Asking the Right Questions: How to Better Navigate Google Analytics

beginner-to-intermediate-google-analytics

If you own or manage a website, you likely know the power behind Google Analytics. While the powerhouse platform is still largely misunderstood, its vast capabilities allow business owners to monitor the success of their digital presence and online marketing efforts. 

In truth, Google Analytics is a lot more robust than most people think. The platform provides comprehensive data tracking and analytical reporting to solve or improve almost any question or issue circulating within your business’ digital marketing efforts.

So, how does one use Google Analytics to solve issues or confusion that are hindering progress and goals? By asking the right questions, of course!

Question 1: How can I use Google Analytics data to track the progress of company goals?


Answer: Set up goals in Google Analytics.


The goals feature in Google Analytics allows users to track specific patterns and behaviors taken by users visiting the website. Goals can help account owners track contact form submissions, conversion rates on purchases, and more. By configuring goals, it becomes easier to monitor progress and discover what is hurting and helping the current strategy. Additionally, Google Analytics allows primary and secondary goal tracking, which are also labeled macro and micro conversions. Generally, there are five types of goals in Google Analytics:

  1. Smart goals: Goals generated by Google Analytics when an account does not have enough data to complete optimization.
  2. Destination goals: Loading a specific web page.
  3. Pages per session: The number of pages viewed by a single user in a single session.
  4. Event goals: Sharing, button clicks, adding items or services to a cart, etc.
  5. Duration goals: Session times that last over a certain amount of seconds or minutes. For example, users on the page longer than two minutes.

Question 2: How can I use Google Analytics to better track the effectiveness of my email marketing campaigns?


Answer: Utilize the campaign tags feature.


Email campaign tracking is a bit different in Google Analytics than one might expect. With properly implemented campaign tags, account owners can track accurate referral data. However, without campaign tags, it becomes hard to accurately track a website’s referral data. For example, visits from desktop apps such as Outlook tend to appear as direct traffic in Google Analytics. Instead, this visit should be calculated as a referral. Similarly, visits from webmail providers that default to a secure server like Gmail also do not appear as referral traffic in Google Analytics. This small misunderstanding can lead to inaccurate data when tracking the success of email marketing campaigns. 

Question 3: Is there a way to track how much of a blog post visitors are actually reading?


Answer: Yes, by installing Google Tag Manager.


Google Tag Manager is a tag management system used to track different tags on a website. A tag is a snippet of javascript that collects data from the website that is then sent to Google Analytics. So, if you’d like to track how much of a blog post visitors are reading before exiting the page, you may want to install a scroll depth trigger using Google Tag Manager. With this tag, you’ll be able to track where users exit the page when reading the blog post.

Question 4: How can I more closely monitor transactions completed on my website?


Answer: Set up Ecommerce Tracking.


If you own an Ecommerce website, implementing Ecommerce tracking is essential if you would like to more closely monitor your website’s value. With Ecommerce tracking, website owners can see:

  • The total revenue generated by each product
  • Revenue total
  • Total number of products sold
  • Quantity of specific products sold
  • Conversion rates
  • Total transactions
  • Number of unique purchases made
  • Average price per product
  • Average value of orders
  • Date wise performance data
  • Number of days and sessions leading to a transaction

By tracking these metrics, account owners can better assess the overall effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and the progress on their goals, thus leading to healthier conversion rates.

Question #5: Is there a way to find out what users are typing into Google before they visit my website?


Answer: Yes, by linking your Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts.


Google Search Console is a free service that provides loads of vital insight for website owners, SEO specialists, and digital marketers. Once the Google Search Console is successfully linked to Google Analytics, account owners can better understand how their website is performing in organic search results on Google.

They may also better track which pages of the website are shown in search results, which pages are most visited, and who is visiting on desktop vs mobile. These metrics can help account owners better optimize their content to increase traffic from Google.

What Is Your Data Telling You?

Screenshot of Google Analytics.

Ring, ring, ring ………. 

Believe it or not, that’s your Data calling. In all likelihood, the conversation is going to go one of three ways:

You hear who it is and immediately reply I’m not interested, take me off your list.

You see that it’s your Data calling and you’re excited to talk, but all you can hear are the teacher’s voices from Charlie Brown.

You have a nice long chat and receive a lot of valuable insights, but it’s just too much all at once so you’re not sure what your next steps should be.

There’s nothing wrong with any of those responses, which is why they’re so common. The alternative is that you’re actively using your Data every step of the way to measure success and influence planning. But if that’s the case, Data wouldn’t be calling in the first place.

In 2013, Hubspot social media scientist Dan Zarrella told Forbes “marketing without Data is like driving with your eyes closed.” Five years later his statement carries even more weight as the marketing canvas on which we paint has exponentially grown and matured. Luckily, marketing analytics come in all shapes and sizes with varying degrees of complexity and usefulness. And there isn’t a right or wrong way to use the Data. The only rule is that you use it.

Data Driven Marketing

Studying Data and analytics can seem overwhelming and daunting. Sometimes it can feel like a never-ending process. But I often equate it to launching and maintaining social media platforms. Yes, having as broad a presence is ideal, but not every network is going to be appropriate, nor will your comfort level be consistently high across the board. So, you pick what fits your brand’s identity (using Data to inform this also helps!) and what won’t become a pain point and burdensome task for you. Falling into either of those two scenarios reverses the exercise’s effectiveness. And that’s the beauty of Data-driven marketing. You can make it work for you and your business.

Regardless of your background or level of experience with Data analysis, the foundation of every campaign should be molded using the answers to these three questions:

Who is the audience I’m trying to reach?

What are my most important marketing channels?

What are my objectives?

Taking it from the top, let’s use the example of a small advertising campaign. You’re given a product to market and a budget, but nothing else. Now start answering the questions.

Audience

It would be easy to run a Facebook advertising campaign where the target audience was everyone. But you could also just toss your money in the river. Instead, take some time and compile three identifying characteristics of you target individual. They can be demographic, geographic, or interest based. Now confirm those assumptions using the insights you have on hand, something like Google or Facebook analytics. (As an aside, Data doesn’t always have to be something generated from a machine and printed on a piece of paper. Anecdotal information, when gathered in enough volume, can be as effective a Data source as an algorithm).

Data Driven Marketing

Marketing Platforms

Now that you have identified the type of person you are looking to reach the next step is to figure out where. The term “marketing platforms” can mean a lot of different things based on your campaign directive. In this case it’s answering the question of where does the consumer that fits the above criteria spend most of their time. If it’s social media is it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest? If it’s email based what sorts of newsletters would they subscribe to, so you can buy into ad networks. Or are they strictly web browsing users? There are a host of resources to confirm your assumptions. For example, take a deep dive into your website’s inbound analytics. If a large percentage of users are finding you through Facebook (paid or organic), it’s probably a good idea to take your resources there. But if Google seems to be a popular starting spot, a targeted AdWords campaign might be the most effective. Regardless, you’re using the past to predict the future, so you can act in the present.

Objectives

We know the type of person we’re trying to reach and the platform we’d like to execute on, but how are we going to know if we were successful? It’s vital to be as specific as possible without limiting yourself so much that the findings from the analysis aren’t going to be useful down the road. The importance of this step goes well beyond the campaign at hand because it’s giving you Data to inform your next campaign. Each time you execute on something you’re compiling more and more Data, which just makes this entire process easier. You’re not saying the objective is to have a click to the website and then move on, but it’s also not that you want someone to purchase a product at high noon with a Visa Debit card. If your objective is to grow your newsletter list via advertising, set a percentage increase goal. Or if it’s sales, highlight a revenue number to meet.

Planning is done! Now go execute, study the Data after the fact, and repeat, at which point you will have officially closed the loop on a Data-driven marketing campaign. It’s not always perfect because not all Data is perfect, and sometimes doesn’t exist at all. The results might not be perfect (or even pretty) and that’s ok as well. It’s a process and it takes practice, time, and patience to improve and realize your goals.

As long as you’re not driving with your eyes closed you’ll reach your destination.