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In case you missed the Google Integration blog post, Motivity, a website optimization platform has been integrated with:

• Google Analytics
• Google Adwords
• Google Website Optimizer
• Google Webmaster Tools
• AND Google Maps

We will be exploring the details of each Google Tool in a 5 part blog series.

Welcome to your personal Motivity tour that showcases integration with Google Analytics.   My name is Lauren and I will be your friendly and informative tour guide.  If you have a pre-existing heart condition this may not be suitable for you, as it has been known to thrill and amaze.   Follow me!   And we’re walking, we’re walking…

The Dashboard

Welcome to the Dashboard, this is your command center to understanding site performance, traffic sources, how much money your site is earning and more.  It can be viewed from the site’s back end, and offers many useful analytical data all in one place.  Similar to the “dashboard” of Google Analytics, this area provides a bird’s eye view of what’s happening in your website.

Now, working our way from the top of the dashboard to the bottom, we’ll go through each area and describe it’s functionality.  Here is the top portion of the dashboard under the “Analytics” tab within Motivity.

(Click on the image for a larger view)

Comparative Reports – Your ticket to understanding your site’s performance

With this easy to use interface you can select date ranges to compare and view visits, pageviews, pages per visit, bounce rate, average time spent on the site and the percent of new visits in an easy to grasp graph.

Both site usage features are extremely helpful in measuring performance, especially when compared with previous date ranges.  This information can help you gauge the effectiveness of optimization or usability efforts, as well as pay per click campaigns based on the outcome.

Visits describes the total number of visitors to your site during the specified time range, easy enough.

Pageviews describes the number of pages viewed on your site during the time range.  Ideally after efforts to cross-link pages (using an interlinking strategy) you would have an increase in pageviews, as is the case in this graph (an increase of 12.81%).

Pages Per Visit let’s you know the average number of pages viewed by a user during the specified timeframe.  This is another metric that should increase by editing content and site architecture to suggest other content pages that a specific user would be interested in.

Bounce Rate describes the number of users who are brought to your site and immediately leave after viewing one page.

Why is the Bounce Rate so high?
A common reason for a high bounce rate is slow page load, which can be a result of an overly-designed homepage.  Another reason is bidding for very general Adwords terms. In this case users who are brought to your site are not actually looking for your product or service.  Another theory: the user has an informational query (do you carry a specific product, the price of a product, a location question) and their question is immediately answered by your content, this would also lead to a high bounce rate.

Average Time on Site describes just that.  Ideally, you want a user to spend more time on your site, but if the purchase or call to action is a quickly executed one, they may not need to in order to follow the call to action.  For instance, I imagine that the Hope for Haiti website’s analytics shows that there is not a high average of time spent on the site because users just go to make a donation.  In this case the low average time on the site is not indicative of any usability problem.

Want more help? Ask the experts

Is your Google Analytics account in need of professional help?  Our expert Google Analytics consultants can help you properly configure Analytics, as well as diagnose problems and fix errors as part of our consulting packages.  Feel free to contact us.

Visitor Overview

In this area of the dashboard, you can select the type of graph you want for the visitor overview with the options of number of visits, pageviews, pages per visit, bounce rate.  This graph shows the same date range of data selected in the top portion of the dashboard. View a larger graph by clicking on the link.

(Click on the image for a larger view)

Traffic Source Overview – Know how users are finding you

In the Traffic Source Overview you can check out a quick pie graph showing your direct traffic versus search and referring site traffic. Why does this metric matter?  It helps you understand where your users are coming from.

Knowledge is power

Not all of us can be analytics experts, so for those of us who are a little more right brained, here’s a quick breakdown of what this pie graph tells you about how people are finding your website.

Direct Traffic comes from a user typing the name of your web site directly into the address bar of their browser.  This kind of traffic can be a result of offline as well as online advertising.  (Offline advertising example: “Visit GEICO.com to learn more how 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.”)

Search Traffic comes from visits to your web site from people typing keywords into a search engine.   This metric can be affected by Adwords campaigns and optimization tactics.

Referral Traffic comes from a person finding your site through a link provided on another site.  Google Analytics can tell you the URLs of the pages on other web sites that have referred visitors to your web site.  This metric can be used for tracking the success of promotions and advertising, or affiliate advertising programs. (Example: You pay to put a banner ad on a radio station’s homepage, and your referral traffic from “104.5.com/home” goes through the roof!  This is an example of referral traffic.)

Other Traffic is everything else that is not direct, search, or CPC/PPC.  Tagged campaigns (via the URL) will fall into this category of traffic.

Per Content Page Analytics – Figure out which pages bring in the big bucks

This feature shows the top five most visited pages of your website, along with the number of times each page has been viewed, and the percentage of pageviews for each content page.

When you click on any of the top content pages, you are taken to that individual content page within Motivity, and from there you can click on the “Analytics” tab and view the per page analytics for each page.

(Click on the image for a larger view)

Notice in the Analytics tab for each page that there is the option to compare date ranges, which comes in handy for analyzing the success of content revisions.

Motivity’s features help you reach your goals

Get a handle on the number of users who reached the conversion stage as well as the rate of goal conversion with this easy-to-understand graph.  This graph shows the same date range that was selected in the top portion of the dashboard, and can be viewed in a larger size by clicking on the link.

Have you noticed a large drop in number of people making a conversion – like buying a product or signing up for a newsletter?  Then investigate and fix the issue with other useful tools offered from within Motivity such as Google Website Optimizer and Google Webmaster Tools.  We’ll go over these features later in the blog series.

The Ecommerce Version of Motivity – Be the cyber-boss of your online store

The following features are available in the Ecommerce version of Motivity, and allow you to understand which products people are buying, how much of them they’re buying, and allows you to view the performance across the determined time frame for conversion rate, revenue, transactions, quantity, and average order value.  You can even click on the graph link and view the graph in a larger size.

The Ecommerce overview area allows you to see the rate of conversion, the number of transactions, the average order value and the number of purchased products across the date range selected at the top of the dashboard.

Per Product Analytics Results – Learn how your latest whositwhatsit is selling

In these areas, you can view the top 5 most profitable products, how many items were purchased, and the amount of revenue generated in the amount of time entered into the dashboard date range.  Each of the top 5 products are linked to the individual product page, as seen in the view below.

In the product detail page you can define and view the product name, sales price, retail price, cost price (from the seller’s side), SKU number part number, inventory quantity, weight, shipping calculator, tax code, manufacturer, distributor, and even define a start and stop date for that product.

From each individual product page, you can click on the “Analytics” tab and view more detailed information on each product.  Click on the image for a larger view.

Here is a view of the Product Analytics for an individual page.  Click on the picture to enlarge it.  As you can see you can compare date ranges, view the date of purchase, the number of unique purchases, revenue, average price, and average quantity as well.

The easy to view graph gives you a great overview of how a product is performing over a set period of time.

In this area you can view the top 5 URL’s your business’s traffic comes from such as specific search engines, direct traffic, referral and more.  This information would be useful in measuring the success of an affiliate advertising program or a banner ad.  If it’s URL comes up as a main source of revenue, then you can certainly be sure you’ve made a wise investment.

Well, that concludes the tour of Google Analytics within Motivity.  We hope you had fun and made some great memories – I know I did!  If you liked what you saw and want to give Motivity a try – request a demo of Motivity.

More to Come

Stay tuned for more blog posts in the coming weeks that explore all of Motivity’s integrated Google features.

Google, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Webmaster Tools, Google AdWords and Google Website Optimizer are trademarks of Google Inc.