Google asynchronous tracking optimizes how browsers load the Google Analytics JavaScript, so its impact on the user experience is minimized. It also allows you to put your Analytics snippet higher in the page without delaying subsequent content from rendering. Visitors get to see your pages faster, and Google gets to serve more adds – everybody wins!

I put together a new Joomla 1.5 plugin so that you can easily add the new tracking code to your Joomla powered site.

Installation is easy:

1. Download the plg_FCGanalytics1.0.0.zip
2. From the Joomla administrator console go to Extensions/ Install
3. Under “Upload Package File” click “choose file” and browse to the file you just downloaded. Once you select it, click “Upload File & Install“
4. Once you see the “Success” message, go to Extensions/ plugin manager and click on the plugin named “FreshClicks Google Async Analytics”
5. Under the plugin paramaters add your Google Analytics UA Code (the code should look something like UA-123456-1), under Enabled choose “Yes” and then click “Save”

That’s it- You new site should now start reaping the benefits of Asynchronous Tracking!

If you find this code useful or have any questions, please comment below and make sure to vote for this plugin on Joomla!

Related posts:

1. Mix n’ Match Analytics Campaign Tracking
2. Tracking Corporate Activity with Google Analytics
3. Initial Referrer: The missing metric in Google analytics

With 90+ standard reports, advanced segmentation, custom reporting, and plenty of other amazing enterprise features, I’m not breaking any new ground here by saying that Google Analytics is a great web analytics solution. It has always bothered me though, that without live tracking it can be difficult to troubleshoot, diagnose problems, confirm that you properly set up your eCommerce conversion tracking or some other custom JavaScript implementation. Waiting 8-12 hours to see if data is still being collected, or if your “test transaction” is being reflected in your reports is no way to work in an enterprise environment.

The solution is to use an HTTP proxy debugger

An HTTP proxy (HTTP Monitor) sits between the internet and your web browser. It is able to record and display all of the data that is sent and received between your web browser / client and the server. This makes it easy to see exactly what information is being sent to Google Analytics, so you can quickly diagnose and fix problems.

In my example I am going to use a web debugging application called Charles, you can download a free-trial from their website. There are plenty of other HTTP debugger applications you can use I just happen to use Charles.

1. Launch your application, You may be prompted to give it privileges on your computer.
2. In your web browser visit the page that you contain your Google Analytics code.
3. If you look in the HTTP debugging application you will see all of the HTTP requests that were made by the page. In the list you will see http://www.google-analytics.com
4. In Chrles you can click on the arrow to reveal the two HTTP request that the page made. The first request was made to by the Google Analytics JavaScript file and load it into your system memory. You can look through the window on the right to see the status file. A response code of 200 means that the JavaScript file was loaded successfully into your browsers memory. So far so good.
5. The next item in the list is that data string that was sent to Google analytics as a response to you visiting the page. There is a lot of data here but if you break it up by the “&” it is easier to find what you are looking for:
   • http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif
   • ?utmwv=4.3.1
   • &utmn=1482837383
   • &utmhn=www.freshclicks.net
   • &utmcs=UTF-8 – the encoding charset of the content
   • &utmsr=1280×800 – screen resolution of the visitors monitor
   • &utmsc=24-bit
   • &utmul=en-us – browsers language setting
   • &utmje=1
   • &utmfl=10.0%20r22
   • &utmdt=Fresh%20Clicks%3A%20Analytics%20and%20eMarketing%20Strategies%20%C2%BB%20MailChimp%20Review%3A%20Email%20Marketing%20Provider – Name of the site and Page title
   • &utmr=-
   • &utmp=/download/emailWhitepaper.pdf – tracks downloads as virtual pageviews
   • &utmhid=1822260590 – unique id to track this user in Google Analytics
   • &utmr=0
   • &utmp=/2009/04/06/email-marketing/mailchimp-review-email-marketing-provider/
   • &utmac=UA-475241-7 – The Google analytics code associated with your account
   • &utmcc=__utma%3D144287458.1535030466.1246519340.1246519340.1246519340.1%3B%2B__utmz%3D144287458.1246519342.1.1.utmcsr%3D(direct)%7Cutmccn%3D(direct)%7Cutmcmd%3D(none)%3B – This last bit is information about the cookies that have been set. You can see that UTMZ is responsible for seting the campaign information about the source of the traffic.

   I couldn’t identify all of the variables it was collecting so if you happen to know any of them send me a note via twitter@LaryStucker so that i can update this page.

As you can see in this example, it is easy to use web Proxy debuggers to determine if Google Analytics is being executed properly and if Google’s servers are receiving the proper information.

If you found this information helpful, have questions or want to mention one of the other HTTP proxy degugging solutions please leave a comment or message on twitter @LaryStucker

Related posts:

1. Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking for Joomla 1.5
2. Barack Obama uses Google Analytics
3. Initial Referrer: The missing metric in Google analytics

Problem

Unless you can get your visitors to identify themselves (fill out a form, sign up for a service, etc.), their visit is going to go completely undetected; however, it doesn’t have to.

Solution

Within Google Analytics, there is a report called “Network Location”.   It reports on which internet service providers your visitors are using.  This report allows you to track the internet service provider (ISP) domains to which the user resolves. The domain is determined by the internet service that owns the user’s internet protocol (IP) identifier. At first this doesn’t sound like it will be of much use in determining which companies are visiting your website except for the fact that most businesses own their IP address.  So, what you see in this report is both generic ISP traffic (AT&T networks, Verizon internet services inc., road runner holdco llc, etc.) along with schools, businesses, and government agencies.

If you using Google Analytics then you already have “Network Location” reports, but like most reports you should probably create an automated processes for reviewing the results.

Setting up daily Network Location reports

When it comes to tracking corporate activity on your website, you should try to look at the results on a daily basis.  Knowing Apple came to your website a month ago isn’t going to do anything to help your sales team today.

1. Log into your Google Analytics
2. Click on the  button
3. Click on Network Properties and then on the Network Location link.
4. Change the date range to yesterday only and click “apply”.
5. Click the “Ave. Time on Site” column so that the results are sorted by the visitors who spent the most time first. (I choose “Ave. Time on Site” because it is the easiest to indicate interest level in these kind of reports.)
6. Click the email icon just above the “Network Location” title.
7. Click the Schedule tab and fill out the information. Make sure to change the Date range to “Daily(sent each morning)” and make sure that “Include date comparison” is not checked.
8. Click the “Schedule” button and you are done!

You will start receiving your daily Network Location reports via your email.

Here is an example excerpt from a Network Location report:

Hmmm...why is Apple coming to my website?

If you found this article helpful, interesting, or you want to add your two cents, please leave a comment below!

Related posts:

1. Tracking Corporate Activity with Google Analytics
2. Website Performance by Language

You can see areas where they have changed code and stopped web site functions in order to improve website retension:

/* Commenting out to try to fix exit and bounce rates in Google Analytics */

What I find most encouraging is that our new president seems to have surrounded himself with smart people.  Including people who know how to leverage technology like Google’s Website Optimizer and Analytics to improve their campaign, while at the same time keeping down their overhead.

Related posts:

1. Did you just break your Google Analytics Installation?
2. Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking for Joomla 1.5
3. Mix n’ Match Analytics Campaign Tracking

What Web Metrics should you start measuring today and why?

• Visitors: What is the average number of visits to your website?
• Conversions: Conversion can mean many different things depending on your business. A Free trial download, the sale of a product, and the completion of a contact form are all types of conversions that have value to your business. You should know the average number of conversions and the number of conversions per visitor to your site.
  FORMULA: # of Conversions/ # of Visitors = Conversion rate%
• Most popular pages on your site: What content on your website is attracting the most views? How has this changed over time? I have recently seen a secondary product’s landing page surpass a company’s flagship product in popularity well before the Executives finally realized that the market has changed and they should change their marketing focus.
• Top referring sites/mediums: How are visitors coming to your website? Which search engines, forums, articles, paid ads, or email are driving visits and conversions to your site?
• Top keywords: What keywords are visitors using to find your site? What keywords do visitors use that convert into sales/ leads/ contacts? What keywords don’t you see? Sometimes the most telling keywords are the ones that you don’t see. If you sell air filters for Chevy trucks and you have zero visits to your site for the Keywords “Chevy air filters”, you have some serious Keywords and Pay-Per-Click optimization to do!
  
• Average visit time and average number of pages per visit (this is also known as engagement): When someone arrives at your website, how engaging is the content? Do they stick around and visit multiple pages? This can vary greatly by referrer and keywords visitors use to arrive at the site as well, so make sure that you keep a close eye on your primary keywords and referrers. Also keep an eye out for new sources of traffic that have a higher engagement level than your site average.
  
• Bounce rate: The opposite of engagement – this is a measurement of the visitors that left the site as soon as the page loaded. This is going to happen, so don’t get to discouraged by the numbers. Depending on your industry your bounce rate should stay under 50%. Anything higher than that may mean that your site is either optimized for the wrong keywords or you are targeting the wrong markets.
• Geographic and language settings: Where in the world is all of this traffic coming from? Of course, if your product or industry has international appeal you would want to know which countries and what languages your visitors speak, but even local business should be looking at this information. For example, when we started looking at the traffic from regions where a local contractor actually serviced, we noticed that 75% of those visitors had their language setting set to Spanish, but the website was only in English. Obviously, it became a high priority for that contractor to offer a Spanish version of his site.

For each of these metrics, you should know if the numbers are increasing or decreasing? Is this a seasonal trend or is this a part of some other market force?

How often should you check/ report on your web metrics?

It can be very addicting to check these metrics constantly and you have to be careful not to spend all of your time poring over the different variables. So, the question that I am often asked is how often should you check your web metrics? Daily, weekly, monthly? The typical answer I give is as often as you can take action based on the results. If you started a new Pay-Per-Click campaign, you probably want to watch the results on a daily basis at first to make sure that it is performing properly. If you spot any anomalies, you can catch them right away and take corrective actions.

Well, that should be enough to get you started. If you have any questions or you found this article useful, please leave a comment!

Related posts:

1. Website Performance by Language