Optimising your Site using Google Analytics April 29, 2010

This practical course will help you improve your tracking, website and campaign efficiency to deliver better results from your digital marketing investments.



Research by Econsultancy has shown that over 70% of companies now use Google Analytics systems to report online performance. But, often Google Analytics hasn't been configured to tailor reports to a particular business and fully use its capabilities to drive business results.



This course focuses on applying Google Analytics for site conversion optimization through advanced configuration and customization of reports. If you are using another tool, the best practice recommendations on campaign and page design improvements will still be relevant.





Workshop format



The workshop has an interactive, small-group format designed to enable sharing of tips and techniques plus expert review and recommendations of your sites and campaigns by course tutor, Dave Chaffey. Sites reviewed as examples of best practice will include a range of consumer and business lead generation and transactional sales sites including retail, travel, financial services, publishing and business-to-business. Attendees own sites submitted before the workshop will also be reviewed by Dave with recommendations on "quick win" improvements for you to consider.



The core part of the course gives recommendations on best practice to improve customer journeys and conversion paths across common page types. These include the home page, product category and detail pages, search pages and, of course, landing pages.



The course will also explain how to review and improve the quality of different types of visitor source including referrals from traditional and social media, search engine optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click and email marketing.

Who should attend?
If you are responsible for increasing online leads and sales from a website, the course will help you achieve your goals. The analysis techniques and best practice approaches discussed will help all types of site owners from online sales and marketing managers, content owners or editors and specialists in usability, design and analytics. Customer acquisition campaign managers will also find out how to make their campaigns more effective through routing visitors to the most effective pages.



You will already be familiar with the basic principles of effective digital campaigns, usability and web analytics. This is an advanced course, so basic concepts won't be covered, although questions are always welcomed if you're not familiar with specific techniques or approaches.



How will I benefit?
After attending this course, you will be able to:

Configure Google Analytics to best report and improve performance of your campaigns and website
Audit your site using web analytics reports and expert review techniques to identify "quick win" conversion improvements across key page types including the home page, category and product pages
Define improvements to different page elements for key conversion page types including landing pages, search results pages and, if applicable, faceted navigation, shopping basket and checkout pages
Refine your messaging hierarchy and use persuasive copywriting techniques to maximize conversion for response pages
Ensure improvements to page template elements such as site navigation, headings, copy, videos and images are consistent with SEO Best Practice to attract visitors from Google's natural listings
Improve integration of your site with different online and offline campaign referrers
Create a structured testing plan for a site to improve results through AB and multivariate testing


What will I learn?
This course covers these conversion optimization techniques:

How best to engage first time and repeat visitors to reduce bounce rate
What to watch for when performing clickstream analysis such as forward and reverse path analysis
Recommendations on the best advanced and custom reports to use to segment visitors by traffic source to understand their behaviour
Integrating Web 2.0 approaches such as personalization, reviews, ratings, social bookmarking, video and other widgets into your site
How to maximize landing page, basket and checkout conversion rates
How to plan and manage AB and multivariate testing of pages using tools such as Google Website Optmizer

Official Website: http://econsultancy.com