Why You Shouldn’t Use the Top Landing Pages Report in Google Analytics

If you're trying to get landing pages that really grab your visitors, there's one Google Analytics report you absolutely cannot live without. And guess what?

It's not Top Landing Pages.

Before I unveil the report that ROIers use to do quick landing page analysis, let's find out why we're not big fans of the built-in Top Landing Pages report:

• It only shows entrances, bounces, and bounce rate
• It doesn't tell us conversion data for our landing pages
• It can't show the revenue generated by our landing pages

Thankfully, there is a way to get what we need for robust landing page analysis out of GA. Hit the jump to find out how.

The first method is the easiest. We just use an existing Google Analytics report, and segment by landing page. Just browse to Visitors > Map Overlay. Then use the dimension dropdown to select Landing Page:

Check it out:

Sure, Entrances and Visits aren't the same metric, but that's not really why I'm at this report. I'm here because I want to see how these landing pages stacked up when it came to getting visitors to sign up for my newsletter or buy my widgets. It wouldn't be the first time that I've seen a page with a higher bounce rate net me more cash than one with a slighter lower bounce rate.

So the Map Overlay report is fine and dandy, but you're probably wondering, "Why isn't he talking about Custom Reporting yet? Does he know there are Custom Reports now?"

Yes. He does. And you get a gold star, because this is a perfect case for why Custom Reports are awesome. If a built-in report isn't doing it for you, just build your own from scratch and start using the new one instead.

Here's a Custom Landing Pages Report:

Now you can compare everything you need. I've separated the Goal and Ecommerce data on separate tabs, but you can try and cram it all on one tab if you'd like. Add that bad boy to the Dashboard and you're good to go.

How do you like to check your landing page performance in Google Analytics? Leave a comment and let us know!

Are Long Page Load Times Driving Your Visitors Away?

You're always checking on your landing pages, right? You read the blogs, run experiments, and generally try to make your site as user-friendly as possible.

But chances are, if you're reading the ROI Revolution blog, you're on a high speed internet connection. If your webpages are loading in nanoseconds with your T1, how are they faring for those visitors who aren't as lucky as you? You know, the ones on crappy cable modems and DSL and (gasp!) the dreaded dial-up?

Does it matter? Well, it depends. If you're a gaming website or Internet marketing blog, most of your audience is probably on broadband. But if you're running a site for a retirement community in Florida, then my grandma is hitting your Flash-encrusted site in her AOL browser and she's waiting. And waiting. And waiting. She's a patient old gal, my Meemaw, but she's not going to wait all day. She's going to point her browser and her pension elsewhere.

Aside from your visitors, your site's load time is also important to Google. Not only does page load time affect your AdWords Quality Score, but according to Matt Cutts, it's going to be playing a bigger role in the organic search ranking.

So read on to learn how to optimize your landing pages' load times, and maybe make a few bucks off my Meemaw.

Before you start trying to speed up your site, you should probably find out whether or not it has slow load times in the first place. There's no use beating a dead horse.

First, just log into your AdWords account and check the Keyword Analysis field. From the keywords tab, hover or click on the the status icon (). You'll get a message about that keyword and its destination URL's Quality Score. It looks like this:

Red text is bad. Green text is good. If the landing page load time has no problems, you're golden. At least as far as AdWords is concerned. But what about your visitors?

You can use Google Webmaster Tools to find the average download time for your site. This will alert you to potential problems with specific pages. Just sign into Webmaster Tools and click your site's URL. If you haven't already set up Webmaster Tools, go ahead and do that. We'll wait for you.

Done? See, I told you we weren't going anywhere. Now go to the Diagnostics area and check out Crawl stats. The third graph on the screen shows your site's average load time.

But if you want to make absolutely sure, you've got to experience your site firsthand. So, go buy an eMachine from 2001, find one of those old AOL floppies, and then...

Haha! Just kidding! You just need to put Charles in charge of your load times.

Charles is a Web Debugging Proxy app for Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. It allows you to all sorts of fun stuff. You can record your Internet traffic, view SSL traffic, and throttle bandwidth. How does this this help us with load times? Well, by throttling your bandwidth, you can simulate slower Internet connections. This means you can browse your site as if you were my Meemaw, on her dial-up connection.

So, after you find out which pages are taking eons to load, what do you do?

Start by minimizing HTTP requests on the guilty pages. This is just a fancy way of saying, "Get rid of excess stuff." According to the Yahoo Developer Network, "80% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end," and most of that time is spent downloading all the junk on your page. Get rid of that junk and the page load faster. Get rid of the images you don't need, reduce the image size and quality for those you do. Make it look good, but keep it simple.

There's a bunch of other things you can do to reduce page load time. Check out Yahoo Developer Network's Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Website for the lowdown, and don't forget: a fast page means a happy Meemaw. And you don't want to see Meemaw when she's angry.

ROI Revolution Attends 3rd Annual GAAC Summit

Every year when autumn rolls around, you'll find the ROI Revolution Analytics Team hard at work planning our strategy. Not for clients (we do that all year 'round, of course) but for the strange and fun activities planned at the annual Google Analytics Authorized Consultant Summit. Last year, it was Rock Band. This year, trampoline dodgeball.

Not all of our time at Google is spent jumping around on trampolines and pegging each other with balls. For four days, Google Partners from around the world convene in Mountain View to talk about the state of analytics and optimization, learn from one another, and push the limit when it comes to supporting our favorite free analytics platform.

Click for a rundown of what we covered...

Day One: Google Website Optimizer

• Dan Siroker, former director of analytics for the Obama Presidential Campaign and founder of the online multiplayer game CarrotSticks, talked about how his team used Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer, and other free tools to help Obama win the presidential election.
• Sandra Cheng, Product Manager of Google Website Optimizer, and Trevor Claiborne, Product Marketing Manager of Google Website Optimizer, talked about the future of the free website testing and optimization tool. There's some exciting stuff coming, not least of which were the recently announced over-time charts and the experiment management API.

Day Two: Google Analytics

• The keynote, by Avinash Kaushik, was, as always, eye-opening and in-your-face. We <3 Avinash.
• Phil Mui, senior product manager for Google Analytics, discussed the roadmap. He touched on engagement goals, mobile reporting, and multiple custom variables, all announced a week later.
• What am I most excited? Analytics Intelligence, an algorithmic intelligence engine for Google Analytics to provide automated alerts for significant changes in your site's metrics. We've been using it in beta and we're glad we can share it with all of our clients!
• After all of the announcements, we headed to Sky High Sports in Santa Clara and did our trampoline dodgeball. All of our practice paid off when we were unceremoniously destroyed in the first round.

Day Three: More Google Analytics

• Hal Varian, Google's Chief Economist, talked about using Google tools to "predict the present" and glean important intelligence about the current economic situation. Very cool stuff.Lots of discussion on the Google Analytics API, as well as some exciting developments in the works for Google Analytics and advertisers. We can't say much yet, but it's really a great time to be using Google Analytics!

Day Four: Urchin

We heard some awesome news from the Urchin team on the development of the Urchin software. Stay tuned to the blog for more news as it comes!

That's about it. In spite of our crushing dodgeball defeat, it was a great time and we were glad to chat with analysts from all over the world. We can hardly wait 'til next year. We're all secretly hoping next year's event is Slamball.

Yeaaaah. Not so much.

Check Landing Page Performance by Browser

Every browser is different.* Ask any web designer about their craft and you'll eventually get them talking passionately about these differences. How Internet Explorer 6 renders CSS pseudo-elements (badly) and handles padding and spaces (randomly). How IE7 ignores CSS drop shadows. How floating divs never seem to work the same way in any of the browsers. These peculiarities have driven many a developer to strong drink.

When it comes to testing new webpage designs in Google Website Optimizer, speed can be essential. You want to get the experiment out the door as soon as possible so you can get preliminary data. Sometimes this means that things slip through QA. Browser testing is exceptionally finicky and time consuming. Not every office has a spare Mac sitting around, and with three different versions of Internet Explorer still in wide use—and no easy way to install all three versions on a single PC—it's no small feat to make your page variations all work perfectly in every popular browser.

With just a few Google Analytics Advanced Segments in your arsenal, however, you'll be able to see whether or not your new pages are functioning fine in all the right browsers. Hit the jump for details.

First, you'll need to create a new Advanced Segment for each landing page in your experiment. Check out Segment 1 and Segment 2 for more detail.

Next, apply both segments to your reports and head to the Browsers reports. This report defaults to the pie chart, but I like to switch back to the data table:

Now check out each browser and pay attention to the Bounce Rate column for each Landing Page segment. If one particular browser has a Bounce Rate that seems particularly out of whack, drill down and check out the versions. Then, using your findings, test the page live (if you can) or use a site like Browsershots.

What other browser testing tips or tricks do you have to help ensure that your site is fit for all visitors? Share them in the comments.

* "No two browsers are not on fire."