Success in Web Analytics: CONFIGURATION

By now, it is clearly identified what to measure and all the tags are in place. And now, it is time to setup the Web Analytics package on the admin side. You already have known the first and second phase of the “Five Phases” Framework in Web Analytics. Let’s move on the third phase. Phase three and phase four are focusing mainly around Google Analytics, because it is the most widely used tools.

Tip 1: Set the Google Analytics permissions properly; limit the number of administrations in to minimum.

• Google Analytics made the user access management more granular and flexible than before. The old and generic Administrator and user’s roles that could be applied at the certain levels are now gone. Before, administrator permissions could only bestow at the web property level, while the user permission were granted on a profile-by-profile basis. Individual Google Analytics users may able to set up new profiles, goals, or filters, and it could also have entrusted them with the ability to delete the whole account.

Tip 2: In case something went wrong, it always wise to have a back up profile; setup a master profile with raw and unfiltered data.

• The majority of Google Analytics accounts are on a single profile set up. All the data, testing, and filters that can have an impact on a single source of data. Master profile is a default profile on all the accounts. This is the most critical, this is where the goals and customs reports are set up, and the site search is enabled. Segmenting everything into a new profile will make it faster to access.

Tip 3: Use Google Analytics profile filters. This can help to optimize user experiences and conversions for different segments.

• Google Analytics offers 3 main ways of segmenting the data: custom variables, advanced segments and profile filters. Keep the raw data profile within the Google Analytics accounts. It will help to monitor changes made by any user to profile filters.

Tip 4: To uncover great segments that need to be targeted in a unique way, build an advanced segment for ad hoc data analysis.

• This is arguably the most powerful feature that ever introduced to Google Analytics. It allowed to specify a set of criteria and can view almost every standard report for the visits that will meet the definition without needing to reprocess data.

Tip 5: Set up goals and funnels; it is essential to optimize the traffic sources, campaigns, keywords on a certain outcome.

• Google Analytics goal can be any unnecessary action that the visitors might do during a visit to the website. And typically, goals would define according to the business objectives. While, Google Analytics Funnel on the other side defines the path that being expect for the visitors to take on their way on converting to a specific destination goals.

Tip 6: Set up goal value for non-transactional conversions; it will help to get a complete picture of value per visitor for a specific segment.

• When it comes to analyzing, Google Analytics offers two features: Google Analytics goals and transactions, and AdWords conversion tracking. It gives the conversion optimizer an access to the data that will help to optimize bids, and will potentially increase the conversions and lowering the costs.

Tip 7: Tag marketing campaigns carefully; if ignoring this phase, the data will be meaningless or even worse it will lead to a wrong decision.

• Adding a campaign parameter to the URLs, it can identify the campaigns that send traffic to the site. These parameters are sent to the Analytics, and can see the effectiveness of each campaign in the reports.

Tip 8: Integrating a set of KPIs in a custom report.

• Switch on using only custom reports that bring just a relevant metrics and dimensions into one place.

Tip 9: Connect Google Analytics to external tools.

• This is a very useful to derive insights for more easy access. Store data in a database for the use of any query and reporting software. Example, think about Google Analytics connects to the Next Analytics to automate the reporting and free the time analysis and optimization.

Tip 10: Uncover hidden correlations and casualties by setting up intelligence alerts.

• The overview lists down all the alerts triggered for the active date range. Whether it is daily events, weekly events, and monthly events.