Martijn Scheijbeler discusses how The Next Web improved their web analytics by optimizing tracking in Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Some key steps included sending more custom data, better tracking user engagement through scroll depth and events, setting up A/B testing in Google Tag Manager, and calculating advertising ROI across multiple platforms. Scheijbeler argues they are reaching the limits of what is possible with web analytics and shares their Google Tag Manager configuration as an example for others to learn from and get started with improved tracking.

1. Web Analytics; Reaching the limits of what’s possible!
Martijn Scheijbeler / Director of Marketing / martijn@thenextweb.com / @MartijnSch

2. Martijn Scheijbeler
Marketing Director at The Next Web
Former Lead Growth, SEO & Analytics
martijn@thenextweb.com
@MartijnSch

3. @MartijnSch@MartijnSch
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Reaching the limits of what’s possible!
Better tracking, better data
Better data, better decisions
“What you’re not tracking, you don’t know!”
“Implementing better tracking creates more insightful data”
Better decisions, better results
“The better the data is the more insightful your decision will be”
“Your results get better by the decisions you make”
“Just as long as the decisions you make are better decisions”

4. Know why, you track and
how to track what matters:
@MartijnSch
WHAT YOU GET OUT OF THIS?
We’ll be sharing the set-up we use at The Next Web to get started immediately!

5. Why
HOW WE GOT STARTED?
Set-up
HOW DO YOU GET THERE?
Future
WHAT’S NEXT?

6. How it all
Started
@MartijnSch
THE START:

7. Why we feel,
the need for so much data?
@MartijnSch

8. INDEX.CO
20,000 +140,000 +6,000
visitors startups listed square meters
7,000,000
unique users
INDEX.CO
Conference

9. Why am I
showing you this slide?
@MartijnSch

10. MEDIA
News
E-commerce
EVENTS
Events
Conferences
WORK SPACES
TQ
INTELLIGENCE
Index.co

11. @MartijnSch
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Unique Users
Growing our unique user base will
increase the potential to reach Generation T.
2
3 3
Our goals for success
User Engagement: PV/Session
A higher engagement with our user base will
increase the number of pageviews per session.
User Retention: Returning %
Increasing the percentage or returning users will
increase our brand awareness.
Newsletter Signups
To get a relationship with our users we’d like to
have their email address for the newsletter.
Social Shares
More shares will influence our reach amongst
new and returning users.

12. SEO
ANALYTICS/CRO
TNW DEALS
INDEX.CO
CONTENT
GROWTH
@MartijnSch
Front-end Developers
MARKETING:

13. Web Analytics Figures
Data from 2015 - 2016
450Million Hits Monthly 2016
December ‘15Started using Google Analytics 360
15Million Hits Monthly 2014
200A/B Tests per Year
PricelessAmounts of fun
35%Traffic v.s. Tests
@MartijnSch

14. @MartijnSch
3 Months
7 Months
2 Months
Our timeline for getting to 450 million hits
Jan
‘15
Hitting the limits?
Hitting 15+ million hits monthly started to really mess with
the data quality in our reports. We needed a solution.
Apr
‘15
Finding an alternative
Google Analytics was the obvious way to go, but we wanted
to know if there would be any alternatives, there were: 3.
Dec
‘15
Setting the roadmap
Talk to our agency and our internal teams to find out:
what we needed to built to create the best analytics set-up.
Feb
‘16
Hitting 450 million
End of December we started moving all our tracking to
Google Tag Manager and adding all functionalities we wanted.

15. Why wait for 7 months? It’s all about the money!

16. You need a plan! This is what our ‘Tracking Plan’ looked like.

17. TLDR:
Why we do
what we do?
1. Know your goals
2. Know every detail about your user
3. Know the maximum you can track?
4. Leverage all the options available
5. No use of additional data sources
6. Create a tracking plan
7. We needed Google Analytics Premium
8. But Google Tag Manager even more!
@MartijnSch

18. But how did we get to
450 million hits monthly?
@MartijnSch

19. What we track &
How we do this?
@MartijnSch
OUR SETUP:

20. We needed to learn,
knowledge building?
@MartijnSch

21. Thanks for all your support!
We learn from you!

22. • Less time to redo our set-up
• Know what to track, best!
Find the
perfect process

23. Google Analytics (GA) & Google Tag Manager (GTM)

24. • Send data to the dataLayer
• Able to create variables
• Use the data however you want
The DataLayer

25. Custom Data
Custom information:
Content, Metrics, Data
Engagement
What’s a user doing:
Scroll tracking, event tracking
Testing
What does(n’t) work:
Testing via Google Tag Manager
Enhanced Ecommerce
Improving Ecommerce:
More info on the transaction process
Filters
Excluding + Improving:
Page information + cleaning
Cost Data
Calculate your ROI:
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

26. • 57 Custom dimensions
• Examples:
• Author
• Adblocked
• A/B Testing
• Post ID
• Client ID
Custom
Dimensions

27. • 4 Custom Metrics
• Examples:
• Ads Loaded
• Comments
• Ads not Loaded
• Words
Custom Metrics

28. • 23 Calculated Metrics
• Examples:
• Customer Lifetime Value
• AVG Cost per Session
• Non Bounces
• Cost of Acquisition
Calculated
Metrics

29. Custom Data
Custom information:
Events, Content, Metrics, Data
Engagement
What’s a user doing:
Scroll tracking, event tracking
Testing
What does(n’t) work:
Testing via Google Tag Manager
Enhanced Ecommerce
Improving Ecommerce:
More info on the transaction process
Filters
Excluding + Improving:
Page information + cleaning
Cost Data
Calculate your ROI:
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

30. Event Tracking
What is going on and why is that
happening? That’s what event
tracking helps with.
Examples:
• JavaScript Errors
• Ads Loaded or Not Loaded
• Share Buttons
• Contact Forms

31. Scroll Depth
Do you really know if people
read your content, you don’t,
right?

32. Time on Page
Do you really know if
people read your content,
you don’t, right?
But on a high bounce rate
page it’s really hard for
web analytics tools to
calculate the perfect time
on page.

33. Custom Data
Cost Data
Calculate your ROI:
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Custom information:
Events, Content, Metrics, Data
Engagement
What’s a user doing:
Scroll tracking, event tracking
Testing
What does(n’t) work:
Testing via Google Tag Manager
Improving Ecommerce:
More info on the transaction process
Filters
Excluding + Improving:
Page information + cleaning
Enhanced Ecommerce

34. Google Adwords
Just connecting your Google
Adwords account calculate
ain’t gonna cut it anymore.
On how many platforms are
you advertising?

35. But what else?
It’s hard to measure the ROI
for, for example social
networks: Twitter,
Facebook, LinkedIn which
are most likely your second
biggest spending platform
after Google Adwords.

36. Custom Data
Cost Data
Calculate your ROI:
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Custom information:
Events, Content, Metrics, Data
Engagement
What’s a user doing:
Scroll tracking, event tracking
Testing
What does(n’t) work:
Testing via Google Tag Manager
Filters
Improving Ecommerce:
More info on the transaction process
Excluding + Improving:
Page information + cleaning
Enhanced Ecommerce

37. “If you double the number of
experiments you’re going to
double your inventiveness”
- Jeff Bezos
@MartijnSch

38. Google Tag Manager is making our lives easier + scalable

39. The opportunity is
350-400 tests a year. As
ROI per test is low we
need to run a lot to have
a positive return.
Efficiency <> Costs
@MartijnSch

40. We didn’t move to any ‘real’
CRO tool but decided to
iterate on our own: GTM <> JS.
Supporting: A/B/n & MVT.
GTM Testing
@MartijnSch
Download:
Github.com/TheNextWeb/CRO

41. Custom Data
Cost Data
Calculate your ROI:
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Custom information:
Events, Content, Metrics, Data
Engagement
What’s a user doing:
Scroll tracking, event tracking
Testing
What does(n’t) work:
Testing via Google Tag Manager
Filters
Improving Ecommerce:
More info on the transaction process
Excluding + Improving:
Page information + cleaning
Enhanced Ecommerce

42. Override the collected data
to refine, clean and update
the data that you would
like to see in your reports.
Examples:
• URL Changes
• Remove parameters
Filters
@MartijnSch

43. Custom Data
Cost Data
Calculate your ROI:
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Custom information:
Events, Content, Metrics, Data
Engagement
What’s a user doing:
Scroll tracking, event tracking
Testing
What does(n’t) work:
Testing via Google Tag Manager
Enhanced EcommerceFilters
Improving Ecommerce:
More info on the transaction process
Excluding + Improving:
Page information + cleaning

44. You want to know what
happens in the funnel of your
ecommerce shop, right?
But how does that work for a
publisher? We figured it out.
Enhanced
Ecommerce
@MartijnSch

45. TLDR:
The set-up
1. Take care of the basics
2. Save custom data for internal use
3. Track engagement: scroll + riveted
4. Make calculating ROI easier
5. Always be testing; GTM is a great alternative
6. Go advanced! Enhanced ecommerce?
@MartijnSch

46. What does the
Future look like?
@MartijnSch
WHAT’S NEXT:

47. Work with Google DataStudio 360 to
get rid of the other reporting sheets
and tools that we need to use at the
moment.
Please fix: realtime reporting!
Automated
Reporting
@MartijnSch

48. Currently measuring the scroll
depth and the engagement on
page is separated. Merging the
data will make sure the tracking
is improved and loadtimes will
decrease a tiny bit.
Content
Enagement V2.0
@MartijnSch

49. Two extra front-end developers, to
make sure long-term we can iterate
and improve our set-up even faster.
But also work on testing even more!
Front-end Dev
@MartijnSch

50. Work with even more (big) data. We
need to know in a more advanced
way what works and what doesn’t.
So using more data ware house like
structures to leverage more data.
Big > Biggest
@MartijnSch

51. Keep up the pace as we do right now.
Make sure to leverage data sources
even more and upgrade our tracking
whenever we can.
Continuous
Improvement
@MartijnSch

52. @MartijnSch@MartijnSch
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You’re closer to the limit on what’s possible!
Better tracking, better data
Better data, better decisions
“What you’re not tracking, you don’t know!”
“Implementing better tracking creates more insightful data”
Better decisions, better results
“The better the data is the more insightful your decision will be”
“Your results get better by the decisions you make”
“Just as long as the decisions you make are better decisions”

53. One More Thing…
@MartijnSch

54. @MartijnSch@MartijnSch
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We make most of this available, today!
Download via:
Github.com/TheNextWeb/GTM
Import the container in GTM
Configure what you (don’t) need
Download as ZIP, import the container in
Google Tag Manager to get started.
The documentation in Github will tell you what
to configure in Google Tag Manager.
Share the love!
You can import a container in Google Tag
Manager with a preconfigured set of tags,
variables, values to get started immediately.
Our GTM set-up is now available for you!

55. Who is excited about this!?

56. Take Aways:
1. Learn from each other
2. Know what your goals are
3. Focus on: Events, Custom Data, Cost
4. Always be testing!
5. Download our GTM Container
6. Have fun!
@MartijnSch

57. Do you have any
Questions?
@MartijnSch