Why is it that I love this Map Overlay report (in the Visitors section) in Google Analytics? Does it give me deep insights as to what my website visitors want? No. Can I measure Key Performance Indicators (KPI) off of it? No. Will it help me discover what keywords are performing well in my paid search campaigns, and which ones I should drop? No.

Is it really cool to play with and spend minute after minute…after minute…rolling over each city in each state in each country, and then zooming out and doing it again on another state or country? Yes, absolutely.

(Editors Note: I am not suggesting I am slacking off while at work. It is merely a hypothetical situation :))

There are a few things that you can do with the Map Overlay. Toward the top-right corner of the map, it should say “Visits”, with an arrow pointing down. Clicking on that will open a menu where you can change the metric that you’re currently viewing. So, instead of Visits, you can view the Bounce Rate, G1 Goal Conversion, or even Revenue, if you have Ecommerce Coding Enabled.

You can also change the detail level of the map. By default the Map Overlay shows you corresponding detail level (so, if you’re looking at the individual country level, your detail level will also be set at country). If you change this option to “city”, towards the bottom-left hand side of the page, directly below the actual map, you can get the very popular “chicken-pox” view of the map:

See how the fun just never ends? Maybe I just like Geography more than the average person, I don’t know. I think that everyone should think about what their favorite report or reports are, and think about why they are your favorites. I would say that the Map Overlay report is my favorite because of functionality and ingenuity. I’m probably not alone in feeling this way. Can you imagine a Google Analytics platform where more [important] reports were as cool to use and as friendly as this one?

Part of my job here at MoreVisibility is helping our clients with their current shopping cart systems. A lot of times, I analyze how they function and I look for certain things that could be improved upon. I do this from two angles simultaneously - from the “Web Intelligence” angle, where I really use data from Funnel Visualization and other types of Ecommerce reports, and then I use the “Common Sense, Everyday Shopper” angle, where I really use my personal experiences and gut feelings to explain what I’m seeing, or what I think will work best.

In the grand scheme of things, I’m a regular person, just like you. I shop online, I comparison shop, I used sites like SlickDeals.com to find cheap stuff, and I get frustrated and leave websites in a hissy fit of sorts when I don’t get my way. Yes, I’m very high-maintenance when it comes to online shopping.

So, let me share with you five tips for improving your current Shopping Cart / Ecommerce system that (in my opinion, of course) can improve your sales, conversion rates, and keep your customer’s blood-pressure as low as possible.

1. No, I don’t want to create an account - I just want to checkout.
My apologies for the harsh tone of that first point. However, this is sometimes how shoppers feel after they’ve clicked on the “Checkout” button of your shopping cart. Often times, instead of starting to fill out their billing and shipping information as they probably expect to, they are required to create an account, a username and a password, and in some cases, enter in the security question and the answer to it (The problem isn’t sometimes the answer to the security question - it’s remembering what security question you selected in the first place!). This can be frustrating, and it could lead to a quick exit off your website. Try experimenting with removing the “create an account” process from your website all together, or, if your system absolutely requires it, find a way to use the person’s first and last name as the username, creating it automatically for the shopper. Yes, I understand that you are doing this so that your returning visitors will have their information saved, or for a certain tracking system that you may have. Remember, a returning shopper has to be a new shopper first, so make it as easy as possible for them to buy that first time, then think about encouraging them to create an account later on.

As a last resort (if you absolutely cannot remove or move the “create account” function), add in a “guest” option that allows someone not to have to create an account first before purchasing something.

2. Show me the money!
Jerry McGuire was right. Don’t wait until the very end of the shopping cart process to tell me exactly how much I’m paying for shipping, tax, and other surcharges - I want to know what I’m paying right away. No-one likes hidden or surprise fees, especially as they have their credit card in their hand and waiting to type in those magical sixteen digits. If your cart does this, find a way to get it to calculate everything - especially shipping - within the “My Shopping Cart” page, before a user clicks on “Checkout”. List them as line-items, so that it is extremely clear what the full cost of everything is, including the breakdown of tax, shipping, and non-member fees. You may get a person to shop at your website and purchase something that first time, but this is something that is frustrating enough that the person may not come back again.

3. Cancel all page-refresh functions
OMG, I cannot even begin to tell you how frustrating this is for me. For example, I could be merrily filling out my address, city / state, zip code…only to see (and hear) the page refresh out of the blue, because I added in six digits to my zip code or my shipping charge is now higher than it was before, because I live in Florida as opposed to living in New York, sending me back to the very top of the page (and sometimes, erasing or clearing whatever information I already put in there in the first place). ERRRR!!! Please do your customers a great favor and find another alert system when they make a mistake. Have the system wait until they click on “Next” or “Continue” to tell them what went wrong (and, find a nice way to do it, in a nice language that doesn’t come accross as mean or over-bearing).

4. When I add an item to my cart, please take me to my cart
This is something that can be debated about for hours on end. For me, when I add an item to my shopping cart, I would like to be taken to the “My Shopping Cart” page, so that I can then checkout, change shipping options, or see how much the new Blu-Ray player that I probably don’t need but I can’t help myself from buying it will cost me. What I don’t like is when I add an item to my cart and the page simply refreshes, sending me back up to the top of the page. “Did I do something wrong?”, “Is the site broken or not working?”, or “What just happened?” are some of the things that I immediately say to myself when this happens. Sometimes, I don’t even notice the “1 item in your bag” text notice, tucked away in a small font in a remote corner of your product page. Sometimes, it could be too late - I’ve already left the site because I thought it was broken or just not working.

5. Fewer Pages + Fewer Distractions = Higher Conversion Rates
Finally, it’s about as simple as this formula. Give me one or two pages to fill out all of my information (including a summary of items purchased), cut out the “noise” that could be surrounding the shopping cart process (like far too much cross-selling, calls-to-action for subscribing to your newsletter, and other jazz), and chances are that you will simply sell more things and make more money, while keeping more people happy. The worst possible thing to do to a customer is to frustrate them, especially considering that they have the entire internet at their disposal, armed with dangerous things like back buttons and “X” buttons on their browsers. Keep it simple, easy, smooth, and hassle-free, and you will really increase the chances of selling profitably online.

Today’s post is all about something that every single business man or woman should already know - their sales cycle. As soon as you read “sales cycle”, a number, an amount, or some percentage should have immediately popped up in your head, that corresponds to the amount of time it takes your customers to buy things from you.

It’s imperative that you know what your sales cycle is! You need to know this so that you can:

• Gain a further level of insight with your customers / shoppers
• Understand what makes your customers “tick”
• Learn what it is about your products / landing pages / messaging that encourages your customers make that impulse or that “on-the-spot” purchase
• Discover what the best ways are for you to market to your audience
• Find out (through testing) what works, what doesn’t, and what you need to do

That sounds like a list of bullet points for a seminar or a conference presentation, but knowing your sales cycle - and how you can shake things up - helps answer a lot of questions that you may not have known the answers to.

But let’s say that you don’t really know what your sales cycle is. That’s OK - your secret is safe with me. Besides, your sales cycle is always changing, isn’t it? You’re testing different marketing messages, different shipping offers, and different “Add to Cart” buttons, and all of these things affect your Visitor Loyalty, and when Visitors purchase stuff, don’t they? Of course they do!

Google Analytics, being the rock star that it is, has thrown in a few Visitor Loyalty reports within its interface that can help you keep track of how long and after how many visits people are buying things from your online store. If you have my favorite Web Analytics program (and if you don’t, why not?), log-in and visit your Ecommerce reports section. At the bottom of the list of reports you will find links to a “Visits to Purchase” report and a “Days to Purchase” report.

These two reports are great, especially when compared to a previous date-range. You can use this report in conjunction with other marketing or Ecommerce reports, and really get a much deeper understanding of how your online business is doing.

A couple of notes: Generally speaking, the lower the cost of your items, the faster your sales cycle. People will usually buy sneakers / hats / ipods after one or two visits. Things like flights, cruises, resort packages, and to an extent, membership applications, will have a much slower sales and ecommerce cycle than your material goods counterparts. Most people will do a lot of research and comparison shopping first, before they pull the trigger on a flight to Japan from the United States, so that they can get the best deal possible. This sometimes takes a few more visits and days than buying a t-shirt or a new CD (Do people even buy CD’s anymore? :)).

I have just a couple of quick news items to pass along to you today.

First, there was a bug in the Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking that seems to have affected a handful of accounts from April 30th to May 6th. It looks like the issue is now fixed, but there may have been some serious drops in Transactions, Revenue, and other Ecommerce related metrics in your Google Analytics account for that period of time. It only appears that it was the Ecommerce section of reports that was affected – Goals, Visitors, Content, and Traffic Sources seem to have been working properly the entire time.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that Google will be able to go back and fill-in the missing data that your account may not have been able to collect. However, not to worry – in the grand scheme of things, this shouldn’t have any long-term effect on any trends or averages, from an analysis standpoint.

Also, I attended a webinar on Wednesday from Google TV Ads. In this webinar, one of their slides was a TV Ads report within the AdWords sub-section of reports within the Traffic Sources section, similar to the “Audio Campaigns” report that was introduced about a month ago. So, look for this new report section to be activated within your Google Analytics accounts sometime in the very near future!

See you next week.

Back in High School, I was a Lieutenant in the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (Go Eagle Battalion!). Class leaders had a lot of fun during uniform inspection time, as well as during drill and ceremony time. We would routinely shout out several commands and instructions to our particular platoons during each class hour, which also included several popular sayings within our corps. These included (but definitely were not limited to):

“NINE to the front, and SIX to the rear!” - A reference to the length and distance of your arm swing during marching;
“Get in STEP [Cadet’s Rank and Last Name]!!” - During marching, this would be sounded off to ensure that each cadet’s step would precisely match every other cadet’s step. If every cadet stepped with their right foot, the cadet that stepped with their left foot would stick out like a sore thumb;
“Move the RIFLE around your head, not your HEAD around the rifle!” - My personal favorite during drill and ceremony with our Springfield M-1903’s;
“If you are not double-timing it, you are WRONG!” - You can replace “double-timing it” with any number of different instructions or tidbits of information to convey the message that this was a team effort, and you were wrong if you weren’t participating like everyone else.

We can take that last saying and apply it to testing and experimentation on the web. If you have a website and a marketing plan of any kind, it is imperative that you implement a testing and experimentation plan. Why? Because if you are not testing, you are wrong. In today’s internet world, you absolutely need to have some kind of testing strategy where the ultimate goal is to improve your website’s functionality, your lead acquisition process, and your shopping cart, so that you can have even happier customers, create some more returning shoppers, and ultimately make more money.

For starters, it doesn’t matter what you test - just get your feet wet!

If you’ve been thinking about testing, or if this blog post is the first you’ve ever heard of it, know that for right now, it doesn’t really matter what you test. The mere fact that you going to start testing something - anything - is good enough for now. Get your feet wet and get comfortable and familiar with the idea first, before worrying about what types of testing strategies exist or what standard deviation stands for. Pick anything on your homepage to test for a week or two - that picture of a palm tree, that blue “click here” button, or that first paragraph of text. Pick one of those items (only one for now), and make a change to it, upload it live, and see what effect that has on your traffic and your conversion rate over a week or two. Congratulations - you have just tested something!

This testing idea sounds great, but I wish there was a free tool out there that can help me set-up tests or experiments on my website…

Have no fear - Google Website Optimizer is here! Google Website Optimizer (or GWO for short) just recently came out of Beta, and is now available to everyone on the planet for free. GWO affords you the opportunity to create an unlimited amount of experiments, completely controllable and customizable. GWO goes as far as to offer your technical or website programming team a unique set-up page per each experiment, so that they have every piece of code and every instruction necessary to set GWO up for any page on your website.

What types of Experiments can I conduct with Google Website Optimizer?

There are two different types of experiments:

A/B Experiments - Sometimes also referred to as “A/B Split Testing”, this tests one page on your website up against a different version of that same page, to see which page gives you the best possible chance for an increased conversion rate. Rotating your Ads on Google AdWords evenly is a form of A/B testing in the marketing world. This is the same concept, but for a page on your website.

Multivariate Experiments - Sometimes also referred to as “MVT Testing”, this tests different areas of a page on your website (for example, different headers, footers, or product images), to see which combination gives you the best possible chance for an increased conversion rate. This is actually quite an advanced type of test, but Google Website Optimizer makes it easy for all of us.

How long should I run a test for, and what results will Google Website Optimizer show me?

I like the 15-day rule. With 15 days, you get two full weeks, plus that additional day’s worth of information. This could be longer or shorter, depending on the volume of traffic to your website. However, something in the neighborhood of two weeks should be enough time for a proper experiment.

Google Website Optimizer gives you a “Page Sections” report and a “Combinations” report (specifically for your Multivariate Tests) for you to look at. You’ll be able to view the estimated conversion rate range, in both a numerical form and a sliding bar graph, as well as other fancy statistically-oriented metrics, such as “Observed Improvement”, and “Chance to beat Original / Chance to beat All”, allowing you to very quickly see which page version or which page combination is doing the best job of bringing you more conversions.

What if I run a test between my homepage and a new version of my homepage, but the original homepage beats the new homepage - is it back to the drawing board?

Yes, and no. First of all, you’re going to have to become comfortable with the idea that an original page / original combination beating a newer page or newer combination doesn’t equate to an unsuccessful experiment. If you’re able to conduct a fair and unbiased experiment, then the experiment itself is successful, regardless of the outcome of the experiment. Google Website Optimizer runs fair and unbiased experiments, so rest assured that your experiment will be a successful one.

Now, just because your original homepage beat your new homepage, doesn’t mean that you can’t learn something that you can use in your next experiment. Keep track of what changes were made on the new homepage, and what was different on the new homepage versus the original homepage. If you only make one or two changes, you’ll have a much easier time in keeping track of exactly what’s making the visitors tick and what’s making them leave your site than you would if you completely re-invented the wheel and made several dozen changes.

Other than the homepage, what other types of pages can I experiment with?

The question should really be “what can’t I experiment with?”. You can and you should experiment with all different types of pages - homepages, about us pages, thank you pages, shopping cart pages, order confirmation pages, and so on. GWO lets you run an unlimited amount of different experiments, and you can also run multiple experiments simultaneously with different parts of your website.

Stay Committed!

After you’ve started testing, don’t let the novelty of it wear off. Find a way to make testing and experimentation a part of your job. I know, I know - you’re very busy and you have a lot of work to do, and you can’t possibly imagine putting on yet another hat on. But you JUST have to! Otherwise, your competitors will begin to fly right past you and take your customers away from you. You wouldn’t want that, would you?

Try this: every month, pick 1 thing to test. The “Add to Cart” button, the homepage text, the links on your “Thank You” page…anything. In a few months, you will thank yourself, as you will (hopefully) work towards making your website more attractive to your visitors, which should in turn increase every marketers metric, the conversion rate. Even if your conversion rate doesn’t increase, you will at least have started to learn about your visitors - what they like, what they don’t like, and what they react positively or negatively to - which can only help your business.