Whats Your PayPal Completion Rate? I am currently working with a client who use PayPal as their payment service provider. God I hate 3rd party PSPs. - don't they make life difficult? We've been tracking shopping cart abandonment over time but have been unable to set up a full conversion funnel analysis because only a very small proportion of purchasers click the return button on the payment successful page with in the PayPal domain and return to the site.

We had suspicions that the shopping cart abandonment rate was much higher than the industry average - Fireclick estimate this to be between 66 and 82%. But couldn't get a handle on what was happening on the PayPal payment page itself. Searching for "PayPal abandonment rates" on Google failed to come up with any useful figures. Does anybody else have estimates? PayPal aren't saying.

To begin payment on the site shoppers must click on a "buy now" button (Flash) which takes them to the payment page. We obviously know the number of completed purchses. So we could have used Google's Analytics New Flash Tracking to count the number of times users clicked on Buy Now. Luckily before I got the developers to do this somebody discovered that the back office system tracked all transactions started as well as completed - presumably as the system needs to pass on order details to PayPal. So in the end it was easy - PayPal abandonment is simply the percentage difference between the number of started transactions and the number of completed transactions.

In fact our PayPal Completion Rate was very close to the Fireclick Average for Fashion & Apparel average of between 18 and 32%.

Labels: abandonment, completion, google analytics, paypal, rates

  ¶ 9:23 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Using Google Analytics with Adobe Flash? One of the most common implementation challenges with Google Analytics has been tracking Flash content. In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every implementation had to be customized. Moreover, there was a lack of standards, and new developers who tracked Flash had to create their own processes to get it working.

At the Adobe MAX Conference in San Francisco, in a joint collaboration with Adobe and third party developers, Google announced a simplified solution for tracking Flash content called Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash.

This feature is a translation of the current Google Analytics tracking code into the ActionScript 3 programming language that dramatically simplifies the ability to track Flash, Flex and AS3 content. This new Flash tracking code provides all the features of the current JavaScript-based version, including campaign, pageview and event tracking and can be used to track Flash content such as embedded videos, branded microsites and distributed widgets, such as online games.

More information on tracking Google Analytics with Flash here.

Expert web analytics advice here

Labels: adobe max conference, FLASH, google analytics

  ¶ 6:45 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Advanced Segmentation on Google Analytics One feature that I always thought Google Analytics lacked was the ability to properly segment site visitors. So I was pleased to notice that as part of the recent Google Analytics update not only is the interface refreshed but Google have launched a new set of features including:

• AdSense now integrated into Google AdWords.
• Motion Charts!
• Custom Reports!
• The Google Analytics API.
• Advanced Segmentation.

Although analytics already had some segmentation functionality I found it difficult to implement and use. With advanced segmentation its now really easy to create intra session segments. There are a number of default segments and then ability to set up custom segments

Custom segments are created using an easy to use wizard which allows you to drag and drop dimensions (such as Visitors, Traffic Sources and Content) and metrics ( Site Usage, E-Commerce and Goals) into the segmentation tool. For instance you can segement on frequent visitors by dragging Count of Visits into the tool and defining the number of visits.

Segments can be combined by adding AND/OR statements and tested using the Test Segment function.

Once you've set your segments up you can apply them to reports by selecting multiple segments from the Advanced Segments drop down menu in the top right of the Google Analytics interface.

The real strength of Advanced Segmentation is that multiple segments can be compared side by side as above. For more information on this subject I refer you to an excellent post from Avinash Kaushik at Occam's Razor

Labels: google analytics, segmentation, web analytics

  ¶ 6:31 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Google Analytics Reverting Back to Original "Average Time on Site" Calculation Read this from the Official Google Analytics blog

"We recently introduced a new way of calculating "Average Time on Site" that removed visitors who "bounce" from your website (people who hit one page of your site and then leave). This updated calculation attempted to give you a better idea of how long engaged visitors spend on your website. However, many of you prefer the original calculation: the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. So today we are changing it back".

Labels: average time on site, google analytics, web analytics

  ¶ 5:55 PM 2 Comments Links to this post