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By Ed Truman Making Use of Google Analytics and Data Studio Dashboards to Surface Customer Insights
By Ed Truman
Making Use of Google
Analytics and Data Studio
Dashboards to Surface
Customer Insights
About Me – Ed Truman
• 11 years Marketing Experience
• GA specialist for 4 years
• 7 Years at Anicca
• Hundreds of GA setups carried out
• Google Data Studio Ambassador
• Proficient in gathering user insights from
GA
• Enjoy surfacing user insight
• Hate badly configured skewed GA
Accounts!
About this Talk
1. Fix - Things that are skewing your reporting
2. Enrich – Your GA Data
3. Visualise - Using Data Studio to Visualise Data
Don’t Let Polluted
Data Ruin Your
Day
#10 common causes we see
Mistake #1 Duplicated or Missing GA Code
• Missing tracking code from a pages will result no data being collected, possible self referrals and campaign info being lost and reported as ‘direct’. Check your 404 pages!
• Duplicated tracking code will result double counting of pageview data which will impact bounce rate, exit rates and page per session metrics. Bounce rates of below 10 often a warning sign!
Tools to use• Use Google Tag Assistant• Inspect page source (ctrl + U)• Check Diagnostics notifications• GA Checker Tool
Tools for Diagnosis
Google Tag Assistant Chrome Browser Plugin - helps to troubleshoot installation of various Google tags including Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and more.
http://www.gachecker.com/ For checking on page code (won’t show if running it via GTM)
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ Use this tool to search for your UA property or GTM code via pages of the site
Mistake #2 Not Tracking the Correct Domain
Your Google Analytics could include visits from:
• Back office systems (e.g. admin areas)
• Developer Sites /Test sites
• Internal Staff Visits
• Other corporate domains & subdomains
• Spam Domains
The Solution:• Setup a hostname filter to only collect data for
the domain(s) you need!
Example Hostname Filter
In order to see which domains your tracking code appears on, navigate to the “Audience > Technology > Network” report and switch the primary dimension to “Hostname”
Mistake #3 Not Excluding Bad Referrals
Eradicate unwanted traffic causing fake visits in your reports. Will usually show as referral but may also show as (direct)!
• Referrals from spammers• Referrals from Marketing tech SEO tools etc• Internal staff (developers, marketing team)• Referrals from staging and testing platforms• Referrals from third-party payment gateways
#3 Excluding Bad Referrals - Solution
The Solution:1. Enable Bot Filtering via view settings2. Exclude company IP address3. Setup a hostname filter for your domain only4. Use filter to Exclude specific troublesome known bot sources
1
2
43
• Will appear as the top referring site for your all
conversions and destroys your campaign tracking
• This is specifically relevant for payment gateways
when you are taken to a payment domain to then
return to back to the website
Solution:
• Use GA’s Referral Exclusion list to allow you to
prevent against visits from specific domains
triggering a new session e.g. paypal.com
Mistake #4 Not Excluding Payment Gateways and 3rd Party Redirects
Mistake #5 – Automatic events affecting bounce rate
In addition to duplicated code, automatic events can also make bounce rates artificially low if they send a hit every time a page is loaded. Examples Include:
•Internal promotions•Product Impressions•Partner ads•Modal windows•Live Chat
Solution – Use non-interaction eventsIf a user is not intentionally interacting with your site, track a non-interaction event to keep bounce rates accurate (and useful).
0% Bounce
Rate???
Mistake #6 – Missing Cross-Domain Tracking
• Required if you take users across domains and want to treat it as single visit by the same user e.g.:
• www.anicca.co.uk > www.aniccaacademy.co.uk
• User Cookie ID needs to be passed to allow the same user to be identified across sites
• Not setting this up will result in the same user being counted twice and a new visit being triggered every time a user moves between the two sites
• Use the same GA code across both sites to allow the user cookie ID to be shared.
#6 – Cross-domain tracking is missing - Solution
1. Update GA code to ‘Auto Link’ domains (via on page or GTM) to allow user data to pass between domains. Note: Google Tag Manager makes this far simpler
2. Exclude Domain within Referral Exclusion List within GA. This stops a new session being created when users
Google Tag Manager
Analytics.js
Mistake #7 Custom Campaigns Not Being Tracked
Campaigns that aren’t properly tagged using UTM tags in campaigns won’t be identified properly in GA!
Use for Email campaigns, social media ads, and any other custom campaigns.
Example of untagged visits from email
Which email campaign did this traffic come from??
Tracking Custom Campaigns – Solution
Use UTM tags on any links sending traffic back to your website:
Required Parameters:
utm_source = eg sentinel_newsletter
utm_medium = eg email
utm_campaign = eg newsletter_feb_2016
/landing.html?utm_souce=sentinel_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign= newsletter_feb_2016
Properly tagged visits from emailCreate your links with the URL builder http://anicca.co.uk/technical/tools-and-technology/url-builder/
Mistake # 8 Misconfigured Campaign Tracking
• Misspelling and upper and lower cases cause havoc
• Same issues can cause duplicates with page names
• Google Analytics filters will save hours of needless
pain
• Fining your agency also really focuses minds
Stay Organised with your campaign tagging!
GET A COPY HERE
• Most clients don’t have this working right
• Changes to the website and campaigns names are not reflected, stuff goes in the wrong bucket
• People looking at reports simply don’t realise that their channel or content groupings are skewed. Eg Paid social media traffic going into ‘Other’ category.
• Channels and Content Groups can be customised to your organisational way of working
• Sit down and bucket your Source/Medium distribution with the client –put everything in the right channel.
Mistake # 9 Misconfigured Channels and
Content Groups
Mistake 10 # ITP 2 and Impacts on Safari & Firefox Visits
With ITP 2.2 onwards, all persistent client-side cookies, i.e. persistent cookies created through document.cookie, are capped to a 1 day
expiry
• Affects EVERYONE using iPhones, iPads and laptops Safari & Firefox
• EVERY tool you use that tries to look longer than 1 days?
• All the ‘Existing Visitors’ will look like ‘New Visitors’!
• Currently skew tools, AB testing, attribution – lots of stuff
• Shorter journeys per user and less channels to attribute your revenue to.
• Ask your vendors for their response!
Understand the % of users coming from Safari
Safari can typically make up between 15-20% of visits
Enrich Your
Reporting For
Better Insight
Set Goals & KPIs For Your Website
1. Define Business Objectives and Website Purpose What is the purpose of the website? eg Direct revenue generation, Lead generation, servicing, education,? How do these align with business objectives?
2. Decide what you need to measureIdentify Primary and Secondary Goal types
3. Map goals to quantifiable website metricsHow should these goals be measured? What Metrics can we use? What should the Key Performance Indicators be?
Identify Primary Goals and Secondary Goals
MACRO GOALSi.e. High level goals cantered around your business objective
Examples:
EnquiriesTransactionsSubscriptions
MICRO GOALSi.e. smaller goals helping you achieve & measure progress to macro goals
Examples:
Signups for webinarProduct ViewsFunnel Completion SuccessVideo PlaysSocial media sharesBrochure downloadWhite paper downloadCompleted customer surveys
Identify Primary (Macro) Goals and Secondary (Micro) Goals for your website or landing page
• You will always need to tune Google Analytics to fit how your business,
product or service actually works
• Customising, tweaking and enhancing the vanilla Google Analytics configuration = enriched data
• What can you do to capture more of the important interactions and events as part of the user journey
Google Analytics – One Size Fits All
Enrich Your Analytics
• Capture the important information shown to a user on a page
• The Datalayer and Google Tag Manager make it far easier to capture information about a page and push it into Google Analytics
• You’ll still need developers to generate the Datalayer in most cases
• The data can then be stored in a custom dimension or in an event
Capturing Content About A Page
Track Your KPIS
• Setup a custom report based on your conversion funnel aligned against dimensions such as device, browser, traffic source
• Incorporate custom goal data side by side to provide KPIs at a glance
Incorporate multiple Goals within a single report
Advanced Page Tracking
• Page Title,
• Page Topic,
• Page Author
• Blog Read rate % (Reads/ pageviews )
• Social Share rate % (Shares / pageviews)
• Comment Rate % (Comments / pageviews)
• Leads and conversions generated
Key Metrics
Track more than just page views(sessions). Get detailed page reporting using custom metrics and custom
dimensions.
RequiresTechnical Setup!
Note: A single page View proceeded by an exit will result in a bounced visit.
Advanced Blog Insights - Reporting
Example of pulling together custom metrics into a custom report
We should promote this page more!
How about Active time spent on the page ?
Go beyond basic GA metrics and capture real engagement ! GA’s Average Time on Page Misleads!
Is Your Website Broken? – Device Compatibility
• How do we perform across Devices, Operating Systems, & Browser?
• Take Your Goal Metrics and assess Engagement & Conversion across all of these
Conversion Rate Split by Browser & Device
This helps you identify any
technical or UX issues for specific
browser and/or devices. If your
website doesn’t work properly with
the device/browser a visitor uses,
they won’t buy! Any issues
identified here are low-hanging
fruits.
Segments applied
Secondary dimension applied
• Use content grouping to group pages into common themes to create a more meaningful analysis of your data.
• Group by page type, web section or language type and more!
Use Content Grouping for Section Analysis
Product pages is our top entrance section to the site!
Content Grouping For Section Navigation
Great for seeing see how users navigate from section to section
Content Grouping For Visitor Flow
• Use content grouping within your Behaviour Flow reports (Behaviour > Behaviour Flow)
• Apply different segments to see the most common paths for different user types
Segment for non converters applied
Create A Content Group within GA
Go Admin > View > Content grouping within Google AnalyticsGroup pages using rule definitions i.e. ‘url contains…’
Identifying Slow Loading Pages in GA
• Go to Behaviour > Site Speed > Page Timings
• View site speed for different devices, browsers, and geographic areas to find where improvement
opportunities exist
• TIP: Use Avg. Document Interactive Time to give you an accurate reflection of how long it takes before the
user can see and interact with the page.
Faster pages = higher conversion rates! = GREATER SUCCESS
Measuring Website Abandonment using Enhanced Ecommerce
Requires Additional tracking code setup
Setting up Enhanced Ecommerce allows you to capture more data beyond that of basic transaction
data and allows you to gain a much deeper insight into shopper behaviour and product performance
on your website.
Use Enhanced Ecommerce to measure :
• Purchases and refunds.
• Product Clicks and Views
• Banner Impressions and clicks
• Adds and removals from shopping cart
• Checkout progression
• Coupon code redemption
Enhanced Ecommerce – Not just for Ecommerce Sites….
Visualise Your
Data with Google
Data Studio
What is Google Data Studio
✓A Free Data Visualisation Tool from Google
✓Easily build custom reports and dashboards
✓Connects up to Multiple data sources
✓Can be used to pull in data from Facebook, Twitter, Youtube AND other custom databases
✓Interactive and sharable with other users
✓Signup to get access through your Google Account
Why do it?
✓Access to your data all in one place
✓Real-time & Interactive Reports
✓Saves Time
✓Looks great
✓Interactive and sharable with other users
✓Ability to combine different data sources
✓Ability to create new metrics
Connect to Multiple Data Sources
✓ Use free Google connectors or Paid or
free Third Party Connectors to import
your data directly into Google Data
Studio.
✓ Third-party tools such as ‘Super Metrics’ can be used to bring in social media
and other ‘non Google’ data
✓ Connect spreadsheets and databases
Choose From Hundreds of Community Templates
Examples
GA Audience Insights Example
YouTube
Facebook (via third party connector)
Google Search Console
Google Ads - Tracking Against Target
Example Checkout Funnel – Data Studio
Monitoring Funnel Abandonment Month to Month
Google Sheets
Google My Business
Social Media Reporting Consolidation
Ready to
Supercharge
Your Reporting?
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