Google Analytics - Custom Variables

[MarkScully]

Hi guys,

I'd appreciate any advice with this one.

At the moment I'm in the process of arranging a URL re-structure. I was wondering what the best way would be to track the performance of the old URLs against new ones?

We will be ammending the URLs for any new property pages which go live on our website but leaving the old URLs in play for any old properties listed. We're taking this approach for the moment so we can conduct analysis on the change.

It has been mentioned to me that placing a 'setvariable' in the code of pages with the old URLs and ones with the new URLs would be a way of tracking performance. However, my knowledge in this area is a little bit grey.

Any advice?

Cheers,

Mark

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Mark,

Have you considered using Google Experiments in Google Analytics to test the pages? You can test variations of pages and their effectiveness by simply entering the different URLs - https://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1745147&topic=1745207

(Experiments is under the Content Menu in Google Analytics)

If you want to go down the custom variable route here is a great how to that should explain it all simply for you (I used it myself) -

http://www.sitepoint.com/google-analytics-custom-variables/

What are you going to be measuring, in terms of performance, in order to be able to judge which page type has been more successful?

The reason I ask is because I am trying to understand how you will define one page type performing better than another.

[fabioricotta-84038]

Why not use Advanced Segments? You can find more detailed information here: http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1033017

For example, if your old URLs looks like:

www.mysite.com/old.php?cat=12&pid=113

And the new ones looks like

www.mysite.com/category-12/product-113

You can easily create advanced segments to monitor the performance.