Charlotte's top analytics tips!

TOPANALYTICSTIPS
UNLEASH YOUR DATA & IMPROVE WEBSITE PERFORMANCE
CHARLOTTE@POLKADOTDATA.COM
Charlotte Upfold 2/10/20 12pm

ANALYTICS MANAGER
@POLKADOTDATA
CHARLOTTEUPFOLD
Maths grad
turned
primary school teacher
turned
Analytics Expert

MAKING WEB ANALYTICS DO THE WORK FOR YOU
Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager
Google Data Studio
• Training
• Implementation
• Platform migration
• Dashboarding & Automating reports
POLKADOTDATA

QUICK WINS IWISHI’DKNOWN,
WHENIFIRSTUSEDANALYTICS
OBJECTIVE

• Why you need to customise GA
• How to speed up getting data
• More of the functionality available
• How useful certain things are
• All these awesome things that I’m about to share with you…
IWISHIKNEW…

FILTERS

FILTERS
• Split data in to views
• Exclude unwanted data
• Tidy up data

USEFUL ONES AND HOW TO APPLY THEM
FILTERS

DON’T DO WHAT I DID…
FILTERS
… filters can be applied to multiple views at once at account level. Don’t copy
dozens of IP addresses from one view to another before realising there is a
much easier way!

USEFUL ONES TO HAVE
FILTERS
• Filters to split data in to views (eg countries, domains)
• IP filters (exclude your office)
• Filters to tidy up data (lowercase campaign information, search terms)
• PII Redactions (although this is not enough to be GDPR compliant, but does
help you meet GA terms and is a good catch all)

SEGMENTS
STOP looking at data in aggregate;
Averages DO NOT tell you the full story.
Segments allow you to:
• Break data down by session activity or user groups
• Look at reports in GA for a specific criteria that can’t be filtered there
• Use for troubleshooting, CRO, detailed analysis and more!
Don’t use GA without Segments!

SEGMENTS

SEGMENTS
… only segments which are shared correctly can be seen by others. Don’t send a report to someone when
the segments have been shared incorrectly, they won’t see the same data as you!

CUSTOMDIMENSIONS
Hit
Product
Session
User

HIT LEVEL
CUSTOMDIMENSIONS
Hit Timestamp
Session ID
Client ID
User ID
GTM ID & version
Payload Length
Hit Type
Tab Type
Tabs Open
Tab ID
Page Type
Product Type
Category
Sub Category

PRODUCT LEVEL
CUSTOMDIMENSIONS
DIMENSIONS
Product Variant
Size
Category
Length of Subscription
Est. end of product life
METRICS
RRP
Discount Value
Impressions

SESSION LEVEL
CUSTOMDIMENSIONS
Device orientation
Split test variant
Payment Method
Currency
Weather
Language
Full referrer
Business Week / Period
Section of day
Type of session

USER LEVEL
CUSTOMDIMENSIONS
User ID
New Customer vs Existing
Account Holder (by Type)
Loyalty Level
RFM
Level of Membership
Historic spend
Registration date
Don’t forget to comply with GDPR

GAURL

GAURL
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#/report/acquisition-channels
/a54516992w87479473p92320289/_u.dateOption=last30days/

GAURL
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#/report/acquisition-channels
/a54516992w87479473p92320289/_u.date00=20200815&_u.date01=20200913
&explorer-table.plotKeys=%5B%5B%22Organic%20Search%22,%22desktop%22%5D%5D
&explorer-table.secSegmentId=analytics.deviceCategory/

GAURL
… the URL defines what you see in the report. Don’t start a report on one day,
save the links to the reports you used without checking the dates, go back to
finish your report the next day and wonder why all the data is different!

BOOKMARK IT!
GAURL
Speed up accessing data you need regularly
Ensure you have a dynamic date range (e.g. Last X days)

API FOR SHEETS
GOOGLEANALYTICSAPI

GOOGLEANALYTICSAPI

USE THE URL TO HELP
GOOGLEANALYTICSAPI
useg=builtin1,userLSnUjBqvSIuIaqiU_h5WxQ/

USE YOUR SPREADSHEET KNOWLEDGE
GOOGLEANALYTICSAPI
Each report generates a sheet with data in. Create a front sheet to look up
dates from and return relevant data to.

USE YOUR SPREADSHEET KNOWLEDGE
GOOGLEANALYTICSAPI
Each report generates a sheet with data
in. Create a front sheet to look up dates
from and return relevant data to.

ALWAYS ADD ANNOTATIONS!
ANNOTATIONS

ALWAYS ADD ANNOTATIONS!
ANNOTATIONS
Changed the default channel groupings – annotate
Launched a new collection or campaign – annotate
Added a filter removing all internal IP addresses – annotate
Site went down – annotate
Sale period – annotate
Investigated an unexpected peak/trough in data and found the cause - annotate

ANNOTATIONS
… annotations are very useful to remind you of what you have already found out. Don’t spend hours
investigating a strange peak of traffic that you had already looked into a week/month/year before…
Treat is as a postcard to your future self or replacement

SECONDARYDIMENSIONS

SECONDARYDIMENSIONS
Combining secondary dimensions with plotting rows, advanced filters and drilling down through reports
makes for easy troubleshooting

ADVANCEDSEARCH

ADVANCEDSEARCH
By default, the search box uses regex – a good way to check filters or segment conditions prior to
applying them.

WEIGHTEDSORT

WEIGHTEDSORT
Not very
helpful!

WEIGHTEDSORT
Allows you to sort metrics shown as % by the most significant dimension

HIDDENREPORTS

A CHANCE TO BUILD WHAT YOU NEED
CUSTOMREPORTS

A CHANCE TO BUILD WHAT YOU NEED
CUSTOMREPORTS
http://bit.ly/pdd_custom

EDITREPORTS

SWAP AROUND TO SEE WHAT WAS PERFORMING WELL THAT ISN’T NOW
DATECOMPARISONS

A VALUABLE DEBUGGING AND INVESTIGATIVE TOOL
PLOTROWS

ON EXPLORER PAGES
EXPORTINGDATA

ON EXPLORER PAGES
EXPORTINGDATA
Combine plot rows with segments to give more data points in an export and be able to get lots of data
out FAST!

EXTREME EXAMPLE!
EXPORTINGDATA

EXTREME EXAMPLE!
EXPORTINGDATA
Every piece of data in the table

EXTREME EXAMPLE!
EXPORTINGDATA
Every piece of data in the table
AND
Every data point on the drawn graph

TOOLS
TOOLS
Google Tag Assistant
GTM Preview
GA Debugger
Tag injector
Da Vinci
Supermetrics

IF IT ISN’T, WE’RE HERE FOR YOU

MAKING WEB ANALYTICS DO THE WORK FOR YOU
Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager
Google Data Studio
• Training
• Implementation
• Platform migration
• Dashboarding & Automating reports
POLKADOTDATA
HELLO@POLKADOTDATA.COM

CHARLOTTE UPFOLD
HELLO@POLKADOTDATA.COM
BOOK A CHAT:
POLKADOTDATA.AS.ME
@POLKADOTDATA
SPEAKSOON!

Charlotte's top analytics tips!

More Related Content

Similar to Charlotte's top analytics tips!

Recently uploaded

Charlotte's top analytics tips!