LinkedIn buys Lynda.com, the best money spent?  

And with advanced tools such as funnels and attribution, you can see exactly how all the pages on your site are working with or against you. At its core, Google Analytics helps you understand what's working and what isn't.

Blog might be driving traffic, or a competitor might be poaching traffic.

SEO and Paid Ads.  Paid Ads?  Google Adwords? 

5 Categories:
1)  E-Commerce.
2)  Lead Generation.
3)  Content Publishing.
4)  Online information.
5)  Branding.

For ecommerce, your objective is to sell products or services.  

You'll use Google Analytics to find ways to increase those sales and track your performance over time. For lead generation, your aim is to collect user information, and you'll test strategies and the landing pages to find a working combination. For content publishers, the goal is to encourage repeat visits and engagement. So you'll be tracking what keeps people clicking and interacting with the site. For online information, it's important that users find what they're looking for when they need it.

So you'll be interested in what content they're finding or not finding. And for branding, the key objective is awareness and loyalty. Is your site being shared, linked to, and engaged with on the greater web? It's more than just looking at how many people visit your site. That information is just a fraction of what you'll need to make informed decisions. Every site will have actions, and Google Analytics tracks all of those actions. And then it boils it down into easy-to-understand reports.

This equips you with the right data to understand what you need to do to improve the outcome of your site.

Four Components of Google Analytics:
1)  Data Collection.
2)  Configuration.
3)  Data Processing. 
4)  Reporting. 

To track a website, Google analytics uses asmall snippet of JavaScript code. You'll place this code on every page of your website, and when a user arrives, the code comes alive and starts to collect data on how the user engages with your site.

Some of the data comes from the website itself, like the URL of the pages that the user is viewing. Other data is collected from the user's browser, like the language the browser is set to, the browser name, and the device and operating system used to access the site, and this is how you can see, say, if most of your users are Mac or PC, or iPhone or Android. The JavaScript can also collect information on what content is viewed, for how long, and even the referring source that brought the user to the site in the first place, say, a blog that linked to your site, or a Facebook post.

All of this information is then pushed to Google Analytic servers to await processing. Google looks at each piece of data as an interaction or a hit, and every time your user visits a new page on your site, the code collects and sends new or updated information about the user's activity. And now that Google has all of this information, they'll start processing it, and this can take anywhere from four to twenty-four hours. You can think of processing as the step that takes all of this raw information and turns it into something useful.

From there, Google will organize the information. It's going to categorize users by whether they're new or returning, it'll determine their length of the stay on the site, and it'll even link together all the pages they viewed in the order they view them in. It's also at this stage thatGoogle applies any configuration settings you've preset for that raw data, and we're going to talk more on those later, but an example of this would be if you want to exclude, say, yourself,or your office from appearing in your reports. Once your data is then processed, it's going to be stored in a database.

From here, the last element is reporting, and this is what we'll be spending the majority of this course looking at. You're going to be accessing reporting through the Google Analytics web interface, and it's there that you can interact with all of your data. Now, it is possible to grab the data using Google's API, but we're not going to be covering that in this course. Now, there's a lot more that does go on under the hood to make Google Analytic's possible. If you're really curious, you can explore Google's documentation in the Google Developer Guidelines.

It's dense reading, but it does give you an even closer look at how all of these elements work together.

First up is Attribution. And this is the process of assigning crdit for sales and conversions to touch points in those conversion paths. Essentially you're quantifying a contribution a particular channel made on your sales or conversions.

Along with Attribution, we have the Attribution Model. And this is a rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and conversions are assigned to each touch point in a users journey. There are different types of models, say, last click attribution, or, first click attribution.  Last click attribution would assign 100% credit to the final touch point before a user purchased. Say a user went to Google, looked for your site, found a blog, clicked on the blog, read another article, and then clicked on a link for your site.

There were many steps in that path and with last click attribution 100% of the credit goes to that final click. First click attribution assigns 100% of the credit to the touch point that started that conversion path, so that search to Google would get all of the credit when they click onto your site. We're gonna go deeper into that in a later chapter. 

CONVERSION
From here, let's take a look at a Conversion. This is a completed activity, online or offline, that is important to the success of your business. You might measure a conversion when someone signs up for your email newsletter, which would be a goal conversion, or makes a purchase on your site, say, an e-commerce conversion.

As you start to interact with data on Google Analytics you'll come across some definitions specific to how Google organizes your data. And the first is Dimension. 

DIMENSION
This is a descriptive attribute, or characteristic of data. Browser, landing page, and campaign are all examples of default dimensions in Google Analytics. Now another example would be a geographic location having dimensions, such as city name or state. You also have browser, exit page,screens, and sessions, which are all other examples of dimensions that are going to appear by default in Google Analytics.

TRACK an EVENT
Now Google's also going to give you the opportUnity to track an Event. And this is a type of hit used to track user interactions with your content. You might track downloads, mobile ad clicks, when someone plays a video, or, say, downloads a PDF. 

GOAL
From there you might set up a Goal. And this is a configuration setting that allows you to track the valuable actions happening on your site. Goals allow you to measure how well you're fulfilling your business objectives. You can set up individual goals to track discrete actions, like getting people to visit at least five pages of your site.

Or someone who spends at least a certain amount of money on your products. Every time a user completes a goal a conversion is logged into your Google Analytics account. So think of a goal as potentially a series of actions that must occur for you to consider it a conversion event. Now you might hear me from time to time to refer to what's known as a Hit. And this is an interaction that results in data being sent to Google Analytics. Common hit types include page-tracking, event-tracking, and, e-commerce tracking.

Each time the tracking code is triggered by a user that data is packaged into a hit and sent to Google servers. As you look deeper at this data you'll interact with what's known as a Metric.  

METRIC
This is a quantitative measurement of your data. Metrics in Google Analytics can either be sums or ratios. For example, the metric of the city dimension is going to be how many residents it has. Screen views, pages per session, an average session duration are other examples of metrics you'll find in Google Analytics.

You'll also be spending a lot of time reviewing your Pageviews. A pageview is different from visitors. This is an instance of a page being loaded, or reloaded, in a browser. Pageviews is a metric defined as the total number of pages viewed. One unique user can contribute multiple pageviews. Once we start playing with reports you'll encounter what's known as a segment.This is basically a subset of sessions, or users, that share common attributes.

SEGMENTS

Segments allow you to isolate and analyze groups of sessions, or users, for better analysis.You might segment your data by marketing channel, so that you can see which channel is responsible for an increase in purchases. Or you might segment your data by geographic region to see what parts of the country, or the world, are improving your performance. Drilling down to look at segments of your data helps you understand what causes a change to all of that aggregate data. Now if you're curious how Google understands how many page views a unique user provides, it's all about the Session.

SESSION
A session is a period of time a user is active on your site. By default, if a user is active for 30 minutes, or more, any future activity is attributed to a new session, meaning they'll be flagged as a repeat visitor. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes are counted as part of the original session. Now another one that you'll see all over the place, and we're going to spend a great bit of time interacting with is Source and Medium. 

SOURCE & MEDIUM
Source is the origin of your traffic, such as a search engine, for example, Google, or a particular domain name, such as, mysite.com.

The medium is the general category of the source. For example, it could be an organic search, in the case of Google, it could be social, in the case of Facebook. It could be a cost per click search, or even a referral from another website. The Source/Medium which you'll see together quite frequently, is a dimension that combines the two. Now we'll encounter more terms along the way, but these are the core concepts you'll want to be familiar with to get the most out of this course.

PROPERTY
A Property is just a website or mobile application.  One master view and one test view.  

VIEW
A view is here.
I have several Views, four in this case, and we can see a snippet of the data on the right-hand side in these columns. So, within this Account, Branded Crate, I have a Property, which just so happens to be named Branded Crate, followed by several Views.Now, you're not seeing any data associated with some of these Views, because I created them with the specific intent of showing you what it looks like when you have multiple Views,associated to a Property, associated to an Account.

10 Ways to Get More Done in Less Time

by Robert W. Bly from this page.

“I am always quarreling with time! It is so short to do something and so long to do nothing.”                          --Queen Charlotte

                

The ability to work faster and get more done in less time isn’t slavery; it’s freedom. You’re going to have the same big pile of stuff to do every day whether you want it or not. If you can be more efficient, you can get it done and still have some time left over for yourself – whether it’s to read the paper, hike, jog, or play the piano.

Here are 10 ideas that can increase your personal productivity so you can get more done in less time:

1. Master your PC. Every engineer or manager who wants to be more productive should use a modern PC with the latest software. Doing so can double, triple, or even quadruple your output.

                

Install on your PC the same software as your colleagues, other departments within your organization, vendors, and business partners use. The broader the range of your software, the more easily you can open and read files from other sources.

                

Constantly upgrade your desktop to eliminate too-slow computer processes that waste your time, such as slow downloading of files or Web pages. If you use the Internet a lot, get the fastest access you can. DSL is getting cheaper by the month and is well worth the money at its current price levels.

                

2. Don’t be a perfectionist. “I’m a non-perfectionist,” said Isaac Asimov, author of 475 books. “I don’t look back in regret or worry at what I have written.” Be a careful worker, but don’t agonize over your work beyond the point where the extra effort no longer produces a proportionately worthwhile improvement in your final product.

                

Be excellent but not perfect. Customers do not have the time or budget for perfection; for most projects, getting 95 to 98 percent of the way to perfection is good enough. That doesn't mean you deliberately make errors or give less than your best. It means you stop polishing and fiddling with the job when it looks good to you -- and you don't agonize over the fact you're not spending another hundred hours on it. Create it, check it, then let it go.

                

Understand the exponential curve of excellence. Quality improves with effort according to an exponential curve. That means early effort yields the biggest results; subsequent efforts yield smaller and smaller improvements, until eventually the miniscule return is not worth the effort. Productive people stop at the point where the investment in further effort on a task is no longer justified by the tiny incremental improvement it would produce. Aim for 100 percent perfection, and you are unlikely to be productive or profitable. Consistently hit within the 90 to 98 percent range, and you will maximize both customer satisfaction as well as return on your time investment.

                

“Perfection does not exist,” wrote Alfred De Musset. “To understand this is the triumph of human intelligence; to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.”

                

3. Free yourself from the pressure to be an innovator. As publisher Cameron Foote observes, “Clients are looking for good, not great.” Do the best you can to meet the client’s or your boss’s requirements. They will be happy. Do not feel pressured to reinvent the wheel or create a masterpiece on every project you take on. Don't be held up by the false notion that you must uncover some great truth or present your boss with revolutionary ideas and concepts. Most successful business solutions are just common sense packaged to meet a specific need.

                

Eliminate performance pressure. Don't worry about whether what you are doing is different or better than what others have done before you. Just do the best you can. That will be enough.

                

4. Switch back and forth between different tasks. Even if you consider yourself a specialist, do projects outside your specialty. Inject variety into your project schedule. Arrange your daily schedule so you switch off from one assignment to another at least once or twice each day. Variety, as the saying goes, is indeed the spice of life.            

                

Approximately 70 to 90 percent of what I am doing at any time is in familiar tasks within my area of expertise. This keeps me highly productive. The other 10 to 30 percent is in new areas, markets, industries, or disciplines outside my area of expertise. This keeps me fresh and allows me to explore things that captivate my imagination but are not in my usual schedule of assignments.

                

5. Don’t waste time working on projects you don’t have yet. Get letters of agreement, contracts, purchase orders, and budget sign-offs before proceeding. Don’t waste time starting the work for projects that may not come to fruition. An official approval or go-ahead from your boss or customer makes the project real and firm, so you can proceed at full speed, with the confidence and enthusiasm that come from knowing you have been given the green light.

                

6. Make deadlines firm but adequate. Of 150 executives surveyed by AccounTemps, 37% rated the dependable meeting of deadlines as the most important quality of a team player (cited in Continental magazine, October 1997, page 44).

                

Productive people set and meet deadlines. Without a deadline, the motivation to do a task is small to nonexistent. Tasks without assigned deadlines automatically go to the bottom of your priority list. After all, if you have two reports to file – and one is due a week from Thursday, and the other due “whenever you can get around to it” – which do you suppose will get written first?

                

Often you will collaborate with your supervisor or customer in determining deadlines. Set deadlines for a specific date and time, not a time period. For example, “due June 23 by 3 pm or sooner,” not “in about two weeks.” Having a specific date and time for completion eliminates confusion and gives you motivation to get the work done on time.

                

At the same time, don’t make deadlines too tight. Try to build in a few extra days for the unexpected, such as a missing piece of information, a delay from a subcontractor, a last-minute change, or a crisis on another project.

                

7. Protect and value your time. Productive people guard their time more heavily than the gold in Fort Knox. They don’t waste time. They get right to the point. They may come off as abrupt or dismissive to some people. But they realize they cannot give everyone who contacts them all the time each person wants. They choose who they spend time on and with. They make decisions. They say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done – and then move on.

                

Assign a dollar value to your time. If you work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, that comes to 2,000 hours a year. To calculate your hourly rate, divide your salary by 2,000. Example: $75,000 annual salary divided by 2,000 hours comes to $37.50 an hour.

                

A productive person can tell you in an instant the worth of his or her time, because he’s already done this calculation and committed the answer to memory. Productive people weigh the effort required for specific activities – and the return it will produce – against the cost of the time based on the dollar value of their hour.

                

For instance, if my time is worth $37.50, and I spend an hour driving to a discount store to save $10 on supplies, I have not used my time wisely -- I am $27.50 in the hole. On the other hand, if I saved $1,000 on a new computer for the same trip, it obviously was worth the time.

                

8. Stay focused. As Robert Ringer observed in his best-selling book Looking Out for Number One, successful people apply themselves to the task at hand. They work until the work gets done. They concentrate on one or two things at a time. They don’t go in a hundred different directions. My experience is that people who are big talkers – constantly spouting ideas or proposing deals and ventures – are spread out in too many different directions to be effective. Efficient people have a vision and focus their activities to achieve that vision.

                

9. Set a production goal. Stephen King writes 1,500 words every day except his birthday, Christmas, and the Fourth of July. Steinway makes 800 pianos in its German plant every year.

                

Workers and organizations that want to meet deadlines and be successful set a production goal and make it. An individual who truly wants to be productive sets a production goal, meets it, and then keeps going until he or she can do no more -- or runs out of time -- for the day.

                

Joe Lansdale, author of Bad Chili and many other novels, says he never misses his productivity goal of writing three pages a day, five days a week. “I’m not in the mood, I don’t feel like it, what kind of an excuse is that?” Lansdale said in an interview with Publisher’s Weekly (September 29, 1997). “If I’m not in the mood, do I not go to the chicken plant if I’ve got a job in the chicken plant?”

                

10. Do work you enjoy. In advising people on choosing their life’s work, David Ogilvy, founder of the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, quotes a Scottish proverb that says, “Be happy while you’re living; for you’re a long time dead.” The Tao Te Ching says, “In work, do what you enjoy.”

                

When you enjoy your work, it really isn’t work. To me, success is being able to make a good living while spending the workday in pleasurable tasks. You won’t love every project equally, of course. But try to balance “must-do” mandatory tasks with things that are more fun for you. Seek assignments that are exciting, interesting, and fulfilling.

                

Can you train yourself to like work better and enjoy it more? Motivational experts say we do have the ability to change our attitudes and behavior. “Attitude is a trap or it is freedom. Create your own,” writes Judy Crookes in Inner Realm magazine.

                

“Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans,” advised Max Ehrmann in his 1927 essay “Desiderata.” “Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.”

About the author:

                

Bob Bly is the director of the Center for Technical Communication (phone 201-385-1220; fax 201-385-1138; e-mail rwbly@bly.com), a Dumont, NJ-based consulting firm that helps engineers, managers, and other corporate employees improve their communication and interpersonal skills. Bob has presented seminars for numerous clients including Foxboro, IBM, Cardiac Pacemakers, Metrum Instrumentation, Medical Economics, U.S. Army,  Arco Chemical, and Thoroughbred Software. He has written more than 100 articles and 45 books including 101 Ways to Make Every Second Count  (Career Press).

Top CopyWriters

1.  Bob Bly, B2B Sales Copy.

2.  Casey Hibbard, Case Studies.  And here.

3.  Casey Demchak, Niche Domination.

4.  Michael Katz, E-Newsletters.

5.  Steve Slaunwhite, Websites.

6.  Ilise Benun, Pricing Services. 

7.  Gordon Graham, White Papers.

8.  Ed Gandia, Getting Clients.

Funny

"Treat the job interview like a date"?

RECRUITMENT OUTFITS

1.  Accolo is an award-winning Recruitment Process Outsourcing, RPO.  What the heck is that?
2.  
3.
4.
5.

Dear Direct Response Letter Subscriber: I am a big fan of Brian Tracy... ... and in his new book "Just Shut Up and Do It: 7 Steps to Conquer Your Goals" (Sourcebooks, 2016; p. 61), Mr. Tracy writes: "Never do or don't do anything because you are afraid of what people may think about you. Because the fact is, no one is thinking about you at all." His point: We are often self-conscious because we think everyone is looking at us or paying attention to what we're doing -- when in fact, almost no one is. Remember the one-hit wonder Rockwell and his song, "Why does it feel like somebody's always watching me ... and I have no privacy?" Well, guess what, Rockwell? No one is really watching! And here's what's even more important: even if in fact some people ARE paying attention to and noticing us, well -- so what? Who cares what they think? You shouldn't. After all, you don't know them. Overwhelmingly, the odds are that their opinions or actions have no effect on your life. We are self-conscious, I believe, because we grossly over-estimate our own importance to others and the world at large. Look at all the e-mails you get from some guru who breathlessly announces, "Woo-hoo! My new book is out!" (Yes, I know you've gotten some of those e-mails from me as well.) And your reaction is probably the same as mine: Who cares? The publication of your book ... the launch of your new business or product ... the fact that your last marketing campaign "crushed it" ... or that you won the blah-blah-blah award ... or are the keynote speaker at the XYZ Conference ... These things are all important to you. And maybe to a few of your followers. But to the world at large they amount to nothing. Nada. Zilch.  Zero. Other than to our immediate families, for most of us -- me included -- we are just not that important. The sooner we realize it, the better we can understand that Mr. Tracy is right: Whatever we're doing, almost no one is looking. So there's no need to be self-conscious or hold yourself back. No need to fear embarrassment or humiliation. Don't be a legend in your own mind. If what you do works, you'll benefit from your success. If it doesn't, the world at large is asleep and not paying attention ... so no one will even see you stumble and fall. As Nike advises: Just do it! You'll be glad you did. Sincerely, Bob Bly Copywriter / Consultant 31 Cheyenne Dr. Montville, NJ 07045 Phone 973-263-0562 Fax 973-263-0613 www.bly.com