Google have announced that multi channel funnels are now available in every profile. This functionality is a whole new area within the updated interface that enables you to see each touch point on the site before a conversion.
Previously data in Google Analytics only reported on the last click before a conversion, which meant that if people found your site through social media, or long tail organic searches but came back to your site via a brand search the conversion would only have been attributed to the brand search.
To use multi channel funnels, make sure you’re using the new interface (link at the top) then click My Conversions and select the drop down for Multi-Channel Funnels. The overview shows you which channels have helped towards conversions but the most exciting data is in the Top Conversion Paths report (in my opinion). Here you can see which routes people took before completing a conversion and you can choose to show all conversion data or specific goals one at a time.
One hidden area here that gives you a very good insight in to your user behaviour is if from the Top Conversion Paths page you click ‘Other’ from above the data and then select Keyword (Or Source/Medium) Path from within Traffic Sources. This then tells you the keywords that were used rather than just stating Organic Search or Paid Advertising.
Google have also provided some default Conversion Segments which you can select at the top, these enable you to segment the data by certain factors such as all those with Organic first click. You can then compare these alongside each other which is beneficial for identifying which type of search result generates the most initial leads by comparing First interaction is Paid Advertising to First interaction is Organic Search.
Another nice feature is that you can create your own groupings so that the channels mean more to you. Here is an example of a brand versus non brand grouping that easily colour codes your different segments so you can see which is more prominent. To set these up navigate to Channel Groupings and click create, then you can set up groupings in a similar way to setting up advanced segments by choosing your dimensions.
The Path Length report does exactly what it says on the tin and shows you how many times a user came to your site through all the different methods before converting. A Similar report is also available for the time it takes before a conversion.
This only touches the surface of the functionality, but is already very helpful for identifying which channels are valuable to you before a conversion. We will be following up this post with a video walk through, but for now I suggest you get in there and have a play around with the data to see what you can find out about your accounts.
Hi Paul, Thanks for your comment. There is a way to change the cookie length on your site with a bit of tweaking in the code, so it might be that this problem isn’t a limiting factor for long sales cycle sites. I definitely agree that all in all multi channels are a very good thing for moving our industry forwards.
Hi Anna. Thanks for the great post.
Whilst the release is far from perfect e.g. a 30 day cookie is not ideal for longer sales cycles, i still think it will eventually completely change our industry and blog about it here – https://www.searchmuse.com/blog/2011/4/13/google-multi-channel-funnels.html
To summarise the post (and to save you leaving koozai!): It will change the way, in particular, small-medium sized business think of sales/ tracking, certainly shake up the tracking industry e.g. the big tracking boys and the affiliate marketing channel as a whole and start to recognise the value that other channels play in the sales funnel e.g. clicks further up the sales funnel and social media.
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