Having trouble viewing the text? You can always read the original article here: What are the Steps of Conversion Optimization
What is the job of an optimizer? Is it just improving conversion rates? If not, what is the goal of a CRO professional and wha…
What is the job of an optimizer? Is it just improving conversion rates? If not, what is the goal of a CRO professional and what are the steps of conversion optimization? Brian Massey, the Conversion Scientist, shares the steps of conversion optimization. He is the founder of Conversion Sciences, and author of the book “Your […]
Having trouble viewing the text? You can always read the original article here: Reduce Bounce Rates: Ready to Fix Your Conversion Problem?
Technically, a “bounce” is a visitor that looks at only one page, or a visitor that spends an embarrassingly shor…
Technically, a “bounce” is a visitor that looks at only one page, or a visitor that spends an embarrassingly short time on the page. Keep reading to find out how to reduce bounce rates. A bounce is any visit for which the visitor only looks at one page and does not interact with it. This […]
Automation and machine learning have tremendous potential to help all of us in marketing. But at the moment a lot of these tools are inaccessible to people who can’t code or who can code a bit but aren’t really that comfortable with it.
What often happens is that there ends up being one or two people in the office who are comfortable with writing and editing code and then these people produce scripts and notebooks that everyone else runs. The workflow looks a bit like this:
I will show you a simple way to streamline this workflow to remove the steps where people need to run a script and format the output. Instead they can run the automation directly from within Google Sheets.
The example I will show you is for a Sheets custom function that returns the Lighthouse score for a URL like in this gif:
The method I will show you isn’t the only way of doing this, but it does illustrate a much more general technique that can be used for many things, including machine learning algorithms.
There are two parts:
A Google Cloud Run application that will do the complicated stuff (in this case run a Lighthouse test) and that will respond to HTTP requests.
An Appscript custom function that will make requests to the API you created in step 1 and return the results into the Google Sheet.
Cloud run applications
Cloud Run is a Google service that takes a docker image that you provide and makes it available over HTTP. You only pay when an HTTP request is made, so for a service like this that isn’t being used 24/7 it is very cheap. The actual cost will depend on how much you use it, but I would estimate less than $1 per month to run thousands of tests.
The first thing we need to do is make a Docker image that will perform the Lighthouse analysis when we make an HTTP request to it. Luckily for us there is some documentation showing how to run a Lighthouse audit programatically on Github. The linked code saves the analysis to a file rather than returning the response over HTTP, but this is easy to fix by wrapping the whole thing in an Express app like this:
Then you will also need a file called package.json which describes how to install the above application and a Dockerfile so we can wrap everything up in Docker. All the code files are available on Github.
package.json
{
"name": "lighthouse-sheets",
"description": "Backend API for putting Lighthouse scores in Google sheets",
"version": "1.0.0",
"author": "Richard Fergie",
"license": "MIT",
"main": "index.js",
"scripts": {
"start": "node index.js"
},
"dependencies": {
"express": "^4.17.1",
"lighthouse": "^6.3"
},
"devDependencies": {}
}
Dockerfile
# Use the official lightweight Node.js 10 image.
# https://hub.docker.com/_/node
FROM node:12-slim
# Our container needs to have chrome installed to
# run the lighthouse tests
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
apt-transport-https \
ca-certificates \
curl \
gnupg \
--no-install-recommends \
&& curl -sSL https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | apt-key add - \
&& echo "deb https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list \
&& apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
google-chrome-stable \
fontconfig \
fonts-ipafont-gothic \
fonts-wqy-zenhei \
fonts-thai-tlwg \
fonts-kacst \
fonts-symbola \
fonts-noto \
fonts-freefont-ttf \
--no-install-recommends \
&& apt-get purge --auto-remove -y curl gnupg \
&& rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
# Create and change to the app directory.
WORKDIR /usr/src/app
# Copy application dependency manifests to the container image.
# A wildcard is used to ensure copying both package.json AND package-lock.json (when available).
# Copying this first prevents re-running npm install on every code change.
COPY package*.json ./
# Install production dependencies.
# If you add a package-lock.json, speed your build by switching to 'npm ci'.
# RUN npm ci --only=production
RUN npm install --only=production
# Copy local code to the container image.
COPY . ./
# Run the web service on container startup.
CMD [ "node", "--unhandled-rejections=strict","index.js" ]
Build the docker image and then you can test things locally on your own computer like this:
But you might have to setup the docker authentication first before you can do this. An alternative method is the use Google Cloud Build to make the image; this might work better for you if you can’t get the authentication working.
Next you need to create a Cloud Run service with this docker image.
Name and adjust settings. You must give your service a name and configure a few other settings:
It is best to pick a region that is close to where most of the audience for your sites live. Checking the site speed for a UK site from Tokyo won’t give you the same results as what your audience get.
In order for you to call this service from Google Sheets it must allow unauthenticated invocations. If you’re worried about locking down and securing the service to prevent other people from using it you will have to do this by (for example) checking from an API secret in the HTTP request or something like that.
Next you must select the container you made earlier. You can type in the name if you remember it or click “Select” and choose it from the menu.
Then click “Show Advanced Settings” because there is further configuration to do.
You need to increase the memory allocation because Lighthouse tests need more than 256Mb to run. I have chosen 1GiB here but you might need the maximum allowance of 2GiB for some sites.
I have found that reducing the concurrency to 1 improves the reliability of the service. This means Google will automatically start a new container for each HTTP request. The downside is that this costs slightly more money.
Click “Create” and your Cloud Run service will be ready shortly.
You can give it a quick test using the URL. For example:
This will open a new tab where you can code your Google Sheets custom function.
The key idea here is to use the Appscript UrlFetchApp function to perform the HTTP request to your API. Some basic code to do this looks like this:
function LIGHTHOUSE(url) {
const BASE_URL = "https://lighthouse-sheets-public-v4e5t2rofa-nw.a.run.app"
var request_url = BASE_URL+"?url="+encodeURIComponent(url)
var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(request_url)
var result = JSON.parse(response.getContentText())
return(result.categories.performance.score * 100)
}
The last line returns the overall performance score into the sheet. You could edit it to return something else. For example to get the SEO score use result.categories.seo.score instead.
Or you can return multiple columns of results by returning a list like this:
Save the file and then you will have a custom function available in your Google Sheet called LIGHTHOUSE.
The easiest way to get started with this is to copy my example Google Sheet and then update the code yourself to point at your own API and to return the Lighthouse results you are most interested in.
Enhance your spreadsheet know-how
The great thing about this method is that it can work for anything that can be wrapped in a Docker container and return a result within 30 seconds. Unfortunately Google Sheets custom functions have a timeout so you won’t have long enough to train some massive deep learning algorithm, but that still leaves a lot that you can do.
I use a very similar process for my Google Sheets addon Forecast Forge, but instead of returning a Lighthouse score it returns a machine learning powered forecast for whatever numbers you put into it.
The possibilities for this kind of thing are really exciting because in Search Marketing we have a lot of people who are very good with spreadsheets. I want to see what they can do when they can use all their spreadsheet knowledge and enhance it with machine learning.
Many analysts, marketers, product managers, UX and CRO professionals nowadays rely on user counts provided by Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or similar tools, in order to perform various statistical analyses. Such analyses may involve the statistic…
Many analysts, marketers, product managers, UX and CRO professionals nowadays rely on user counts provided by Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or similar tools, in order to perform various statistical analyses. Such analyses may involve the statistical hypothesis tests and estimations part of A/B testing, and may also include regressions and predictive models (LTV, churn, etc.). […] Read More...
This article will examine the effects of using the HyperLogLog++ (HLL++) cardinality estimation algorithm in applications where its output serves as input for statistical calculations. A prominent example of such a scenario can be found in online contr…
This article will examine the effects of using the HyperLogLog++ (HLL++) cardinality estimation algorithm in applications where its output serves as input for statistical calculations. A prominent example of such a scenario can be found in online controlled experiments (online A/B tests) where key performance measures are often based on the number of unique users, […] Read More...
There are a lot of stats to look at when viewing Google Analytics and average session duration is one of them. This article will cover what is average session duration and why bloggers should care about it. Even if you’re not a blogger, you may want to read in on this. Average Session Duration –…
There are a lot of stats to look at when viewing Google Analytics and average session duration is one of them. This article will cover what is average session duration and why bloggers should care about it. Even if you’re not a blogger, you may want to read in on this.
A single session is calculated from the first time someone views your page, to the last page view of that person. So, if someone enters your site and visits a few places, say 5, on it that takes them 10 minutes, then their session is 10 minutes, or 600 seconds. If their session is one page and only 30 seconds, then their total session is 30 seconds.
The average session duration is taking the total time of the session divided by the number of sessions during a specific date range.
Average Session Duration – Why Bloggers Should Care
Average session duration can be influenced by bounce rate, page views,and sessions, but for some, this could be a indicator of how much people like to stay on specific areas of your website. For bloggers, this allows them to know if an article has been well received.
Google loves long form content. This has been said over and over by many leaders in the SEO industry. However, Google also has suggested that content in a post be at least 300 words.
Well, 300 words doesn’t take long to read. If you’re a blogger that constantly published content that ranges around 300 words, you’re not really beefing up the potential of time that your readers are spending on your website. Often, the reader will skim through in under a minute, possibly comment, and then leave.
Rather than giving the reader a “wham bam thank you mam” experience, why not do some of the following to possibly increase the average session duration, and thusly your reader’s interest in remaining on your website:
Create a series of posts and interlink them. People who have an interest for the topic will click to each topic and stay on the site longer.
Always find ways to link to other relevant posts in your website. Whether it’s a specific term that you explain or some other relevant content, this gives the reader a possible option to be curious enough to click that link and read more.
Have cornerstone content that is lengthier and filled will several methods in which the reader can digest your content. Aside from long form text, don’t forget that you can add images, video and audio to expand upon your point. Cornerstone content is usually quite lengthy (more than 1500 words), and sometimes may even seem like it should be in an ebook.
Don’t forget to link to your services, encourage visitors to comment, or ask readers to subscribe to your newsletter. It’s your website, don’t be shy. All of these encourage some type of positive action that brings them to another place on your website.
Most bloggers will probably look more at their page views, but seriously, if you’re setting goals on individual pages, you may want to also focus on whether people are staying on those pages or going to the places you want them too.
Have you taken the time to look at your site or individual article’s average session duration?
You can link Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics? Why yes you can! In doing so, it allows you to integrate all the services of each into one big tool to measure the behavior of your site’s traffic. This allows you to dig deeper into how people are searching your website so you can see what…
You can link Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics? Why yes you can! In doing so, it allows you to integrate all the services of each into one big tool to measure the behavior of your site’s traffic. This allows you to dig deeper into how people are searching your website so you can see what they are looking for the most. Aside from their capabilities, the great thing about having both of these tools are that they are absolutely free. The only thing you need to do in order to take advantage of them, are to sync them together.
This article will show you how to link Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics.
How to link Webmaster Tools with Google Analtyics
Before you can link Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics, you need to sign up for a Google account. After you have a Google account, you need to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. You will need to submit your website to each of them and add their tracking code onto your website.
The best tool to add the tracking code from Google Analytics or get your site crawled by Google Webmaster Tools, especially for WordPress users, is to use Google Analytics for WordPress, and WordPress SEO by Yoast, both of which are handy plugins.
After you’ve installed the tracking codes, either manually, or using the recommended plugins if you’re a WordPress user, then you need to link Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics.
Step 1. You can link Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics by going to the Google Analytics tab called Admin. After you’ve clicked to go to the Admin section, there are 3 columns. Look for the middle column that says Property. You want to click on the link that says All Properties. (Note: Right click on the image below to open in a new tab or window in order to see how you can navigate to where you need to link Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics.)
Step 2. On the All Properties page, if you scroll, you’ll see all sorts of Google properties listed. You will want to find the Google Webmaster Tools section.
Step 3. Fill out the form and hit save. On this page you’ll want to also decide if you want to enable features like Demographics and Interest Reports Advertiser Features, and In-Page Analytics.
The Demographics and Interest reports basically collect information on your visitors in regards to age, gender, and their interest. The Advertiser Features give you options not available in regular use of Google Analytics and give you the ability to remarket with the platform, as well as have DoubleClick integration, reporting on Demographics and Interests, and reports on Google Display Network Impression.
As a note, while in this step, please make sure that you’ve hooked your website up to Google Webmaster Tools. The website has to be verified or this will not work right. Click save when you’re done.
The process in how to link Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics doesn’t take long at all. If you’ve already hooked your website up with each Google property, then it’s pretty easy to do.
Have you linked your Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics?
Google Analytics provides a great feature for website owners to be able to track specific campaigns, also called a goal. It can be places on pages, forms, or anything you are wanting to track for to see if a campaign has an effective website conversion. It also tracks how the visitor arrived to the area…
Google Analytics provides a great feature for website owners to be able to track specific campaigns, also called a goal. It can be places on pages, forms, or anything you are wanting to track for to see if a campaign has an effective website conversion. It also tracks how the visitor arrived to the area you want to convert.
This works great after you’ve tried A/B Testing so you can verify the results from live traffic. In this article, you’ll learn how to set up a simple goal in Google Analytics.
Google Analytics: How to Set Up a Simple Goal
Please note, if you haven’t added your site to Google Analytics, then you can’t take advantage of the goal tool until you do. Aside from adding your site to Google Analytics, you will also need to apply the generated tracking code to your website.
The first step is in creating a simple goal is by clicking on your site in the Google Analytics dashboard. On the right hand side, scroll down to the area called Conversions. If you click on it, the area will expand and show you other links. Look for the area called overview as shown below.
Now, you can either do this and be led to set up a simple goal or you can also click the Admin tab at the top. Image is below. In order to view the image larger and much better, you will have to right click on the image to open it in a new tab or window.
On the last column under View, is an area called Goals. You’ll click that and be led to the page that has an area much like the image below.
Click on the red button to create a goal. Once you have, you will need to name your goal and tell it hat type of tracking you want. In the case of this tutorial, and it being how to set up a simple goal, we’ll choose the first option called Destination. This is great for contact forms or lead generation forms. Once you have selected the option on how you want to track your goal, then click the blue button that says Next Step. See the example image below to see how you should proceed.
In the next step, you tell it what page you are wanting to land on. You do not put the full URL. See the image below for how this step should go.
Before hitting the blue button that says Create Goal, make sure to click the link that says Verify this Goal. This helps to make sure that your goal will work and checks it against your previous 7 days of stats on Google Analytics. In the case that you just joined and don’t have 7 days of stats, then proceed by clicking the button to create the goal. You can always check after a few days if the goal is actually working.
Once this has been set up, you won’t have to mess with it any more. You can just sit back and analyze how your goal is doing. Simple, right? There are other ways you can set up a goal in Google Analytics, like how long visitors are staying on your site (called Destination), by how many pages visits (Pages/Screens per Visit), or Event (like from watching a video.)
Have you taken advantage of setting up a goal in Google Analytics? Did you find it easy?
In Google Analytics, one of the statistics measures is average session duration. In simple terms, this is the amount of the time that a person spends on your website. This article will help you understand average session duration and if you’re a blogger, perhaps persuade you to take a better look into this piece of…
In Google Analytics, one of the statistics measures is average session duration. In simple terms, this is the amount of the time that a person spends on your website. This article will help you understand average session duration and if you’re a blogger, perhaps persuade you to take a better look into this piece of information.
As an extra goodie, there will be a few brief tips to hopefully get those visitors to stay longer.
Average Session Duration – What is it and Why Bloggers Should Care
As mentioned before, the average session duration is the average time of all the time spent on your site by your visitors. This time is usually a great indicator of how interested people are with the content on your website, regardless if it is something you are selling or not.
The smaller the number that the average session duration is, means that you’ve got a lot of work to do in either jazzing up your content, or creating new articles that your visitors are truly interested in seeing. You also would need to try to entice those visitors to stay on your website longer.
For example, if your visitors are only on your website for less than a minute and a half, you probably need to be concerned. Of course, Google Analytics has other tools you can look at after looking at your average session duration statistic. Usually you will want to check out where the visitors are coming to your site and where they are leaving. If the entrance and exit of your website, especially a blog, is the front page, then you’ve got a problem with the front of your website.
Possible Problems that Could be the reason for a poor Average Session Duration stat
Poor Navigation – If you don’t give people a clear path in order to navigate your website, they probably won’t go any further than the front page, or if you’re lucky, one article.
The design is undesirable. – A lot of people are visual. If your people can’t identify with you and remember you, they might not be back. Some bloggers who choose minimalistic designs often sacrifice their branding.
There are no effective calls to action. – If you are giving people a reason to come back, they won’t. Ask them to subscribe to your newsletter. Encourage the to follow you on the social networks. Encourage them to use your contact form or click on your about page to learn more about you and what your website is about.
The articles have boring titles. – People aren’t enticed to click on and read articles that are unappealing. Be concise and try to think of what spurs you on to clicking and reading a blog post based on the title. You can learn a lot from visiting leaders in your niche to see what’s most effective.
The website is just confusing. – If people don’t know what your website is about, and why they should be there rather than some other site, then they won’t be back. Give them a reason. If you’re not sure, go back to your original site focus plan and tweak it.
No plan to keep visitors once they’ve clicked deeper into the website. – Once people are within your website, whether it’s a blog post, or your shopping cart, or landing page, you need to keep them there. Entice them with linking to other articles within your site, in your post’s content. You could also benefit from either showing some most recent posts or related posts, or both.
Average duration session is definitely an important factor in website conversion. The goal is to keep them there as long as possible because that WILL get the subscriber, the social share, the commentator, and above all, THE SALE!
Do you pay attention to your average session duration stat for your website?
When you get into creating and managing a website, at some point you’re going to hear about Google Analytics, especially being told you need to have it on your website. Regardless if you’re a blogger, a small business owner, or a big corporate business, you do need a tool to measure your site’s progress. Google…
When you get into creating and managing a website, at some point you’re going to hear about Google Analytics, especially being told you need to have it on your website. Regardless if you’re a blogger, a small business owner, or a big corporate business, you do need a tool to measure your site’s progress. Google Analytics just happens to be a good one that is also free to use.
So…
What Do You Do After You First Apply Google Anayltics to Your Website?
The majority of users may look in on their stats once a day or once a week. Google Analytics provides quite a bit of statistics. You can even set campaigns to analyze traffic from your website and some of your social network handles.
It’s quite alright to take a frequent look at your stats, but if you’re just looking at them and wishing your traffic to improve, then you’re missing out on what Google Analytics can do for you. It takes analyzing what’s going on and planning a campaign to drive attention to those areas of your website that you want people to see.
The great thing about most stats programs, including Google Analytics is that they provide exactly what information you need to know about your visitors. You can even find out if you’re targeting the correct audience, and at what times they hit your website.
Once you’ve installed Google Analytics on your website, you should let it do it’s job in collecting information. After about 3 weeks to a month, you should have a nice tentative spread of your website’s traffic.
When installing Google analytics to your website for the first time, some of the most important stats you should look at are:
Pageviews
Percentage of new visitors
Percentage of returning visitors
Bounce rate
How you are acquiring your visitors (where are they coming from)
Keywords
While there are a TON of other stats, your first time through should be to gather this information and start to put together a first campaign.
Your keywords, acquisition, and your bounce rate with each campaign you plan will change in time depending on how you adjust your website conversion plan.
Keywords
Before you even look at your stats, you really should already have a list of keywords that you’ve been wanting to work on for your website. If your analytics in Google are not coinciding with your intended list, then you’ve got homework to do in creating content around those keywords. Don’t worry, some people have websites for a few years before realizing that they’ve been missing out on capitalizing on being more laser focused on their keyword strategy.
Acquisition
If your website is brand new, you might not have too much information on how you’ve been acquiring your visitors. You will have a small idea, and can use those stats to either focus on those places that are sending you traffic, or working on trying to get traffic from new sources. It might take making sure your website is properly listed on search engines, creating social network handles, and sharing your content.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate gives you a percentage of how many of your website visitors are only viewing one of your pages, and then leaving. Your bounce rate should never be high. In fact, your strategy should be in converting those visitors to fill out your lead forms, buy your product, share and comment on your blog posts, or even subscribe to your newsletter.
If you can put a plan together that gives you a low bounce rate, great acquisition sources, and above all, making a return on investment, you’re on the right path to great website conversion. The great thing is that Google Analytics is free to use… so what are you waiting for? Go forth and find out how your website is performing!
Do you use Google Analytics in your website conversion strategy? Do you still struggle with deciphering those stats and putting a plan together? If not, what advice do you have for newbies just hooking their website’s up to Google Analytics?
In Google Analytics, one of the statistics measures is average session duration. In simple terms, this is the amount of the time that a person spends on your website. This article will help you understand average session duration and if you’re a blogger, perhaps persuade you to take a better look into this piece of information.
When you get into creating and managing a website, at some point you’re going to hear about Google Analytics, especially being told you need to have it on your website. Regardless if you’re a blogger, a small business owner, or a big corporate business, you do need a tool to measure your site’s progress.