LunaTV Ep. 02 ‑ Google Analytics ‑ (Not Set) Pages, New Vs Redesign For Mobile, GA Limits, IQ Exam

May 2, 2012

This weeks topic is Google Analytics. In this episode, we answer:

-What’s causing my page title to be (not set) in Google analytics? – @MarkGinsberg, Twitter

-Is it better to have a dedicated mobile site for an eCommerce business or to redesign the site to work across multiple browsers and devices? – David C., LinkedIn Answers

-Why can’t I add another new site in Google Analytics? – Quora

-Where can I find good resources to prepare for the Google Analytics exam? – Quora

LunaTV is a weekly segment where LunaMetrics team members answer your questions from across the web. Got a question you want answered? Tweet at us at @LunaMetrics with #LunaTV and we’ll answer your question!

 

Jim:
Hi, I’m Jim Gianolio

Sayf:
I’m Sayf Sharif

Jim:
Welcome to Episode 2 of LunaTV, where we answer your questions from around the web. This week’s topic is Google Analytics, last week we talked about social media, this week we’re gonna talk about Google Analytics. So we have a couple of questions that we found from around the web.

The first question is from Mark Ginsburg, he asked us via Twitter – by the way, you can ask us questions on Twitter on our Twitter account, you can see right down there, @LunaMetrics. And if we can’t respond to you right on Twitter right away,if it’s a longer question that we need to answer in a little bit more than 140 characters we’ll do it right here and get back to you that way.So be sure to ask us questions!

And the first question was from Mark Ginsberg, again, from twitter, he asks

‘Page title (not set) in GA, any ideas of the cause, thanks’

Jim:
So a couple of things can be causing this.

Sayf:
It helps he was nice. Goes a long way.

Jim:
Yes, he did say thanks – so, you know, please and thank you go a long way. So there’s a couple of things that could be causing this. One is if you have your GA code above the title, then the code is executing before that title is actually being sent. So that’s one of the first things you would want to check to see if that’s causing it.

Another thing that can cause it is if you’re using virtual pageviews. So if you’re setting ‘track pageview’ and actually physically naming your pages, for instance on a PDF download link, or a click on a ‘Mail To’ link, and you’re using a virtual pageview to track that, obviously, that virtual pageview doesn’t have a page title so that’s going to show up as (not set). Along the same lines, if you’re tracking things like flash navigation, or navigation within flash files or any kind of interaction within flash files as virtual pageviews, you’re gonna get that (not set.

A couple of things that you can do to troubleshoot this is just use a tool like HTTP Fox to check out the information that’s being sent in the utm.gif request to see if the header, I’m sorry, the title information is actually being sent at all. That will point you in the right direction
to see what the cause might be for that.

So the next question, Sayf?
Sayf:
I think this is from LinkedIn [EDIT: It’s from David C. on LinkedIn] I didn’t source exactly where this is from. Someone asked

‘Is it better to have a dedicated mobile site for an ecommerce business or to redesign the main site to work across desktop and mobile browsers’

This is something that has come up a couple times as far as usability and analytics concerns. And I think that, regarding analytics, the first step that someone needs to take is actually look at their analytics and see what kind of traffic they have. If they’re not getting a lot of mobile traffic at all, it might not be worth it for them, cost-wise, to invest in an entirely new website. However at the same time what is best is something that people can actually use. And it means just because you might not be converting a lot of people on your mobile site it could be because the fact that you have a bad mobile site. So you can’t use a poor conversion rate on your mobile site necessarily as an indication that it’s not worth doing. Many sites, you know, you want them to fit on a phone.

If you have the main Amazon site, there’s not going to be a button that you have to push that you have to expand the screen. So either you want to have the same site but use something called responsive web design, which allows the same information to be passed to the user but changes how it’s styled to be easier to use on a mobile handset or a tablet, or have a separate site entirely designed around the idea of a smaller screen, focusing exactly on what they do. If you look at any of the major eCommerce players you’ll notice that they don’t have just their main website on your phone when you go to, say, Amazon.com.

So, any time one of the biggest eCommerce retailers, whatever they do, generally that’s a good indication of practices that you should probably follow as well.

Jim:
We have a couple more questions, some quick questions, the first one I’ll answer. This came from Quora –

‘Is there any reason why I can’t add a new site in GA? I have about 45 sites being tracked with Google Analytics, and now when I try adding a new web property it won’t let me, I click on the create property button and nothing happens.’

Now what’s happening here is you’re hitting the limit, the upper bound of the number of profiles that you can have in Google Analytics. The limit that you have is 50. So you probably have 45 web properties and a couple of those have multiple profiles in them.

You can work with a Google Analytics certified partner, like LunaMetrics, and we can get that increased up to 200, but 200 is the maximum. The thing I would ask is why do you need that many web properties in one account? It might make better sense to have 45 accounts, and keep them separately that way – that way you don’t run against that account limit.

Sayf:
Another quick question that we got was

‘Where can I find goodresources to prepare for the Google Analytics exam?’

meaning the IQ, the Analytics IQ lessons themselves cover just about everything you need to know, and they can be found at google.com/analytics/iq.html. It’s really good information even if you don’t plan on taking the IQ test, which does cost $50 to take the test.

However, the information videos on that page are really good information for anyone starting to do their analytics or just for a refresher, it’s every aspect of Google Analytics. It covers everything in pretty good detail, so any time you have a question that’s a good place to look to for ideas on how to understand Google Analytics better.

Jim:
So that wraps it up for this week, be sure to check back next week on Wednesday for our next episode of LunaTV.

We’ll see you then!