Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics Goes Live
I’ve been waiting along time for Google to release this, but last week I finally got access to multi-channel funnels. I must say I am quite impressed – although I can already see a few problems. I’ve been trying out the non-brand vs brand channel grouping that Shark SEO ran through on SEO Gadget, which is kind of cool.
There is one thing that I think needs adding – I’d like to be able to segment channels based on their landing pages – if you have a different landing page for each stage of the buying decision making progress then you can accurately determine where they are likely to be in that process. This is definitely something I’d like to see in future, and I can imagine it is fairly easy to do.
I’ve actually been surprised to see that there seem to be many different paths taken by users to sites, making it very difficult to draw some conclusions in some cases. For example, this is a snippet of the report for one of my clients (click the image to enlarge):

From this I can conclude, organic plays a big part in their conversion process!!! Not terribly useful. But this next report is great for justifying SEO – you know that problem you have where you know your SEO efforts are working, but the visitor isn’t buying on the first visit? Well this is the solution, simply show your client this (again, click the image to enlarge):

I was a bit confused looking at this, I wasn’t sure if a last interaction conversion counted as an assisted conversion, but if you look at the differing numbers you can see it most certainly doesn’t. So from this we can see that organic actually assists the majority or conversions aswell.
Proven SEO Results
SEO’s can actually use these new multi-channel funnels to justify and prove their SEO results. If we drill down a bit further by creating our own custom channel grouping, in this case I’ve used Brand Organic and Non-Brand Organic, and we take a look at assisted conversions, we can see how much money is spent on the website which probably wouldn’t have happened without Non-Brand Organic:
If you look at that image you can see that although SEO brought in around £64,000 revenue on a last click basis, it actually contributed to a further £82,000 – all in all it has contributed to £146,000 revenue. This is very important if the company in question has low margins – it may make the difference of it being a profitable campaign or a loss making one – so take note, because it might just help you retain that client that can’t see the benefits they are getting!
11 Comments
DijitulDave - http://www.dijitul.co.uk
I really am amazed with the constant improvement of Google Analytics, the in-depth knowledge this gives the user is just unreal. It makes we wonder how much more information Google will make available to us. I literally spend hours with my head in certain reports and it just keeps going.
Where will we be in another 12 months? What else will Google Analytics tell us? I wonder….
David W
Yeah its pretty impressive. I think in the future we will be getting a free telephone service from there which tracks all visits that lead to telephone calls – I think that nicely fits in with Androids and Google Voice.
DijitulDave - http://www.dijitul.co.uk
That would be pretty cool. We have a prediction list of what is next but that is not on it, by far. It would not surprise me though, lets see if it happens 🙂
David W
I think its highly likely, as soon as they can quantify exactly how many calls are coming through from AdWords people will increase their bids on keywords and Google makes more money…
I think they are already doing it in AdWords in the US aren’t they? Don’t quote me on that, I might be totally wrong.
DijitulDave - http://www.dijitul.co.uk
I’m not too sure about the US David. I have had a look around the new analytics things again this morning, so in depth, wherever do you stop, its endless!
Certainly takes SEO to another level.
David W
Hi Dave,
Yeah you’re right – not sure where I heard that now – perhaps it was just a rumour!
I can see it happening with mobile phones – they have the click to call thing in AdWords now…
DijitulDave - http://www.dijitul.co.uk
I do sometimes worry about just how much power Google have and how many businesses are in the palms of their hands. It’s quite scary to think how much we are all led by them. Do you know what their current market share is right now?
David W
Over 90%
DijitulDave - http://www.dijitul.co.uk
Wow, some interesting Facebook stats. I wonder if they will ever take on the search side of things one day? I guess you never know with Facebook, they are always planning something. Or maybe they will sell out to Google?
Ricky - http://www.iprospect.no
Whats your take on the likelihood of the different paths being correct? The reason I’m asking is that all of our customers have a lot of weird/unlikely MCFs, and the mix of different sources is very low (like in your example). I would expect to see a lot more funnels with a higher mix of sources.
For one customer he have 14 conversions with first 10 organic, then 5 paid and 15 direct. What are the odds of 15 people having that exact same path? I’m just having a hard time believing the paths, especially with so many people going through the same funnel of sources.
Like in your case, the 10th most used path is 9 organic searches (x 34 conversions). Now if you add a second dimension, and set it to show keywords, you’ll see what I mean, most likely, the keywords will be exactly the same for all visits. What are the odds..?
David W
Hi Ricky,
I agree it certainly is very odd. I think perhaps Analytics needs some improvement – especially in Europe where it is now, in theory, illegal to have it on your website without asking the visitor for permission first. Perhaps they need to have a mix of logs aswell?