A small but potentially quite big change to Google Analytics has been pushed out. It relates to how sessions are handled, which you'll see in the "Visits" metric in Google analytics.

Most web analytics tools have to work out a "visit" metric to try and give you some idea of people coming to, then leaving, your site. The problem is that the analytics tools don't get a "goodbye" message when the visitor leaves the site, so they have to use other mechanisms. The traditional way is a timeout of 30 minutes without any activity from the visitor, or if the visitor closes his browser.

This change to Google Analytics introduces the idea of any change to the traffic source value resulting in a new session, that is a new visit. These values are set whenever a visitor arrives from an external site, meaning any new arrival basically, even if it happens within the previous 30 minute time-out bracket.

It's a pretty sensible change to the way the data is calculated and will affect all reports that include the "Visits" metrics. Any business wants to know how many people come through the front door, and how well they're converting them into paying customers. Even people who come through the front door more than once should be counted in that metric.

Details from Google about the change, including some rather panicky comments from users who are alarmed, can be found on the official Google Analytics blog post about the session tracking recent changes.

While rude sales people are harder to fix (try firing a few as a start), getting the right person on the phone should not be so difficult and companies could make that process a lot easier using more unique phone numbers, especially online and on direct mail. Apart from providing more granular campaign response data, marketers should use unique phone numbers to help control the customer experience! Think about the following examples.

Unique phone numbers by product category: Prospects browsing a particular product category should be shown a phone number unique to that category enabling calls to be routed directly to the right call center team that specialises in that particular category. This approach should cut down phone steps, improve overall call experience and thus also increase conversion. Equally, website visitors identified as existing customers should get a priority number, after all they're already a customer and should be treated as such.

Unique phone numbers by purchase lifecycle stage: Similarly to the above, if a website visitor has already started converting (i.e. started checking out, filling in a lead form, etc), are you just going to show him the standrad website phone numbers? I hope not! If by their actions, website visitors are showing some serious purchase intent I would strongly suggest you display them a special unique number that ensures their call is answered as a priority, after all they're most likely to convert.

Finally, you're comments are always welcome, but I don't want to see any comments on your 1300 number being part of your brand or phone numbers are being too expensive. Maybe Pizza Hut can claim that for its best customers that call every day but the rest of us just doesn't care enough about your company to remember your 1300 number. Also, the true cost comes from the amount of phone calls not the number of unique numbers and pales next to the potential revenue increase from more sales and happier customers anyway. 

Read on to find out how many numbers you might need and visit our partner Jet Interactive to set-up some additional unique numbers online including detailed data on call performance and origin.

Google Analytics just released a video with details on its brand new multi-channel funnels or media attribution solution that's currently being introduced as a limited pilot. Watch the video below to see all five new reports in the new multi-channel funnels section including the overview, assisted conversions, top conversion paths, path length and time lag reports. 

This is a good video to watch if you just want to find out about cross-channel campaign tracking and optimisation in general, quite well done and explain, but keep in mind that the solution only includes data from direct visits and not mere banner impressions (that didn't result in a click-through) which is a big limitation (but who knows what will happen with that, Google owns DoubleClick after all).

Anyway, even if you are a big display advertiser, you should sign-up for early access to the new reports, more insights can never hurt as long as they're interpreted correctly.

We've written about this before but Ian just forwarded me the below article on the ClickTale blog about eye tracking vs. mouse tracking and I think it's a very nice comparison.

Research has shown that when both methods of testing are conducted simultaneously, there is an 84%-88% correlation in the results. In addition, both the eye and mouse move to relatively the same rhythm and focus in on the same page content. 

Below are the slides on tracking and analytics from our guest lecture at the ADMA Digital Certificate last night including links to useful tools online. Thanks again for listening to all who attended, here are again the key points.

• Standardise metrics to enable benchmarking and performance comparison over time.
• Think laterally, free online data from Google and Facebook can be used in many ways.
• Media cannot be judged based on final conversions alone (i.e. statistical significance).
• Data and insights have to come from one central analytics platform to avoid duplication.
• Last click media attribution is inaccurate and can lead to misallocation of media budgets.
• Maintain a simple calendar of events to help provide context around data trends.

If you would like to know more about some of the topics covered last night you should also check out our ADMA short course Analyse to Optimise. The Sydney session has already happened but the Melbourne course still has some spots available.