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July 18, 2017
A guide to the benefits and setup of 3 essential Google Analytics features
Adding Google Analytics tracking code to a site is quick in most cases, but I find that many businesses leave it there and don't add more customisation to use some of the more advanced Google Analytics features. These features can give great advantages in understanding how users interact with your site, to support ideas for conversion optimisation. You may not consider these features advanced, but they are missing in many cases, so are advanced in this sense!
The three customizations I will cover, which work best when considered together, are:
Event tracking codes
Goal setup
A/B testing and content experiments
1. Event Tracking Codes
The power of event tracking codes is shown by the many user actions that you can monitor within your website. Event tracking codes can make your life easier since you can monitor all these micro-conversions that matter to your…
A how-to guide for campaign reporting with examples
One of the most important (but often overlooked) aspects of digital marketing is setting up your analytics properly. It’s a little bit technical but easy to do once you understand a few simple steps and see why it’s so important.
Being able to track where your visitors are coming from is a valuable opportunity to improve your engagement and your ROI during the campaign. Additionally, when you benchmark your campaign performance you will be able to improve your campaigns in the future, and budget more effectively. It’s worth investing a little time in analytics!
In this post, we’ll show you how to use Google Analytics to track visits to your website or landing page. This is the critical first step in being able to understand how your campaign is performing.
Once you can accurately see where your visitors are coming from, you’ll be able to build more…
How to use filters in Google Analytics to get more accurate data
In this article, we will explain how to receive more accurate data using filters.
For a start, keep in mind that filters in GA are designed to help you customize the data seen/viewed in GA, according to the purpose of the report you need to create. You can
Exclude data;
Include data;
Change data;
Search & replace data;
Set up an advanced filter.
First Things First: How to Add a Filter
Filters are added only within the “View” menu and here you can create many views if required. A view of the website is basically a copy of the GA data with different settings applied, e.g. you can set access rules, determine the goals for your website, etc. For further information about what the view is and how to add a view check out this material.
Now, log into your GA account,…
Improving your use of Product categorisation, Marketing and Custom data will let you get more out of Google Analytics
Google Analytics has changed considerably in the last three years and in the latest update to our 7 Steps to using Google Analytics to improve your business, we have covered off all the major upgrades and improvements.
While there are many changes over the last year, probably the most significant is the upgrade to the new Universal Analytics standard and the introduction of enhanced e-commerce tracking.
For non-e-commerce sites this is obviously of less significance but for online retailers there are some significant improvements.
The advent of enhanced e-commerce brings a far greater emphasis on key areas of site performance and marketing, in addition however it has also bolstered its tracking and reporting around product performance. That means whereas before GA was primarily the domain of e-commerce and marketing professionals it is now moving into…
Did you know this data is available? Many don't!
In a couple of recent consulting workshops with our members, I've recommended this report Google Analytics report (shown below), but the marketing managers I was working with were unaware of it and, more to the point, they thought they were really useful. I find similar in training workshops too.
What is this data and why is it useful?
The chart shows that you can see the Male / Female breakdown for your site visitors and you can also see the age breakdown too. It's useful for both B2B and B2C.
It becomes more interesting when you compare it to the profile of traditional customers acquired by other channels - this prompts questions as to whether you are reaching new audiences online or similar audiences.
The data…
You can now evaluate the power of your landing pages for generating leads and sales from organic traffic
Value: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Google Analytics article
We're 'quite excited' by this new feature from GA since it gives back some insight which was lost 3+ years ago when Google stopped reporting on keywords from organic search when it blocked reporting of encrypted search terms, labelling them as the opaque 'not provided'.
What marketers need to know about this new feature
1. You can now see not only the volume of traffic generated by organic keywords, but also the visit quality
When integration is configured we have been able to see estimates impressions and clickthrough of search volume for different keywords, which has been helpful since Google blocked reporting secure searches with keywords reported as not provided.
This means that you can now see data on bounce rate and conversions in Google Analytics as shown here. Previously just…
Google upgrades Google Analytics Premium into a capable Marketing Data Management and Analysis Platform
Importance: [rating=4] (For businesses who can potentially pay for Google's Analytics Premium features and service)
Recommended Source: Google Adwords blog announcement
Here we give you the lowdown on Google's new 360 suite and get some in-depth analysis from Google Analytics expert Matt Trimmer.
As users of Google Analytic's Premium product will already know, Google has long provided a great range of analytical data to help you discover insights into your customers wants and needs.
However until now there was no way of unifying this with other platforms in an easy to use way. That is what this new offering from Google, named its '360 suite' after the '360 degree view of the consumer', aims to provide. It gives you the ability look at a number of different data sets and offers new functionality all in one place, and integrates with other Google products like…
If you are going to optimise your digital campaigns you need to measure them accurately
How do you measure the effectiveness of your digital campaigns? In this video, Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights talks to Grant LeBoff, founder of the Sticky Marketing Club about tools and key metrics to use for digital campaign tracking monitoring that companies should start to consider. Have a watch to find out all about the best practices in the area of measuring your campaigns.
[arve url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFebyszqGKA" /]
Or here's the transcript for the quick version:
Grant Leboff: So Dave, one of the things that business owners, marketing managers, really struggle with, I think, a little bit on digital, is measuring the effectiveness of what they are doing. How would you go about looking at that?
Dave Chaffey: Yeah, that's right, Grant. It's a huge challenge. Almost every business I talk to hasn't really got that nailed yet. The good news…
Google's new Autotrack library enables additional tracking of site visitor interactions
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Google Analytics announcement about the Autorack plug-in
If you've been involved with customising Google Analytics for different businesses, you will know there are some oddities which make it difficult to track some on-site user interactions which are helpful to know. For example, how do you track clicks out to other sites or outbound form fills. These deficiencies have been around ever since the service was purchased from Urchin. However, there have been workarounds available as plug-ins which we have used on Smart Insights and when helping customise other sites.
Google's new Autotrack plugin library for the first time provides a quality, Google Authorised library providing a simple way to record 'clicks out' as events and also has some great new features which effectively mean it is '6 plug-ins in one'
Here's a quick run down of what's available in the…
Personalise your reporting with new calculated metrics
There is not a lot that you can’t do with Google Analytics these days, but one feature that has been missing for a while that the community has been requesting is Calculated Metrics. This feature is only available for properties using Universal Analytics and is currently in Beta.
In this post I have gone into some detail about what it is, why you should be exited, what you can do with it, and how to approach this new feature in your business by using examples.
Quick at a glance summary
Google Announced in their November 2015 product update email newsletter
Currently in Beta
Only available for properties using Universal Analytics
You can only have 5 Calculated Metrics per view (50 if you have the paid Premium)
You need to have the right level of access in your GA account to create them
You can mix any metrics or custom metrics…
