How to use Google Analytics webinar with Avinash Kaushik

YES! This guy is so awesome! Take advantage if you can.

IMO, Avinash was poorly prepared. We're all sitting there waiting for him to drill down into our world, but he never made it to us.

At the beginning of the presentation they mentioned that 2400 people were logged into the presentation. IMO, with a count that large, a great number of listeners were dealers. I can't be sure, but it’s a logical conclusion.

I don't believe he had any idea of what his audience makeup was. If it's 90% dealers, then craft the presentation to your audience. If it was a big mix, he could pre-announce to us all how widely diverse the audience is and how he'll need to "keep it fairly generalized" to apply to all. An Example to clarify: If he presented to the Pool Table industry and based his presentation to the manufacturers, what good is it to the retailers that sell the tables?

His presentation was aimed squarely at auto manufacturers and was of little help to auto dealers. The auto dealer has unique search difficulties and unique search opportunities because of their local presence. Dealers cannot do competitive marketing intelligence using Google trends because our traffic counts are too small. He has long tail as a Paid Search solution and long tail is a no-brainer for non-paid search.

I can go on and on, I don't have time to break out all of the details, but IF the audience was mostly car dealers, then Avinash did not have any idea what his audience consisted of.

Avinash had some excellent points. I like using the bounce rate and visitor loyalty as excellent metrics of shopper satisfaction. But his 60 min presentation was simply a 1,400 word per minute caffine induced race around the planet.

I can't help but think that Avinash's presentation was no different than having a junk landing page for a PPC search term. My "visitor loyalty" score for him will be not good.

just my $0.02
Joe

I was bummed about missing it but now not so much.
I am sure they will have a podcast soon?

In hindsight, I would have recommended a quick survey before the webinar; asking what side of the industry you were representing.

Joe, I agree..it was more tailored to the OEM rather then the dealer body and I would hope that most of the attendees were dealers.

I did get a few walk aways from the webinare though. Being from a larger dealer group, I get an advantage in that I get to track traffic gathered from all our dealer sites. This allows me to dial in on some analytics in order to get a good idea of what is working and what is not working on our dealer websites.

Avinash confirmed that tracking your bounce rate for Upper Funnel keywords was indeed to the way to measure. As you move down the funnel with category and brand search terms, you want to measure time on site.

The truth is..I bet only 10% of dealers are monitoring their dealers website analytics and using those analytics to make the right changes to their websites. Another reason to stay away from the cookie cutter template sites and to have the least amount of "plug-ins" as possible.

Let your website teach you what your customers are looking for, what information they want the most they tailor your site accordingly.

I was cracking up when he explained what a HIPPO is - the "Highest Paid Persons Opinion". Ha..we all know that too well.

That "HIPPO" effect is not limited to just selecting website hosts... As for using Google Analytics, I really think you need to be able to trend and compare your month to month and year to year analytics to be able to identify patterns and make useful decisions. That meant making a HUGE MS Excel spreadsheet where I enter my monthly analytics for each of our sites and they now automatically graph for me in each category so that I can see where we are doing well, and where we are falling short. It took some time to put together but it works great. Google Analytics is an amazing tool when you make it work for you...

I'd have to agree with Joe. The presnetation was not geared towards dealers at all. Some of the challenges that dealers go thru with paid search can become very tricky when competing against OEM's and other 3rd party sites. My biggest take away was how important the bounce rate is to monitor.

I watched the entire presentation and had the prickly sensation that there was some other intention of this besides just an education process about Analytics.

I would not go so far as to say that a guy with Avinash's credentials would sell out for Automotive News or for GM, but I can definitely say that all of the presentation had a specific odor to it. I wrote an article on my site concerning how far the manufacturers are venturing into becoming Internet or service providers. If you want to read it, it is here:

http://automotiveseoblog.com/2008/10/29/how-far-is-too-far-when-it-comes-to-automotive-factorydealer-relations/

No problem if you do not want to link outside away from your site Jeff- feel free to post it on your site if you would like with proper mentions to PureDealer of course

Overall, I'm fine with a push for Analytics, ALL sites should have them, and heat maps too. It just seemed strange how wonderful some manufacturers were supposedly doing online, and how awful others were doing. Watch the presentation and you can see the same patterns. I'm not one for conspiracy theories but you can judge for yourselves.

-Michael