- How about a general repository for us to share filters? I'm thinking of something along the lines of the way Google offers widgets and gadgets and whatnot for iGoogle and Desktop. I've created some and gone out and found some out there that did things I didn't even realize were possible; why re-invent the wheel?
- I find the breadcrumb navigation somewhat lacking. There's a lot of times where I'm digging down deep to the keyword level, and I want to go back just one step, and I end up back about four levels, or worse yet, where I started.
- Much more help on setting up to track other types of campaigns (MSN and Yahoo PPC, online campaigns, offline campaigns)
- For those of us who are working with clients (as opposed to just our own accounts) it would be really great to be able to set up some kind of a demo account with some demo stats (or have one available) to show to clients. To be honest, they'd rather have me show them the benefits step by step with an account that looks like their traffic and their sample products than sit through your presentation. I can't show one client another's data, and they just don't seem to get how useful and important this information is unless they can see it and click on it and I can explain it in terms of their business.
Ok, that's for starters. I have more.
I *really* need to be able to sort by Transaction number, or failing that, by date. Now that some of my clients have several thousand transactions, it's a real nuisance. The Revenue, Tax, Shipping and Quantity columns are all sortable - why not Transaction? I realize it may not always be numbers, but even so.
Also, we should be able to set our preferred sort everywhere and then LEAVE it that way.
For example - under Product Performance, it defaults to sorting by Quantity. I want to be able to set it to default to sorting by Revenue.
Another issue I'm having is the ability to get the Analytics information to match up with the AdWords reports (or vice versa)
Case in point - one of my clients got a $1970.00 order a couple of days ago, which was larger than usual, and we wanted to track down where it came from. According to Analytics, it came from a click on the Content Network, and GA reported which Campaign and Ad Group it came from. That was nice, but I wanted to know which site. We might want to run a CPC Site Targeted campaign there, after all. So when I ran a Placement report in AdWords for that Ad Group, I couldn't find ANY conversions, going back to the first of the month. Now, I know conversion tracking is working, because I have plenty of other conversions being reported in other Ad Groups, both Content and Search, and it's a store - they all end up on the same final page with the tracking code. And it was almost 72 hours after transaction occurred, so it *should* have shown up in the Placement report by then. I suspect it was from a Domain ad, but even those showed no conversion. So either Google Analytics isn't right, or AdWords isn't right, and meanwhile, we don't have the information we need to decide whether or not to site target.
Just some thoughts ...
The Advertiser Feedback Report goes out in about 5 hours; in case there are any late breaking additions between now and then, I'll include those too.
AWA
And once this is available it would be nice to be able to automate the process.
For network location I'd also like to be able to obtain the IP address. It's a pain searching through the logs for this.
I could be wrong, but I think this is not available by design. There's not supposed to be any identifying information going into GA; you'd have to get a log analyzer or some other kind of a web stats program for that.
I would like more information on what the advantages are to updating to the newer GA code. The reason I ask is, my partner tried it on his ecommerce site, and it blew up big time. Stuff wasn't being reported, different numbers showing up in different places (i.e. revenue being reported differently depending on what section you were in) So he's going back to the old code, and I, who was going to upgrade my clients, am now afraid to do it. All the announcement said was that it would make it easier to view some transaction data. Not really good enough.
As an aside - where do we send reports for all this stuff we're seeing - to AdWords Support? I already have one in for an existing problem where Revenue reports one number of transactions in the overview, and another in the Product Performance and Transactions sections, for the same time period. But we're collecting screenshots at the moment, trying to figure out what's what.
As an aside - where do we send reports for all this stuff we're seeing - to AdWords Support?
Sorry not to have seen your question until now. Yes, it is best to contact AdWords support, and they will escalate as appropriate if they are not able to address/answer your concerns.
BTW, my apology to all for having been absent quite a lot over the last week and more. Between one thing and another during this very busy time of year, I have had less time than normal for reading and posting here.
Along those same lines, I wanted to mention that I'll be away from AdWords starting tomorrow evening through January 2nd - returning on the 3rd. During this time I'll mostly be visiting/caring for my mom. As she needs focused attention, I will not be reading/posting during that time.
AWA
That said, if anyone has any suggestions/feature requests that they'd like the Analytics team to hear, I'll happily pass them along in the weekly Advertiser Feedback Report that goes out later this evening.
Thanks in advance. ;)
AWA
I would disagree about perfectionism and say that merchants are using tools other than analytics, while affiliates are struggling with a pain of not having control over conversion.
Stay tuned anyway…
I would disagree about perfectionism and say that merchants are using tools other than analytics, while affiliates are struggling with a pain of not having control over conversion.
I was just being funny, smallcompany. Or at least trying to be. ;)
Believe me, I would not consider Analytics perfect. And the same can be said, of course, for any other product ever built, anywhere, anytime.
That's why I ask for feedback so often. :)
AWA
Example: I am the webmaster for a large corporate site. To use GA (we already have WebTrends but GA is way better for quick overviews and AdSense integration obviously)
I can: register ourdomain.com with my private gmail address and then forever be the "owner" of the data - even after I leave the position and go work somewhere. Or, register a "ourdomainwebmaster@gmail.com" account and keep all my profiles there which seems a bit messy.
I´ve spoken to a couple of other web developers who also face this predicament when developing sites for clients. Are we missing something obvious here (aside from giving admin access - which is still no the same)?
Grateful for suggestions
Anyone else? Still plenty o' time.
AWA
<edit> How could I possibly have a typo to fix with that few words!? </edit>
[edited by: AdWordsAdvisor at 1:33 am (utc) on Jan. 18, 2008]
I appreciate your keeping this thread alive. ;)
AWA
Second thing is about "site overlay". Presently I have to roll over mouse on links to get detail. And some stats doesn't appear within the screen. So I am not able to view entire stats. Of course this is dependent on the website layout. There should be a mechanism where we can view summary of clicks on different links at a single shot. Instead of having to roll over mouse on each links to view the stats. And yes, we should be able to export these reports in PDF.
2) We're having problems with the new code. We have sent in lots of screen shots and have an issue report, but we haven't heard anything back. We now have inconsistencies between reports with the new code and reports with old code, and even inconsistencies WITHIN the same report. For example:
For the time period of Dec 28 - Jan 23, I am right this minute looking at:
Old Code: Ecommerce Overview reports 677 transactions, 309 products and $102.2K in revenue
New Code: Ecommerce Overview reports 681 transactions, 319 products and $109.1K in revenue
Old Code: the Transactions Section reports 690 transactions and $102.2K revenue
New Code: the Transactions Section reports 679 transactions and $109.1K in revenue
This is very difficult to explain away to my clients, specially since NONE of these numbers are actually correct, because I keep track of all transactions in Excel.
Still several hours until the report goes out - so lots o' time for more.
By the way, I hope to have a question revolving around Analytics support to ask you all soon. Watch for it. ;)
AWA
Is there a newer version of the tracking code in the offing?
As a test, I'm running *both* sets of code (yep, it slows things down somewhat) on one of my personal sites; there's no ecommerce. I'm seeing pretty different numbers between one set of code and the other - the newer code has fewer everything, but the profile with the older code has four exclusion filters on it for my various computers and connections, and the profile with the new code doesn't have any. My own log reports show the that the older code is closer to the actual visits, though still pretty short.
For example, for the period of May 10 - June 5, the old code shows 15,442 visits and 42,256 pageviews, where for the same period, the profile with the new code (and no exclusion filters) shows 14,111 visits and 38,935 pageviews.
Stuff like this drives me nuts.
This way you could import it into another Analytics account. Say for example you have a problem with Adwords / Analytics linking and need to start a new account and link the two so they sync and pass in cost data. If I could import all previous data that would save alot of trouble.
What I also find silly about Analytics is that you can only get information about a goal once its set up.
Forgive me if I don't explain this quite right, but I'll try my best.
Scenario 1.)
I have users visit various pages of my site. They reach the contact page and make an enquiry. I have not set up my contact thank you page as a goal yet. So I cannot gain any data about this goal, like keyword used, reverse goal path etc.. Yet technically all this data is in Analytics, it just hasn't been defined as a goal yet.
Same with Funnels. Let say a certain sequence of pages make up a goal. Again I cannot report on this until it is defined by me in Analytics, however (as far as I know) this data should be there. It shouldn't matter if I have defined it yet or not.
I know of another Analytics package that we have been using where data has been collected over a long period of time. Nobody here knew how to define a funnel / goal or anything like that. However when I got here I managed to plug in the right values and instantly could see data going back several months even a year.
This would be really helpful for clients, as many may have installed Analytics but don't know what to do with this data.
The data in relation to goals and funnels (page view sequence) is recorded in Analytics, I should be able to change my goals / funnels and get visibility of this instantly.
The only reason I can see that this might not be recorded is due to storage space.
Hope I made sense there.
I'll pass your feedback along to the right folks on Thursday, and also make sure that GAA sees it as well.
Other additions are more than welcome, of course. ;)
AWA
I'll check back before the report goes out and be sure to include any late-breaking additions. It'll go out hours earlier than usual (hopefully by 7:30pm) since I want to catch the US portion of my reading audience before they start focusing on July 4th activities.
Many thanks.
AWA
This way, lets say I work for a company that runs a television commerical and I know what times and when these commercials run. I can then tag these dates / times and view the effect it has on traffic to my website.
It doesn't have to be limited to TV, it could be any campaign or marketing activity that is going on in the company.
I would also like more support for tracking email campaigns. At the moment its not possible to track links in emails that go to 3rd party websites. This would be a huge help for affiliate marketers. I would also like to be able to add some kind of beacon (invisible pixel) or equivelent to emails so that I can determine (albeit not accurate) open rates for email.
Finally it would be great to be able to test goals / funnels / tagged links without having to wait 24-hours. Kind of like how Adwords has a feature to check your conversion tracking code. Waiting 24 hours for something to show up in a report is evil :). Especially when I make a mistake lol.
Thanks :).
Many thanks :)
AWA
So if I have 20 websites in my Analytics profile, I can view all their traffic stats at a glance. Or I could have a custom dashboard with vital stats (goals) or (Ecommerce) transactions for all relevant websites without having to login to each one and look up the report etc..
However it would be nice if you could control how your Google Adwords account and Google Analytics accounts are linked.
I know under certain circumstances, I myself have made mistakes and clients often link accounts incorrectly.
The only way to undo this is to call Google and get them to unlink the accounts.
Giving the user more control over this would save google time and users, but I wonder what other implications might come along with this.
I was thinking today that it would be nice to have an overview page in Analytics just like the MCC of Adwords.
Yah I asked for this a while ago, and I hope they're working on it. I have accumulated a set of common filters that I always like to apply when I'm setting up Analytics and working with AdWords, and it would sure be nice to be able to apply them every time from my own MCC (GCC? no, that's a compiler) account, rather than type them all in manually *every* *single* *time*.
