Interview with Google Analytics Expert Rachael Gerson

This week I am honored to bring you an interview with Rachael Gerson, Google Analytics expert and one of my close personal friends!  I had the pleasure of working alongside Rachael for several years at SEER Interactive, where she now manages the Analytics division.  Rachael’s background as an SEO account manager for nearly 5 years offers her a unique insight into the applications of Google Analytics specifically for SEOs.

1. If you had to describe your role to your grandparents, what would you say your job is?

I actually just did this a few weeks ago! I visited my Grandma while in Florida and ended up helping her with some online and computer tasks. While I worked on her projects, she asked about my work. I walked her through the kind of data I would look at if I owned the sites we were on – how many people visited the sites, what can we learn about their computers, which desired actions did they complete during their visit, etc.  Next we logged into Google Analytics so she could actually see that information and how to access it herself. My Grandma’s a smart cookie, so she caught on quickly 🙂

To someone else’s grandparents, though, I’d probably say something vague along the lines of “I analyze information about how people interact with websites and look for opportunities to make improvements.”

2. Can you give us some examples of the “improvements” you might recommend?

Looking at the conversion funnel, if a high percentage of people tend to drop off at the same point, I’d review that part of the funnel to look for any disconnects between the prior information and the current action. For example, if someone’s trying to sign up for a free service but is asked to provide a credit card at step two of the funnel, I’d consider that a big disconnect. I worked on a site recently that initially required a physical mailing address, phone number, birthdate, and other information just to get an email newsletter. Take a wild guess what that conversion rate looked like…

For another example, I’d look at conversion rates and bounce rates for specific browsers and computers. One site I reviewed didn’t have any conversions from Chrome. I tested the process and found the pages didn’t load properly on Chrome. Fairly easy fix, once you’re aware of the issue.

3. What are the three things that every business owner should know how to do within Google Analytics?

I’d say business owners need to know how to check visits, conversions, and the breakdown of traffic sources. But there’s a giant asterisk at the end of that statement. That asterisk is that the business owner must have someone around who can take care of all of the setup – make sure the Google Analytics code works across the site, customize the code to improve functionality, set up goals and dashboards, things like that. I honestly don’t feel like every person in an organization needs to know how to do all of the setup, as long as someone knows.

4. What is your favorite new product that GA has launched in recent months?

I’m torn between the new social reports and the real-time reports. I think having the ability to see what’s happening on a site right now can be hugely helpful, but the value really comes in if you have someone who’s able to sit there and monitor it. I wish there was a way to set up alerts in GA to trigger the instant criteria is reached, rather than waiting until the next day. Real-time alerts would be fantastic. But now I’m way off topic. Right, the social reports. The biggest question I keep hearing in the industry is how to measure ROI of social media. I think the new social reports are the best next step in accomplishing that goal.

5. What would you give up to get (not provided) data back?  First born child and other family members are in play…

You know, my answer to this is very different than it would have been a few weeks ago. At that point, I might have even given up my second monitor to get the data back…and I really love that second monitor! Since then, I have developed all kinds of workarounds to try to break down information about the (not provided) data: looking at the ratio of branded to non-branded, pairing the keywords with landing pages, etc.  Now I’m ready to take it to the next level. The data is gone, we’re only going to lose more, so what’s next? Maybe it’s time for us to rethink how we evaluate our Analytics entirely.  Perhaps this is the point where we focus more on landing page performance, rather than individual keyword contributions to the whole. All in all, once I finally got past the “must get (not provided) data back!” panic the analysis became a whole new challenge.

6. If you could make any updates or changes to GA, what would they be?

I have a whole wishlist of feature requests, including the previously mentioned “real-time alerts,” so I’ll stick with my top five:

1. Create an additional level of admin access that falls between the current User and Administrator options. This new level could be Profile Administrator, with the ability to only make changes to those profiles they’re granted Admin access to, rather than all profiles.
2. It would be fantastic to be able to import data into GA, such as historical data that pre-dates the Google Analytics setup 
3. A sorting or searching function to find Advanced Segments within a list. My list of segments gets long and it’s super annoying to have to scroll through every time. This is tiny, but would be such a help!
4. It would make my life a whole lot easier if Google Analytics saved and shared goal setup across profiles.  It does this with filters, why not goals? Pretty please??
5. Finally, I’d love to see a less expensive GA Premium for small businesses. The service could offer scaled back functionality to help justify the decreased cost, such as lower data limits, fewer custom variables, or a higher number of hours in the data freshness guarantee, but I think it would greatly increase adoption and promotion of the service if it was more cost-effective for small businesses.

7. You mentioned Google Analytics Premium, what is your initial impression of the service and its appeal to businesses?

My very first reaction was “about time!” followed closely by “I wonder if that’s why fast-access mode has been such an issue in the past six months?” I think the Premium service has a ton to offer businesses and that it was the logical next move for Google in the analytics space. I do expect to see some improvements over the next 6-18 months, especially in accessing the Premium features through the GA interface.  For example, although Premium users will receive unsampled data, this data is only unsampled in the downloaded exports and not the interface itself.  My hope is that this will change in the coming months as Premium continues to take off.

8. If you had a chance to take Avinash out to dinner, where would you take him and why?

I’d pick up take-out from his favorite local restaurant and bring it over to Avinash’s house. I want to make him comfortable and I think his house is the place he’s most likely to relax and be at ease so we can engage at a more substantive level. Plus, the man spends so much time traveling it’d be great to help him get some time at home!

 

Got a question of your own for Rachael? Drop it in the comments or reach out to her directly on Twitter @RachaelGerson, I know she’d love to connect with other Analytics enthusiasts!  Rachael will also be speaking at the following events in the next couple of months:

• SEOmoz Meetup – May 10th, Philadelphia, PA
• SMX Advanced – June 5-6th, Seattle, WA
• Search Exchange – July 23-25, Charlotte, NC
• eMetrics – September 30-October 4, Boston, MA