Upgrade to Google Analytics 4 to Enhance Your Analytics Options 

GA4 is an analytics service designed for how today’s consumers shop, with the privacy options they desire and require. Whether your potential high-value customers are browsing on their phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop, GA4 tracks every interaction. GA4 captures events, including clicks and scrolls,  across platforms; allows you to assign different categories to these events; and offers your business a holistic view of the customer’s journey while complying with privacy rules and regulations. GA4 streamlines your tracking and reporting, with all the tracked platforms monitored from a single dashboard. GA4 leverages machine learning for conversion modeling and to automate key insights about your customer behavior. 

With first-party data usage at the center of GA4’s design, your customers have more control over how their data is shared through options like Consent mode. This mode adjusts what data is collected based on user preference, while still allowing for the collection of non-identifying data, such as functional and aggregate information. GA4’s use of server-side tagging improves attribution for conversion and offers a deeper understanding of the specifics of the customer’s journey. GA4 offers an opportunity to effectively collect accurate, insightful first-party data that can benefit your strategy in real-time, with no need to rely on third-party data. 

While GA4 is an upgrade from Universal Analytics, (because UA is built around page views and sessions on a single device and GA4 tracks events across platforms), the two platforms work differently and offer different reporting and metrics. You’ll need to invest time to understand what options are carried over to GA4 and how new features may replace or augment current reporting. By migrating to GA4 now, you can take time to learn GA4’s interface, explore its features options, and develop your marketing and analytics strategies before support for UA ends. Google’s helpful comparison of UA metrics with GA4 offers insight into how metrics might report in different ways after the migration and what new metrics are available. Google’s support resources are a critical tool when navigating this transition and exploring new options, such as enhanced attribution features and modeling that includes cross-channel rules-based models, an Ads-preferred rules-based model, and data-driven attribution. 

Ensure a Successful Migration to Google Analytics 4

Haven’t had time to upgrade to GA4 yet? To ensure a seamless migration, make sure you communicate the updated migration to all your channel stakeholders, and plan for a reporting transition period as your business and team get up to speed with GA4. The sooner you migrate your data, the better: Standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing data on July 1, and eventually these properties will go away entirely, taking your historical reports with them if you don’t export them ahead of time.

As of March 2023, if you haven’t created your own GA4 account, Google has already built one for you. Google will automatically create a basic GA4 account for your business that copies over your UA configurations.

What if you don’t want this profile but you missed the opt out date? In the Admin section of your account, select your UA property, click GA4 Setup Assistant, and click Disconnect from your “Connected Property”. After that, you can go ahead to your GA4 property and delete it. If you’ve created your own GA4 property, you can control which configurations you’d like to copy over.  

Future-Proof Your Business with NetElixir’s AI Solutions

Check out our GA4 Strategies For Your Brand on demand webinar for a discussion between our Senior Director of Client Strategy  Tauseef Syed and Google’s Agency Development Manager Billy McLellan.

Our analytics technical experts can work with you to ensure your e-commerce business is set up for success with Google Analytics 4. We’re here to answer your questions and share best practices that can inform your digital marketing strategy now and into the future. By crafting a strategy that collects and leverages first-party data, your business can field targeted campaigns that respond in real-time to customer behavior.

AI-powered modules are the future of digital marketing, and at NetElixir we are AI-first. GA4 uses machine learning to analyze user behavior, offer predictions, and help your business optimize the user experience. We can help you access real-time insights that will maximize the quality of your data inputs to ensure you are getting the most out of your tracking, reporting, and analysis. Our proprietary AI-powered digital marketing platform, LXRInsights, seamlessly integrates with Google and other platforms to help you understand and reach your customers.

Additional Resources

• Go Organic: Your SEO Strategy In The Cookieless World
• Your Social Strategy For the Cookieless Future
• Web Development For the Cookieless Future

The post Benefits of Google Analytics 4 appeared first on NetElixir.

A year ago, we suggested that it was time for e-commerce businesses to start thinking about making the switch to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for their tracking and reporting needs. Today, we at NetElixir are here to tell you that if you haven’t already begun ‌implementing GA4 for your e-commerce platform, the time to start is now. 

Why Should My E-Commerce Business Upgrade To Google Analytics 4 Now?

Google has announced that Universal Analytics (UA) will be phased out next year. UA properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023 and Universal Analytics 360 properties will no longer process new hits starting on October 1, 2023. While summer 2023 may feel far off, in reality e-commerce businesses that use UA have just over a year to make a smooth transition.

By making the leap now, your business can immediately begin to gather historical data to support your digital marketing strategy for the future. If you begin using GA4 sooner rather than later, by the time UA is sunset – when many of your competitors will finally make the switch – your business will have had at least a full year’s data recorded and analyzed. You will be a step ahead for the 2023 holiday season! Your 2022 holiday data will have been processed and analyzed in GA4’s algorithm to better inform your future holiday strategies.

In fact, by using dual-tagging, it’s possible to begin building out your GA4 implementation while keeping your UA implementation in place for the time being. This allows your business to build that critical historical record while still accessing ongoing insights from UA. As you start to understand and use GA4 and its tools, you can compare and contrast the data collected and insights offered through both GA4 and UA to better recognize how patterns you have seen in UA might appear in GA4 in the future. When the time comes to shift completely to GA4, you can do so with confidence.

However, it is important to note that GA4 does not share e-commerce and event data structure with UA. The best practice for setting up e-commerce data collection in Google Analytics 4 properties is to have two implementations in place: one for UA and one for your GA4 property. We at NetElixir can provide flexible GA4 packing from core e-commerce events implementation to UA events migration to ensure your data is being accurately tracked, measured, and analyzed.

How Can GA4 Help My Business To Understand Customer Journeys And Events Across Platforms While Meeting Privacy Standards?

When UA was introduced in 2012, it had only been five years since the unveiling of the iPhone. Because e-commerce shopping and advertising were not yet the multi-platform experiences they are today, UA’s tracking was based on user sessions (most often via web browser) and used third-party cookie data to measure key data points such as conversion and attribution. 

GA4 is the most recent version of Google Analytics. Today, as customers move between email, web, and social media apps on their phones as well as browsing and communicating on computers, all with an expectation of privacy, it’s important that tracking captures each event in a customer’s journey. GA4 collects event-based data across platforms, assigning different categories to these events to better understand and analyze a customer’s activities and interactions with your brand. GA4 was designed with built-in compliance to GDPR, CCPA, and other regulatory developments, including the requirement that IP addresses must no longer be tracked. 

GA4 is an analytics tool built for the cookieless future that allows you to monitor web, mobile, and app analytics on a single dashboard. With a more in-depth integration system and audience list, users are afforded a robust understanding of the customer journey as well as more informed ads targeting. GA4 uses advanced machine learning for customer tracking across platforms and devices, with conversion modeling offering knowledge where the loss of third-party cookie tracking leaves holes. GA4 automates certain customer behavior insights, such as showing how changes in new customers’ activity connects to a rise in demand for a certain category.

How Can Netelixir Help You Succeed On GA4 In The Post-Cookie World?

Need some expert assistance getting set up with GA4? Whether your business uses Miva, Shopify, WooCommerce, or another standard e-commerce platform, NetElixir can handle the complete technical implementation of GA4. We offer professional setup of GA4 and support crafting website goals and conversion funnels. NetElixir can also:

• Create more advanced tracking for your business through customized tracking pixels.
• Upgrade your pixels to GTM or global site tag prerequisite for GA4.
• Perform post-implementation data validation and other setup-related maintenance checks.
• Institute best practices around reporting insights and tracking audiences and events‌.

GA4 can provide your business with valuable analysis from your customer data, and NetElixir can make sure GA4 is implemented across your e-commerce website to maximize its capabilities. 

Want to learn more? Request a consultation with our experts today.

Further reading

• Our latest e-book: Preparing for a Cookieless World
• NetElixir + Google webinar: The Future of Analytics and Thriving in A Cookieless World
• Preparing for the Cookieless World With Google Analytics 4
• Using Data to Guide Your Content

The post Google Analytics 4 & Cookieless Tracking: Why You Need to Upgrade Now appeared first on NetElixir.

In today’s context and to thrive in the digital landscape, businesses need reliable and real-time data to continue to make strategic decisions. Tracking tools like Google Analytics, Omniture, Supermetrics, and more have funneled granular information surrounding website performance, market trends, consumer information, and more to businesses to assist in their growth journey.

Metrics like average monthly users, bounce rates, and customer demographics provide the foundation for strategic decisions. Tracking conversions, revenue attribution, and more related to the customers’ journey provides a more holistic view of a brand’s impact. 

While there are ample resources for tracking data, the key lies in seeing crucial data points in a more logical and cohesive way in order to glean actionable next steps. At NetElixir, we help our clients with apt data visualization through Microsoft’s Power BI tool for better representation and smarter decision-making. 

How Does Power BI Empower Our Clients?

Depicting Trends and Anomalies

Detecting data trends is a crucial step to identifying opportunities as well as anomalies. A critical assessment of both data gaps and opportunities allows a brand to correct their mistakes, test something new, and learn how they can best grow and evolve. 

In a simple example, the below graph depicts an increase in revenue in the months of May and June, whereas the order numbers had a dip in the month of June specifically:

This may indicate the fact that the average order value in the month of June exceeded that of May; hence, a further look into what products were bought, what promotions were running, and more will illuminate potential strategies. Even though the transaction numbers dipped, the revenue contribution was almost the same —maybe a new product launched that customers swarmed to buy or maybe a higher free shipping threshold rounded out carts. 

In the day-to-day maintenance of the brand, looking at isolated pieces of data is important to understanding key metrics. However, cross-analyzing data between departments is crucial to creating sustainable long-term plans and understanding how different business facets work together to achieve end goals. Executives managing thousands of observations and multi-dimensional data bits need a more sophisticated way to detect and analyze all these data points and their intersections — here is where NetElixir’s Power BI dashboard can greatly empower brands in their trend analysis.

Actionable Insights For Better Decision Making

Data-driven decision making leads to new business opportunities, a stricter control over branding, and more sustainable growth. When we analyze accessible visual data, we see an overview of a brand’s core activities and omnichannel impact. 

For example, in our work with a B2B brand that supplies health care equipment, we harnessed the power of consumer data to optimize their omnichannel growth strategy. Diving into their product data across channels, we saw some products perform better on Amazon compared to Google search. Rather than pulling the product from ads completely, we picked the top-performing products for each channel for new marketing campaigns that worked in tandem to further the brand’s end goal of increasing revenue.

A cohesive dashboard provides a better vantage point to notice trends and new market opportunities. 

Individual And Integrated Dashboards

By using Power BI, we can share a full-fledged e-commerce dashboard that combines multi-channel data points to share unique insights into overall marketing performance. We also have a Power BI dashboard for individual verticals like SEO, paid social, and search. 

Below is a demo of what one of our paid search dashboards looks like:

We can easily compare performance between various platforms and assess how to best allocate resources to make the most of your ad budget. In the above graph, we can deduce the assisted revenue performance of a product in Google vis-à-vis Bing during a selected time frame. The left chart represents assisted revenue from Bing, while the right graph represents the same numbers from Google. In a similar way, we can also compare metrics like impressions, clicks, orders, CPC, and cost. The data will dynamically appear within your dashboard. 

Our integrated dashboard shares the breakdown of which channels drive the greatest revenue percentage for your brand, as seen below:

In the above illustration, the first graph depicts conversion rate and revenue trajectory, while the second one portrays sessions and value per session within a selected time period. We can analyze the data further by selecting specific dates and various channels like direct, organic, or referral and further segment the results by devices. Upon selection, the data changes dynamically and helps you get the desired output within seconds.

Learn which investments are contributing the most to your brand’s growth so you can optimize your holistic strategy.

NetElixir’s Recommended Next Steps

While we take pride in being able to share actionable and intuitive insights with the help of our owned customized dashboards, the NetElixir Power BI team is also keen to explore further opportunities.

Our Power BI solution is part of our analytics package that helps you get the most out of your website. Our goal is to assist clients with custom reporting in BI basis their requirements. If you have any questions or want to make the most out of your data, feel free to reach out to us!

Further Reading

• Who Is Your High-Value Customer?
• Staying On Trend With The Evolution of SEO
• Google Analytics: Advanced Features and Reports

Written by Ragamalika Chekuri, SEO Analyst and Antara Chaudhuri, Sr. Client Ops Manager

The post Empowering You with Data Insights Through NetElixir’s Power BI Dashboard appeared first on NetElixir.

Google Analytics is a simple tool that helps brands track everything that is happening on their website. By running Google Analytics, you can definitively report how your website is performing and make adjustments to bring in more users.

What Does Google Analytics Show?

Google Analytics tracks important information about your website’s users to help you better engage with them. Reports from Google Analytics show:

• How many people are visiting your website.
• How visitors are finding your website (redirect through social media, direct search, etc.).
• How much time they are spending on your site and different pages.
• Your site’s most visited pages.

To get started with tracking and understanding your website traffic, first you need to set up a Google Analytics account. It’s easy and free to use! 

Simply go to Google Analytics, click “Set up for Free,”  and enter your information.

Once entered, scroll down and click “Next”.

Because you want to set up Google Analytics in WordPress, install it on your website by clicking “Web”.

Scroll down and click “Next.” Enter your website name and URL you want to track, as pictured below.

Then, click “Create.” You have successfully created your Google Analytics account!

How to Set Up Google Analytics in WordPress

After creating your Google Analytics account, you want to connect this account with your WordPress account. Google Analytics is a simple, well-coded, and powerful plugin. To install it, go to Dashboard → Plugins → Add New.

Type “GA google analytics” in the plugins search box. The plugin should be at the top of the list, at the top left, pictured below.

Install this plugin and then click “Activate.”

Next, visit the “Plugin Settings” Panel on the left hand side of your WordPress dashboard. Enter your Google Analytics Tracking ID (which was given to you after you set up your Google Analytics account). 

Universal analytics is a default standard for collecting and organizing user data to more accurately measure user behavior. Global site tag helps track conversions across multiple events and limits managing multiple tags for multiple products. Legacy is a library for measuring how users interact with your site. It is recommended you use a newer tracking version with a new Google Analytics account.

Finally, configure any other plugin settings as needed. 

When you are done, save changes. Within 24 to 48 hours, you can log in to your Google Analytics account to view your traffic.

For any additional questions about your Google Analytics account, WordPress features, or e-commerce website in general, NetElixir’s tech support team is here to help!

Further Reading

• What Google Analytics 4 Means for Retailers
• Google Ad Tips for Small Businesses
• Why You Should Add Custom Alerts to Google Analytics

The post Setting up Google Analytics in WordPress appeared first on NetElixir.

For many years, companies have been using Google Analytics to make profitable business decisions, as well as to understand the overall landscape of their business. Even after the rise of many analytics platforms, the majority of the businesses continue to use GA as it simplifies data and presents it in several ways at no cost. To further improve the tracking of a user’s journey, Google has launched GA4 with better AI-powered insights, less cross-platform gaps, cleaner data visualizations, improved engagement tracking, and more. 

GA4 allows you to see your website activity and visitors through a different lens. Instead of page views and events, you will track every interaction as an event with associated parameters. Instead of goals, you will configure conversions. Instead of views, you will set up data streams. So, regardless of the state of your current GA implementation, you will need to re-think and re-design how you capture the interactions, metrics, and segments you need in order to measure and optimize your website, app, or digital marketing initiatives.

So, what does GA4 mean for digital marketers? Take a look for yourself:

NetElixir has an array of analytics solutions to help you reconfigure your GA4 data capture. 

For Further Reading:

• Why You Should Add Custom Alerts to Google Analytics
• App Store Optimization Tips

The post What Google Analytics 4 Means For Marketers appeared first on NetElixir.

As a marketer, it often becomes difficult to keep an eye on every channel’s performance or any metric fluctuation without spending an inordinate amount of time. It would be great if we had an automated way to receive notifications when such fluctuations happen.

Do we have a feature in Google Analytics to get notified immediately of any major fluctuations?

Google Analytics has a useful feature to help you address such risks called Custom Alerts. These are events that can be configured in the GA platform. You can set up a condition for any sudden fluctuation in any important metrics and have a message sent to the provided email addresses. This will allow you and your organization be proactive rather than reactive to any sudden changes in performance.

How to Create Custom Alerts in Google Analytics

Custom Alerts can be created in Admin > View> Custom alerts> +New custom alert

You can give the alert an appropriate name and apply it to any views. You can choose between three alert periods (Day, Week, or Month) and apply any condition. (Refer to the below screenshot.)

Examples of Custom Alerts

Huge Change in Traffic: There might a day when your website traffic is down and no one has noticed. This will be reflected in the drop in traffic in your reports. A Custom Alert can be set up to trigger when traffic is down by a certain percentage (20%, 30%, 50% – a threshold can be set based on history and experience) to help you identify this immediately. An email will be sent as soon as the change in traffic crosses a set mark. A similar alert can be set up when there is a sudden surge in traffic. An alert for this can help you identify any other changes.

Drop in Transactions: An alert to identify a sudden decline in transactions can help you identify if there is an issue with the payment gateway or checkout page on your site. It could just be related to seasonality or a change in advertising strategy, but alerts will help keep us honest.

Apart from the above scenarios, it might also make sense to add alerts for changes in Conversion Rate (could be website-related or channel strategy changes), Bounce Rate (website issues, relevance, UX-related), and Average Order Value (could be related to a specific merchandising shift or any promotional changes).

KPIs differ significantly depending on the type of industry, so make sure to list the ones relevant to your business and set them up accordingly. Below are a few examples that can be used in alerts.

Custom Alerts can also be created for any specific campaign or keyword targets. For example, we could have a campaign created for a promotion or discount with a specific landing page that just runs for a week, and we want to monitor it on daily basis. We can create alerts for that particular campaign, as well.

Take advantage of this valuable feature in Google Analytics to stay proactive in monitoring the metrics that are most important to your business performance. If you’d like additional guidance in implementing Custom Alerts or any other advanced features in GA, we encourage you to check out our analytics solutions for ecommerce businesses.

The post Why You Should Add Custom Alerts to Google Analytics appeared first on NetElixir.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” – Peter Drucker

If you’re a retailer familiar with Google Analytics, you know the difference that data can make. It’s one thing to know how your business is performing; it’s another to have the numbers that tell the story of why.

Google Analytics (GA) is a potent tool that can generate a plethora of data regarding how your website is attracting, retaining, and (hopefully) converting visitors. But even the most seasoned GA professional may not be taking full advantage of its power. GA boasts a range of advanced features and reports that offer actionable insights to help retailers improve their website experience for customers.

Whether you’re a beginner or veteran user, there’s always something new to learn about GA. We’re going to take a look at some of the most important features and reports retailers should incorporate into their repertoires. These comprise four main categories:

• Goals and Funnels
• Cross-Device Tracking
• Channel Attribution
• Data Studio

Goals and Funnels

It’s important to have goals in life. You probably heard that from your parents, your high school guidance counselor, and now you’re hearing it from us, too. But in order to use Google Analytics effectively, you need to establish exactly what you’re aiming to get visitors to do on your website.

In the context of GA, a goal represents a completed activity (known as a conversion) that reflects a specific success event. Examples of goals include making a purchase, submitting contact information, creating an account, playing a video, or downloading a file.

Goals can take the form of macro goals and micro goals.

Macro goals are directly related to a company’s profitability. They’re the ultimate goals of your website, whether that’s making a purchase, filling out a lead form, or scheduling an appointment. For ecommerce businesses that sell products on their websites, for example, a product purchase would be a macro goal.

Micro goals are any miscellaneous conversions or actions taken by a prospect which might ultimately lead to a macro conversion. They help you better understand a visitor’s engagement with your website content.

Goal Types

Goals can be classified into one of several categories depending on their ultimate purpose. These include destination, duration, pages/screens per session, and event goals. See the chart below for more info and examples.

Smart Goals

When Smart Goals are enabled, Google Analytics uses machine learning to examine a variety of signals to determine which website sessions are most likely to produce conversions. The best-performing sessions are converted into “Smart Goals,” which can be imported into Google Ads to optimize ad performance.

Funnels

Once you’ve figured out which goals are most relevant to your business, it’s time to think about how your website visitors are reaching those goals. This is where funnels come into play.

Funnels are specific to destination goals and help us understand customer interactions and exits throughout the site. While funnels don’t reflect the actual conversion path, they do show the critical path visitors take to reach a specific goal.

Funnels make it easy to see where users are entering and exiting the conversion process. This allows you to identify troublesome pages that are hindering visitors’ progress on the way to a conversion. Other key insights you can gain from funnel analysis include:

• Checkout process in need of redesign
• Identify out-of-stock products
• Products unavailable for certain geographies
• Poor navigation
• Limited payment options

Cross-Device Tracking

Today’s consumer isn’t limited to only one device. Think about your own daily routine: You’re likely on a desktop at work, browsing with your smartphone on the bus, and perhaps using a tablet somewhere in between. If you fail to recognize every device on which a user visits your site, you’re neglecting the big picture.

In Google Analytics, cross-device tracking is a process of stitching together a customer’s interactions with a website across multiple devices. This enables you to take a holistic view of the customer journey. If a user first visits on a mobile device and later returns on a desktop to make a purchase, you can see the entire journey thanks to cross-device tracking. This is achieved through implementing User-ID tracking and enabling Google Signals.

Cross-device tracking unlocks a series of reports to give you a better idea of your customers’ device habits. These include the Device Overlap report (see below), which shows how many of your visitors use each device or combination of devices.

Other useful reports include:

• Device Paths report: Displays the sequence of devices used to engage with your site.
• Channels report: Allows you to see which channels (organic search, paid search, direct, email, etc.) and devices are driving the best performance.
• Acquisition Device report: Determine how many users that arrive on one type of device convert on the same type of device, how many convert on a different type of device, and how many simply don’t convert.

Applications of Cross-Device Tracking

Here are just a few of the ways cross-device tracking will make your life easier:

• Give your remarketing strategy a tune-up based on user/device clusters.
• Recognize the relevance of cross-device advertising.
• Optimize customer journeys based on popular devices.

Limitations of Cross-Device Tracking

While that all sounds great, cross-device tracking does come with a few drawbacks of which users should be aware:

• Data collected is not retroactive.
• You can’t apply segments like in other Google Analytics reports.
• Users must be logged into their Google accounts with ad personalization turned on to be captured by cross-device tracking.

Channel Attribution

When it comes to conversions, Google Analytics helps you give credit where it’s due. Attribution modeling is the process by which credit for a sale or transaction is assigned to one or more marketing touch points.

GA offers seven default attribution models. These include single-touch models like First Interaction and Last Interaction, as well as multi-touch models including Linear, Time Decay, Position-Based, and Data-Driven. You can also create up to 10 of your own custom attribution models per reporting view.

You can use the Model Comparison Tool to see how different attribution models change the valuation of your channels (see below). Experiment with models to determine which one is most appropriate for your business goals.

The potential insights are many, but keep these points in mind when using attribution modeling:

• Make sure all marketing campaigns are tagged and have campaign parameter tracking.
• A combination of conversions and cost per order is a better gauge of performance than only sales.
• You can use attribution models for goals other than ecommerce metrics.

Data Studio

Numbers are powerful in their own right, but sometimes a dazzling visual is required to really drive the message home. If you’ve ever struggled to communicate the insights in your data to your organization’s decision makers, Data Studio is the answer.

Data Studio is a feature in Google Analytics that combines data from different sources to build highly visual, easy-to-use dynamic reports. You can easily pull information from GA, spreadsheets, Google Ads, and more to tell the most compelling story.

The Data Studio interactive dashboard allows you to organize and present your data in the most effective format. These reports are easy to build, read, share, and customize, and ensure your statistical analysis makes the necessary impact.

Upgrade Your GA Skills

We’ve put a lot of information on your plate, but becoming more proficient in Google Analytics is truly worth your while if you’re an online retailer.

To make it a little easier, we’re offering a 10-point Google Analytics audit. This overview of your GA account includes goal setup, funnel configuration, enhanced ecommerce reporting, and more. Just email analytics@netelixir.com to get started!

The post Google Analytics: Advanced Features and Reports for Retailers appeared first on NetElixir.

Google Analytics is an essential tool for online retailers, but the sheer amount of data available – and the countless ways to organize and interpret that data – can overwhelm even the most veteran user. Through this in-depth, educational session, we aim to make GA more accessible to businesses of all sizes and industries.

On Thursday, July 11th at 2:00 PM ET, our Director of Analytics will explore several of the advanced features and reports available in Google Analytics. We’ll share how to leverage your data into actionable insights to help you make smarter marketing decisions.

Want a preview of the topics we’ll cover? Here are some of the central themes we’ll address during the webinar:

• The importance of goals in Google Analytics
• Understanding cross-device activity
• Selecting the attribution model that best suits your business
• Taking advantage of Google’s new data visualization tool

This is a great opportunity to see first-hand how much of a difference Google Analytics can make for your business. Even if you feel like you already have a firm handle on GA, there may be a few features you’re not using effectively to better steer your strategy and drive stronger results.

Click here to register now and mark your calendar. If you know anyone else who may benefit from this event, feel free to provide them the registration link, as well. We can’t wait for you to join us!

The post Unlock Google Analytics’ Advanced Features & Reporting appeared first on NetElixir.

Methodology

We used LXRInsights, our proprietary analysis tool, to evaluate holiday traffic data from over 400 million ecommerce website visits across our client base. Our analysis began on Thanksgiving Day (11/23) and continued through Christmas Eve (12/24). We collected data from Google AdWords, Bing, Yahoo Gemini, and directly from the ecommerce sites.

Our Projections vs. Actual Results

Our initial projection of 10% holiday sales growth was somewhat conservative, but we still ended up very much in the ballpark. We ultimately saw U.S. sales increase by 13% overall. This supports what we found in our Thanksgiving weekend analysis, as well as last year’s holiday trends.

Ecommerce Sales Growth by Region

While each region saw a notable uptick in sales, the largest came from the Southern US, which nearly doubled the national average at 24.3% growth. Studies have shown that Florida, Texas, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Oklahoma rank among the fastest growing state economies (Source: U.S. News). This coincides with our results and highlights the region as a major source of opportunity for retailers.

Paid Search YoY Trends

We tracked double-digit percentage growth in CPC, impressions, conversions, and average order value (AOV). Since 2012, ecommerce has nearly doubled its share of total retail sales, which helps explain the 14.2% jump in average CPC. Increased competition among mobile advertisers also plays a role. Over the past year, the gap between desktop and mobile CPCs has shrunk from 35% to 15%.

AOV showed an eyebrow-raising leap of almost 20%. We discovered that although the value of cart items remained mostly the same, the number of items increased. This makes sense as consumers grow comfortable with online shopping and make more of their purchases online rather than in-store. Rising free shipping thresholds likely contribute as well. Buyers are willing to add more items to their cart to get that coveted free shipping.

Mobile Visits and Sales Increased in 2017

Mobile continues to grow as a force in ecommerce. We saw increases in mobile share of visits in almost all major product categories. With more connected devices in play and retailers providing more user-friendly mobile experiences, it’s understandable that consumers are doing more of their browsing on mobile.

The share of sales for mobile has also grown, albeit more modestly. We have a few theories as to why. Many consumers may be practicing “showrooming” by researching products and comparing prices in-store, and then buying offline to get the item more quickly. It’s also a fair bet that buyers are still more comfortable inputting credit card information on desktop sites rather than mobile.

Overall, there was much to celebrate for ecommerce, and NetElixir CEO Udayan Bose envisions many of these trends continuing in 2018.

“This holiday season data shows overall positive growth,” he said. “Consumers are continuing to move to online shopping for their holiday purchases and are also using their mobile devices more for purchasing in specific retail categories like cosmetics. With the mobile visit data trending in a steeper upward direction, we can expect that ecommerce figures will be higher next holiday season.”

Hungry for even more insights? Read our Future of Search Marketing guide to get our predictions about where digital is going in 2018 and beyond.

Watch the Webinar On-Demand

If you missed our full webinar with the holiday results, retail insights and SEM hacks, you can watch the complete replay below.

The post Put a Bow on the 2017 Holiday Season with Our Ecommerce Recap appeared first on NetElixir.

Now, if we look at the both candidates’ websites, we’ll get some interesting insights. According to the data aggregate site, SimilarWeb, both sites are competing inch to inch for visitor attention. Look at the table below for the stats from SimilarWeb.com:

Interesting, right? Can we say Hillary Clinton is marginally winning? No, not yet. We don’t have any predictions and there are still a few hours until we’ll find out. In short, politics is complicated. But, we can definitely learn from the digital campaigns involved.

Now, let us look at another set of Similarweb for data on the traffic sources to these websites.

Four striking points emerge from the above pie graphs:

• Social Media is the common favorite: For motives like influencing potential voters, social media proves to be the best medium. Both parties have invested significantly in social media. Parties have very aggressively adopted digital media this time. We see them going beyond Facebook or Twitter and getting into the likes of Gen Z media like Periscope or Instagram. As per Technavue, the social media ad spend has gone up by 600% over that of the previous election.

• Natural search favors Hillary: The republican candidate has got a higher share of traffic from organic search. However, Hillary scores over Trump in terms of the quality and effectiveness of the traffic. Look at the below table for the trust flow and citation flow of both websites. (Source: Majestic.com)

• Trump wins the referral traffic: Interestingly enough, the referral traffic for Donald Trump is much higher than that of Hillary. There’s probably a lot of content Mr. Trump has triggered out there in the web, directing traffic to his site. Smart guy, right?

• Dormant Email: Direct marketing with email remains very dormant with less investment. At least that’s what the graph says. However, political merchandise stores seem to be dealing with email marketing more professionally. Internet Retailer magazine quotes Thomas Phillips, Director of Merchandising, Hillary for America, the official campaign shop for Clinton, “We send abandoned cart emails. We’re constantly refining our marketing emails and messaging. We do A/B testing on email subject lines and offers.”

The US election digital savviness doesn’t stop at the websites of the candidates. The game of democracy has triggered sales of political merchandises. Bobble head dolls of Trump, Hillary, Obama, Sanders, etc are the hot favorites in such stores. Home pages of most of the gifting websites have adopted the theme of presidential elections. Check out the below screenshots of Cafepress and Zazzle.

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