So far I’ve been pretty awful at blogging as I go along on my travels. It’s been several weeks (well, several since I started writing this post, several more since finishing) since I spent 2 weeks exploring Thailand, though I was just back in Bangkok a few weeks ago for a couple of days of…
Myanmar
When I decided to start my 3.5 month Asia trip in Myanmar, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Myanmar was a country I knew very little about, and it wasn’t until talking to a friend from home who had recently been that I got a vague sense of what I might see or do there….
A/B Testing Dried Mangoes for Fun and Learning
Recently, a coworker brought back a bag of dried mangoes from the Philippines as a gift for me, telling me that they are the best dried mangoes in Southeast Asia (hereafter, SEA). This coworker happened to be from the Philippines and was for sure a bit biased in her opinion here… Another coworker sitting next…
New Default Position for Widgets Added to a GA Dashboards!
Some time ago, a few analyst friends tweeted about wishing new widgets in Google Analytics dashboards could be added to the bottom by default rather than the top. As an analyst who has made and maintained MANY GA dashboards, I couldn’t agree more. By adding the widget to the top, the analyst is forced to…
Mixing Google Analytics Dimensions and Metrics
Following Krista’s excellent post on using secondary dimensions in Google Analytics, this post will explain the GA represents your data using its internal data model and why it’s important to understand this. You’ll see that certain combinations of metrics and dimensions don’t mean what you might think, and that some are actually completely invalid. We’ll…
Testing with a Rapid Optimization Plan
If you’ve ever set out to A/B test a whole site redesign, you must have come across the question of ‘What do we do if the new site, that we’ve spent so much time and money on, doesn’t win?’ That’s a fair question. A very fair one. In fact, if you are not asking yourself…
Segments – An Analyst’s Best Friend! Part 2: Secondary Dimensions
In part 1, I wrote about the details of Advanced Segments. They are incredibly powerful and will help you take your analysis to the next level. But as I mentioned in that article, when I think about segmentation, it comes in two forms in Google Analytics: 1. Advanced segments a. Out of the…
Segments – An Analyst’s Best Friend! Part 1
Advanced Segments are quite possibly the most powerful slice-and-dice tool available in Google Analytics. Recently, however, it came to my attention that even some of our biggest and most advanced users are not using/under-utilizing advanced segments! When I think about segmentation, it comes in two forms in Google Analytics: 1. Advanced segments Out of the…
2015 Travel by the Numbers
Happy New Years! Looking back on this past year, 2015 was another big year in travel. Once again, I’ve taken a look back at my 2015 travel numbers and with the help of TripIt have pulled together the stats to paint a story of my year. If you missed last years, you can see my 2014…