No matter who we meet with and no matter the industry, I usually start with the same question. Can I have access to your Google Analytics account? I usually get one of two answers: 1) Sure but my developer might get upset and 2) What's Google Analytics?
Answer #1 usually means it's a basic setup especially if you are a small business without eCommerce and when I look in, I can see the need for some basic upgrades. If it's Answer #2, that usually means you have no idea it was added and probably don't have access to it. Granted Google Analytics is usually something your web designer put on there and they are usually the ones that have carnal knowledge of it, but it's still very important for your business. You should know why you need it and the basics reports you should be looking at.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is simply Google's free website tracking tool. I don't care what kind of business you are, if you have a website, GA needs to be installed (note: you actually shouldn't be installing GA's code anymore but instead Google Tag Manager but humor me for a few minutes). As a business owner, there are really only a few reports you should care about. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of reports and information available to you, but if you are worried about stocking shelves or going over a legal case, you don't have time to dig into everything. So here's what you need to do...
- If you can take online orders on your site, make sure you have someone enable eCommerce tracking
- Someone needs to create a filtered view for you. What's a filtered view? Think of GA as just a machine that gathers website data and then displays it in easy to read format. Think Garbage In = Garbage Out. Filters can better organize the data. For example, do you care about international traffic? If not, filter it out. Is Facebook.com and fb.com the same traffic source? Yes of course it is, then you need to replace some of the source information. Do you use your website as your homepage? Yes, then filter out your IP address.
- Enable audiences and demographic reporting. Audiences are how you build retargeting lists and if you don't enable them for all, you get nothing. The same person also should create audiences of people who buy your product, make conversions, and visit important pages of your site. You need to link those audience with a Google Ads (aka AdWords) account.
- Finally, someone needs to create conversions or goals. For example, email signups.
- And even though you don't need it in the initial setup, you need to be aware of how to construct click thru links so your source and medium track through. You need to visit Google's URL builder and familiarize yourself with the source, medium, and campaign variables. Sending an email out to your house file? You want the URL builder to look like this: www.ericfrenchman.com?utm_source=email&utm_medium=hf&utm_campaign=summer so the source in your report says "email" rather than direct/(none)
Once you have those 4 to 5 basic steps accomplished (it's really easy and it would take me about 15 minutes to take care of it), there is only one real report you need. It's the source/medium acquisition report. Someone can set it up for you so you receive it every Monday (for example). It's found on the left side under Acquisition-->All Traffic-->Source/Medium. You can adjust the date range. The report shows you HOW your visitors got to your site (did that ad in the local news site really get traffic?), whether they were new or returning, how much they bought or signed up for email, and a bounce rate. A bounce rate is simply a stat that shows you the % of times someone visited the one page they landed on and then immediately left. If you are paying for that traffic and you get a 90%+ bounce rate, that's really bad.
Another useful report is the geographic report so you can see where your site visitors are located. That's under Audience-->Geo-->Location. Also, under the same Audience tab you can see the demographics of your site visitors (you might be asked to enable so enable so you can see what your audience looks like). Finally, the other useful (really must have if you are eCommerce) is the transactions report which you can find under Conversions-->eCommerce-->Transactions. This is the report to see what product has been selling.
What is Google Tag Manager and Why You Need It?
OK so I sold you on why you need Google Analytics and the basic reports you should be looking at on at least on a weekly basis. So why do you need Google Tag Manager? Simply GTM allows you to have your website developer place one set of code (called a container tag) on all pages of the website and then allows you (if you want to play around with it) or your developer to then add multiple tracking tags in the GTM platform. So the very first tag you would put in would be basic Google Analytics. Your next codes? Google Ads (AdWords) and then most likely Facebook and perhaps Bing. So now instead of having multiple tracking codes on your website, you put them in the GTM platform and then tell GTM when to fire the tags. Your developer (or someone like me) can assign triggers that tells GTM when to fire the tag (all pages or completed sale or sign up for email). Most likely they would also set up multiple GA tags to track eCommerce, Goals, and more. I'm not going to go into details because the odds are you aren't going to do it yourself and if you want to do that, there are better sources online to help you with it. However, here's what you need to know when asking for GTM to be added:
- Ask your developer to add Google Tag Manager rather than Google Analytics
- When they grumble, it's a sign that they don't know what GTM can do and just want to slap a GA code on but insist on GTM.
- Once they add GTM, they need to set up triggers (eCommerce, Goals like email signup), and multiple GA tags (one for basic, one for eCommerce, one for your Goals). Someone like me can have this setup in about 30 minutes.
- Then add in multiple tags with triggers like Google Ads, Facebook, etc
And that's it. If you have questions, let me know below and I'll answer them (I really will). Just remember, add (or ask to add) Google Tag Manager first and then add Google Analytics to the GTM platform. Setup basic filters in GA, activate eCommerce if you need it, setup goals, and then monitor your reports on a weekly basis. Good luck.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
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