Yes! Please! I often survey attendees of an AdWords Seminar, and a common theme often emerges.

• Most of the audience uses Google Analytics.
• Most of the audience does not use the AdWords conversion tracker.

They are different tools that should be used differently.

AdWords Conversion Tracking

The AdWords conversion tracker just tracks conversions. You can define a conversion in many different ways (sale, lead form, page view) etc. You can define different conversions within the same account. Once you’ve enabled conversion tracking, you can run reports to see performance statistics by keyword, ad group, campaign, ad copy, landing page, content sites, etc by different conversion types (what keywords lead to contacts vs. shopping cart checkouts).

AdWords conversion tracking passes that stats back to your AdWords account so you can easily access all you conversion information cross referenced with your AdWords data within the single AdWords reporting interface. This is a huge timesaver.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an analytics system. It will give you more information than you need to know about your site and visitors. You can easily define goals (conversions) within your analytics account. Google Analytics will tell you about visitors to your site that came from other sources than AdWords. You can view browser, screen resolution, referring site info, and your AdWords account within Analytics (as well as hundreds of other data points).

Like AdWords conversion tracking, analytics should be used to make decisions. Whenever you decide to implement analytics, the first question you should ask is ‘What information do I need to know to get my job done well?’. You can ask that of the design, marketing, and other departments within your organization. Then look for an analytics solution that fits your needs.

For most small businesses, Google Analytics will fit that need. If you need to make real time decisions, then it will not meet your needs.

However, it is much more difficult to extract data such as what content sites are sending you converting traffic from your Analytics account. From within the AdWords conversion tracker – it’s easy. From Analytics – incredibly difficult.

Use Both Google Analytics and the AdWords Conversion Tracker

Assuming you’re willing to use Google Analytics, and it gives you the data you need to perform your job – then you should use them both. Since these two tools perform different functions, you need a tool for each function. Neither are difficult to install, and the data can be invaluable for increase your website’s effectiveness.

AdWords Conversion Tracking Resources:

• Video: Setting up conversion tracking (watch this first)
• Setting up AdWords conversion tracker FAQs
• PDF guide to setting up AdWords conversion tracking
• Troubleshooting conversion tracking

When is the last time you looked at your website in different browser resolutions?
If its been a while, maybe these statistics will make you change your mind:

Source: Weinreich, H., Obendort, H., Herder, E., and M. Mayer, “Off the Beaten Tracks: Exploring Three Aspects of Web Navigation.

Searchers are still clicking ‘above the fold’ in what is visible when your page first loads.

The issue is, we all have different screen resolutions.

W3.org publishes stats on the screen resolutions.

Just because it’s the published number does not mean that applies to your site.

Here’s a screenshot of Google Analytics for this blog:

In the past month, this blog has been viewed on 128 different screen resolutions. In addition, the most common screen resolution (1024×768) which normally makes up 48% of all visitors, sees half of that typical number (only 21.87%) for this site.

While more people are scrolling overall, and some companies are  ‘debunking the fold’; every time I most actions on a site to below the fold, I see conversion rates drop.

While vertical scrolling is getting some traction, horizontal scrolling is not. Make sure you page does not force individuals to scroll right to view additional content.

It only takes a few minutes of your time. Change your screen resolution, surf your site, make notes of areas to test for different resolutions or areas where you are most likely losing conversions or traffic and need to make some design changes.

One idea is to split test your pages where the major change is layout based upon different screen resolutions before you do any major redesigns.

Another option is to use crazyegg to create a heatmap of where your visitors are clicking and make decisions or tests from that data.

You should have some analytics package installed – don’t forget to use the data!

Microsoft has been testing their new free analytics program for a while and a new round of invites has recently gone out to those wishing to try out analytics.

A few important troubleshooting tips if you have an invite:

• You may have to visit the page a few times before the signup process runs smoothly. It looks like the initial errors where the pages were erroring out have been fixed.
• Ensure the email address of the invite is the exact same as the email address in your adCenter account
• Once you have the code and place it on your site, you have to wait for statistics to accrue before you can add advanced options such as:
  • Goal setting
  • Outbound link tracking
  • Event tracking
• Be patent. While trying to write this post, the system has been unavailable about half of the time I’ve clicked on a link within the analytics interface.

The most interesting feature is the ability to segment your analytics by age, gender, occupation, and geography. This is most likely associating website visits to passport accounts and other Microsoft data which is similar to how adCenter’s targeting works.

While Microsoft doesn’t know everyone’s information, and the ‘unknown’ category is by far the largest, the additional data can be quite useful for slicing and dicing data.

Screenshot of segmentation by Age. (click image for full view)

Screenshot of segmentation by Gender. (click image for full view)

Screenshot of segmentation by Occupation. (click image for full view)

Screenshot of segmentation by Geography. (click image for full view)

While the interface is still a bit basic and erratic, the above segmentation data is not available in any other free analytics service that I’m aware of.

Using Microsoft adCenter Analytics combined with Microsoft adLabs can give you some powerful analytics to help engage your audience in new and meaningful ways.