When you are working with Google Analytics Data Analytics it is obvious that you will want to improve the ROI as well as the SEO of your website. Along with it you will also want to resolve any issues or answer to any business questions. You may even simply use it to derive broader insights in less amount of time.
Whatever your purpose is, you can analyze things in a much better and faster way if you follow the right process. This will help you in several different ways such as:
- You will be able to draw more relevant conclusions
- You will be able to analyze larger volume of data in less time
- You will be able to improve the positive impact
- You will be able to limit the negative impact and
- You will be able to handle any given or unexpected situation.
In all the situations it is a win-win situation for you when you use Google Analytics. However, to make the best use of the Google Analytics Data Analysis you must ensure that all of the technical implementation is done correctly.
The steps to follow
In addition to that you must also make sure that you have a good in-house developer who can support you. In case you do not then make it a point to hire a professional analytics and branding agency or a freelancer for that matter and abstain from doing it all by yourself so that you ensure that everything is measured and analyzed correctly with Google Analytics Data Analytics.
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- Start with a business question: In order to enhance your analysis capabilities greatly you must start by asking a business question first. This is the most important step to follow regardless of the fact that you are using Google Analytics or any other web analytics tool for that matter. If you get the proper answer you will be able to know where exactly to look for, what to analyze and what to solve. All this will happen in much less amount of time.
- Use data analysis framework: One you know what to do, the next important steps is to have the right process in place. For this you will need to use the data analysis framework so that you do not have to reinvent the wheel again every time you want to analyze data! It is a smart way to know in the first place how well you can approach your data analysis project. This will help you to decide whether you want to improve it or stick to it.
- Goals and goal values: Next up, it is time to set up your goals along with the goal values of Google Analytics so that these are configured correctly. In this aspect you are requested to look at both your macro goals as well as your micro goals.
- Set up annotations: For your data analysis job Google Analytics annotations can be of great help. Using this feature of Google you can record many different things such as offline campaigns, tracking issues on the website, price changes by your competitors, traffic spikes in social, weather extremes and even when you want to start of new online campaigns. Make a note of all those activities that will impact your data. There are ideally two different ways in which you can add annotations namely through reporting interface or the admin interface but it is better to go for the admin interface route. This is because you can add a future date here which is not possible in the reporting interface approach.
- Set up intelligence events: Follow this up by setting up the intelligence events. In Google Analytics there are two types of intelligence events that you can include. One is the automatic alerts and the other is the custom alerts. Automatic alerts, just as the name suggest are created by Google Analytics itself for you that will help you to identify accurately the major changes made in your data as well as the underlying factors of such changes made. On the other hand the custom alerts will help you to monitor all those custom changes made within the data. In order to create a custom alert focus on a few things such as the alert name, one or more reporting views that it applies to, the period, email or mobile phone alert, who all it applies to and the alert conditions when it should be triggered.
- Add custom segments: If you want to enhance the insights from your data then you will also need to add custom segments to it. In Google Analytics there are several different segments you can choose from that will provide you with better and more real insights from the hidden segments than the overall analysis.
- Automate campaign tracking: You must ensure that you automate the Google Analytics campaign tracking feature. With this feature you will be able to measure three different traffic media on default such as the direct traffic through bookmarks or direct typing in the URL, the referral or incoming untagged links and the organic or unpaid traffic that comes through different search engines. If you can use the proper Google Analytics parameters such as the Campaign source, medium, term, content and name, you can also track all affiliates, paid banners, offline campaigns and emails.
- Automate Google Analytics reporting: Since it is very important to report the key performance indicators of your business within a short time, automating Google Analytics reporting is the best thing you can do. This will save you from the pain and effort of exporting and extracting your data and analyze that in Excel or any other statistical package.
Lastly, learn everything about metrics and dimensions to prepare customized reports. These are ideally the building blocks of the reports. Since all metrics and dimensions will not go together you will need to play with them to find out what works best for you. This will help you to create a report according to your business goals and the key performance indicators.
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