Today we wanted to remind you of the range of free Google training available online. We're highlighting some upcoming webinars and online resources that could help you understand and improve your website conversions.

Google Webinars

The Google AdWords team run regular webinars on a variety of topics which you can attend for free. Some webinars are live, and others are recorded so you can access them on demand. The English language webinar calendar can be found here. (Webinars are also offered in other languages, find out more here).

Below we have highlighted just some of the topics we thought would be of interest to Conversion Room readers...

Conversion Optimiser
August 19th 2009 3pm - 4pm British Summer Time (GMT +1)

Join the product team for an overview of how Conversion Optimiser works and learn how you can get more conversions at a lower cost per conversion from your AdWords search and content campaigns.
Register now

Tracking your AdWords Return on Investment
September 9th 3pm - 4pm British Summer Time (GMT +1)

This webinar will show you how to better convert online clicks into profit for your business using AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics. We will show you how to get started with these tools in order to anaylse your return-on-investment and make informed decisions in your AdWords account.
Register now

Websites That Work: 10 ways to convert visitors into buyers
September 16th 3pm - 4pm British Summer Time (GMT +1)

This webinar will explore the common website design pitfalls and techniques to avoid them. It will also show how leading companies have used free Google analytics and testing tools to dramatically improve conversion performance.
Register now

You can also access on demand webinars, check out the recorded sessions below:

Google Analytics I: Getting started & tracking conversions

Google Analytics II: Managing your Google Analytics account set up for best results

Google Analytics III: Report navigation & analysis of AdWords data

Website Optimiser - Test & enhance your website

Google Analytics Learning Modules

A few months back we announced the launch of the Google Analytics IQ, an individual qualification you can take to show your proficiency in Google Analytics. You can improve your knowledge of Google Analytics for free by following our online tutorials within the Conversion University.

If you want to go on and take the exam you can do so by visiting this page.

We'll continue to keep you updated regularly about Google webinars and trainings on the Conversion Room. In the meantime we hope you find these free resources useful!

Posted by Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team.

When you run an experiment with Website Optimiser, you're testing new content to see whether it improves your conversion rate. We can often find big winners, but, of course, some of our variations are going to be losers in that they perform significantly worse than our original content.

While you've been able to disable poor performing variations on your own for some time now, you needed to sign in, check your reports, and manually prune away the losers. No longer! Today, Website Optimiser adds a new feature: auto-disabling.

With auto-disabling, Website Optimiser will automatically prune poor performing variations for you. This keeps overall conversion rate high while testing. Additionally, by removing poor variations automatically, your traffic is focused on only the variations that have a chance at winning, which means experiments should complete faster. Lastly, we think auto-disabling gives you more freedom to try really big changes. If that crazy variation just doesn't work out, it'll be disabled. And if you've been anxious about running a test, you should be able to relax knowing that a losing variation won't hurt your overall conversion rate.

Auto-disabling is available for any Website Optimiser experiment with more than two variations (i.e. you can't use it for an A/B test, but you could for an A/B/C test). You can enable it from the experiment settings page. You can read more about setting up auto-disabling in this Help Center article.

Posted By Edward Jackson, Google Analytics Team

Today we are really excited to unveil a network of conversion experts in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, who are ready to help you grow your business by increasing your conversions and driving greater return on investment from your online spend. Our Google Conversion Professionals use web analytics and testing best practices to turn more of your website visitors into paying customers. Google conversion tools, such as Google Analytics and Website Optimiser, are free to use but if you lack the time and resources to really focus on the insights these products provide then a Google Conversion Professional could be the answer.

Google Conversion Professionals are Google accredited specialists that examine your marketing effectiveness, website usability, and product / service offering, in order to find areas of improvement. Learn more about how these elements of your business impact your overall profitability by visiting our new site.

Google Conversion Professional services include:

• Full implementation of analytics and site optimisation tools
• Improvement of marketing effectiveness
• Website enhancement through analysis and testing
• Help tailoring product & service proposition for maximum results

Check out this video to hear our experts sharing their advice on improving conversions...

How do I contact a Google Conversion Professional?

Visit our brand new conversion focused website today to learn more about our experts and find a professional to work with today:

www.google.co.uk/gcp

In the coming weeks we will feature cases studies showing how major brands have increased conversions by addressing issues with their marketing effectiveness, website usability or by adapting their product/service offering. We'll also feature guest posts from our new Google Conversion Professionals. Sign up for our site feed or subscription service to ensure you don't miss out.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

One of the coolest new features in Google AdWords is the ability to target different demographics using demographic bidding. This allows you to adjust your bidding strategy based on your target audience and how each demographic group converts on your website.

The AdWords demographic bidding interface can tell us the cost per conversion and conversion rate of each demographic.

(Please note: The advanced reporting information presented in this article may require some additional help from your Webmaster to implement. We have included links in this article to relevant help centre topics to assist you or your webmaster.)

Demographic bidding interface:

The screenshot below shows you the interface for demographic bidding within your AdWords account. Once you have activated this option you will begin to see data for each of the demographics listed.

The interface above allows you to increase or decrease your bidding for different demographics that visit your website. But what if conversion rate and cost per conversion isn't enough information to form your bidding strategy? But what if you're not sure which demographic you should be focusing on? Analytics can help you understand this.

For Example:

Q. What if we want to know the demographic with the highest value per visit on our website?

A. Use Google Analytics and visitor demographics

As you may already be aware Google Analytics can reveal many actionable insights about visitors and visitor trends on your website.

Before Google Analytics can report on visitor demographics we need to:

1. Ask your visitors to provide some information about themselves
   
2. Pass this information to Google Analytics
   

So how does it work?

Step 1: Forms

One of the easiest ways to collect information about users on your website is when you ask them to complete a form on your website. Many website registration forms ask for a visitors date of birth and often their title (mr or mrs) or gender (male or female). It's usually a good idea to keep registration forms short and simple, so that they're not off-putting for visitors. Think about what details are most useful to you before including them.


Example user registration form:

If we know the users selected title (for example Mr = Male, Mrs = Female) we can determine the users gender. From date of birth we can also easily identify their age group.

Step 2: Passing Information to Google Analytics

This step may require a small change to your website (javascript) in order to pass the information into your Google Analytics account. To find out more about this technique visit this Help Centre article, or pass the details to your webmaster who may also like to view this article on visitor configuration.

Example of how the information is passed to Google Analytics:

pageTracker._setVar('Male|18-24');

Where the values 'Male' and '18-24' were obtained from reading the values of the user submitted form. We use the _setVar method which is part of the Google Analytics Tracking Code API to pass the information to Google Analytics.

Once your Webmaster or IT team has managed to make these changes to your website, the appropriate info will be accessible from your Google Analytics account. We can now move onto the next step of interpreting the information.

Reading Google Analytics User Defined Reports:

Step 1.

In your Google Analytics account go to Visitors - User Defined report.

Step 2.

Click on the tab E-commerce (if you have an E-commerce website), alternatively you could also use the Goal Conversion Tab.

Don't have Goals or E-commerce setup? Read our previous post and learn how to set up goals and e-commerce.


Step 3.

Change the view type to percentage. You should then see a drop down menu? Choose Per Visit Value from the list (If using goals, try per visit goal value instead). This will then populate the report with visitor types that have the 'highest value per visit'.

Step 4.

Use the above report to identify your highest value per visit demographic. You can then adjust your bid strategy in AdWords.

Example above shows that the 'Male 35-44' group have the highest per visit value. So using Demographic bidding we would increase our bidding for this demographic.

We could also take this a step further and consider using an AdWords creative that specifically targets this demographic.

Next Steps...

Knowing the visitor demographic that provides the 'highest value per visit' is an important factor to take into account when using the advanced Demographic bidding option provided in Google AdWords.

As a further exercise try creating a custom report with the dimension User Defined Value. You may discover new and exciting details about visitor demographics on your website.

Let us know how you have used demographic data to improve your marketing effectiveness.

Posted By Gavin Doolan, Google Analytics Team

Today we wanted to let you know about a new enhancement to how Google Analytics and AdWords work together. You can now see your Google Analytics conversion metrics within your AdWords account by importing your goals or transactions directly into AdWords.

This integration lets you easily see the Return on Investment from your AdWords campaigns directly inside the AdWords interface, therefore allowing you to optimise your ads and keywords based on Google Analytics data. In the past, you needed to separately install AdWords Conversion Tracking to do this.

Before you attempt to import goals into AdWords there are a few things to check...

• Make sure you have linked Google AdWords and Analytics. If you have not done so already visit this help centre article.
• Enable data sharing within your Google Analytics account to allow Analytics and AdWords to work together.
• Ensure you have goals set up in Google Analytics and they have completed conversions via traffic form AdWords.
  

Once you've met the requirements above you are ready to import your goals.

Just follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the "Conversion Tracking" page from within your AdWords account.
2. Click "Link your Analytics goals and transactions" from the Conversion Tracking table (only visible if you met the above requirements)







3. Select the Goals or Transactions you want from the list.
4. Edit the action name so you can identify the goals in your AdWords reports.
5. Select "Link" from the bottom of the table to finish.

Your imported Goals and Transactions will show up in your account, along with AdWords conversion metrics. You can use this data to see which ads, keywords and campaigns are bringing in the best ROI and then optimise your campaigns based on this information.

Drive AdWords ROI with Conversion Optimizer

One of the benefits of importing your Google Analytics Goals and Transactions into AdWords is that you can use them with the Conversion Optimizer, an AdWords CPA bidding tool that has been shown to help advertisers get more conversions from AdWords.

Conversion Optimizer makes it a lot easier to manage your AdWords bidding and maximize results. Find out how one of our AdWords advertisers benefited from implementing Conversion Optimiser in our Success Stories pages.

We hope you find this new enhancement to how AdWords and Google Analytics work together useful. Please let us know if you have any feedback.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

We're delighted to announce a new blog for our German speaking Conversion Room visitors across Europe. Our German Conversion Room blog launched last week and will cover Google Analytics, Website Opitmiser and AdWords converison tools just like the Conversion Room.

Check out the new blog today by visiting conversionroom-de.blogspot.com. You can also sign up for the site feed to have weekly posts delivered directly to your email address.

If you have ideas for topics you'd like to see covered on this blog, or our new German blog, please drop us an email.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

Have you ever wondered how good the return on investment is from your AdWords traffic? More importantly have you ever asked yourself how you can improve it? In today's post we're going to address these thoughts and go over how you can answer three specific questions:

Which of your AdWords keywords are generating the most revenue?

Which are generating the least revenue?

How can you make your keyword advertising more profitable?

Before we begin, make sure that you have linked your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts together in order to see detailed AdWords reporting within your Google Analytics account. To find out how, check out this video. With both accounts linked the next step is to ensure that you make decisions based on trustworthy data. Isolate the data you need in Google Analytics by following the steps below...

Make decisions based on valid data

Imagine the following scenario, you've just started tracking with Analytics and 10 visitors arrive on your site, all of them converting by performing an action you have set as your goal. You could say that you have a 100% conversion rate since every visitor you have tracked has converted. However, it is unlikely that this behaviour will hold true for the next 10 visitors.

To ensure that we are making decisions based on normal user behaviour we will only examine keywords that meet a certain threshold of visits. The higher the threshold, the more diluted the one off anomalies become. If most of your keywords are showing tens of visits rather than hundreds of visits, you can always expand the date range to increase their visit numbers.

Generate your AdWords optimisation report


Now that we have isolated only the keywords we're interested in, we can return to the 'AdWords Campaigns' report.


Under the 'Site Usage' tab we want to focus on the 'Bounce Rate' metric. We'll then compare it to a metric that shows us the return for our money such as 'RPC' (revenue-per-click) under the 'Clicks' tab or 'Goal Conversion Rate' under the 'Goals' tab. Whilst it's possible to toggle between the different tabs it's probably best to create a Custom Report , as seen below, to show only the data we are interested in.

With our new report now active, click on the 'google / (cpc)' entry to see only AdWords keywords. Next click on the comparison link on the top right of the report and compare 'Bounce Rate' on the left with either 'Goal Conversion Rate' or 'RPC' on the right.

Now that we have manipulated the data to show only information that is relevant, the next step is to discuss what can we do with it.

Separating the winners from the losers

The report should now be ordered by keywords that have a higher bounce rate first. Looking at the right of the screen we can see that of these keywords those with a green bar have performed above average for 'Goal Conversion Rate' or 'RPC', whilst those with a red bar have performed below average, i.e. green is 'good', red is 'bad'.

Now it's time to optimise your keywords...

Group 1: High Potential keywords

From the initial screen isolate only our 'green' keywords. These are keywords with a good return but a poor 'Bounce Rate'.

We should focus on trying to optimise these top performing revenue generating keywords with the aim of further increasing the return they bring in.

For our list of 'High Potential' keywords consider the following, our aim is to decrease the 'Bounce Rate' but maintain our higher than average return.

1. Examine the current Landing Page and consider deep linking further into the site to more relevant content.
2. Experiment with different ad copies that include the keyword in the title and possibly the Visible URL.
3. Drive visitors to a Landing Page that is built around those keywords. Experiment with Google Website Optimiser to achieve the best results.
4. Concentrate a higher percentage of your advertising budget on these keywords.

Group 2: Poor Converting Keywords

Previously we focused on the keywords that were generating the greatest return from AdWords. Looking on the other end of the scale we'll focus on the keywords that are performing below average and outline what actions you could take with them. Switch to the default 'table' view and order by 'Goal Conversion Rate' or 'RPC' so that the poorest performing keywords show first. Switching back to our 'comparison' view we should arrange our report to see poor performing 'Goal Conversion Rate' or 'RPC' results on the left and 'Bounce Rate' on the right, as in the image below.

Focusing on the keywords with poor conversion rates and that are in the red section of 'Bounce Rate' we can consider the actions below. Our aim is firstly to improve the 'Bounce Rate' and secondly, the return we get from these keywords:

• Are these keywords relevant to your product/service? If the keywords are not relevant, are not performing, but are using up budget you could consider removing them. If they are relevant or you feel they have potential, optimise to improve performance per the steps below.

1. Examine the current Landing Page and consider deep linking further into the site to more relevant content.
2. Experiment with different ad copies that include the keyword in the title and possibly the Visible URL.
3. Drive visitors to a Landing Page that is built around those keywords. Experiment with Google Website Optimizer to achieve the best results.
4. Consider expanding these keywords to make them more specific or conversion focused e.g. 'buy google hat' in place of 'google hats'.

Group 3: Non-converters The final group of keywords are those that are within the green section of 'Bounce Rate' from the report structured in Group 2. Remember, a green 'Bounce Rate' indicates that visitors to the site via these keywords are more likely to explore your site.

These keywords don't convert but are driving traffic beyond the landing page. People are sticking around so these keywords do have some value. It is possible customers are researching before they commit to a purchase and to confirm you could look at the 'Visits to Purchase' report within the Ecommerce reports section of Google Analytics.

If you are satisfied that these keywords help in the conversion process then you could take the following action:

1. Move these keywords to a branding campaign whereby you could allocate a specific budget you are comfortable with to this campaign.
2. Consider expanding these keywords to make them more specific or conversion focused e.g. 'buy google hat' in place of 'google hats'. Monitor their performance over time to see if they improve.

Now you should be able to analyse your AdWords keywords using the data in your Google Analytics account. To learn more about optimising your AdWords campaigns visit the AdWords Help Centre and to find out more about optimising AdWords using Google Analytics check out this video.

We'd love to hear how you've used Google Analytics data to improve your AdWords performance, if you've got tips to share please let us know.

Posted By Eoin O'Carroll, Google Analytics Team