For those who prefer not using the third party redirection, there is also an option to run code from your own servers. The advanced version of the code is written in php.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Please share your thoughts, insights and comments because it really helps me write more effectively.

Quickly Integrate Facebook with Google Analytics is a post from: Key Web Metrics & Web Analytics Blog

Social media serves as a portal for communication between the company and its customers. Not only does it serve as a free-form portal for marketing existing, new or upcoming products or services from a company, it also doubles up as a platform for PR, becoming an extensive medium for the company to receive instant feedback, provide basic customer support and also an opportunity to understand the mindset of their customers.

Analysing the returns and “hits” to a social media platform is unavailable and as such not feasible since these social networking sites do not track the number of hits on a particular profile page. Instead, users are encouraged to increase their “friend” or “follower” counts to increase presence.

Instead of optimizing or efficiently coding a website, social media marketing promotes conversation and networking as a means to an end. Instead of hits and visitors, social media marketing focuses on the number of useful conversations had with existing and potential customers and how, through the use of innovative techniques and social platform tools, the brand of the company is promoted.

In a way, analysing social media marketing is akin to psychology – the minds of the customers must be understood and newer products should be built to cater to the customer’s needs. Therefore the Return of Investment (ROI) in social media marketing is practically impossible to define in the same terms as other ROIs are defined – in that there is no preset formula that says that for X hours of time spent socially spreading the product, Y number of products would be sold in a time period of Z months.

The time spent marketing a product and linking with the user-base does not give off immediate or mathematically predictable results. However, when done right, it can prove to be a valuable asset for bringing in loyal customers who also spread the word about the company through the same social media tools. Thus, for simplicity’s sake, the investment on social media marketing is nothing but time (as most of these tools online are completely free).

Hence, it is imperative that the customer’s needs are addressed to in any and all way possible through the use of these tools. Specifically, these key provisions can be made:-

•    To provide knowledge about the products and/or services of the company for a new customer.
•    To help them with the existing product and provide basic customer support.
•    To receive feedback and to ask for an elaboration or thank a negative or positive feedback respectively.

Thus we see how social media analytics is not a case of using Javascript click-trackers and other webmaster’s tools. Social media marketing concentrates upon building lasting relationships with customers and gathering new users into a forum for the business to flourish.

Please provide your comments, feedback, or tweets here.

Here is a list of other helpful blog posts -

Bounce rate Calculation in Site Catalyst Omniture

What is Web Analytics?

Can Web Analytics Provide Solution to My Small Business Problems?

Social Media Analytics and ROI Measurement is a post from: Key Web Metrics & Web Analytics Blog

Screen shot below shows that the target website for the search term “rackspace” is now showing up as a clickable link in the drop down list. Search users can easily click the website link and bypass the SERP (search engine results page).

This has dual benefits -

a. Increase search user experience by giving them directly what they want instead of sending them to SERPs.

b. Brand companies can slash ppc cost by remove the branded terms (usually cost lot) from their ppc bidding.

This new feature is a big disappointment for companies who are bidding on the competitor keywords. Google has always discouraged bidding on third party trademark and brand terms and this could possibly be a big initiative.

Google could also lose money if large numbers of brands remove brand term from their ppc bidding.

How to track visits from these links?

Aha! I know your analytical brain has already started to think on how you could track these links in your web analytics reporting. No worries my friend.. the referring url for these links will look slightly different that the normal search referring url.

1. Referring url of normal search links -

http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=KEYWORD&btnG=Google+Search

2. Referring url of search with new feature -

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.COMPANYWEBSITE.com%2F&ei=BgEQSuujLZeIkAWvhKWkBA&rct=j&q=KEYWORD&usg=AFQjCNHR4fiqT0G5fVooF9_K_nvf3wCb_Q

Notice the difference in the query string in blue and the search keyword in red.  The new feature will still capture the keyword being searched but will also include the url that brought the search user to the target site.

Please provide your comments, feedback, or tweets here.

Here is a list of other helpful blog posts -

Bounce rate Calculation in Site Catalyst Omniture

What is Web Analytics?

Is Web Analytics Right for My Small Business?

Cut PPC Cost with Google’s New Search Feature is a post from: Key Web Metrics & Web Analytics Blog