Google Analytics Training Series
The Google team is gradually providing the public with more free information about how best to install, configure, and use Google Analytics to its fullest. Training is going to continue to be really important to get the kind of adoption rates they want for this service. The Google Analytics Blog has its own YouTube channel with brief instructional videos. People like Avinash Kaushik and Raku Coryne travel to distant cities to share the good news about web analytics. Raku was even kind enough to send me a free copy of Avinash’s book Web Analytics an Hour a Day.
In my opinion some aspects of the training are over simplified in a way that is similar to the Adwords training. In a way it is an edu-marketing where they sell you as they are training you on how to use the service. The nuts and bolts of making Google Analytics work from a technical perspective are slightly more complicated than the way that they portray (3 clicks and you’re tracking your ROI!). And that is just the technical implementation. You still need a web analyst to interpret the data and develop actionable insights.
Of course advanced segmentation in Google Analytics is the most exciting news for me since I got Ninjas in my Gmail. Months ago I actually emailed Avinash personally to ask him if this was possible in Google Analytics (I was embarrassed to admit that I didn’t already know whether it was possible or not). Turns out it was not available at that time.
I always find it interesting to keep tabs on what is still missing from Google Analytics. Some of the major factors are the lack of the ability to control your own data, house it on your own server, reprocess it, combine it with other historical data, etc. That coupled with the fact that Google will not maintain this data forever – they currently estimate that they will be dropping data every 2 years. It is still a fantastic free tool, but there is an important gap that must be filled by a paid provider and it is really important to know where that gap is and how it will affect you and your business.
Tracking ecommerce
There are several important ecommerce metrics that are easily trackable in Google Analytics. There is a description of the technical implementation here. You can of course measure the visitor engagement to include the following and more:
- Adwords Keywords generating the most profit – Because of Google’s broad match you can be a little misled here if you are not careful. The phrases you see in google analytics won’t be the exact phrases that brought people to your website. The good news is that the exact phrases are available with a little bit of customization.
- Revenue Per Click, ROI, and Margin – Crucial metrics to determine the health of your online marketing efforts.
- Average Order Value – It is crucial to take average order value into account when you are analyzing data surrounding user behavior. Always check because if you make decisions based on trends of the majority you could be alienating a big spending minority.
- Overall revenue per marketing channel – Use this to determine which channel deserves more attention and resources and what is completely useless.
Limitations
It is also important to understand what metrics cannot be easily tracked:
One important metric from this perspective which is not available in Google Analytics is latency. Latency is often measured and analyzed grouped with recency and frequency. Recency describes the amount of time between the first time someone visits a site and the subsequent visits. Latency describes it takes for that person to turn into a customer – make a purchase fill out a conversion form or take whatever action is desired on the site.
