Mark Eibner: And welcome to Broker IPTV. My name is Mark Eibner and we are having another Friday afternoon skype in with Ed Kohler, Ed Kohler is with "Haystack In a Needle" and also the author of Technology Evangelist and Ed welcome to the show.
Ed Kohler: Hi Mark how are you doing?
Mark Eibner: I am doing great. Hey so keeping with the spirit of our viewers, giving some great tit bits of information in a three to four minute time span today we wanted to touch briefly on Google Analytics. Ed maybe could tell our viewers out there Ed what is Google Analytics, where does one get it and why should we even care about it?
Ed Kohler: Okay Google Analytics is one of the most popular web stats programs on the web today, so of course provided by Google and if you go to google.com/analytics or just Google, the term Google Analytics you will find it. The stats program is a relatively easy thing to install, you just put a little bit of code on every page of your website and then Google will log all the visitors to your website and keep track of where they came from, what they looked at, how long you spent on your website, all kinds of things like that so its weird way to kind of keep track of what, how people are using their website and where people came from.
Mark Eibner: So you say they could go to Google it's a free piece of software they can get a snip of the code and it has to be inserted on every one of their web pages in their...?
Ed Kohler: So if you work with the web developer you could ask them to set up a Google Analytics account, in fact they may already be running one on your account for you, if you set up a blog for example you may have to just go in and paste a little bit of code into your blog's template like in the footer file for example and then that will just carry across all of your pages. So it's really a one time thing to get things set up, it's not too bad.
Mark Eibner: So things that will be measured I guess types of browsers people are using where they are coming from like a time on the site what about key words in the search box that got them to the site?
Ed Kohler: Yeah Google are first I would, a lot of information about visitors to your website, so it will show you where they came from, whether its they clicked from another website, whether they typed in, your domain directly to call a direct visit or if, if someone ran a search and came over, it will also parcel the jet search turn that used to arrive at your website, so it's a lot of different ways of slicing it out, if you do any online advertising they can also break that out separately whether its Google ad words or ad over on Zillow or Trulia they can track that as well.
Mark Eibner: So any other key metrics that people should be paying attention to specifically real estate brokers and brokerages?
Ed Kohler: Well real estate is kind of a tricky one for online metrics in some ways because unlike e-commerce where you have really kind of high volume and a lot of transactions because you are, people are buying something that only costs you know tens of dollars or hundreds of dollars instead with real estate the transactions are very large and the lead volume is just lower because of that. So its within Google Analytics you can track conversion, so someone fills out an online form on your website you can track that back to where that person, what they originally searched for to get to your website and that will help you figure out what sources of traffic are the ones that are most valuable for you, but short of that another way that you can kind of figure out what's working and what isn't isn't, is to look at the balance rate from different websites which is a measure of people coming to your website looking at one page and then deciding to leave. If you happen to like say buy an ad in a local newspapers online website and you notice that the balance rate is very, very high for whatever reason the traffic is coming over its not finding really what they are expecting, so they are leaving after one page view, so that's a sign that for whatever reason its just not working, so keep that in mind.
Mark Eibner: Well I think one thing that's unique to the Internet search world here and working in the Internet in general as far as true analytics is unlike some of our past pieces of media, television and newsprint etcetera you can truly track your results literally click by click where they came from, where they are going, how long they have been there, very unique proposition.
Ed Kohler: And but generally one thing that, that's still missing today that will, eventually will get worked out is, its very difficult to track offline leads that your website generates. So if someone calls you after looking at your website that's not necessarily being tied together, but if when people call you be sure to ask them you know how did you find lot about me and you know keep track of that in your CRM system.
Mark Eibner: Great well hey once again Ed great information for the Friday skype in.
Ed Kohler: Thanks Mark.
Mark Eibner: I appreciate your being with us today.
Ed Kohler: No problem.
Mark Eibner: And for more great information about real estate marketing technology and everything else involved in the industry make sure to go to brokeriptv.com. Thanks we will see you next Friday in our skype in.
Posted on October 29, 2009 15:29:33 by Mark Eibner
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