Do you add Google Analytics to your site, just to tick it of the checklist? “It’s a cool product, everyone uses it, hey its free, I might as well add it to my site.” Cool, but are you using it properly?… These 5 things below certainly don’t prove it’s power(I’ll write about that sometime), but for now, here are some common mistakes…even amongst large successful eRetailers.

Last Click Attribution. Beware. Use Nooverride to switch attribution from last campaign back to first campaign.

By Default Google Analytics attributes all conversions to the last click. So if you running an Adwords campaign with converion tracking (a Google product!) as well as Analytics (also a Google product!) and numbers differ, it may not only be because of clicks vs. visits, but also because, by default, Google Analytics attributes
the conversion to the last click…so if a banner on another marketing channel was clicked with UTM tags, or an email newsletter link, with UTM tags was clicked and a conversion is made after the user clicked on an adwords ad, Analytics will attribute the conversion to your the most recent click. It is however possible to allow Google Analytics not to attribute the conversion to the last click, simply by add nooverride=true to the landing page URL.

Tracking Subdomains – such a common mistake.
While reviewing many Analytics accounts, I find that the most common mistake is tracking sub-domains. if your website has subdomains like search.domainname.com or chat.domainname.com or checkout.domainname.com (I have seen this), then ensure Google Analytics is aware that these subdomains are part of your normal website flow and should be tracked within the same profile.

Why track your own traffic. Use Filters
Why do so many analytics profiles not include a filter to exclude their own traffic? Surely you do not want to measure your own visits? I recommended keeping a raw profile and creating another profile with an added filter. Filtering by IP would probably work well, especially if all users in your office share the same static IP address.

SiteSearch
This is so easy to setup and usually (98% of the time) requires absolutely no web development changes. Tracking Site Search can be realy useful. Why? Well, if you running any campaign, you can segment your data by that campaign and see what users are searching for when they land on your site. Is what they are searching for aligned with your campaign? Perhaps you running a PPC campaign and many users are specifically searching for the same keyword that you do not have in your campaign. If it is a relevant keyword, then why not add the keyword as an exact match keyword and deep link to the most relevant page? Refine your campaign in to increase user intent? Optimise your SEO?

TimeZone
Please tell me the timezone in your Analytics profile is correct. I’ve come across this (more than once) that the timezone of an Analytics profile is incorrect…If you looking at data that shows hours of the day that receives most visits or sales, then you looking at incorrect data. Your time-zone can be seen under Settings.

There’s a lot more I would like to cover; Goals, Funnels, Segmentation, Custom Varibles (ever heard of them?), Annotations. I’ll write about this in another post.

Cheers,
Lloyd

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