A good friend of mine, Daniel Waisberg, and I were discussing how organisations are reluctant to invest in their Google Analytics setup – be it implementation, training & education or insights/consultancy. Our conclusion was, that is difficult to get even the richest of companies to invest in a product that is free. The perception is that everything else that is required to make it “work” i.e. all of the above, should also be free.
Of course the new GA Premium product changes this a great deal – though that is very much aimed at large enterprises i.e. Fortune 500 types. That group aside, why is it an organisation will pay tens of thousands of pounds on a CMS platform or CRM solution, but fail to see the opportunities of investing a similar amount (or less!) in their web analytics?
As I wrote in an article last year, the hard part of web analytics is gaining insights form your reports when all you have is the basic setup. You must go beyond the basics if you wish your measurements to actually impact your business.
With this in mind, I asked Daniel to write a guest post on what it takes to get your GA implementation up to the next level. Below is a 10-point check list he recommends for both beginners and advanced users.
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Why use a paid-for tool? A client considering GA Premium (the paid-for version of Google Analytics) asked me the following question recently:
“One thing that would be great to cover in our meeting, is the value of the Premium product for us. How will it save us money by spending $150k a year instead of simply adjusting our approach and using the free product?”
That’s a great question – getting right to the point of value for money. And this was my two-point response that can be applied to any paid-for vendor….
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An odd announcement form the GA product team was made last night that affects all users of web analytics tools: When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, Google Analytics will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site. – Full announcement That’s […]
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My company is looking for a smart GA person to join the Swedish office and work with me as a Google Analytics Account Manager. If you have the experience and enthusiasm please take a look at: www.ga-experts.com/join-us.php
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If reading a physical book like mine is your thing, that is, rather than trawling through online documentation (that may or may not be correct) or using a ebook (great as a compliment but doesn’t beat the real thing), then here is your chance to win a signed copy of the second edition posted direct […]
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Lots of interesting discussion sparked by my last post on the new EU privacy law, so I thought it worth while to follow up and clarify a few points that were raised: The new EU law came into affect on 25th May and is applicable to all EU member countries – right now Its up […]
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Following new EU laws aimed at protecting the privacy of online users, there has been much said about the death of web tracking as we know it. At present the wording of the law is stating that visitors to your website must explicitly consent to having cookies stored on their computers. As pretty much all web analytics tools reply on cookies for visitor tracking, there are clearly implications for anyone that uses these on their site…
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There are 2 main things that Google Analytics cannot do:
1. No regionalisation of Search Engines for SEO – previous post
2. No automatic tracking of file downloads and outbound links – this post…
The first is an major limitation for Search Marketers requiring regional search engine detail for SEO campaigns; The second is a real pain in the bum for webmasters of content heavy websites who need to track non-standard click throughs (file downloads, mailto, outbound links).
However, Google Analytics is a very flexible product and a little bit of custom JavaScript can go a long way – so I have developed JavaScript “extensions” to over come these limitations…
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There are 2 main things that Google Analytics cannot do:
1. No regionalisation of Search Engines for SEO – this post
2. No automatic tracking of file downloads and outbound links – follow-up post
The first is an major limitation for Search Marketers requiring regional search engine detail for SEO campaigns; The second is a real pain in the bum for webmasters of content heavy websites who need to track non-standard click throughs (file downloads, mailto, outbound links).
However, Google Analytics is a very flexible product and a little bit of custom JavaScript can go a long way – so I have developed JavaScript “extensions” to over come these limitations…
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As readers of this blog will know, I am a strong advocate of online privacy… That may sound strange coming from a web analytics evangelist. However, if we as an industry do not sort these privacy issues out, there is a real danger that web analytics as we know it today will disappear completely.
So, following the recent excellent post from Phil Kemelor on The FTC Privacy Report, “Do Not Track” Options and Web Analytics, I wanted to also add my take here…
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