A tutorial covering our recommended process, report, tools and KPIs to grow your business

By the time you read this, it's likely that Google Analytics 3 or Universal Analytics (UA), whatever you call it, will be no more. Switching to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) presents a big challenge for any business that wants to use a data-driven approach to improving their marketing. As the timeline shows, many of us have become very familiar with UA since we may have used it over the last 10+ years. I'm excited about switching to GA4 since, I've been using Google Analytics since it was first created, when Google acquired Urchin, centreing my consulting, training and Smart Insights learning materials and templates on it as a practical tool to help improve digital marketing using a data-driven approach. However, the differences between GA4 and UA mean it's a BIG change…

Only a minority of users tend to go beyond the basics and utilize some of the more advanced features of Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a very powerful analytics tool that’s widely used in marketing departments around the world, with approximately 85% market share across all web traffic analysis tools. However, despite being ubiquitous across the industry, only a minority of users tend to go beyond the basics and utilize some of the more advanced features of the platform. If you feel you may not be making the most of the tools available in Google Analytics then read on, as we’ll look at a few of the more intermediate and advanced features to help add even more meaningful data to your marketing reports. [si_guide_block id="71497" title="Download our Free Resource – Google Analytics Fast Start - 10 mistakes to avoid" description="This guide in the Smart Insights ‘Fast Start’ series gives you a checklist of…

Don't fall foul of these common Google Analytics mistakes

Google Analytics is a fantastically useful tool for businesses of all sizes. Rather helpfully for all the SMEs and SMBs out there, it's also free. That means anyone can start using Google analytics to study their web traffic in an attempt to tease out insights, to use to improve their sites.

This openness and low barriers to entry mean it's easy to launch yourself into Google Analytics before you actually have a handle on exactly what you are using for and how you should use it for your business. There's nothing wrong with getting stuck in and learning on the fly, but it can leave you vulnerable to making mistakes that could affect your bottom line. This post will introduce you to some of the basic mistakes people often make when setting up and using their Google Analytics. If you want…

Your marketing's most valuable player: using attribution.

Imagine a typical customer journey for a business like TOMS, a shoe retailer that sells online. A user sees a sponsored Facebook post that was liked by a friend about TOMS, and clicks through to Tom's site, browses for a while, then leaves. Later on, the user sees a display ad from a TOMS retargeting campaign, and clicks through again, this time signing up for email alerts from the brand, but still not buying anything. Finally, the user receives an email from TOMS, clicks through, and starts to really think about buying the shoes. They leave it for a bit, and decide to buy, and they type the web address directly in the browser.   Who gets the credit for any revenue created? Well, that will depend on your attribution model. Attribution may sound complicated but in simple terms,…

Unsure about how to use Google Analytics? Need some guidance on how to navigate around it? Learn how to set-up a GA demo account

Jill Quick originally wrote this advisory for our blog in July 6th 2016 based on a briefing with Google. 

A while back Google launched a new string to their analytics learning bow. A fully functioning Google Analytics account that anyone with a Google account can access. This is a wonderful education tool for any marketer, or business owner, who wants a better understanding of how to use Google Analytics. One of the problems my clients and delegates face when I deliver training on Google Analytics is a real-life example. Something to play around with, learn from and use to back up your measurement plan to educate your team on the insights they could be getting and showing your boss what your time and budget is paying for, especially…

How Google’s Data Analysis Suite Could Transform Your Digital Marketing Strategy

If you run a website or blog and haven’t heard of Google Analytics, then prepare yourself for a whole new world of possibilities! Google Analytics carries on the company’s proud tradition of providing best-in-class tools for web designers and developers and giving those users the guidance they need in order to maximize their potential. If Google Analytics is not installed on your website or blog then get on it now! Seriously; Google Analytics is a tool that no serious website owner should be operating without.

What Does It Do?

Among its many functions, Google Analytics gives you a quick, easy, and mostly automatic way of finding out the vital statistics of your site. For example; How many visitors your site receives over a given time period? How many visitors to your site are unique and how many of them have visited…

What is event tracking and how you can use it to improve micro conversions and macro conversions

According to the definition given by Google: 'Events are user interactions with content that can be tracked independently from a web page or a screen load. Downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX embedded elements and video plays are all examples of actions you might want to track as Events’. In plain English, for those of us who aren't coders, we can give this example: When we have a video in our site and once a user clicks the button for the video to play, an event will be triggered. At the same time, when this event is triggered you can see the result of this action on Google Analytics Events are then grouped in this report in the 'Behaviour' section of Google Analytics.

…

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…

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,…

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…