I’d like to talk about the conversion funnel.

Firstly, what is ‘the conversion funnel’? Well, the conversion funnel is the steps which a website visitor has to complete in order to fulfill your desired goal, whether the final outcome is a lead or a sale. Each step in this process is vital. After all, if a website visitor does not complete all of these, then the sale has not been made.

Most online marketers only look at the end result. However, it is important to consider the non-converting cases in order to discover at what stage the sale process was stopped. This information can then be used to improve the process and increase the conversion rate.

What happens if your website achieves a lot of downloads, but few sales? Could it be the checkout process? How secure does a user feel when they are completing their purchase? Are they been offered too many alternatives at this final step? These are all important questions to consider.

I believe in the KISS principle. Keep it simple, stupid. The fewer steps a website visitor needs to take to complete your desired goal, the better. Just by improving the final steps within your conversion funnel, you can greatly improve your overall conversion rate.

Using tools such as Google Analytics, you can track the user’s progress through the different stages the checkout process. This allows you to monitor your conversion funnel metrics and learn valuable information which can be used to improve your website.

Google Analytics has introduced a data sharing policy which it says, will provide users with transparency, choice and improved product experience.

By sharing your analytics data with Google you are helping improve the products provided by the search engine. Users who opt to share their data with Google will have access to improved ad-specific services.

With Google Analytics Data Sharing you are able to share your data with Google and in return you are able to make use of benchmarking and have access to specific ads-related features such as Conversion Optimizer.

The Conversion Optimizer is an optional feature within AdWords which can automatically adjust your bids to maximize conversions at the minimum price. Currently, only users who opt to share their data with Google are eligible to use this feature.

To share your data, go to the Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings page within your account to opt in to sharing your data “With Google products only” or “Anonymously with Google products”.

If you select “do not share my Google Analytics data” in your Data Sharing Settings, you will not be able to use benchmarking or any of the other improved ad-specific features.

You can also choose to share your data anonymously. Google will remove all identifiable information about you and your website and then combine the data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in similar industries and then place this data in an aggregate form.

Google Analytics Data Sharing will not affect a customer’s existing account without express and explicit permission.

For anyone who has ever uploaded a video into YouTube knows, the question that has always been unanswerable is “How do I find out who watches my video?”

Finally, YouTube has volunteered a solution to this problem to the delight to thousands of its subscribers.

On the 26 March, YouTube launched YouTube Insight, a free analytics tool modelled on Google Analytics. The tool is designed to help subscribers understand more about where the viewers watching their videos are and how those viewers found their videos.

Insight enables YouTube subscribers to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload into the site. This information, previously unavailable to YouTube users, allows subscribers to monitor how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

Using these metrics, YouTube subscribers can increase their videos’ view counts and improve their popularity on the site.

Now, the makers of the videos can watch those watching them.

Without Website Analytics search marketers would only be obsessed with generating endless amounts of traffic.

There are many analytics tools on the internet that a webmaster or analyst could use to monitor where their traffic is coming from and how users navigate through their website.

Personally, I just make use of Google Analytics and also sometimes install CrazyEgg.

Most of you probably know what Google Analytics is all about, so I am going to focus on CrazyEgg.

One of the main features of CrazyEgg is the Heatmap, in fact this is the main reason why I sometimes include CrazyEgg on the websites I build.

In a nutshell the Heatmap allows you to see what’s hot and what’s not and it illustrates this is such an easy way to analyze.

I think CrazyEgg is a very important tool for webmasters that care about what their users do and in return aim at optimizing usability for their users.

I noticed the other day, CrazyEgg promoting a new feature called Confetti. According to their website, this allows you to dig a little deeper and find out where people click based upon things like: Top 15 Referrers, Search Terms, Operating System, Browser etc.

Although CrazyEgg is not a completely a free service, it does a allow you to track 5000 visitors per month.

With the combination of these two services (Google Analytics and CrazyEgg), I can get many useful bits of information from my website visitors.

This is just really a simple introduction, most analytics services offer a lot of more information including Bounce Rate, Top Entry and Exit pages and also allow you to setup goals. I will write more about this in another post, so watch this space.