Making Google Analytics Content Experiments Even Better

A few weeks ago, we announced Google Analytics Content Experiments.  Since our announcement, we have been busy making Content Experiments available to Google Analytics users and improving it based on your feedback.  We'd like to tell you about a few changes that we have recently introduced:

Content Experiments available to everyone. Every Google Analytics user can now access Content Experiments. You can find this feature under "Experiments" in the "Content" section of your Standard Reports.

Support for relative URLs. Using relative URLs affords you increased flexibility when defining the location of variations.  This is particularly useful if you have experiments running on multiple domains, subdomains, or pages. You can learn more about using relative URLs in Content Experiments by reading our Help Center article.

Ability to copy experiments. You can now copy experiments by clicking the Copy experiment button on the Edit Settings screen of the experiment you want to copy. If you are running an experiment on a page, this allows you to run additional experiments after the original one finishes without having to add experiment code to your page or otherwise modify it.

Improvements to the experiments report. We've added regular Analytics-report capabilities to the experiment report, such as: Site Usage, Goal Set, and Ecommerce tabs, and the option to choose which variations you want to plot in the graph.

Click the above image to view the full report

We hope that you find these improvements useful. Our team is working hard to make Content Experiments in Google Analytics even better. Stay tuned for more news!

Posted by Inna Weiner, Software Engineer

Helping to Create Better Websites: Introducing Content Experiments

Over the last 5 years, it’s been great to see how many marketers and publishers have improved the web by using insights from Google Website Optimizer to create better site experiences. Today, we’d like to announce the release of Google Analytics Content Experiments, which brings website testing to Google Analytics.

We’re excited to integrate content testing into Google Analytics and believe it will help meet your goals of measuring, testing and optimizing all in one place. Content Experiments helps you optimize for goals you have already defined in your Google Analytics account, and can help you decide which page designs, layouts and content are most effective. With Content Experiments, you can develop several versions of a page and show different versions to different visitors.  Google Analytics measures the efficacy of each page version, and with a new advanced statistical engine, it determines the most effective version. You can watch this video to learn more:


Testing and experimentation of websites may sound complicated, but we've worked hard to provide a testing tool that makes it as easy as possible:

• Content Experiments comes with a setup wizard that walks you step by step through setting up experiments, and helps you quickly launch new tests.

• Content Experiments reuses Google Analytics tags so that you only need to add one additional tag to the original page.

• Content Experiments helps you understand which content performs best, and identifies a winner as soon as statistically significant data has been collected.

• Since content testing is so important, we’ve placed Content Experiments just a click away from your regular diagnosis reports in Google Analytics.

With full integration in Google Analytics, we’ll be able to grow and evolve website experimentation tools within our broader measurement platform. Initially, you’ll be able to utilize important features like optimized goal conversions, easier tagging, and advanced segmentation in reports. We’re also working hard to release page metrics, additional goal conversion options and experiment suggestions.

Since we’re rolling much of the Google Website Optimizer functionality into Google Analytics, it’s time for us to say goodbye to the standalone tool. The last day you’ll be able to access Google Website Optimizer, and any reports for current or past experiments, will be August 1, 2012. We encourage you to start any new experiments in Content Experiments. For those of you that are new to website experimentation, we hope you’ll try out the new Google Analytics Content Experiments.

This is just the first step we’re taking to simplify website testing, and we look forward to integrating more features into the experimentation framework of Google Analytics. Content Experiments will be gradually rolling out over the next few weeks to all users. Once available in your account, you can start testing by going to Google Analytics and accessing Experiments within the Content section of your reports.

We’ll continue to have a strong network of Google Analytics Certified Partners who will be able to provide advanced support for Analytics, including Content Experiments. If you would like professional assistance in designing, implementing, or interpreting the results of a test, simply go to the Google Analytics Partner page and select "Website Optimizer" from the Specialization menu.  You can also find more information in our help center. Please try out Content Experiments and let us know what you think.

Happy testing!

Posted by Nir Tzemah, Google Analytics team

PUMA Kicks Up Order Rate 7% with Insights from Google Analytics and Viget

Google Analytics has a network of Certified Partners around the globe who provide valuable technical and analytical services, but I often get asked about the impact of their work. To that end, we help our partners publish case studies to showcase their best projects, and we’re featuring these studies in a series of posts in the coming months.

PUMA is a highly recognizable and well-respected sport/lifestyle company. They have a global audience and a world-class website, but still they strive to beat their own records. They know the best athletes use data and strict regimens to improve their performance, so applied the same concepts to their website with great results.

PUMA had a few strategic goals. They wanted to measure all engaging elements of their dynamic website, beyond just simple pageviews. They also wanted their site to be optimized for each key region around the world. Finally, they wanted to improve ecommerce conversion rates across the board.

   



Using Google Analytics, and with the help of Viget Labs - a Google Analytics Certified Partner based in Washington, DC - PUMA implemented a robust measurement strategy, including the use of Event Tracking to capture how visitors engaged with the dynamic parts of their website. They then set up website optimization tests to inform improved website design leading to a higher conversion rate. Viget also suggested they use Google Analytics Custom Variables to segment their customers from each test variation. 

Working with Viget and Google Analytics, PUMA has gained a detailed understanding of visitor behavior, enabling them to optimize their entire web site experience. Being customer focused and improving their digital experience translated into considerable gains in revenue. Check out the full case study of their experience here: PUMA Kicks Up Order Rate 7% with Insights from Google Analytics and Viget






PUMA’s team were extremely pleased with the business impact and we’re delighted Google Analytics could help them. You can read what their Head of Digital Strategy thought of the project:

“Google Analytics lets us help our customers. We’ve seen some spectacular results working with Viget, and we’re thrilled with GA as a tool. For every decision we’ve faced, GA’s been there to answer the call.” — Jay Basnight, Head of Digital Strategy, PUMA

Improvements like this aren’t just limited to big global brands, businesses of all sizes can take advantage of these features with Google Analytics if they’re willing to plan their web analytics strategy around business goals. If you feel like Google Analytics isn’t helping to drive more revenue for your business, you may want to re-assess your analytics strategy. If you don’t know where to begin, you might benefit from a consultation with a Google Analytics Certified Partner.

Let us know in the comments what your biggest challenges are and we’ll run a series of guest posts from our partner network to share advice on the most popular topics.

Posted by Jesse Nichols, Google Analytics Partner Manager

Greater insights from the Site Speed report - Technical section

Speed is an important part of the users experience of your website and is a key way to understand and improve your site performance. So we’re happy to extend the Site Speed report with more metrics in Google Analytics to help site owners improve performance.

So what’s new?
In the Site Speed report we’re exposing a new set of metrics available in the “Technical” section that can be found in each one of the Site Speed tabs (Explorer, Performance, and Map Overlay).


   Where to access the Site Speed Technical section 



   Site Speed with Technical section metrics overlayed

What are the new metrics and what you can do with them?
The Technical section of the Explorer and Map Overlay tabs provides details on the network and server metrics. Similarly, the additional sections of the Performance tab shows summaries for each of these metrics. These network and server metrics are one component of Avg. Page Load Time; the other component is browser time, i.e., the browser overhead for parsing and executing the JavaScript, rendering the page and other overheads such as fetching additional resources (scripts/stylesheets/images).

In addition to Avg. Page Load Time, the Site Speed report displays the following network and server metrics in the Technical sections:

• Avg. Redirection Time - the time spent in redirection before fetching this page. If there are no redirects, the value for this metric is expected to be 0.
• Avg. Domain Lookup Time - the average amount of time spent in DNS lookup for this page.
• Avg. Server Connection Time - the time needed for the user to connect to your server.
• Avg. Server Response Time - the time for your server to respond to a user request, including the network time from the user’s location to your server.
• Avg. Page Download Time - the time to download your page.

If you notice that some of the metrics are higher than expected, review your site operations and test if changes lead to improvements. For example, if you notice that Avg. Domain Lookup Time is high, you might want to change your DNS provider. A high Server Connection Time, on the other hand, is a metric that you might not be able to reduce. 

To most significantly increase your website’s speed, evaluate your Site Speed report for metrics that have the largest values and target those for improvement. Below is a list of actions that you can take to help solve issues with each of these metrics: 

• High Avg. Redirection Time - analyze whether the redirects are necessary. Also check sources to see if a specific referrer is causing high redirect latency.
• High Avg. Domain Lookup Time - consider changing DNS provider that provides consistent and lower response times.
• High Avg. Server Response Time - reduce backend processing time or place a server closer to users.
• High Avg. Page Download Time - reduce your initial data size.

Looking for additional ways to improve your site speed? Be sure to view your site’s performance by browser type and Geo location. Your pages may need to be optimized to display faster on a specific browser or for a specific country. Visit the Map Overlay tab to gain insights by region and add “browser” as a secondary dimension to see the impact by browser. 

We hope you’ll gain insights into how your site performs for your users from this newly updated report and be able to use it to optimize your pages.

Thanks,
The Google Analytics Site Speed team

Site Speed, now even easier to access

Speed matters. Faster loading pages mean more visitors land on your site instead of waiting in frustration or leaving. The Google Analytics Site Speed report will help you learn which of your pages are underperforming, so you can address this potential barrier to your conversions.

The Site Speed report was launched a few months ago, but it required site owners to add an additional Google Analytics tracking code to see data in this report. Based on increasing user requests we are now making this feature available to all Google Analytics users and removing the requirement to modify your Google Analytics tracking code. As of today all Google Analytics accounts will automatically have the Site Speed report available with no extra work required from you.


Want to check out Site Speed in your account? It’s easy. Go to the content section and click the Site Speed report. There are three tabs within the Site Speed report for you to review: Explorer, Performance, & Map Overlay. Each provides a slightly different view of your site speed performance. The Explorer tab provides an overview of load time by page. The Performance tab buckets your site speed performance by page load time. The Map Overlay tab provides a view of your site speed experienced by users in different geographical regions (cities, countries, continents). Below are snapshots of the Performance & Map Overlay tabs.





If you have already been using the Site Speed report through the additional tracking script, you can keep using the report as before. Since the tracking code “ _trackPageLoadTime” is no longer required to enable Site Speed report, going forward Google Analytics will simply ignore it.

Interested in understanding the details of the Site Speed report sampling rate, tracking of virtual pageviews, and impact of redirects?

• Sample rate - Google Analytics samples your page load times to generate this report. For the more technical minded users you can adjust this sampling rate by adding to your Google Analytics code the function - setSiteSpeedSampleRate. 

• Support for virtual pages - If a virtual path was used in the _trackPageview call, that path will now also be associated with any site speed data collected from that page.

• Redirection time - Redirects are now counted as part of the "page load time" metric, so it represents the total time a user perceives of your site loading. Current users of the Site Speed report may notice a small increase in page load times as a result of this update.

Still have questions? Check out the Google code site and Help Center articles on Site Speed. We hope you’ll gain insights from this newly updated report and be able to use it to optimize your pages.  Please share with us your thoughts on this report and any suggestions for future updates. 

- Nir Tzemah, Google Analytics Team