conversion

How to analyze “new users” metric by specific pages in Google Analytics?

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Problem:

you want to create a funnel chart of how your new users move from their landing page to your desired destination. Ideally it’s goes something like this:

Stage 1) lands on your home/landing page

Stage 2) goes to a product page

stage 3) goes to a checkout page

stage 4) sees a thank you page

Now, if you want to analyze the conversion among these stages for a “new” user then you will need create custom reports in google analytics. You will basically need to create a report for each specific page that you want to analyze. So how to set one up?

Solution: 

1) Navigate to Google analytics profile

2) On the top of the go to “customization” section and click on create a new custom report

3) here’s how you can set up a custom report that will use you new users by a specific page (notice the page filter?).

New users by specific pages funnel visualization google analytics

Conclusion:

In this post, I outlined the steps that you need to take to setup a custom report in google analytics that shows you new users by specific pages.

Business Metric #5 of N: “Conversion rate” (online marketing)

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Summary:

In this post, we will see an important metric in online marketing called “conversion rate”.

Description:

so, what is conversion rate?

Conversion rate = (Number of Goals Achieved)/(Total Visitors)

why is this important to track?

In my previous blog on leads (marketing), I mentioned it’s important to track number of people interested in your products/services but along with that it’s important to provide context while reporting on Leads – this is where conversion rate comes into picture and provides the necessary context. Conversion rate can tell us the Quality of the leads & visitors that you get from your online marketing efforts.

Let’s take an example of an e-commerce site:

An e-commerce site decides to increase their monthly online marketing budget and they see a spike in the number of visitors – so that’s great, right? They should continue to increase their marketing budget, right? Well – that might not be true. While the number of visitors may have increased how do we know that increased number of visitors results in increased revenue? It all depends on the quality of the visitors that’s being generated – so how do you quantify the quality of the visitors? That’s right – conversion rate with the goal: number of visitors clicking “buy” button. So you want to make sure that with increased online marketing budget 1) Conversion rate is good or better 2) Number of visitors/leads have grown.

This was a basic scenario helping you appreciate the power of tracking the conversion rate for your online marketing efforts.

Now, If your marketing funnel is more complex then you might also create multiple conversion rate metrics to track conversions at each stage of a marketing funnel. This is VERY powerful. Here’s an Example:

Conversion Rate #1: (Number of Leads)/(Number of Total Visitors)

Note: your marketing team would define a “lead” based on their criteria(s) like downloads a newsletter, submits a contact us form, favorites a product, etc.

Conversion Rate #2: (Number of Actual Customers)/(Number of Leads)

Note: Conversion Rate #1 is great to evaluate effectiveness of marketing campaigns and conversion rate #2 is great to evaluate sales effectiveness.

How can you capture this data?

A good web analytics tool (like Google analytics) should help you track your conversion rates.

Conclusion:

In this post, we saw that tracking conversion rate is very important metric to track your online marketing efforts.

Business Metric #4 of N: “Leads” (marketing)

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Summary:

In this post, we will discuss about a common metric used by Sales & Marketing teams called “leads”.

Description:

In simple terms,

Leads = number of individuals (or companies) that have expressed an interest in your goods or services.

why do we want to measure this?

For a business to grow, it’s important that the sales & marketing department work to make sure that there is a growing interest in company’s goods or services. It’s important to track this metric to make sure that it’s a positive upward trend!

Word of caution: It’s important to also note that this metric on its own can be misleading. It might be a good idea to also track “conversion ratios” (converting leads or potential customers into actual customers) to make sure that high-quality leads are being generated.

where can you get this data?

Depending on the channel that you use to capture potential customer’s information & the technology maturity of the company, it varies. I’ve seen CRM systems used to report “leads” data and I’ve also seen manual excel files that are used to generate leads report.

Are there any sub-categories?

Yes, it’s usually subdivided into 1) Marketing Qualified Leads and 2) Sales Marketing Leads.

usually, Marketing Qualified lead (MQL) is someone who has shown interest in your product or service but you don’t know if they fulfill your qualifications to buy your products or services. out of all MQL’s, those leads that qualify your criteria and are identified are someone who is ready to buy your products or services becomes your Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) and sales department get’s ready to engage with these leads to make them an actual customer.

Marketing Funnel Sales Qualified Lead

Conclusion:

In this post, we saw a high level overview of a business metric used in marketing and sales called “leads”.  As mentioned earlier, don’t report on just “leads” – it can be misleading for marketing & sales executives since upward trend in number of leads doesn’t necessarily result in increased sales unless the quality of new leads is same or better. Marketing and sales executives would really appreciate any context  (example: conversions) that you can provide to their “leads” report. I hope that helps!