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Yahoo! Web Analytics Demo and Top Questions Answered

I've been receiving lots of questions lately surrounding Yahoo! Web Analytics so I decided to answer them here on my blog. Below you'll find the answers to the top questions....

How Do I Get A Yahoo! Web Analytics Account?

A lot of people over the past several months have asked me how they can get a Yahoo! Web Analytics account. Here is your answer:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/introduction/intro-2.html;_ylt=ApmUYEFUUL8CWAKmAYsVh13KInlG

Is There A Yahoo! Web Analytics Demo?

You bet. A pretty good one in fact that highlights some of the best features of what Yahoo! Web Analytics has to offer:

http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/ayc/flash/ywa-dennis-5-min-75p.swf

Are There Training Videos Available?

Yes, we now have multiple sessions of free Yahoo! Web Analytics training videos available:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/documentation/training/;_ylt=ArBJcSfzlFVLaR2NyMPpktVteHdG

Why Would I Want Yahoo! Web Analytics When I Already Use Google Analytics or Site Catalyst or Coremetrics or WebTrends?

Here are my favorites.....

1. Un-aggregated Data

You can dig deep into the data to help you get the answers that lead to making smarter web site optimization and online budgeting decisions.

With the raw data you can customize your reporting and filter out segments to help you get the type of actionable info that you simply cannot get from a default/non-customizable report.

For example, with Yahoo! Web Analytics you can customize a basic Visits report and make it into an actionable report (such as the one below). A basic default Search Engines report might show you that most Visits come from Google. But does that mean you should spend more on Google advertising? No, you need more actionable information to help you make smarter budgeting decisions.

With Yahoo! Web Analytics you can open up the 'Customize Report' function and pull in some of that additional raw data you have access to such as Conversion Rates, Revenue, Average Order Value, etc. In the image below, we see that while Google drove the most Visits and Revenue it didn't drive the highest Conversion Rate or provide the best Average Order Value.

Looking at how AOL compared in this example, it actually drove a higher Avg. Order Value than Google did. Looking more closely, we notice that AOL drove about half the amount of Revenue that Google did on only 1/10th of Google's traffic. So you can imagine that if you worked to drive more traffic to your e-commerce site from AOL (with the Avg. Order Value it's running at) you could see some positive results!! Now THAT is actionable information!

(click on image for larger snapshot)











2. Interest Group Data

Anybody with a web site wants to better understand what their visitors are interested in so that they can better target them. Yahoo! Web Analytics offers a newer report call Interest Groups.

With Yahoo's HUGE audience scale (600 million monthly unique visitors) and massive amount of users that have signed up for Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports, Yahoo! Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Finance, etc., Yahoo! can provide a pretty awesome sample set of data and can help you understand the types of visitors that are coming to your site and what they are interested in.

(click on image for larger snapshot)













Combine Yahoo's massive audience with the science of housing raw un-aggregated data and the ability to filter on that data (such as breaking down the Interest Group data by gender or city as shown in the image above) and you have some amazing targeting data that no other company currently provides.

3. FREE

Where else are you going to find an enterprise analytics solution combined with Yahoo! audience data for free? Nowhere. Even when Yahoo! adds new functionality in future upgrades....still free.

I had a client ask me if they could test our Yahoo! Web Analytics for 30 days. I laughed and said, "You can test it for as long as you want because it's free!" Here at Yahoo!, we like to call it FREE99.

No more paying for page views!! If Yahoo! Web Analytics helps you grow your web site traffic (which it is designed to do with its web site optimization and campaign tracking reports) are you going to have to pay more for that additional traffic? NO! NO! NO!

You shouldn't have to pay more for analytics because your web site is improving...that's what the web analytics tool is supposed to help you do in the first place! Your costs should not have to run side by side with your improved performance!

Remember folks......Yahoo! Web Analytics is not a reporting tool, it's an analysis tool. What do you have to lose? It's free.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Useful post. I read the complete detail and is so impressed with all the answers provided. This article is a learning guide for all those people who wish to know about this analytic tool.
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