started with Google Analytics in his Google Analytics series.
 

About the Author

Bob Clary has over eight years of marketing experience. He is currently the Marketing Manager and Google Analytics Trainer at Webucator and is a Google Analytics Qualified Individual. Bob has also created Webucator's online Google Analytics courses.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Interview: Michael Orbach from Cascadia Capital on the Evolving Customer Experience Market

The rise of social media has radically altered the state of customer communications. Organizations now have unparalleled insight into customer wants, needs  and — more importantly — into their perspectives. But consumers have gained a tremendous amount of influence, with social networks literally giving a global voice to every customer. This means that delivering a positive customer experience — tailored to individual expectations — is now a critical part of marketing and customer service.

Thus, the market for customer experience management (CXM) technology has grown significantly in importance in the past few years. CMSWire recently had the chance to discuss CXM technology and market trends with Michael Orbach, Managing Director of Cascadia Capital, a boutique investment bank specializing in private and public growth companies in the social and digital media sectors, among other markets. 

CXM — What Is It?

Orbach began his commentary by briefly providing a firm definition of CXM, which can be a somewhat nebulous term.

“CXM fits into the marketing automation sector,” he said. “In this broader sector, you have solutions that perform functions like marketing surveys, customer polling and web content management. But CXM focuses on how businesses interact with consumers at the point of product.”

Although CXM solutions can be used in virtually any industry, Orbach used the successful coffee retail chain Starbucks as an example to illustrate how CXM actually works.

“Starbucks interacts directly with consumers at the store level and uses feedback to improve corporate performance," he said. "The segment is extremely dynamic, and it all starts with customer interaction.”

However, Orbach cautioned that customer feedback must be meaningful. “You need something more than, ‘The girl behind the counter is pretty’ or ‘This place is dirty,’” he stated. “That doesn’t really tell you much.”

How Does CXM Work?

CXM technology helps companies ensure they collect meaningful customer feedback in a timely manner. “Surveys often have a gamification aspect to create an initiative to participate,” said Orbach. In the case of a retailer like Starbucks, gamification might extend to the back end so local store personnel are also incentivized to encourage customer participation. Technologies such as mobile devices — along with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter — can also help organizations obtain instant feedback, which allows for faster response to any customer issues or concerns.

In addition to providing an adequate and timely customer feedback mechanism, CXM solutions also must provide a means of interpreting feedback once it is collected. “There is a complex analytics problem,” said Orbach. “You get a lot of data in a short time. In the case of Starbucks, they need to analyze feedback and then deliver results to the store manager and regional manager, as well as to the corporate entity.”

Orbach said the potential for high volumes of immediate data created by the ubiquity of mobile devices and social media also necessitates a strong analytics component to any CXM solution.

What Is the Market Like?

Considering how important CXM has become in an era of consumer empowerment and instant global communication, it’s not surprising that Orbach sees a very healthy market for CXM

“There is a lot of CXM activity in terms of mergers and acquisitions and financing,” said Orbach. “Oracle acquired RightNow, TPG invested $1 billion in SurveyMonkey, Fizzback was bought by Nice.”

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

TIBCO Shows Off Spotfire 5 Analytics for Big Data Discovery

TIBCO, makers of Spotfire analytics has released version 5 of its simplified system for making data based decisions, building predictive models and perhaps finding that key insight that could be ground breaking.

Spotfire 5 Features

Spotfire 5 has been rebuilt to provide faster data visualization, predictive modeling and scalability.

"These capabilities are exactly what enterprises are looking for to be able to discover the value hidden in their data," Lars Bauerle, TIBCO Spotfire VP of product strategy said in a statement.

Spotfire 5 is meant to capture data from multiple sources and offers custom reports and dashboards, but also do that in a faster, more intuitive way. Because Spotfire integrates with Microsoft, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services cubes, version 5 can take advantage of its in-memory system for faster parsing of large data sets.

All that means is for those systems that are more closely connected to Spotfire (unlike systems that must be accessed remotely, for example), data can be indexed faster and with less compute power than with previous versions. That is good for scalability and speed.

Spotfire 5 interactive analytics is a good fit for the high tech manufacturing, retail, life sciences, and financial services industries.

Additionally, because Spotfire does not require a deep knowledge of business intelligence to know how to use it, companies can set the system up faster and begin using it across departments even faster. 

Data Evolving, Companies Responding; Mostly

This month, CMSWire is focusing on how companies can improve customer experiences using the right data and proper strategies. Because so many analytics packages are only really good at either reporting static information or simply providing complex stats, Spotfire 5 is positioned to battle on both of these fronts. TIBCO promises an analytics platform that is dynamic, and not overly complex to use. 

That means people across enterprises could benefit from any insights found, and those findings could be implemented faster to provide real action. As with any enterprise undertaking, it's wise to think long and hard about taking on a new analytics package, and remember to have some clear goals already set out.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com