Tag Archives: Business Insights

Retailers: Three Insights to Drive Q1 Results

Now that we’ve survived the holiday season, it’s time to get the year started with some Q1 insights from Google Analytics!  Over the holiday season, retailers are inundated with data about the best shopping days, when to start their sales, and predictions about which items will be popular.  But what to do once the furor dies down?  How can retailers make the most of Q1?  

Here at Google Analytics, we delved into our Q1 data from 2013 and 2014 in the US to provide some insights to guide you in the first quarter of 2015.  In particular, the weeks around Valentine’s Day and the Super Bowl provided some notable trends.  Our analysis encompasses millions of businesses large and small who are using Google Analytics.  See the end of this article for more about our dataset.

The Day of the Big Game:  A Low Point for Online Shopping
We took a look at the first big marketing event of Q1:  Super Bowl Sunday.  The day of the big game, we saw lower numbers across the board.  Sessions were down 11% compared to the average for the quarter.  Similarly, transactions and conversion rates were down on average 16% and 5% respectively.  In both 2013 and 2014, the sessions and transaction numbers for the day of the Super Bowl fall into the bottom quartile for the quarter.

Clearly, on the day of the game, online purchasing is not a priority.  However, as we see later on in this post, this period of time serves as the turning point for transactions and conversion rates in the quarter.  The brand advertising that is such a big part of Super Bowl Sunday may help businesses capitalize on increased consumer buying behavior later in the quarter.

Best Romantic Shopping Day:  The Sunday before Valentine’s Day
We also delved into the second big marketing event of Q1:  Valentine’s Day.  In particular, we evaluated the week preceding the big day to find any pre-holiday patterns.  It turns out that in both 2013 and 2014, the Sunday before Valentine’s Day sees the biggest spike in week-over-week transactions with an average bump of 10%.  The same holds true for conversion rates and sessions, with an average increase of 6% and 4% respectively.  Besides a week-over-week increase, we also see that transactions are 5% higher on that day than for the average Sunday in the quarter.  The bump in transactions could indicate that consumers are using that Sunday to find and purchase their gifts, making it a good opportunity to invest in getting consumers to your site for some Valentine’s Day shopping.  If you plan to invest in advertising for this holiday, one way to prepare for Valentine’s Day is to adjust your bids.

Between the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day:  The Q1 Turning Point
Unless you’re lucky enough to sell items for diet, exercise, or other big new year’s resolutions, retailers often see sales slow in Q1 as consumers reduce gift-buying.  The chart below shows that for most of January, transactions are indeed below the average for the quarter.  

When should retailers spend marketing dollars to bounce back from this holiday hangover?  We see that transactions in both 2013 and 2014 start to ramp up as the key marketing dates approach: Valentine’s Day and Super Bowl Sunday.  In particular, the week of February 5th (also known as the week after the Super Bowl and the week before Valentine’s Day) marks the first time that transactions hit the average or above for the quarter.  

The graph below shows that in 2013 the week after the Super Bowl was above the average, whereas in 2014 that week was at the quarterly average.  In both years, this week has the highest week over week growth in transactions and conversions rates for Q1 at 6% for both metrics.  Sessions, however, display only a 0.4% increase week-over-week, not even close to being the highest for the quarter.  Based on this information about sessions, it’s clear that the uptick in buying behavior is not simply a function of consumers spending more time online, it’s an indication of increased intent to purchase during the time they do spend online.  If we look at average conversion rates before that week compared to the average conversion rates for that week and the rest of the quarter, we see a 6% increase.


So, as you plan your budgets, promotions, and campaigns in Q1, keep in mind that consumer activity will tend to increase throughout the quarter.  In particular, transactions tend to get a big bump during the week between Super Bowl Sunday and Valentine’s Day.  We know it’s hard to get back in gear after the holidays, but we hope our insights will help you think clearly and creatively about your marketing plans in the first quarter.

About the Data & Charts 
In order to perform this analysis, we looked at billions of sessions from authorized Google Analytics clients who have shared their website data anonymously (read more).

Posted by Jocelyn Whittenburg and Daniel Waisberg


Refreshing “The Customer Journey to Online Purchase” – New Insights into Marketing Channels

Last year we introduced “The Customer Journey to Online Purchase” -- a tool that helped marketers visualize the roles played by marketing channels like paid search, email and display ads in their customers' journeys.

The goal was to help marketers learn more about the customer journeys for their industries. If social makes your customers aware, and email makes them convert -- or vice versa -- you can make sure you're in both places with the right kind of message.

Today we're happy to introduce a new improved version of the Customer Journey to Online Purchase, with a few key enhancements.  We’ve refreshed the data based on millions of consumer interactions, updated the industry classifications, and we’ve split out paid search so you can see the influence of brand and generic search terms on the purchase decision.

In each industry you can now see journeys for small, medium and large companies, which can often be quite different.
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For instance, the above image shows the journey for customers of small businesses in the shopping industry. Note that organic search is very often an "assist" interaction for these customers.
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Now here's the same journey for large shopping businesses. Note that display clicks and social are strongly assisting interactions -- while display didn’t even appear for the small businesses above. For both small and large businesses, a direct website visit is most likely to be the last interaction. Across industries, the differences from small to large businesses illustrate how different marketing strategies and customer profiles may lead to different buying behavior.

And there's more! Now you can drill down into each marketing channel for a closer look at the role it plays based on its position in the purchase path. Channels that occur more frequently in the beginning of the path are more likely to help generate awareness for your product, while the end of the path is closer to the customer’s purchase decision.
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In these charts, for example, we see the different roles that different channels play in the Shopping industry. One interesting insight is that all channels -- even those traditionally thought of as “upper funnel” or “lower funnel” -- occur throughout the purchase path, but a given channel may be more common at particular stages depending on its role (and depending on the industry).

Each marketing campaign and channel may have a different impact on customers depending on when they interact with it. Using what you learn from this tool, you can help adapt your marketing messaging to be more relevant and useful for your customers.

Try the Customer Journey to Online Purchase today. And for more helpful marketing insights, check out Measure What Matters Most: our new guide chock-full of suggestions on how to measure the impact of your marketing -- across channels -- to complement what you learn from the Customer Journey tool and take action to improve your marketing.

Happy analyzing!


Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Product Marketing Manager, Google Analytics

Ringing in the New Year – Behavior Trends and Insights

Last month we published an analysis of how people behave before and during the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. We saw the most important days of the year for retailers, how to take advantage of the top transaction days, and when to take action.

Today we are looking at the patterns of behavior over the holidays and into the new year with the objective of understanding how digital marketers can prepare for 2015.

After looking at data from the previous three years, we found two interesting insights:
  1. User behavior is significantly different from country to country, but very consistent from year to year within a particular country.
  2. The beginning of January can be a great time to offer new deals outside of the US.
Read on to learn more about the analysis we performed and how to take advantage of the trends we found, it will help you get a head start on 2015!

User Behavior Trends
Patterns can tell us a lot about data, they are intuitive and show us a lot of information at a glance. With that in mind, we produced the charts below to show how people behave around Christmas and New Year’s Eve. We wanted to understand the differences between cultures, so we focused on the trends from three large economies: US, UK and France. All the charts show data from December 11 to January 14 for the last three years and the two vertical grey areas represent Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.


United States: the transactions trend clearly shows that users purchase mostly up to a week before Christmas Day and no improvement is seen in early January, although sessions do return to normal quickly after New Year’s Eve. Publishers should take advantage of this rebound in sessions, while retailers may want to wait on providing deals until sales bounce back fully.

United Kingdom: transactions decline sharply until Christmas and then start rising sharply from December 26, and about a week after New Year’s Eve it raises to levels about the same or higher than pre-holiday, so you might consider creating marketing campaigns and promotions to take advantage of January’s rise. Sessions follow a similar pattern.

France: transactions and sessions follow a similar pattern as in the UK, but with a significant decline during New Year’s Eve. As you can see, there is a major spike in the second Wednesday of January every year, that’s the day Winter sales begin in France! Unlike in the US, January is an important month for French retailers, should we say the French Cyber Wednesday?

Get a head start on 2015
So how can you take advantage of those trends to be more successful during the coming year? Here are some ideas for you to act upon right now:
  1. Look at your own data for previous years to understand the patterns for your existing and previous customers.
  2. Check your Benchmarking reports to learn more about how other websites of your size and in your vertical performed.
  3. Use Google Trends to check trends from previous years related to your vertical and country.
  4. Make sure you match your marketing efforts to your local post-holiday trend.
About the Data & Charts 
In order to perform this analysis, we looked at billions of sessions from authorized Google Analytics users who have shared their website data anonymously (read more).


Online Retailers: The Secret to Seasonal Success in 2014


Plan ahead.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the holiday rush begin earlier and earlier. And we’ve also noticed that the shopping frenzy is extending beyond the traditional season, with transaction rates in 2013 boasting lifts even after Christmas. These trends make for a lot of opportunity for online retailers, but you need to play your cards right. The most important thing you can do to ensure seasonal success is to plan your digital strategy now.  We’ve analyzed transaction behavior from a portion of our Google Analytics accounts over the 2013 holiday season to develop a guide for seasonal success. 

Which days drive the most transactions?
In order to develop a successful holiday retail strategy, it’s important to first understand the days that drive the most sales for your business. Once you understand this, you can craft a strategy that optimizes your media and promotion not only for these days, but for the entire holiday season.

As digital retailers are well aware, Cyber Monday is THE digital shopping day of the year.  It generates the most transactions of any single day and, in 2013, saw a transaction rate lift of 170% over average.  In second place is Black Friday, a day that has increased in digital importance over the last three years. By 2013, the transaction rate on Black Friday was 114% higher than average.  Beyond these two stars, the table below shows you the top days in 2013 by transaction volume and the lift in transactions rates on each day.


In general, beyond Cyber Monday and Black Friday, the Mondays and Tuesdays before Christmas in December tend to generate the highest volume of transactions.  Interestingly, the highest transaction days are not correlated to the days with the most sessions (traffic to your site), so avoid using the top session days as a proxy for the top transaction days.


How can I drive sales on the top transaction days?
The holiday season generates some of the highest transaction rate spikes and the lowest dips for the entire year. In order to drive digital sales successfully, it’s important that you adjust your bids for auction-based media, such as search ads, appropriately to account for higher transaction rates on key dates and throughout the season.  As you navigate the holiday season, use the lift in transaction rates over the average transaction rate as your bid multiplier for auction-based media (learn more about bid adjustments). This adjustment schedule reflects the increased value of clicks that are more likely to convert, and helps ensure that you stay ahead of competitors and  get in front of the right consumers. The transaction rate lift for the top days are shown in the table above, while the chart below gives you an idea of the lift for the weeks surrounding the holiday season.


As you can see, the top days generate some of the biggest transaction rate lifts, but there’s also plenty of upside in the weeks preceding Thanksgiving as well as right before Christmas.  A smart retailer will generate a bid schedule for the entire season, starting 4-5 weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Marketing to consumers is notoriously tricky and often trend-driven, making the holiday season a difficult and uncertain time for retailers. However, with proper pre-season preparation, digital retailers can set themselves up for seasonal success in 2014.  If you’re a Google Analytics user, you can tailor this analysis and approach to your business, using your own data and the data available in our benchmarking tool.  For more strategies for the holiday season, check out our holiday tips blog post and best practices checklist.


About the Data
In order to perform this analysis,we looked at billions of sessions across millions of Google Analytics accounts. We used session and transaction trends; and we looked at the percentage of sessions that included a transaction to calculate transaction rates. The data includes only accounts that have authorized Google to share website data in an anonymous way (read more). For questions, comments, or praise please contact us at [email protected] 


Posted by Daniel Waisberg and Jocelyn Whittenburg from the Google Analytics team.

Richer Insights For B2B Marketing With Google Analytics

The following is a guest post from Google Analytics Certified Partner Feras Alhlou, Partner & Principal Consultant at E-Nor Inc.
Marketers and sales professionals want to know who’s visiting their site, what content the target audience is consuming and what converts site visitors to paying customers. 
In a B2B environment -- where long sales cycles and multiple stakeholders affect sales decision -- “knowing who’s coming to your site” takes on another dimension. 
Say you’re in charge of marketing an eLearning system, and your target market includes telecom, hi-tech/software companies and universities. Your sales cycle could span several months, and there are multiple personas/stakeholders who will evaluate your company and your product. 
Some key personas include:
  • Trainers, professors and teachers evaluating user experience and ease of uploading curricula and content 
  • Management/administrators evaluating your company, pricing, client testimonials, case studies, etc.
  • IT assessing technical aspects of products, maintainability, your technical support processes, etc. 
As a marketer, your job is to ensure your site addresses the needs of each stakeholder, while realizing that the interests/questions each group of stakeholders are likely to be different. It’s critical that the message and content (that you invested so much in creating) “sticks” with the unique personas in each market segment. 
Easier said than done; measuring and optimizing all the above isn’t for the faint of heart.
But don’t fret. Integrating Google Analytics with Account-Based Marketing and Firmographic data has come to the rescue. 
B2B Measurement Framework
Let’s walk through a typical scenario and highlight key performance indicators (KPIs). The measurement framework our eLearning marketing manager has in mind includes (and yes, they follow GA’s ABC!):
Acquisition
    1. What percent of my traffic comes from industries I target
      1. Telecom
      2. Hi-tech/software companies
      3. .edu’s
    2. Percentage increase or decrease in traffic from industries I’m not targeting 
    3. Traffic volume and frequency from organizations our sales team targets offline
Behavior
    1. Landing page stickiness by industry and organization
    2. What content is very popular
    3. What content is most shared
    4. All the above segmented by the three targeted industries
Conversion
    1. Number of whitepaper downloads by industry and company
    2. Number of demo requests
    3. Sales follow-up call requests 
    4. All the above segmented by the three targeted industries
If your site visitors aren’t providing you with company and industry data, it’s not possible to report on this data in Google Analytics. Hello Insightera, a marketing personalization platform, enables your to enrich customer’s onsite journey with firmographic data in a seamless integrated fashion (note, another product in the Google Analytics app gallery offering similar functionality is Demandbase).
Rich Firmographic Data in Google Analytics
Insightera’s firmographic data is organized by 1) deriving information from site visitors by identifying their ISP 2) determining that organization’s information, including location, industry (and soon company size and company revenue will also be available). 
With easy-to-navigate firmographic readily available, analytics data takes on a new dimension; advertising dollars can be better targeted, and you have the ability to customize a visitor’s experience in several new ways.
Here’s a few examples of the rich and super cool data you have access to with Insightera, nicely integrated in the Google Analytics Reports (in Custom Variables):
1- Traffic Distribution by Industry  
Within the GA interface you have a nice presentation your traffic by industry. Telecom seems to be strong (24.1% of traffic) in the report below, while Education could use some love from your marketing team. 

2- Engagement By Industry
You can also report on your KPIs by industry (e.g. see how “Education” is the number 2 industry in the report below)

3- Traffic & Engagement By Organization
This report below shows the platform’s ability to take data segmentation a step further, and highlights specific organizations within the industry visiting the website (e.g. Yale University)

With firmographic data integrated into Google Analytics, it is possible to optimize paid campaigns such as Google AdWords, LinkedIn, banner ads, etc., and pinpoint how many companies from a specified list visited your site, which industries and what size companies visited the site. It provides the opportunity to then target paid campaigns to those visitors and channels, or increase efforts to reach untapped segments of a targeted audience. 
Technical Considerations 
Not a whole lot of considerations. Insightera makes it easy to plug and play. In your ‘Admin’ interface, select your Custom Variables slots for the ‘Industry’ and ‘Organization’ -- and let the rich data flow. Double check that the selected custom variable slots are empty and that you’re not already using them for something else in your Google Analytics implementation. 

Content Personalization
Equipped with this new data, you can automate and personalize remarketing efforts and create targeted ads based on any given criteria. In the example above, the education-specific whitepaper can be presented to your higher-ed visitors, while hi-tech/software related content can be presented to your hi-tech/software visitors. 
Insightera’s recommendation engine filters visitors by location and industry, content preferences and CRM data and digital behavior patterns. This process then predicts which content or channel works best for each visitor.
Increase the Value of Universal Analytics with more User Centricity 
If you’re an early adopter of Universal Analytics or planning to migrate to Universal Analytics, Insightera will soon have you covered. The same method described above can be applied and firmographic data can be integrated into Custom Dimensions. 

With some additional customization, and if you are (and you should be) user-centric, you can take up your implementation a notch up and report on visitors, not just visits, across web, mobile and other devices. Examples include where you have premium/gated content behind registration, user logins or when users self-identify. In these examples, a user-id is associated with each authenticated visitor and stored in a Custom Dimension. Measuring user behavior across multiple sessions and across multiple devices will then be available and you’ll be able to stitch data from different data sources including Insightera as well CRM systems such integrating GA with SalesForce.

Conclusion
As advertising and remarketing efforts reach new levels of focus, site owners have the most relevant information to meet their needs thanks to account-based marketing. Combining the power of Google Analytics with the new scope of firmographic data allows a new level of Performance Analytics. This set of tools offers deeper analytic insights into who your potential customers are, what they do, where they come from and what they consume.
Posted by Feras Alhlou, Principal Consultant, E-Nor, a Google Analytics Authorized Premium Reseller