Multi-Channel Funnel & Assists are Coming to Google Analytics

In the biggest update to Google Analytics in 1.5 years, version 5 is promising a new feature to help analyse one of the hottest topics in online marketing at the moment -’conversion attribution’. The new feature will show the full combination of marketing channels (with the exception of display ads) that influence buyer behaviour before the final goal. This is called Multi Channel Funnels.

View the Official Google video;

 

Why Has This Come About?

Most of us are used to dealing with last click attribution through traditional analytics. This is where the credit for the conversion/sale is attributed to the last digital channel or keyword the customer went through. In reality we know that the user journey is not that simple, the customer may have been influenced throughout the buying cycle by multiple sources. The problem with relying upon “last click attribution” is that companies may cut budget to channels that provide a great number of assists but no direct goals, thus negatively impacting the overall performance of their online marketing campaigns.

Conversion attribution has been a hot topic for many years and although many companies have tried, no one has developed a robust mass market solution. Most of the solutions that can shed light on the subject offer no help to the average marketer because of the high implementation and training costs. Although not yet a proven development, Google Analytics new multi channel functions offer to bring conversion attribution to the masses!

What Can You Expect to See?

The new multi channel functionality will show previous searches, referrals and exposure that assisted in the end goal/conversion. These reports will be generated from the conversion trail which is the path of data from interactions with digital channels. In these reports, the digital channels are accredited with how many sales they initiated, assisted with and completed.
The top conversion path shows the user journey from initiating to conversion. So you can see which channels influenced customers at different stages of the buying cycle. These reports also include time lag and path length which will shed light on the duration of time that it takes to make someone a customer and how long their digital trail was to provide enough influence to become a customer.

When Will we Have this Feature?

Currently, the feature is only in limited pilot . That means that Google Analytics are launching the feature to a limited number of trusted users and have not released a date for a full launch.
The good news for Inside Online customers is that we are in the process of getting our clients accounts accepted on to this trial so we can see the functionality before anybody else!

Originally posted 2011-05-24 16:24:49.