Google Analytics (GA) is one of the most important tools for digital marketers and businesses in this digital era. Given the importance of this tool in revealing in-depth information about a client’s website visitors, it’s not surprising that digital marketers have embraced it as a key ally in building a successful business strategy.
Whenever I take on a new client, one of the things I do is go into their Google Analytics account to tweak a few things and get valuable insights into how their business works. I’ve often found that doing some basic housekeeping to ensure that the data collected is clean, accurate and consistent, goes a long way towards ensuring future success.
So what are some of the things you can do to ensure that your client’s data collection process is better, more efficient and gives you useful, reliable information?
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Tweak the code and settings.
The first thing to do is to check whether the analytics code is on every web page. It’s common for websites to have orphan pages that don’t appear in analytics, thus affecting the results. To correct this, get an export of all URLs in your database and check and ensure the analytics code is on each.
Additionally, you can change or customize some of the GA settings to better suit your client’s business. These include changing the site speed sample rate as well as the session and campaign timeout. Changing these from the default settings to some that better reflect your client’s customers will give better analytics.
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Work on the account setup.
The next step is to bring some order and consistency to how the GA account is setup. Make sure the account name works for everyone and then get down to naming and clarifying the views. When setting up views, it’s crucial to have a Raw Data View with no filters at all to act as a backup, the Primary View with necessary filters as well as the Test View which is unfiltered.
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Set better (conversion) goals.
You have a limited amount of goals with GA so you need to really think through when setting them up. I’ve found that setting goals on what makes you money works really well as does grouping similar goals together. Also, name goals clearly so that everyone will know exactly what they are.
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Clarify event tracking.
The Google Tag Manager in GA allows you to track as many events as you want. It’s helpful to think about what you want to track and why. To avoid getting sidetracked, have some kind of standardization for event tracking.
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Be future-oriented.
Finally, when setting up and using a client’s GA account, always think about the future. Ensure you annotate what you can, have proper documentation and communicate these with everyone else. This way you’ll have streamlined data collection for better analytics for that organization.
Schedule a consultation with me today and let’s see how we can use your marketing analytics to improve your business’ bottom line.