Link: Monitus Tools Google Analytics connector for Yahoo! Store.
"Google Analytics + Yahoo! Store -- We are pleased to announce the launch of the Google Analytics connector for Yahoo! Store. Our service will enable Google Analytics to gather the truly important information: converting keywords that are linked to individual products.
View the tour>>>> "
My good buddy and co- Yahoo! Store seminar instructor Michael Whitaker just launched his new Yahoo Store tools service! Congratulations, Mike & Jean!
I know that they've been burning the midnight oil working on this new service and on several other cool things, too, because one of my sites was a beta tester for the Google Analytics bridge.
IT ROCKS! I've never been able to get to my converting keyword data so easily. Google Analytics + the Monitus data bridge fixes one of my major beefs with the store metric data of the Store Manager.
While the Yahoo Store Manager's charts and graphs and reports are very helpful and easy to use, they haven't been updated since 1996 when the guys at Viaweb created them. In the past nine years, many companies have built cool Web site analytical tools, some of which are Yahoo Store friendly, and I've gotten so much more out of my stores by using these third party sevices.
These days I prefer Engine Ready / Index Tools for collecting my converting keywords and Click Tracks for easy peasy site improvement based upon viewing visitor paths. Get your wallet out because these services aren't cheap. I spend anywhere from $500-$1000 a month on these services (depending on pageviews), and I think the data is worth that and more.
Enter Google Analytics.
Long story, short: Google bought Urchin last year and is now giving Google Analytics accounts away for free, although there is a waiting list.
Why would they do this? Arguably, folks who can track their advertising buys on Google Adwords will buy more advertising when they can prove that PPC ads convert into sales. These same advertisers will also make more money when they can use Google Analytics (GA) to see where their stores have problems areas and work to decrease their bail rates and increase the conversion rates of their stores, and hopefully spend that buying more keywords on Google (and Overture).
Okay. I've known about Urchin for a long time, and when I was hanging out with the MonsterCommerce girls in Belleville, Urchin was the preferred analytics package in St. Louis. The main problem for me was that like a lot of other analytics packages, Urchin wasn't Yahoo Store compatible, so no matter how cool it was, it didn't work with my favorite e-commerce software.
Enter the smart fellars over at Monitus with a magic bullet.
I have no idea how much mental heavy lifting was required to get this to work done, but they figured out how to pass the Yahoo! Store ecommerce data (the sales and order data) from the new Checkout Manager over to the new, free Google analytics service. Holy cow.
Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/ and sign up for a free account RIGHT NOW because the waiting list is looooooooooooong. You can also sign up in your Google Adwords account by clicking on the Analytics tab and giving them your email address. I had good luck calling Google and nicely asking to skip to the front of the line based upon my adspend at Google.
Next, look at Monitus. If you're using the new Checkout Manager (just fresh out of beta) then sign up for their tools. I know about all kinds of new stuff I can't talk about yet, but you need to take a look if increasing your Yahoo Store's sales is important to you. (I know what I'm doing this weekend!)
