Marketing summary
From Analytics Guide Articles
The Marketing Summary is one of those wonderful reports that tells the webmaster so very much in only one page:
- Top 5 Sources
- Top 5 Keywords
- Top 5 Campaigns
...all with their goal conversion rates nestled nicely beside them.
Google Says
Marketing Summary
Have my marketing efforts become more or less effective? This report shows the increase or decrease in visits and conversion rates associated with your top five sources (such as search engines and referral sites), top five keywords, and top five campaigns. Define your starting (earliest) date range on the lower calendar; define your current or ending date range on the upper calendar.
- The first column (Visits) shows the total number of visits referred by particular source, keyword, or campaign during the current date range (upper calendar). The green or red arrows and % numbers indicate the percentage increase or decrease in number of visits, respectively, from the previous date range (lower calendar).
- Subsequent columns show the conversion rates for each goal for the current date range (upper calendar). The green or red arrows and % numbers indicate the percentage increase or decrease in the conversion rate from the earlier date range.
A (direct) source indicates visitors that typed your site URL directly into their browser.
A campaign in parenthesis represents one of the following special cases:
- (organic) indicates visitors referred by an unpaid search engine listing.
- (referral) indicates visitors referred by links which were not tagged with any campaign variables.
- (not set) indicates visitors referred by links which were tagged with campaign variables but for which the campaign variable was not set.
- (direct) indicates visitors who typed the URL directly into the browser.
G/Visit is the conversion rate for the goal and is conversions divided by visits.
Interpretation
Woooowee! Nice job on this one, Google! Not only do they tell us how to use this report, but give us a good idea of many of the features available throughout Google Analytics.
Excellent intros, aside, here's what the stats should mean to you:
Top 5 sources tells you where your visitors are coming from. Not just the campaign (i.e., direct, referral or organic) but exactly where they're coming from. So you see here, this report throws a nice bit of nitty gritty the webmaster's way with minimal clicks and hopping between reports.
Top 5 keywords does much the same thing, telling you exacly which search terms are performing best for you.
Top 5 Campaigns is another handy number to look at early and often. Are more people coming from search, direct URL or referral? And why? Drill a but further into the stats and you'll likely find your answer (or answers).
Those Groovy Percentages next to your "top 5's" are nice to look at, but don't do you much good if you don't select a date range (because Google so wisely includes the current day, incomplete though it is, into the stats by default). But still, great to see how you're doing vs. yesterday... or last week... or... well, you get the point.
Goal Conversion- Does the amount of information you get from this page have no bounds? See which keywords, sites, search engines, etc. are making the cash register ring - or whatever it is you want.
WISHLIST: Hey, Google, let us expand the top 5 into the top ten from this page!
