Introducing Google Analytics 'Multi-Channel Funnels'

Forget about the release of Google Analytics Version 5, for me, this is the most important update to the platform in a long time. I suspected it would only be a matter of time before the limited trial of this reporting functionality graduated to a fully fledged feature, available to every user of Google Analytics.

To quote Google, this new level of reporting should allow site owners to:

• See how search phrases progress towards conversions.
• Know each traffic source's role in driving conversions.
• See each interaction in your sales cycle.

So, how is this information conveyed in the reports?

The best way to introduce this is to give you an overview of the metrics and reports you will find within the new reporting area and what these mean to your marketing analysis:

The Metrics

Assisted Conversions: The number of sales/goal conversions that the channel or keyword assisted in

Last Interaction Conversions: The number of conversions 'closed' by the channel (footballing side note: can't remember where, but I have seen someone refer to this as a “Lineker”)

First Interaction Conversions: The completion of goals/sales which were initiated by the channel i.e. when the channel introduced your site to the potential customer

Assisted/Last Interaction Conversions: The ratio of the two metrics above for a channel. 0 indicating a high ratio of completions to assists, 1 and above indicating that a channel has assisted more sales than it has closed. This gives an at a glance insight into the characteristics of a channel i.e. Social may have a ratio above one, whereas brand keyword searches may well be close to zero.

The Reports

Overview: Gives a summary of the of total conversions and the level of conversions which were assisted.  One of the best features of this top level report is the Venn diagram, helping to quickly give you an overview of the level of multi-channel activity

Assisted Conversions: A channel by channel breakdown of the types of conversion recorded. First up is a basic view, but by going through the available tabs you can drill down to look at these metrics for the sources and mediums, or even right down to keyword level:

Top Conversion Paths: Details the most popular journeys from first visit to conversion (when users use more than one channel to visit the site). Again, you can drill down or add keywords as a secondary dimension – this is really useful for understanding how visitors turn from potential to actual customers, and the synergy between your marketing channels

Time Lag / Path Length:  Both of these give insight into the delay between first interaction with your site/marketing activities and completion of a goal or transaction. The strength in this report lies in my belief that it is not always so beneficial to only focus on the immediate ROI of activities (which is a great strength of digital marketing), when there are larger goals such as brand building. This report is great for getting across the message that often it takes time to convert someone who previously has had no contact with a brand into a customer.

The next instalment:

Like anything else within Google Analytics, once the basics of the multi-channel reporting are understood there is a wealth of actionable insight to be gathered. In the next instalment, I will be discussing how to leverage some of the more advance features such as custom 'channel grouping' and conversion segments to carry out some really valuable analysis of site visitors.