Measuring Success

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.

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….

As you may have noticed I have not been particularly active when it comes to blogging recently. Essentially this autumn I have been busy writing the third edition of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. I am about 2/3 of the way through with the plan to finish before Christmas and have the book ready for Feb 2012 (note new cove colours!). As you may know, my aim with these books has always been to give the reader a thorough understanding of web analytics, from a practitioners point of view, using Google Analytics as the tool of choice. There are lots of details (the book is called Advanced…!), but only when it is necessary. That is, where there is a good business opportunity/insight to be gained from it… What’s new in the 3rd edition? Just in the past 12 months there has been a wealth of announcements from the GA [...]

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 a BIG change! Essentially marketers will no longer be able to view the keywords used by visitors that come from Google organic search in their web analytics reports (the fact they came from a Google organic search is still shown). The rational for this, as the announcement explains, is to protect the privacy of users who are logged into their Google account. What’s my view? As you know, I am a big fan of user privacy and putting the end-user experience first, so on the one hand this is a good approach. However, this does [...]

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