Datalicious Blog - Data Driven Marketing

Formstack online form builder that also integrates with Google Analytics to track form conversions

We've had a few clients now that were looking for an easy online form builder that also lets you integrate with Google Analytics to track your form conversions and and I think we've finally found one in Formstack.

There seems to be quite a few of these tools out there but the main problem with most of them is the fact that although they provided a simple user interface to build forms without any HTML knowledge they don't allow you to add custom code to your form pages which prevents people from adding the necessary Google tracking scripts. At best you might be able to track that a form was started but not if it was actually finished so there's no way to track actual leads or calculate a form conversion rate (and that's probably crucial for most forms).

Anyway, have a look at Formstack, it's an easy to use tool that lets you build all sorts of online forms from contact forms over surveys to order forms and integrate them with a wide range of other platforms such as SalesForce, Highrise, FreshBooks, Mailchimp and Paypal.

Gigya and Compete report on increasing importance of social network referral traffic over Google

We all heard the news when Facebook overtook Google as the most popular website in the US in March this year according to Hitwise but now the guys at Gigya have released a research report based on Compete data that adds an interesting new perspective to this trend suggesting that social networks are becoming the next/new search.

Although Facebook has overaken Google as the most populate website, marketers were wondering if that would actually translate into increased traffic to their sites which according to the Gigya reports is exactly the case. The below chart clearly shows that referral traffic from social networks has become a major traffic source that rivals Google and marketers would be well advised to develop suitable strategies to address this trend.
A social revolution is dictating dramatic changes in how companies run their websites, and their business. With the advent of social feeds - a live stream of friends’ activity shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter - consumers can more easily rely on trusted personal relationships to determine what’s worthwhile to read, watch, play and buy online. For many, the conclusion is startling; referral traffic is as significant from social networks as it is from search engines, making Social the next Search.

Big blow for web analytics: Google search is going secure and along the way hiding all referrer data

Google search is currently in the process of beta testing a secure search, check it out yourself at https://www.google.com.
 
Even though this might be commendable from a privacy perspective, the move could potentially have devastating effects for all search marketers and online analysts. Turning the normal Google search results into secure pages will essentially hide all usage information including the referrer string which contains data on the used search term. So if you would like to know what keywords are driving your business, you're out of luck. For all secure searches, standard analytics software packages will no longer be able to see the what domain referred the visitor (i.e. search engine) and what search term was used (see screen shots below).
 
It's rumoured that China may be part of the motivation for the switch as this will prevent filtering of certain keyword searches as well as the ability to packet sniff the usage of Google. The switch hasn't rolled out in Hong Kong yet, but you can safely assume it won't be too far away!
 
For more information check out the following Google and Wired articles.

Research: Google Ad Planner data on website user demographics could be wrong by up to 20%

A quick analysis we did today revealed that Facebook user figures reported in the Google Ad Planner platform can differ by up to 20% from the actual Facebook data.
 
Most online marketer probably know the Google Ad Planner platform and love the data it provides but might have wondered how accurate the user figures and demographics actually are for each website. Well, Google is not exactly open when it comes to revealing its data sources or methodology but it occurred to us that the Facebook ad targeting service would provide a perfect sanity check, at least when it comes to user data on Facebook.com.
 
Summary of key findings
1. Total user numbers are very close
2. Google might have the genders wrong
3. User might not be as old as Google thinks
 
Although the Google data seems to be pretty accurate in terms of total user numbers by country when compared to actual Facebook data (numbers differ less than 0.05%), there seem to be significant differences when comparing user numbers by gender and age groups. 
The gender split between male and female users only seems to match in the US, whereas in Australia and the UK it is actually reversed, i.e. Google thinks there are more male users on Facebook than female users which according to Facebook data is exactly the other way around (user numbers differ by up to +/- 9% here). 
A similar pictures presents itself when looking at users by age group across Australia, the UK and US. Google seems to think that Facebook users are on average much older than they actually are across all three countries according to Facebook profile data (user numbers differ by up to +/- 19% here). 
Now don't get us wrong, we love the Google Ad Planner and the data it provides but we hope that this simple analysis will get more marketers to actively question the data they're looking at (and maybe even get Google to provide a little more transparency in the future).
 
You're welcome to repeat the experiment by extracting the data yourself from the below sites or just download the raw data we collected as well as the Tableau workbook we used to analyse and visualise the data.
 
Facebook ad targeting service
http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/
 
Google Ad Planner platform (now DoubleClick)
https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile#siteDetails
 
 
(download)
(download)

Google Webmaster Tools gets more transparent, now shows impressions and clicks by result position

In case you didn't catch it, Google Webmaster Tools recently deployed a VERY useful new feature. You can now break your sites search traffic down by the query keywords and also your position in the results. These new stats show how many times you appeared in the results for a given search (impressions) and also how you performed (clicks and CTR). The data also breaks down which pages the users were sent to on your site.

You wouldn't have to be Einstein to know Google is definitely using this information to adjust search result rankings. It's bringing more of an adwords style performance metric into the search algorithm. If people love clicking your link, then it's probably a good result for that search. This type of adjustment obviously helps to weed out crap results, but if it's a well formed result listing to a bad site it may not matter too much (Note: that's likely where Chrome and/or Google Analytics usage data are integrated)

Below shows how the Datalicious web site is performing for the search term "osama bin laden" (Note: We were surprised to see we somehow get traffic off this term too!). For a given query you can see the traffic, and the click through rates for each position. This is not a fantastic example as the click through is too low to compare, but for high traffic terms you will notice wild variations in the click through percentage of each position in the search results. 


Google is testing new search results page layout making vertical and local options more prominent

Using Firefox, Safari and Chrome at the same time I sometimes come across some interesting a/b tests and this time it's Google. Looks like the search giant is experimenting with a new search results page design making the local and vertical search customisation options more prominent than before, i.e. the left hand pane is open by default rather than hidden and a location auto-detect function has been added.

New Google AdWords report called Search Funnels showing paid search path to conversion

Similar to Omniture's Campaign Stacking plugin Google has finally launched a new AdWords report called 'Search Funnels'. Unfortunately, it only seems to consider paid search interactions leading up to a conversion whereas Omniture can path all search activity, organic and paid. Email us at insights@datalicious.com if you would like to find out more or read our earlier post on how to actually do multi channel media attribution.
Currently, conversions in AdWords are attributed to the last ad someone clicks before making a conversion, masking the fact that many customers perform multiple searches before finally converting. AdWords Search Funnels help you see the full picture by giving you insight into the ads your customers interact with during their shopping process.
AdWords Search Funnels are a set of reports describing the ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up to a conversion. In addition to a Top Conversions report, Search Funnels consist of 7 reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length. For an overview of these new reports, check out this video:

Read the official article here

Google Ad Planner now DoubleClick including new features and improved data integrity

The Google Ad Planner we've come to love so much has officially be renamed to DoubleClick Ad Planner! Thank god, they didn't only change the name but also rolled out some new features and improved the data integrity by 10% (as claimed by Google).
In cas you ever wondered where your Google Analytics data goes if you opt in to share it with the world, here is your answer: "To improve the quality of our site traffic estimates, we have upgraded our traffic estimation model. Our model uses a hybrid methodology that combines sample user data, from various Google products and services, with direct measured site-centric data. The model's direct measured signal is pulled from Google Analytics customer accounts that have chosen to opt-in to sharing their data with Ad Planner."
This is especially interesting for publisher data and might over time force more of the Australian publishers to add Google Analytics code to their sites.
"In May 2009, we announced Ad Planner Publisher Center, which made it possible for publishers to opt-in their Google Analytics data to Ad Planner. We've now upgraded site profiles in Ad Planner to display this data in the worldwide charts for Daily Unique Visitors on site profile pages. For publishers who opted-in, their direct measured data is displayed as a solid line in their chart. For example, Gamezhero, a website offering free online games, opted-in their Google Analytics data in June. Here's what their worldwide chart for Daily Unique Visitors looks like now."
Google/DoubleClick Ad Planner

For more information on the Google/DoubleClick Ad Planner data methodology

New Google Webmaster tool features including site performance and download speed tests

Looks like Google has given its webmaster tool a makeover and added a few new features with lots more data available now on search terms, back links and internal links.

Not necessarily new but still very useful are the crawl stats on how long it took Google to download a page from your site which makes performance benchmarking and basic speed testing available for everyone now.

For more information on how to add this to your own website visit

Free geocoding and address cleaning for files with up to 1,000 line items

Have a look at GPS Visualizer's free geo-coding service below, it not only returns the latitude and longitude but also cleans the address data.

http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/geocoder/

Data entered (misspelled address): 150 william st Wolomolo australia.

Data returned (correct spelling appended at the end): -33.874455,151.218939,150 william st Wolomolo australia,"150 William St, Woolloomooloo NSW 2010, Australia".