If you're just getting started with Google Analytics what you want to focus on is setting up your conversion tracking. Within Google Analytics there are things called 'goals' that you need to set up. You set up one goal for your opt-in and one goal for sale, if you're structuring your site like we're recommending here.
The goal for opt-in is to track the number of people that actually subscribe. So, whatever page that they're taken to as the thank you page for giving you their name and email address on that forced opt-in or squeeze page is what you want to set up as one of the goals to trace the number of views of that. Then, from your sales letter, when people subscribe to your newsletter, the thank you page from that needs to be set up as a sales goal, so you can track the conversion rates on the opt-in and on the sales. Once you're tracking those then what you want to look at within Google Analytics' data is all of the different traffic sources that are coming to your website. Watch the conversion rate trends by traffic source.
This is a critical thing that very few people do, but it will help you determine within your own marketing if a particular campaign is effective or not. A lot of people will look at their global conversion rate and that will give you some decent information. However, to make decisions that you can take action on within your business you need to know, by traffic source, what the conversion rate of that individual traffic source is. Not all traffic sources are created equal and not all traffic sources are going to convert equally well for you.
If you're driving pay-per-click traffic to your opt-in page you might discover that traffic from your Google AdWords campaign might be converting at 40% to opt-in. If you look at your Yahoo campaign and discover that's only converting at 20% that tells you that you need to make some tweaks and changes to your Yahoo campaign. Either improve the keywords you're targeting there or try to get it to better match Google or, perhaps, just for whatever offer you're making, traffic from Yahoo is just not as targeted as qualified as traffic from Google.
Once you have those goals set up, look at your traffic sources and your conversion rates by traffic sources to determine where you want to spend more money or invest more time driving traffic. Bret Ridgway is co-founder of the Newsletter Formula. For your copy of the free report "7 Ways to Make Money with Newsletters and Continuity Programs" visit http://www.NewsletterFormula.com
The goal for opt-in is to track the number of people that actually subscribe. So, whatever page that they're taken to as the thank you page for giving you their name and email address on that forced opt-in or squeeze page is what you want to set up as one of the goals to trace the number of views of that. Then, from your sales letter, when people subscribe to your newsletter, the thank you page from that needs to be set up as a sales goal, so you can track the conversion rates on the opt-in and on the sales. Once you're tracking those then what you want to look at within Google Analytics' data is all of the different traffic sources that are coming to your website. Watch the conversion rate trends by traffic source.
This is a critical thing that very few people do, but it will help you determine within your own marketing if a particular campaign is effective or not. A lot of people will look at their global conversion rate and that will give you some decent information. However, to make decisions that you can take action on within your business you need to know, by traffic source, what the conversion rate of that individual traffic source is. Not all traffic sources are created equal and not all traffic sources are going to convert equally well for you.
If you're driving pay-per-click traffic to your opt-in page you might discover that traffic from your Google AdWords campaign might be converting at 40% to opt-in. If you look at your Yahoo campaign and discover that's only converting at 20% that tells you that you need to make some tweaks and changes to your Yahoo campaign. Either improve the keywords you're targeting there or try to get it to better match Google or, perhaps, just for whatever offer you're making, traffic from Yahoo is just not as targeted as qualified as traffic from Google.
Once you have those goals set up, look at your traffic sources and your conversion rates by traffic sources to determine where you want to spend more money or invest more time driving traffic. Bret Ridgway is co-founder of the Newsletter Formula. For your copy of the free report "7 Ways to Make Money with Newsletters and Continuity Programs" visit http://www.NewsletterFormula.com
