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.

Tourism Marketing: Tracking Actions

Woman being photographed in front of hundreds of hot air balloons.

You’ve taken the time to brainstorm, strategize, and build your digital campaign. You’re now able to see how people are interacting with your ads. But what about the campaigns that drive traffic to your website? Ever curious about what actions users who clicked on ads are taking?

Tracking actions, such as button clicks or form submission, on your website can inform you a lot about web visitors. It signals an activation of interest in your services or products. To track actions, you will want to have a Google Tag Manager account. Tags are segments of code that you can configure and track actions like button clicks. With tags, you can track how many times a button for Australia trips is clicked or see how far down on a Travel Package page a user scrolls down.

This article will focus on how to track a form in Google Tag Manager and how to monitor the tracking in Google Analytics.

Form Tracking in Google Analytics

Step 1: Create new tag

  • Under Tag Configuration, select Google Analytics: Universal Analytics tag type
  • Track Type: Event
  • Event Tracking Parameters: Here you will create how Google will identify the tag. What you put into these fields will be how to find this tag in Analytics, so make sure it is clear what you are tracking.

  • Under Google Analytics Settings, select your Google Analytics Tracking Variable.
    • If you don’t have one set up in Tag Manager, select New Variable on the drop-down list. Name the variable “Google Analytics Tracking ID” and add the tracking code to the Tracking ID field. To find the tracking code, open a new tab and go to Analytics, Admin Settings, Property Settings, Tracking Info, and select Tracking Code.

Step 2: Create new trigger

  • Select Form Submission as the trigger
  • Select Some Forms
  • Here is where you determine how the trigger will fire. For form submissions, there are a few ways to accomplish this. One way is to find the form ID within the web page code.
    • Open a new tab and navigate to the page that has the form you want to track. Right click on the form and click on Inspect. This will open up the site code. You want to search for where the code refers to the form. It should be encompassed within a <form> section.
    • Look for id = “contact_form ” or class = “contact-form” that falls within the <form> section
    • Copy the text within the “ ”

    • Set the trigger to fire whenever the Form ID contains “contact_form”

  • If you don’t see any Form variables, you will need to enable variables in the list of built-in variables. To do so, click on Variables on the left sidebar, click on the Configure button under the Built-In Variables section, and select the variables you would like to turn on.

Step 3: Testing the Tag

  • Go back to the Tag Manager Dashboard
  • Click on the Preview button on the top right – this puts your browser into Debug Mode

  • Open the web page with the form you want to track in a new tab
    • A second window should pop up on the bottom half of the web page. If not, then there is an issue with the way the Analytics tag was set up.
  • Test the tag by filling out the form and checking to see if the tag moves from the Not Fired section to the Tags Fired section

Step 4: Publish

  • After testing successfully, click on the Publish button (next to the Preview button) and write a description of the tag. Now tracking is live on the form!

Step 5. Create Goal in Analytics

  • In Analytics, click on the Admin Settings button (looks like a gear switch) on the bottom left sidebar
  • Select the correct Account, Property, and View where you want to create and track the goal. Under View, click on the Goals option.

  • Create a new Goal
    • Select Custom
    • Name your Goal
    • Select Event as your Goal Type
    • Goal Details is where you add the details for the tag you created. It is case sensitive so make sure that you input the exact information on the tag to the goal.
      • Keep the Event Value as Conversion turned on

Step 6. Monitoring After Tag is Live

  • Under Behavior, click on Events > Overview
  • Here you can monitor your new tag. Click on Event Label to identify the form and see how often the form is submitted.