Testing and Analytics

[Andy]

Some things web marketers may not be aware of is that Google now provide free tools to do Traffic monitoring (Analytics - who clicks where and when), split testing of sales pages (flip between 2 versions of a sales page and monitor conversions to your goal) and multivariate testing (comparing the effects of small changes on a web page to conversion to a particular goal).

There are free video tutorials on using these tools too. They even have a web page designer program.

My excuse for not trying any of these tools out is that I was too busy (#1 excuse) and information overloaded to try them. But at least I brought it to your attention and you can check it out and report your findings here. That saves me doing it  Off you go, implement them, test and report your findings here. Take action and get out of your lazy comfort zone...

[Manu]

Lot of people do not want to give this info to Google. Well I don't share so much of their concern but use StatCounter instead, which works great for me.

[Andy]

If you need to optimize page copy for maximum returns then these tools are the kind you need to use since only knowing visitor stats to a url is not enough. I can understand not wanting to divulge this data since it would be valuable. But I think they will have much of the data anyway since they can track the path of visitors around the web via Adsense and analytics on other sites.

[Manu]

I don't know about their conversions tools, but the stats are better and simpler at Statcounter IMO. Also, google analytics code many times increase the loading time of a page which statcounter rarely does.

[Queen Bee]

Well, I installed it. I don't care if big G has my information or not. When they enter the fine arts scene I'll have something to worry about. Perhaps I'm a bit foolhardy, but that's the way I feel.

I don't know about their conversions tools, but the stats are better and simpler at Statcounter IMO. Also, google analytics code many times increase the loading time of a page which statcounter rarely does.

That's disappointing. I don't want code that slows down load time... Hostexcellence already does that for me. I'm still going to try it, anyway.

[Andy]

I was looking at my AWStats and find there are about 50 unique visitors a day to my www.AdsCube.com site where I am selling a few products but they are not buying.

So today I installed Analytics to see if that can help me work out how to get some sales. It's a bit weird that so many people are visiting my site and not doing anything. They can either buy a product or comment on a blog post, but it seems like they do nothing apart from view the pages.

My last Blog post asked them if they would like me to post some code that I wrote to rotate my Blogroll links, which I think is very cool. But so far, no takers 

One reason I started a new forum was because of frustration at getting any visitor feedback on Blogs. I have produced several Blogs that have had a large amount of traffic, every post has a comment area and there are not many genuine comments, only 1000's of spams that are automatically filtered. It's like most people don't understand the concept of Blogs or the people that do are only interested in commenting if there is a marketing benefit.

The forum seems better, I think I got a good post and member after about 100 visitors and 1 spam a short while afterwards, but it's early days and I haven't posted much there myself yet.

I'll report back on Analytics in a day or so once some data is gathered.

p.s. I should add, that commenting on blogs is one of the easiest ways to get traffic to your website. I regularly comment on blogs and see the visitors from those Blogs popping up in my web stats. Also, after a few months, the page with your comment can get page rank and your link is on that page! "rel=nofollow" may null this effect though on some Blogs.

[Andy]

The Analytics is working ok but it does seem to significantly add to the loading times of the sites. I may remove it.

Lot of people do not want to give this info to Google.

A good point. I am currently testing my own code for multivariate optimization where you keep all the data to yourself. At the moment I am letting the software automatically optimise banner Ad selections and the text for links. It is running on my weight loss blog to start with.

It's incredibly interesting to have software optimize your Ads I think. The program I am advertising generated 1 sale before from fixed Ad creatives but now it will zoom in on the best converting combinations based on clicks on the links and images. I will manually check which of several rotating landing pages convert best. However it will take a few weeks to get good data I think due to lowish visitor traffic.