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GAget is a Mac OS X widget for anyone willing to see the important Google Analytics stats quickly and frequently.

It displays the number of visits, new visitors and bounces with a chic interface.

The widget is not limited to a single site and it is easy to switch between profiles (also, multiple instances can be used).

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By default, Google Analytics doesn't track downloads and requires an event to be attached to each download link.

Entrourage.js lightweight (339 bytes gzipped) JavaScript solution that can automatically add tracking support for downloads.

It is framework agnostic, unobtrusive.and leaves the markup clean without requiring any inline JS usage.

There is also a filter provided which enables us to track only the selected file-types.

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While using an analytics application, ability to analyze the funnel users go through to reach an event is a very valuable way for understanding users and improving leads.

Using Google Analytics, it is possible to get a report like:

• users who browsed the product details page –>
• downloaded the brochure –>
• purchased the product –>
• used PayPal.

by using many segments, filters and exporting data.

PadiTrack, a totally free application that can do this very easily for you.

It connects to your Google Analytics account (no tracking code required) and pulls the data automatically + instantly.

The greatest part of it is that segments can be applied to the funnels so you get to see how people converted from different traffic sources

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Wix, the popular Flash CMS application, is giving away 3 Annual Unlimited Premium Accounts ($99 value/account) to WebResourcesDepot readers.

The details on joining the giveaway can be found at the bottom of this post. But before that:

What is Wix?

Wix is a free website builder tool that makes creating nice Flash websites so easy for anyone whether you have or don't have experience in web design.

The websites created are search engine friendly and adding image galleries, videos or streaming music is a breeze.

It integrates tightly with Google Analytics and helps tracking every detail of the websites.

Wix lets you customize every page totally and there are lots of templates offered if you prefer to start with something already good-looking. Here are some screenshots of the websites build with it:

And, there are much more live examples provided in the Wix Directory.

The free website builder also offers an e-commerce store creator to start selling stuff instantly.

How to join the giveaway?

In order to win one of the Unlimited Premium accounts which has attractive features like:

• using your own domain
• 1gb storage
• $75 Google AdWords voucher + $50 Facebook voucher + free domain coupon

it is enough to comment to this post and winners will be selected randomly with the query below on 8th of September 2010 (1 week later):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=1825 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to all.

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A/B Testing is a great way for finding the better performing version of text, layouts, images, colors or any other element. in a website.

phpA/B is a free PHP script that enables you to setup A/B tests on your website so quickly.

It integrates automatically into your Google Analytics, allowing deeper insight into your tests’ impact on users.

The script can be run in trial mode to find out if the variations are working completely and, if it is, can be switched to live mode.

phpA/B also automatically filters search engine bots out of your tests to keep the data clean.

P.S. More on A/B Testing on Wikipedia.

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SlimStat is an open source web analytics application that collects & presents statistics information about your website.

It is built with PHP-MySQL & can be integrated into websites with JavaScript (like Google Analytics) or PHP.

For  the given period, the application can display:

• the number of visitors/pageviews
• referrer URLs, domains
• search terms
• browsers, OSs, countries, screen sizes

There is also a "paths" feature that shows a user's browsing path page-by-page.

You may be asking, "why to use SlimStat instead of Google Analytics?" The best answer would be "live stats".

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FeedBurner's popular chicklet FeedCount is the most-used way to display the number of subscribers for a feed.

Also, a similar design is used by TwitterCounter to display your Twitter followers.

We'll be creating a dynamic FeedCount-like interface that can display your website's statistics like pageviews, visits, etc. (one or all of them) using PHP.

At the end of this tutorial, we'll have 2 different counters:

• a counter that can display only one metric – basic version
• a counter that can display multiple metrics (some jQuery fun here) – advanced version

Basic Counter

Let's start with the PHP part:

How To Fetch Google Analytics Data With PHP?

We'll be using a PHP class named GAPI that makes using Google Analytics API so easy.

There are 3 variables we need to start using GAPI:

• Google Analytics user that has access to the website stats to be displayed (I suggest creating a new Google Account specifically for this purpose and provide only read access to that website's data. This will prevent using your real Google account in your code which is a good step for security).
• Google Analytics user password.
• Profile ID of the website (it is not the one that starts with UA, rather, it is the ID that appears on browser's address bar when a report of that website is clicked).

GAPI offers a simple usage to access Google Analytics data:

<?php
define('ga_email','yourGoogleEmail');
define('ga_password','yourGooglePass');
define('ga_profile_id','yourProfileID');

require 'gapi.class.php';
$ga = new gapi(ga_email,ga_password);
$ga->requestReportData(ga_profile_id,array('browser','browserVersion'),array('pageviews'));
?>

Now we have the pageviews data of the last 30 days (it is possible to define custom dates, check the GAPI docs.)

(If you want to read more on GAPI, code-diesel has a great article on this class.)

Here is the HTML:

<div id="statsWrap">
	<div id="statsDetailsWrap">
		<div id="statsCount">
			<?php echo $ga->getPageviews() ?>
		</div>
		<div id="statsMetric">
			pageviews
		</div>
	</div>
	<div id="byGoogle">By Google Analytics</div>
</div>

And CSS

#statsWrap {
	font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
	font-size: 10px;
}
#statsDetailsWrap {
	background: #333333;
	float: left;
	padding: 1px 3px 1px 1px;
	border: #666666 1px inset;
}
#statsCount {
	float: left;
	padding: 1px 3px;
	background: #999999;
	color: #FFFFFF;
	border: #666666 1px inset;
}
#statsMetric {
	float: left;
	padding: 3px;
	color: #FFFFFF;
}
#byGoogle {
	clear: both;
	color: #666666;
	font-size: 10px;
}

 

Advanced Counter (With jQuery)

---

It is possible to fetch multiple data with GAPI & we'll be creating an auto-rotating counter that can display multiple metrics (visits & pageviews).

Let's use a little improved version of the PHP code:

<?php
define('ga_email','yourGoogleEmail');
define('ga_password','yourGooglePass');
define('ga_profile_id','yourProfileID');

require 'gapi.class.php';
$ga = new gapi(ga_email,ga_password);
$ga->requestReportData(ga_profile_id,array('browser','browserVersion'),array('pageviews','visits'));
?>

And a tiny update to the HTML by adding few spans to wrap every metric so we can show/hide them.

<div id="statsWrap">
	<div id="statsDetailsWrap">
		<div id="statsCount">
			<span id="statsPageviews"><?php echo $ga->getPageviews() ?></span>
			<span id="statsVisits"><?php echo $ga->getVisits() ?></span>
		</div>
		<div id="statsMetric">
			<span id="statsPageviewsText">pageviews</span>
			<span id="statsVisitsText">visits</span>
		</div>
	</div>
	<div id="byGoogle">By Google Analytics</div>
</div>

I have also updated the CSS a little bit by adding hard-coded width-heights to elements to make sure they will look ok when rotating:

#statsWrap {
	font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
	font-size: 10px;
}
#statsDetailsWrap {
	background: #333333;
	float: left;
	padding: 1px 3px 1px 1px;
	border: #666666 1px inset;
}
#statsCount {
	float: left;
	padding: 1px 3px;
	background: #999999;
	color: #FFFFFF;
	border: #666666 1px inset;
	width: 40px;
	height: 12px;
}
#statsMetric {
	float: left;
	padding: 3px;
	color: #FFFFFF;
	width: 50px;
	height: 12px;
}
#byGoogle {
	clear: both;
	color: #666666;
	font-size: 10px;
}

And here is the jQuery part which rotates metrics:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {   

	$("#statsPageviews").hide();
	$("#statsVisits").hide();
	$("#statsPageviewsText").hide();
	$("#statsVisitsText").hide();
	rotateMetrics(); 

	function rotateMetrics() {
		$("#statsPageviewsText").slideDown("slow");
		$("#statsPageviews").slideDown("slow", function() {
			setTimeout(function() {
				$("#statsPageviewsText").slideUp("slow");
				$("#statsPageviews").slideUp("slow", function() {
					$("#statsVisitsText").slideDown("slow");
					$("#statsVisits").slideDown("slow", function() {
						setTimeout(function() {
							$("#statsVisitsText").slideUp("slow");
							$("#statsVisits").slideUp("slow", function() {
								rotateMetrics();
							});
						}, 3000);
					});
				});
			}, 3000);
		});

	}
});
</script>

In the jQuery part, although it may look complicated, it is definitely not. We used callbacks for the slideUp/slideDown functions & added a little delay between transitions.

That’s all.

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]]> http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/feedcount-like-google-analytics-counter/feed/ 20 http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/tracking-new-rss-subscribers-with-google-analytics-to-understand-them-better/ http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/tracking-new-rss-subscribers-with-google-analytics-to-understand-them-better/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:01:08 +0000 Umut M. http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/?p=1338

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For a website, gaining RSS subscribers requires hard work as visitors prefer to subscribe websites with fresh/quality content & expect this to be continious. On the other hand, RSS subscribers are very valuable loyal readers which follow the website regularly. So, for a website, it is very important to analyze "how visitors become RSS readers" [...]]]>

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For a website, gaining RSS subscribers requires hard work as visitors prefer to subscribe websites with fresh/quality content & expect this to be continious.

On the other hand, RSS subscribers are very valuable loyal readers which follow the website regularly.

So, for a website, it is very important to analyze "how visitors become RSS readers" like:

• from which websites do they reach to yours
• which page of yours is the one that gains you most subscribers, etc.

Google Analytics, besides all the simplicity it offers, has a very functional event tracking method for analyzing custom events which we will be using to track new RSS subscriptions and see how to analyzing them deeper.

 

Part 1 – Applying Event Tracking Code

---

There are currently 2 different versions of Google Analytics tracking code used:

• The standard tracking (gaJsHost)
• Asynchronous tracking – beta (_gaq)

The asynchronous tracking code has a major advantage over the standard version's event tracking which is: it will be able to track the clicks even if tha page is not fully loaded.

Codes for both versions will be mentioned.



No JavaScript frameworks version

Standard tracking


The standard Google Analytics event tracking code uses the _trackEvent method as follows

_trackEvent(category, action, opt_label, opt_value)

The code added to our RSS link will look like:

<a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/webresourcesdepot" onclick="pageTracker._trackEvent('rss', 'clicked')"Subscribe To Our RSS Feed</a>

You may have realized that we have used only 2 of the variables and didn't include opt_label & opt_value as it is optional.

Asynchronous tracking

The Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code uses the _gaq.push function to call the _trackEvent method:

<a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/webresourcesdepot" onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'rss', 'clicked'])">Subscribe To Our RSS Feed</a>

jQuery Version

Standard tracking


Let's assume that we have added the class="rss" to our RSS links for making it easier to find the clicked items:

jQuery('.rss').click(function() {
    pageTracker._trackEvent('rss', 'clicked');
});

Asynchronous tracking

jQuery('.rss').click(function() {
    _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'rss', 'clicked']);
});

MooTools Version

Again, we're thinking that the class="rss" is added to our RSS links.

Standard Tracking


$('.rss').addEvent('click', function(){
    pageTracker._trackEvent('rss', 'clicked');
});

Asynchronous tracking

$('.rss').addEvent('click', function(){
    _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'rss', 'clicked']);
});

 

Part 2 – Analyzing Events With Google Analytics

---

After we placed the event tracking as defined above, Google Analytics starts to collect that data and displays is under the Content>Event Tracking" menu.

We can easily see howmany clicks our RSS links gets everyday easily. It is even possible to use the optional values of the tracking codes and track RSS subscriptions with multiple labels like: mainRSSButton, footerRSSLink, etc.

In order to findout which visitors convert to RSS subscribers, "Custom Reporting" is exactly what we need.



Let's create 2 custom reports to see:

• which content results in more RSS subscribers
• visitors coming from which websites become subscribers

Which content results in more RSS subscribers:

• Click "Custom Reporting>Create new custom report".
• Select "Content>Total Events" as the metric.
• Select "Content>Page Title (or Page if your page titles don't define the content)" as the dimension. A good idea would be adding a 2nd dimension like "Traffic Sources>Keyword" to findout the keywords that forwarded users to the page.
• Give the report a name by clicking "edit" at the top of the "Create new custom report" & save the report.

Visitors coming from which websites become RSS subscribers:

• Click "Custom Reporting>Create new custom report".
• Select "Content>Total Events" as the metric.
• Select "Traffic Sources>Source" as the dimension. A good idea would be adding a 2nd dimension like "Content>Page Title (or Page if your page titles don't define the content)" to findout the most popular contents from that referrer that ended up in a new subscribers.
• Give the report a name by clicking "edit" at the top of the "Create new custom report" & save the report.

Both reports are very similar but they offer you the data from different point of views.

Now, you know which type of posts convert to RSS subscribers & which websites are referring you new RSS subscribers.

And, you got the point. There are 100s of possibilities in creating reports. It is totally up to what you are in need of.

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]]> http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/tracking-new-rss-subscribers-with-google-analytics-to-understand-them-better/feed/ 12 http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/new-google-analytics-code-for-better-load-times/ http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/new-google-analytics-code-for-better-load-times/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:01:33 +0000 Umut M. http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/?p=1318

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Google Analytics has recently announced a new asynchronous tracking code that can "optionally" be replaced with the old one. The new code does not block the website while it loads which will improve the loading times. It also aims to provide more accurate results as it can be installed inside <head></head> tags (rather than before [...]]]>

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Google Analytics has recently announced a new asynchronous tracking code that can "optionally" be replaced with the old one.

The new code does not block the website while it loads which will improve the loading times.

It also aims to provide more accurate results as it can be installed inside <head></head> tags (rather than before the </body> tag) and will be able to collect data from visitors that quit the webpage before it loads fully. This way, "any possible tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript not being fully loaded" are also eliminated.

More information can be found in the official announcement & the "Asynchronous Tracking Usage Guide".

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]]> http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/new-google-analytics-code-for-better-load-times/feed/ 3 http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/css-only-rounded-corners/ http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/css-only-rounded-corners/#comments Mon, 05 May 2008 05:42:27 +0000 Umut M. http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/?p=268

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There are several options for creating rounded corners like: with one image, four images, javascript and plain CSS (and more). Ask The CSS Guy puts the CSS rounded corners used in Google Analytics under scrutiny. The technique works by leaving a 1px notch in every corner which creates the rounded corner effect . This is [...]]]>

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There are several options for creating rounded corners like: with one image, four images, javascript and plain CSS (and more).

Ask The CSS Guy puts the CSS rounded corners used in Google Analytics under scrutiny.



The technique works by leaving a 1px notch in every corner which creates the rounded corner effect .

This is definitely a nice way of creating rounded corners as it is always more flexible working with CSS rather than static images.

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]]> http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/css-only-rounded-corners/feed/ 4