Update: Watch Video Below!

Below is information on what we learned.  Check back on Monday to see the video of the event in its entirety.

1.     It’s easy, 5-minutes easy, to setup Google Analytics – As John Shiple mentioned…it’s easier than going to your local café and ordering coffee.  Many content management sites such as WordPress and Blogger make it so easy to track the behavior of your visitors by allowing you to copy + paste a tracking code in the headers or footers of your site.  You’ll be collecting analytics data in no time!

2.    Having the Right Goals in Mind – Many people focus their energy towards driving large volumes of traffic to their site, which is great, but what you do with that traffic is even more important.  Is your bounce rate high? Are you experiencing a drop-off on certain pages? Google Analytics tracks all that.  By making your conversion goals more deliberate and spelled out such as “collect an email”, “add an item to shopping cart”, “spend X dollars to buy my product”, and “confirm sale” , you greatly improve your metrics  and are more enabled to make more informed decisions to improve your company’s online marketing campaign and overall bottom line.

3.    Tracking Inbound Traffic – Learning where your traffic came from and how they got there is just as important as what they do once on your site. So make sure you code your links to be human-readable.  Use us for example; we over here at Highly Relevant like to comment often on interesting social media blogs found on Mashable as well as other blogs regarding online reputation management. In this case, of commenting on Mashable we would use the http://www.highlyrelevant.com/social-media-marketing.html as s opposed to http://www.highlyrelevant.com/online-reputation-management.html.

This helps online users on Mashable know we are part of the social media community plus it also helps us determine where most of our traffic is coming from – social media blogs or online reputation management blogs.

4.     Need Help? Don’t fret.  GA help is Everywhere – The panel members provided the following resources:

• Avinash Kaushik – the GURU of Google Analytics has a blog on the subject:  Click Here.
• Google’s Conversion University has a bunch of training guides.  Here’s the link:  http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/
• Google Analytics works within Facebook.  See this link:  http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2010/google-analytics-for-facebook-fan-pages/

5.    Creating Funnels –Funnels are great (and illustrative) tools for building the steps towards your company’s goal.  They also show you how to identify your user drop-off rate at each step.  Essentially, if there’s drop-off for every step you will want to limit and simplify the number of then in order to successfully convert into sales.

A special shout-out to the very informative speakers– You guys were great!

Check them out on twitter to see what other projects they are working or if you have any questions.

Serena (Host): @serena
Erica: @SnowboardWomen
Alex: @aybecker
Andrew:@andrewhahn
John: @FreelanceCTO

Disclaimer: Before you upgrade, please follow the instructions listed on the official Upgrading WordPress documentation and recommended upgrade instructions. After you have successfully followed the instructions on upgrading wordpress listed above, then follow the automatic upgrade process inside of your wp-admin and finish your installation of WordPress 2.9 Carmen.

Here are the main upgrades for the new WordPress 2.9 Carmen and why it’s important you upgrade immediately:

• Video oEmbed Technology: Paste a URL into a post and it will automatically embed the linked video. Additionally, this capability extends to Scribd.com, Youtube.com, Google Video, Vimeo & More. For a full list of the embed technology of wordpress 2.9 please click here.
• Image Editor & Functionality: Images are “more at home” inside of WordPress 2.9, according to Matt Mullenweg, one of the founders of WordPress. You can now easily upload, edit, and transform images with a pretty advanced web based editor.
• Plugin Compatibility & Batch Plugin Updater: You can now upgrade up to 10 plugins at once. Additionally, you will know whether or not the plugin is compatible with your version of WordPress and much much more. WordPress is only as powerful as the plugins that people create for the CMS, and I’m glad to see that they are getting the attention they deserve.
• No more deleting posts and pages: That’s right, you can’t delete them anymore. Rather, you can send things to the “Trash” where they will remain for 30 days unless you restore them or permanently delete them yourself – which I don’t recommend doing.

For a full list of why WordPress 2.9 Carmen is “oh so fine” check out the link.