Contact us

Tag: Analytics

Google Analytics Ecommerce Reports: 5 mistakes to avoid

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

Google Analytics is a powerful but complex tool. Discover the 5 mistakes you should avoid to optimize your analysis.

You can also download our Google Analytics study on the distribution of Ecommerce sales and how they are allocated according to acquisition channels here : Google Analytics Ecommerce Attribution

Analytics secrets: 5 mistakes to avoid with Analytics.

Analytics, as its name suggests, is based on data analysis.
It’s essential that your account is set up properly.

Used by a machine learning solution, data enables you to optimize your bidding strategy simply and easily.

Conversely, inaccurate data will distort your results.
Here are 5 mistakes to avoid with Analytics.

1. Your payment platform is counted as a referral site.

When it’s time to pay, your customers are directed to Paypal, Shopify, Payoneer (or other) before being redirected to your site.

Analytics counts this as a new session and your payment platform appears as a referral.

The solution? Add your payment solution to the list of sites to be excluded from your referrals.

Although ROAS and ROI (Return on Investment) are often used interchangeably, they differ.
ROI takes into account overall costs, while ROAS focuses solely on advertising investments. ROAS is therefore better suited to evaluating the effectiveness of Google Ads campaigns.

2. Your tracking code is partially installed on your site.

If your visitor navigates between listed pages (your pages that convert) and unlisted pages, his or her journey is broken down into several smaller sessions, resulting in erroneous results.

Use GA Checker to check that your tracking code has been installed throughout your site.

3. Your company's IP address is not filtered.

Who visits your site most often? You do! These sessions should be excluded, as they are not representative of your customers’ behavior.

All you need to do is filter the IP addresses of your company, your service providers and your employees, if they work from home.

4. Robots are not excluded.

Robots – whether acting on behalf of search engines or malicious entities – regularly scan your site.

If their sessions are counted, they report high bounce rates and very short visit times.

Check that the “Robot filtering” option is enabled in your Analytics account (Administration > View, View settings).

5. Important events are not documented.

Promotion, launch, redesign of a page’s UX, etc. are all important events to take into account in your follow-up.

The annotations available in Analytics enable you to measure the impact of these actions on your results. Would you like confirmation that your Analytics data is not distorted?

We carry out an audit of your account before the start of each campaign to check the quality of your data.

Have you ever thought of using a Machine Learning solution to improve your performance? Contact us to find out more!

CONCLUSION

If you need help with your tagging plan oroptimizing your Analytics accounts, contact us, we’ll be delighted to discuss and implement the solutions you need;

Also, if you want to advance on your own and become an Analytics ninja, don’t forget to work on your Conversion Funnels; Check out our artilce “How to set up Conversion Funnels in Google Analytics“: you’ll be guided step by step; Happy reading!

Google Ads – Analytics: under-utilized data

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab


Every year, we are surrounded by more and more data.

This is an undeniable asset for companies: the analysis of this data enables them to optimize their marketing strategy.

Communicating with the right target, at the right time, with the right product: that’s the goal of every company today!

However, data is not always put to the best possible use. Companies exploit it, but the analysis remains too superficial to be fully effective.

In this guide, we’ll focus on 2 essential digital marketing tools: Google Ads & Google Analytics.

These high-performance tools enable companies to collect a vast amount of data, but the evidence is clear: this data is under-exploited.

First, we’ll explain what data you’re likely to collect with these two tools.

Secondly, we’ll give you tips on how to optimize the use of the data you get from Google Ads and Google Analytics.

What data does Google Ads collect?

If you own a website, especially an e-commerce site, you’re probably familiar with Google Ads.

With just a few clicks, this tool enables you to create advertising campaigns that appear in the SERPs: the results pages of the Google search engine.

Here, we’re talking about SEA, not SEO: the sites aren’t listed naturally, but through a bidding system.

In order to appear in a good position in the Google Ads inserts that are displayed each time a web surfer makes a query, ads must meet a number of criteria:

CPC, also known as cost-per-click: the higher a site’s CPC compared to its competitors, the greater its chances of appearing in good position.
Ad quality: certain rules laid down by Google must be respected by advertisers
Landing page quality: in particular, the landing page must be consistent with the subject of the ad.

For e-commerce sites, tracking Google Ads campaigns is essential.

Thanks to this tool, you’ll always know what each keyword, each ad and each campaign is bringing in and costing you.

Google Ads campaigns are optimized on a daily basis, to improve conversions and meet targets.

That’s why it’s essential to analyze the data obtained through the Google Ads tracking and management tool.

Here are some data that may be important for an e-commerce site looking to improve its conversions:

The click-through rate (also known as CTR)
The number of times the ad is displayed
The keywords used by web users who have purchased from the e-commerce site after clicking on a sponsored ad
The location of web users and their profile who have clicked on the ad

All this data can be analyzed. The most important is undoubtedly the CTR.

If, after analysis, you realize that the CTR of your campaigns is low, it’s because you need to optimize them: your ads display well in the SERPs, but web users click on them relatively little.

In such a situation, you’ll probably have to rethink your strategy: modifying the ad with a catchier or less advertising text may be a solution to consider.

What data does Google Analytics collect?

Google Ads isn’t the only tool for collecting data.

Google Analytics is just as essential.

However, it doesn’t work in the same way as Google Ads:

Google Ads lets you analyze the data obtained from your sponsored ads
Google Analytics lets you analyze the performance of your website through statistics

Note that these two tools can be combined, which is very useful for e-commerce sites.

But more on that later. First, let’s take a look at the data that can be obtained using Google Analytics alone!

Here is a non-exhaustive list of data you can collect and analyze with Google Analytics in addition to the number of visits and page views over a given period:

Data related to the website audience:

Demographics (age, gender, etc.)
Geography (language, country)
Site behavior (new or repeat visitors, frequency of visits)
Technology used (operating system, browser, mobile)

Data related to the acquisition of the website audience:

Traffic sources, referring sites…
Google Ads
Social networks

Data relating to the behaviour of Internet users on the website:

Most viewed pages
Viewing time
Bounce rate
Destination page
Exit page
Site speed
Site search
Data linked to conversions…. provided that objectives have been defined beforehand!

For an e-commerce site, this section must be parameterized: this will enable you to carry out a more complete analysis.

So, if you find that certain pages of your website have a very high bounce rate, it’s because the strategy in place isn’t the most optimal.

You’ll probably have to think about modifying the content of the page to make it more attractive or more in line with what web users are looking for.

Similarly, demographic data will help you to better understand the visitors you are attracting to your website.

If you realize that a target spends a lot of time on a category on your e-commerce site, you can take this into account when setting up Google Ads.

Analyze project performance by combining Google Ads and Analytics

If you use Google Ads and Google Analytics separately, it’s a good idea to combine the two tools.

In this way, you’ll be able to analyze the performance of your campaigns and e-commerce site in a much more detailed and comprehensive way.

In particular, you can retrieve cost-per-click data from Google Ads, as well as conversion data from Google Analytics.

By merging these two types of data, you’ll obtain unprecedented information that will enable you to make strategic decisions in the future.

So, for each conversion, you’ll know which product was clicked on and which was sold. In this way, you’ll be able to compare the gain from selling a product on your website with its cost.

All the data you obtain from combining Google Ads and Analytics will give you a better understanding of your website’s traffic and conversions.

This information is extremely useful for improving your e-commerce site and your Adwords ads: with the right data at your disposal, you can make strategic and optimal decisions!

But how do you combine these two tools? Find out how:

  1. Start by logging in to your Google Ads account

  2. Click on Settings, then choose “Associated accounts” from the menu.

  3. Display the details by clicking on “Google Analytics”. You should then see a list of all the Analytics properties you can choose to associate.

  4. Choose one of the properties. Click on “Configure association”.

If the selected property has only one view, its name appears. Then click on “Import site statistics”.

This is the step that gives Google Ads access to your Analytics data.

If the selected property has multiple views, the methodology is a little different. You can choose between 2 parameters. The one we recommend is the import of site statistics.

But you can also choose the second method, “Associate”. In the latter case, you can associate as many views as you like.

  1. Validate the information and repeat the operation for each property you wish to associate between Analytics and Google Ads.

Once set up, you’ll be able to import Google Analytics goals and transactions, view all Analytics data in Google Ads reports, and import Analytics remarketing audiences.

Of course, you can also view Google Ads data in your Analytics reports.

Personalized attribution models: a winning strategy?

You can go even further in analyzing the data provided by Google Analytics and Google Ads. This involves setting up personalized attribution models.

Are you unfamiliar with the concept? Here’s some information to help you make sense of it:

The personalized attribution model is a set of rules that the statistics tool (Google Analytics) automatically applies to assign conversions to the various channels, i.e. traffic sources on your website.

The attribution model allows you to monitor your website in a much more detailed way, which is particularly interesting for e-commerce sites.

Indeed, when a sale takes place on your website, you don’t just want to know from which source it came.

In fact, you also want to know which were the decisive clicks that enabled the Internet user to buy on your website: it’s not necessarily the same click!

Note that if you don’t set up a custom attribution model, the default model will only give you information on the last click.

And yet, it’s not necessarily the most important one, the one that was decisive in the purchasing process.

Let's talk about the different clicks for a better understanding:

The first click: as the name suggests, this is the first click that brings a visitor to your website. This could be a click on a sponsored ad, in natural results, from a Facebook page, from a link in a blog, etc.

Intermediate clicks: these are clicks made by the visitor to your site, after the first one, which were not decisive for a purchase. So, if the first click comes from a sponsored ad, the second click may well come from natural results, and the third from your e-commerce site’s Facebook page.

Let’s talk more about the last click.

As explained above, this is the default click used by Google Analytics.

Let’s take an example: a visitor arrives on your website from a sponsored ad.

He doesn’t buy anything, but comes back to the site the next day from the natural results by typing your company’s name into the search engine to buy the product he’s interested in and that he’d spotted the day before.

In Google Analytics, this sale will be attributed to the “Google/Organic” channel: true, but not in full!

Don’t forget the importance of first and intermediate clicks.

Ideally, in Google Analytics, you should be able to trace the various stages that lead to a conversion: they’re all important!

And that’s exactly what the personalized attractiveness template allows you to do.

We therefore advise you to assign a custom attribution model, preferably the one that best suits your e-commerce site.

In fact, there is no single model, but many. For example, you can define a model that attributes all your conversions to the first interaction with your website.

Towards ever-better use of data?

To fine-tune your marketing strategy, it’s essential to use data.

The most effective technique is still to use the tools available to you and exploit them to the full.

So it’s important to take the time not only to set up Google Ads and Google Analytics, but also to combine them.

In the end, you won’t necessarily get more data, but data that makes more sense.

And it’s precisely this meaningful information that will enable you to fine-tune your marketing strategy, improve your ROI and achieve your business objectives.

E-commerce sites: don’t neglect the analysis and personalization of Google Ads and Google Analytics data! These are invaluable tools for the long-term success of your business.

The 7 attribution models in Google Analytics

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

The secrets of Google Analytics: the different attribution models and their functions

Discover what an attribution model is and the secrets to choosing the right one for your E-Commerce business. “Analytics Secrets” is a series of articles giving you our advice on optimizing your Analytics account and analyzing your website data.

What is an attribution model?

An attribution model is a model that distributes the relative influence of each traffic source for a given objective. In e-commerce, it determines which traffic sources have led to a sale. Using a relevant attribution model allows you to optimize your Google Ads strategy.

We also recommend that you read our study on Attribution of e-commerce sales by acquisition channel.

The 7 main attribution models.

All traffic sources together account for 100% of attribution points. Depending on the attribution model used, this 100% is allocated differently:
Last interaction: the last source of incoming traffic gets 100% of the credit.

⇒ First interactionThis is the 1st point of contact which obtains 100% of the points.

⇒ Last non-direct clickWhen direct attribution channels are removed from the equation, all points are awarded to the last indirect click.

⇒ Last click on a Google Adss: 100% of points are awarded to the last ad clicked on Google.

⇒ Linear allocationEach channel used by the visitor up to the point of sale shares the 100% equally.

⇒ Depreciation over timeAll traffic sources are taken into account, but the last ones score more points.

⇒ Position-based allocation1st and last contact points are awarded 40% of points each. The others share the remaining 20%.

⇒ Data-driven attribution: This attribution model uses Google Ads algorithms and actual performance data from your campaigns to determine how clicks on your ads contribute to conversions. Unlike other models, it’s dynamic and customized according to your account data.

How do you choose your attribution model?

The choice of attribution model depends on each company’s conversion tunnel.
Knowing your visitors’ behavior (sources of traffic, average time to conversion, etc.) enables you to decide which attribution model makes the most sense for your company.

In fact, it’s also necessary to set up more features in your account, such as the Google Analytics Conversion Funnel. Find out more in our article “How to set up conversion funnels in Google Analytics“.

Audience: the importance of Google Analytics

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

Measuring your audience is an essential step in developing your business on the web.

It enables you to take stock of your acquisition strategies and the quality of your traffic. Google Analytics is a powerful tool for accessing quality information.

See also: Boosting your SEA campaigns with Audiences and Remarketing

Google Analytics: an indispensable tool for your company's success

To ensure the success of your e-commerce or lead generation site, you need to make data analysis a priority.

You need to understand consumers’ needs, where they are, their gender and age, and anything else that might help you improve their experience on your site.

The more information you have about them, the more you’ll be able to personalize your approach, identify problems and improve your communication.

The number of people affected

You can find out how many people are affected each day.

This measurement enables you to understand whether your advertising actions are having an impact, and whether you’re continuing to increase your audience and traffic.

Which acquisition channels

Internet users can arrive on your site through various channels: social networks, search engines, partner sites, etc.

The acquisition report identifies how your prospects arrived on your site. This may be through your advertisements, or your Facebook page…

Once you know where visitors are coming from, it’s vital to identify the channels that bring you the most conversions, so you can intelligently allocate your investments to the right channels.

See also: Audience exclusion, or how not to wear out your prospects?

Where do you lose your prospects' attention?

Using Google Analytics to measure your audience enables you to perfect your communication tools.

In fact, through analytics data, you’ll know where your audience leaves your site, and identify the pages where they leave.

To keep prospects on your pages longer, we recommend A/B testing. This practice gives you the opportunity to imagine two strategies and evaluate their impact.

You can choose between two approaches, and only keep the one that really works.

Measure your audience to know it perfectly

This free tool gives you access to various indications:

Most visited pages
The social network where you have the most impact
Usage habits: smartphones, computer, tablet

Conversion rate

The main objective of your e-commerce business is to generate sales and find customers.

Google Analytics gives you a helping hand by telling you which channels have helped you sell and convert. So you need to ask yourself the right questions:

Are your social networks powerful? Do your advertising campaigns convert? Have you seen a return on investment?

Google Analytics, made available to you free of charge by Google, should become your best ally in developing your e-commerce business.

To take your analysis a step further, we strongly recommend you read our article on setting up the Google Anlaytics conversion funnel.

This step-by-step guide will enable you to configure different funnels in your Google Analytics account.

Google Analytics: Key configuration steps

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

Configuring Google Analytics, a key step!

Google Analytics provides a wealth of information about your online presence. There’s just one condition: set up your analytics account properly beforehand.

Who wants to make decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate data? In this article, we take a step-by-step look at how to set up Google Analytics correctly.

Let’s start with the mistakes regularly made when setting up Google Analytics. Even if your business is unique for many reasons, you can start by following these tips, which apply to all sites, even yours 🙂

Also read: How to set up the Conversion Funnel in Google Analytics

1. Check that the tracking code is correct and complete

The tracking system is at the very top of the list of configurations that need to be set up correctly. Without it, you run the risk of missing out on key data on existing conversion stages on your site.

Tools for checking your configuration

There are various tools you can use to check your analytics configuration and make sure everything’s running smoothly.

Tag Assistant: perfect for checking configuration and resolving detailed problems at “page” level.

Tag Assistant is a Chrome extension that can be used to validate and diagnose your Google Analytics data on a page-by-page basis. Once you’ve solved a problem, you can return to Tag Assistant to check that your tags are working properly.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider: ideal for detecting site bugs across all pages. This tool is perfect for finding out whether your tracking code is correctly installed on all your pages.

There are two versions available: a FREE version, for websites up to 500 URLs, and a paid version, for more than 500 URLs.

Your tracking code
At the very least, you should check two things with regard to the tracking code installed

Tracking code version: if you haven’t already done so,
make sure you switch to Universal Analytics. Tag Assistant will display the
version you’re using and whether or not you need to migrate.

**Code location **: where to place your tracking code depends on whether you use Google Tag Manager or not.

It is increasingly recommended to use Google Tag Manager for tracking configuration.

Getting the code implementation right (according to your tagging plan) is a crucial step in getting reliable information from Google Analytics.

2. Setting objectives

Setting up Google Analytics objectives is a crucial step in data analysis. Without these objectives, you won’t be able to find out why your site is working or not, and where you can improve.

Objectives are generally based on form validations, downloads or purchase completion.

If your site is primarily dedicated to lead generation, it’s important to set your objectives on the form validation pages.

For e-commerce, conversions are essentially measured by the validation of a product sale. Tracking is specific to e-commerce.

It is obtained by integrating a few extra lines of code into your site.

In the article“How to set up your conversion funnel in Google Analytics“, we explain step-by-step how to create your own goals and conversion funnel in your Google Analytics account.

3. The backup "view

By default, Google Analytics lets you configure up to 100 accounts, 50 properties per account and 25 “views” per property. Multiple views are strongly recommended.

You should always configure a raw data view. Read this article if you’d like to know more about configuring different views in Google Analytics.

No matter how experienced you are, you need to have a backup view in place. Very often, there are several people working on the same Google Analytics account.

Make sure that NOBODY modifies the raw data view.

Customer value (LTV), churn: measure long-term indicators with Google Analytics

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

Long-term metrics such as customer lifetime value (LTV) and churn are often overlooked in analysis and optimization processes. Certainly because it’s quite difficult to track and measure loyalty using common tools like Google Analytics and Optimize. However, they can be very instructive when combined with other, more basic metrics, such as transactions or revenue. In this article, we take a look at several ways of tracking churn and customer lifecycle with Google Analytics, and suggest some even more useful solutions…

Depending on the software you use, there may be ready-made solutions. For example, on Shopify, you can use Littledata to send a more accurate LTV value in a customized Google Analytics interface. More often than not, however, there’s no good solution available and it’s necessary to make new developments on your existing configurations in your Analytics accounts. Some people often mistakenly believe that these long-term retention metrics are only relevant to a few specific types of business. It’s true that metrics such as churn rate are essential for SaaS and subscription products, yet any company that closely monitors its business should have its long-term performance metrics in place, such as loyalty rate, re-purchase rate. And we’re not just talking about tracking them, we’re talking about analyzing them and optimizing the business based on them. And we’re not the only ones! Visit Harvard Business Review points out: “Acquiring a new customer is five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. It makes sense: you don’t need to devote time and resources to finding a new customer – you need to keep the one you already have.” So, if you’ve been focusing on new customer acquisition and metrics like revenue or transactions, this is the article for you!

How do you measure loyalty indicators such as LTV and churn?

The most relevant long-term loyalty metrics for you depend on your industry, but the most common are customer lifecycle value (LTV) and churn rate. Below is a list of popular loyalty KPIs. It’s up to you to decide which ones are most relevant to your business!

Current customer loyalty measures(Source )

  1. Churn rate
  2. Sales attrition rate
  3. Growth rate of existing customers
  4. Repeat purchase rate
  5. Product return rate
  6. Days sales outstanding
  7. Net promoter score
  8. Time between purchases
  9. Rate of loyal customers
  10. Customer lifecycle value

User identification for Google Analytics

Almost all retention measures require correct implementation of the user ID.

This means you need to identify the user over time, even if they use multiple devices or browsers. Fortunately, in most cases, actions such as making a purchase or subscribing to a membership involve some form of authentication. While it’s possible to track retention metrics with Google Analytics alone, in most cases you’ll get much better (and more accurate) results by combining it with other solutions.

Sending retention data to Google Analytics

This solution involves sending retention data to a customized Google Analytics interface.

The exact workflow depends on the software (CRM, CMS, database, etc.) you use, but the general process looks like this. Create a custom dimension in Google Analytics (tailored to the user)

1. Create a custom dimension in Google Analytics (tailored to the user)

2. For logged-in/identified users, extract relevant retention metrics from a database or other system (CRM, CMS...)

Here’s an example with order data stored in BigQuery.

3. Make retention measurements available in the data layer (Datalayers)

4. Upload your retention metrics to the dashboard

Use Google Tag Manager to send your retention metrics to Google Analytics, using the custom dimension or metric locations/indices depending on how you configured them in step 1.

Now that this data is available in Google Analytics, you can do whatever you want with it! Here are a few examples. Using LTV in a custom Google Analytics report

LTV in the Google Analytics User Explorer report

Note the difference between LTV that Google Analytics shows by default ($439) and the value we see in the custom dimension ($2,016). This is because Google Analytics can’t track the user as accurately as your backend system or the e-commerce platform you use. The same is true for other retention metrics, obtaining accurate metrics requires custom work.

Custom segments in Google Analytics

The list of possible use cases for this type of data is endless. We therefore recommend that you create custom segments in Google Analytics for customers in the top 10% in terms of LTV to see what differentiates them from the rest of the visitors. Apart from the fact that a percentage of these customers make more/larger purchases, of course. Things like their traffic source, the pages they landed on, the A/B test variants they saw, etc. can be very informative.

Data storage and analysis on a larger scale

If you’re just starting to use retention metrics and are still mainly optimizing generic metrics such as revenue sources, total transactions and total revenue, it’s best to stick with Google Analytics.

But if you want to take it to the next level, to analyze in depth and optimize customer loyalty and lifecycle, you need a dedicated data management system. Here’s a quick, step-by-step guide:

  1. Send all Google Analytics data to a specific data management system (e.g. BigQuery). Tools using the Reporting API (most of them) can get you started, but to get real, unsampled data at the results level, you need a tool like Parallel Tracking.
  2. Transfer, sort and feed data from other relevant sources into your data management system. This could be your database, CRM, marketing tools, advertising platforms, customer support, live chat or any other tool that contains data about your customers and their interactions with your brand. Self-service tools like Stitch can help you get started, but we recommend more flexible solutions.
  3. Finally, to access the data stored in your data system: you need a tool (they may be separate tools) capable of handling ad hoc queries, dashboards, automated reports and the creation of data models. Solutions like Google Data Studio will get you started. But Looker or Tableau are more powerful. In any case, the best solution will be made up of a set of tools that are optimal for you, and tailored to your specific needs.

If Google Analytics has enabled you to produce all sorts of useful reports and analyses, with the configuration above, you’ll see just how rich, not to say unlimited, the options become!

An appropriate data management and analysis system is a real competitive advantage

Not only does it give you a very good overview of the current state of your business and your customers, it also enables you to truly optimize the user experience and journey. This leads to improved retention metrics, lower acquisition costs and higher sales. Remember, acquiring a new customer costs five to 25 times more than retaining an existing one! To convince you of the benefits of an efficient data management system, here are a few examples of questions that would otherwise be very difficult to answer:

  • Purchases from which traffic channels are most likely to be redeemed at some point in the future? This could lead you to review your marketing budget.
  • Which traffic sources have the highest retention/LTV?
  • What is the correlation between subscription value ($) and churn?
  • What is the long-term impact of your campaigns or A/B experiments?
  • Do quick wins lead to higher churn or lower LTV?

Do data from different sources add up? Perhaps Google Analytics is missing some transactions that are in your backoffice, or perhaps some of them are duplicates? For example:

As you can see, Google Analytics is missing a good deal of transaction data, which requires further analysis. This is certainly something you should include in your Google Analytics database. And this is just a short list of ideas to get you thinking about what’s possible with the right data analysis system!

Working with automatic recurring events

It’s also important to bear in mind that some retention measures can change without the user himself doing anything. You must therefore ensure that these cases are monitored and taken into account, particularly with regard to :
  • Recurring orders/payments
  • Subscription expiry
  • Expiry of payment method
  • Modified/cancelled orders (e.g. due to a missing item).

If your data management system has been set up correctly, you should already have this information. Just make sure you include it in your analyses and reports. If you don’t have a data management system and are trying to solve this problem with Google Analytics alone, you’ll need to use a measurement protocol. Some of the most common subscription platforms, such as ReCharge for Shopify, integrate this functionality or can be solved by third-party solutions, but custom development is often required.

In short …

If in your line of business customers are expected to generate value more than once (repeat purchase, subscription, etc.), you need to start focusing on your retention metrics. Google Analytics can help you get started with basic metrics and limited precision. A better setup would be to combine Google Analytics with Parallel Tracking, but if you really want to optimize these metrics, you need a customized data management system where all your marketing data is collected. Do you have any questions about this? Contact us, we’ll be happy to discuss these topics with you and help you solve your data analysis problems!

7 effective ways to optimize your online store’s conversion funnel

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

Building an effective conversion funnel for your website means optimizing it in a number of ways to improve your conversions and profits. This includes a set of best practices that focus on the design of your website, not just on one aspect or another, as you want to offer your users a complete package. The conversion funnel is made up of a succession of small steps. Each of these steps will improve your chances of increasing sales on your site.

In this article we’ll look at what a conversion funnel is, the parts that make it up and the 7 best ways to optimize the conversion funnel to increase sales.

What is the conversion funnel?

Easier said than done. It’s not enough to simply offer good services and products to get on the right track and make good sales. Often, it’s a little more complicated because customers can be unpredictable.
Developing and improving your conversion funnel is a good way to improve your sales. What exactly is it? It’s the path your customer or
user must follow before reaching the cart and finalizing their purchase.
In this process, there are 4 stages and, as you might expect, at each stage, there are losses. Optimizing your conversion funnel
therefore means minimizing the losses observed at each stage.

These 4 steps are:

  1. the Landing Page (Interest-Visit)
  2. the Product Page (Review-Discovery)
  3. the Purchase Page (Purchase Decision Summary)
  4. Purchase (Customer Loyalty-Settlement)

To get the most out of this funnel, each of these stages needs to be optimized in some way. In this article, we’ll examine conversion rate optimization best practices.

What do these stages mean? To begin with, all customers who visit your site, in one form or another, begin with the landing page. This is the most important stage of the funnel, and the one with the highest drop-off rate. This is where your customers will become aware of your products and services, and you need to hook them. You’ll need to provide engaging content, such as free blog posts, articles, guides, and even video guides and demos, to pique their interest.

The next stage of the funnel, which typically only 40-50% of landing page visitors reach, is the product pages. At this stage, users will be curious about your products because you’ve hooked them with an interesting landing page. This is a crucial stage, and this is where you need to provide healthy and interesting product pages. Talk about your products and provide some value, but don’t forget to include specific details that will interest certain customers.

Once customers decide your product page is compelling enough to buy, they enter the shopping cart phase of the funnel. This is a crucial step on the path to purchase, and poorly designed shopping carts are often the reason people abandon their purchases. They may add products to their cart, but never complete the purchase. There are a few best practices that can reduce the number of cart abandonments.

The last step is the purchase, when users decide to buy something it is important to have a good payment system.

Now let’s look at some of the best ways to improve your funnel overall.

Optimize your sales and your e-commerce funnel in 7 effective ways

Photo by Pickawood / Unsplash

Target ROAS uses artificial intelligence to automatically adjust bids, optimizing conversion values and ROI. Using advanced algorithms, Google Ads adjusts bids in real time to maximize performance based on your Target ROAS settings.

1 - Attracting customers via social networks (arousing interest)

The first stage of the funnel is marketing, which involves guiding visitors to your landing page. Social network marketing, in other words: being active on different social media platforms, has several advantages. Some 90% of marketing professionals believe that social networks offer broad exposure for their business activities.

By being active on several platforms, you can :

  • increase brand awareness
  • drive more traffic to your site
  • increase customer loyalty
  • improve your search engine rankings
  • boost your conversion rate

Facebook is a social network known to almost everyone, and has a large number of users. For this reason, it’s important to develop a high-performance tactic to attract Facebook users to your site. From 2018 to 2019, Facebook use by marketing professionals in the US rose from 86.3% to 86.8%, and could reach 87.1% in 2020.

Facebook ads are great, but they’re not enough. You need to design powerful ads to effectively promote your products and create a Landing Page that will make your visitors want to go deeper into the conversion funnel.

2 - Offer free, attractive content on your landing page (Interest phase)

The purpose of your Destination Page is to attract Internet users and make them want to buy your products, or at least to capture their interest. People choose pages and products that are of value to them, and at this stage, it’s just the right thing to do.

These could be short blog posts about your products and services, or a variety of promotional items.

3 - Use product proofs on your product page (Reflection phase)

When you present your products on your site, it’s important to display some kind of proof, a confirmation that your products are worth customers’ time, money and perhaps effort. The best way to do this is to display social proof (customer reviews, helpful messages or comments) on the product page. This will make your products seem more interesting.

According to a Minter report, 70% of Americans look for reviews on review sites before making a purchase. The good news is that BrightLocal found that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

4 - Optimizing your Product Pages (Examination/discovery phase)

The next step is crucial and indispensable (if you haven’t already done so): optimizing Product Pages.

This means giving customers all the information they need. Product descriptions don’t have to be boring, for example, describe how they would feel, but make sure they also include technical information.

Also include practical call-to-action buttons on your site, enabling customers to buy quickly and providing all the necessary information: shipping, costs and fees…

You can find great inspiration for your CTAs, but make sure they’re fun, unique and irresistible.

When it comes to optimizing a Product Page, web analysis is a must, especially qualitative analysis tools such as traffic maps and site path analysis. They’ll help you answer all those “Why?” questions during the optimization process.

5 - Using software to track discharge intentions (Basket stage)

Too many shopping baskets are abandoned along the way. Fortunately, there are many things you can do to reduce the number.
One of the best things you can do is create a pop-up message when the customer is about to give up.

You can do this with exit intent trackers, which can be very effective in this respect.
You can combine these trackers for an even more effective result. For example, Pixojet uses a pop-up linked to an intent tracker and a time spent tracker.

6 - Optimize your check-out (Shopping cart stage)

One of the most important parts of your conversion funnel is your Checkout System.

7 out of 10 visitors give up buying at this point. That’s a huge number. But there are a number of key ideas for reducing it:

  1. One study showed that around 30% of buyers gave up at this stage when asked to sign. Instead, offer order validation or automatically create a user account.
  2. Consider product prices that include shipping costs. For example, NuFace, an online beauty distributor, increased its orders by 90% by adding a simple “free shipping on orders over $75” banner.

Adapt your site to all types of media. In practice, this concerns buttons to tap (ergonomics), loading speed (reduce the number of images), ease of navigation (align / organize forms vertically).

7 - Offer and promote a loyalty program (Loyalty Stage)

The last stage is the one that never ends: building customer loyalty. This is an ongoing process aimed at creating long-term relationships. Here, you can offer a program with discounts and special offers to those who buy from you more than once. You need to promote this program so that customers are aware of what they gain by remaining loyal to you.

In one report, 84% of consumers say they prefer a brand that offers them a loyalty program, and 66% add that being able to earn rewards changes their purchasing behavior.

Conclusion

Improving your conversion funnel is the top priority in your business. If you make it so, and if you embrace this process of constant improvement, the results shouldn’t be long in coming.

How to set up conversion funnels in Google Analytics (step-by-step)

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

In this article you’ll find a number of tips and detailed steps for setting up your conversion funnels in Google Analytics.

Extremely useful for analyzing customer journeys, we strongly recommend that you set up your funnels to identify friction points in your customer journeys and improve your conversion rates.

We also recommend that you download our detailed study of Ecommerces’ sales by acquisition channel: Ecommerces’ Google Analytics Attribution

Several sections are covered:

Contents

1. What is the conversion funnel?

2. Why worry about conversion tunnels?

3. What is conversion funnel analysis?

4. How to view conversion funnels for your website

5. How to set up sales funnels in Google Analytics

6. How to use Google Analytics funnel data to optimize your conversion rates

7. Turn insights into action

Optimize your Analytics data and tagging plan with Tag Manager

Article source: How to Set Up Sales Funnels in Google Analytics (Step-by-Step)

written by Andy Calvo, web analyst at Hostgator

Let’s get to the heart of the matter, and to illustrate the point, let’s say you have a promotional video on your B2B site’s homepage, and it’s doing a great job of encouraging your potential customers to give you a call. The only problem is, no one is watching that video…
Or maybe you have an Ecommerce store, and you have no problem attracting people who come from social platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Many of them even add items to their Shopping Cart, but halfway through the checkout process your potential customers leave the site.

Surely these two scenarios ring a bell?

Although frustrating, these experiences are commonplace for any website owner. Fortunately, there’s a way to find out what’s stopping people from converting on your site.

All you need to find out is a free Google Analytics account and a good Internet connection. (If you haven’t yet set up Google Analytics for your website, you can do so here).

Then it’s time to set up your sales funnels in Google Analytics. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to:

  • track visitor behavior on your website,
  • identify problem areas
  • optimize the user experience to get more visitors to do more of the things you want them to do: like make a purchase, fill in a recommendation form or subscribe to your newsletter.

If all this sounds confusing, don’t worry. Below, we’ll explain what conversion funnels (or sales funnels) are in Google Analytics, why they’re important and how to track them in Google Analytics. We’ll finish with a look at how to take action by leveraging your conversion funnel data.

What is a conversion funnel?

A conversion funnel (or Conversion/Order Tunnel) is a sequence of steps that a user follows to complete a conversion. A conversion funnel on an Ecommerce site might look like this:

  1. The customer arrives on the website.
  2. Once there, the customer browses a few pages of different products.
  3. The customer then adds an item or two to the shopping cart.
  4. Finally, the customer buys the item(s).

The sales funnel is different for different types of website and different types of customer. That’s why it’s important to know who your customers are, and to describe the series of actions they can take on your website.

All sales funnels (or conversion tunnels) end with a conversion. A conversion can have different definitions, depending on the business you’re in and the type of website you’re running.
Traditionally, when people think of a conversion, they think of completing an order on a website. But a conversion can be broader than that, such as signing up on a site or downloading a white paper.
Ultimately, a conversion is any type of behavior you want your customer to adopt that results in some value for your business.

Also read on our blog: The Facebook Guide to Creating Ecommerce Ad Campaigns

The Facebook Guide to Creating Ecommerce Ad Campaigns

Why should every site owner care about conversion tunnels?

Conversion tunnels or sales funnels are essential for understanding the steps your customers take before reaching their final conversion, and the obstacles that prevent them from doing so.

You can think of each stage of your sales funnel as a central touchpoint that you want people to reach on their way to conversion. Once you’ve defined each of these stages, you can identify the friction zones: the places where people get stuck, leave or don’t continue the conversion process. When you have this information, you can optimize your page design and site flow, adjusting the right elements to capture more conversions. And suddenly, you know what’s working on your website and what’s not – so you can start adjusting and improving.

Optimize your Analytics data and tagging plan with Tag Manager

Concrete example: Example of a Business Coach

Here’s an example to illustrate the value of sales funnels (or conversion tunnels). Let’s say you’re a business coach. As part of your assessment process, you offer a free 30-minute consultation, so that customers can get an idea of what you do and what you can bring to the table.
You advertise this consultation throughout your website with a prominent CTA (Call To Action) button.
To sign up, visitors click on a separate registration page and fill in a form.

When you analyze your sales funnel in Google Analytics, you’ll see that your CTA button has a high click-through rate. Whatever page they clicked from, the number of people who see the CTA button, compared to those who click on it to go to the sign-up page, hovers around 50%. This indicates that you’re doing an excellent job of generating interest in your free consultation.

However, once people reach the page with the registration form, less than 1% fill it in. Given the high interest rate, what explains this sudden loss of interest? Your consultation is free. What do people have to lose?

Well, maybe your registration form could have too many fields, discouraging prospects from filling out your form. Or, the sign-up form is too far down the page and people can’t find it. Maybe the page loads far too slowly and people give up and leave.

Each of the above could be an opportunity to improve your sales funnel. Right now, one or more of these elements turns people off and forces them to leave. Once they’re gone, they may be gone forever. It’s up to you to test different changes to see what motivates the 1% who convert.

Thanks to Google Analytics, you know exactly where the problem lies: the page with the form. People click through to the page with the form, but stop there. The sales funnel helps you pinpoint the problem so you can stay focused and make changes that lead to improvements – instead of wasting your time working on things that aren’t part of the problem, like changing your ad copy or increasing the consultation time from 30 to 60 minutes.

What is conversion funnel analysis?

Funnel analysis turns your conversion tunnel into something you can monitor and analyze. Let’s use an e-commerce site as a hypothetical example.
Below are the potential stages in your funnel:

  1. People arrive on your website.
  2. People navigate to a product page.
  3. People add a product to their shopping cart.
  4. People arrive at the payment page.
  5. People are finalizing their purchase.

Funnel analysis involves quantifying each of these steps, and seeing how many people made it to each one. Essentially, you want to know two things: the percentage exit rate from one step to the next, and the cumulative percentage of the total. This gives you a very good overview of the friction points in your sales tunnel.

Set up these steps in Google Analytics, and you can literally see the friction points. For our hypothetical Ecommerce site analysis, here’s what the data might look like in Google Analytics:

The blue blocks represent the total number of people reaching each stage, while the red arrows point to and indicate the number of people exiting at each stage. This data tells us several things:

  • Of all the people who access the website, 80% leave without browsing the product pages. This represents a great opportunity for you. We might ask, does the home page do a good job of directing people to the product pages? Are product categories listed in the main menu? Are “Best of” items highlighted on the home page? These are all things we could test to encourage more people to visit the product pages.
  • Of those who visit a product page, 75% end up taking the next step and adding the item to their shopping cart. Nice! It’s a good sign that among the people who are interested enough to visit the product page, we’re doing a great job of convincing them that they should buy it.
  • Unfortunately, only around 6% of these people complete their order. So there’s something wrong. Maybe there’s a technical problem with the payment page, or people don’t feel they can trust the site with their credit card information. Maybe there are too many fields to fill in, or it asks for information unrelated to their purchase. Whatever the reason, it’s an issue worth investigating. The fact that people have added the item to their shopping cart indicates a strong intention to buy, so if none of them are converting, there must be something preventing them from validating their order.

Just by looking at the raw data, we suddenly have a ton of information to work with to optimize our website. That’s what makes funnel analysis so reliable. Once you start thinking of your website as a journey/journey for your customers, you can get into their mindset and consider the incremental steps that move them forward.

Next, let’s talk about how to apply this strategy to your site.

Use for e-commerce sites

In the case of e-commerce sites, Target ROAS maximizes the return on advertising campaigns by targeting products or
categories with the best profit margins. This helps you achieve your business objectives while maintaining control over advertising expenditure.

Good to know: A well-defined Target ROAS can significantly increase profitability without requiring a proportional increase in the advertising budget.

How to visualize sales funnels for your website?

Before you even open Google Analytics, the first step is to fully understand your site and what you want your future customers to do. I recommend a brainstorming session where you map out your funnels. If you have an Ecommerce site, your funnels probably look like the ones we described above.

If you have a blog, the funnel concept still applies. There may be no product page or “add to cart” button, but you still have a home page, category pages, and blog posts. These blog posts should be considered as the “products” of your site.

You really want to think about your site, the journey you want users to take and their ultimate destination or goal. Is the goal to get people to read your blog? Figuring out how to direct them to your blog posts would be the top priority.

Remember that you could have multiple funnels within the same site. Maybe you’re a blogger who sells products on the side, so you’d have different sales funnels for your blog content versus your online store.

By the end of this brainstorming session, you should know what you want people to do, and break it down into steps (e.g. get to the site, visit a blog page, download a white paper).

Optimize your Analytics data and tagging plan with Tag Manager

How to configure sales funnels in Google Analytics

Once you’ve got your sales funnels mapped out, it’s time to collect the data. There’s a lot to do, but segments and objectives are the easiest steps to set up, so that’s what I’m going to show you today.

Let’s start with the simplest option: create a segment.

Note: For convenience, we’ll use product pages as an example in the following steps. If you’re setting up funnels for your blog, adjust accordingly.

Creating a segment in Google Analytics

You will create four segments:

  • one for your home page,
  • one for your product,
  • one for your basket and
  • one for the thank-you page.

In Google Analytics, go to Acquisition > All traffic > Channels. This report visualization shows you all your website’s traffic, broken down by channel (social, organic, direct, etc.).

Create your home page segment.

Creating a segment in Google Analytics

Clicking on “Add segment” takes you to a new screen. Here you’ll see that Google Analytics already offers plenty of relevant options for sales funnels. If you like, you can also click on “Make a purchase” and that would be it for today 😉

But your site is not identical to any other. You’ve already described the specific pages of your site that you want users to be able to browse. The easiest way to create a segment for this specific sales funnel, and avoid Google scrambling the data, is to create a custom segment.

Click on the red “New Segment ” button at top left.

Then click on “Conditions in the “Advanced” menu on the left.

click on “Conditions” in the “Advanced” menu on the left.

In this screen, you’ll define each stage of your sales funnel.
Use the drop-down menu to find and select “Page”.

Search and select “Page

Then select “matches exactly in the second drop-down menu. This prevents Google from including other pages with similar URLs.

select ” corresponds exactly to “

Finally, enter the URL of your home page in the text field, or use the / suggested by Google. (In Google Analytics, / is a shortcut for your home page.)
Name your segment in the “Segment name” field at top left, and click on the blue Save button.

Name your segment explicitly: here, “Home Page”.

Create your product page segment.

To see how many people go from your home page to the product page, you’ll need to create another segment. To do this, repeat the same steps above. Here they are for your convenience:

1 Click on Add a segment.
2 Click on the red New segment button.
3 Click on Conditions in the advanced menu on the left.
4 Find Page in the drop-down menu.

Then, if you have a single product, or want to create a funnel for a single product, you can continue the same process you used for your home page. Select “exact match” from the drop-down menu and enter the exact URL of the product page in the text field.

Segment creation for a product page

Alternatively, if you sell several products, you’ll want to see how many people visit any given product page on your site. In this case, you would select “contains instead of “exactly matches” in the drop-down menu, and use a common denominator in the text field (for example, if all your product pages include /shop/ in the URL, you’d enter /shop/ in the text field).

Identify the common denominator for grouping all the products on your site

Give your segment a name you can identify, such as the product name, or simply “Product Page”, and click Save.

Save the segment as “Product Page” and save.

Create your shopping cart segment

Follow the same steps again:

Shopping Cart” page segment

Finally, create your purchase confirmation or thank-you page segment

Follow the same steps again:

  1. Click on Add segment.
  2. Click on the red New Segment button.
  3. Click on Conditions in the advanced menu on the left.
  4. Search for the page in the drop-down menu.

Again, since the specific URL may vary from user to user, you’ll want to use the “contains” option and find a common denominator in the URL, such as /thank-you/. Give your “Thank you” segment a name and click Save.

Your Google Analytics should look like this:

Viewing segments in Google Analytics

Each segment is represented by a different colored line, and you can visually see the decline from one step to the next. There’s also a wealth of data for each segment described below. In this example, there appears to be a significant drop-off from the product page to the shopping cart, and again a number of people who don’t complete their order. Either of these would be a good place to start optimizing.

Setting goals in Google Analytics

Let’s move on to the more advanced option of creating and setting objectives.

Once you’ve done this, you’ll unlock other Google Analytics features, such as the Funnel Visualization report (available under Conversions > Goals > Funnel Visualization).

Visualizing Analytics Goals

To define goals, you need to access your Google Analytics administration settings. Click on the equipment icon in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen, then click on Goals.

Creating goals in Google Analytics settings

Then click on the red button “button..

New Analytics objective

Enter a name for your goal, such as “Place an order “, and check “Type: Destination”. Type : Destination. Then click on Continue.

In the last screen, we’ll use our thank-you page as the URL and select “Equals from the drop-down menu:

You now have the option of defining a value for each conversion. If you use your website primarily for lead generation, your revenue is probably not captured by Google Analytics. You can still estimate it by setting the Value field to ON, then specifying an amount. For example, if you’re using this goal to track white paper downloads, you can assume that, on average, each download is worth $100 to your business, so you should enter that. Again, this field is optional.

Objective enhancement

Next, turn the funnel ON. Here, you’ll present the different URLs for each stage of your funnel, just as we did when we created custom segments. Click Save when you’re done.

Finally, click on “Check this goal” to verify your work. Next, return to Conversions > Goals and you’ll see that you can now view the Funnel Visualization report where it shows you a visual representation of your funnel:

Google Analytics funnel visualization

This report tells us a number of things at a high level:

  • At the top, it shows you how many people have reached the target (120 sessions) and the overall conversion rate for this funnel (14.69%).
  • On the left, it shows us the previous page that brought visitors to the funnel in the first place. Often, this is the home page. It’s the most popular page for most websites, so it’s logical that it should appear here (indicated by “(entry)”).
  • On the right, it tells us how many people left the funnel at each stage, and which page they visited next, if they didn’t leave your site completely (indicated by “(exit)”).

Google Analytics will show you this same information at every stage. Where did your visitors come from before entering your funnel, did they leave at any stage and, if so, where did they go?

How can you use Google Analytics funnel data to optimize your site's conversion rates?

Funnel analysis helps you quantify the number of users reaching each stage, and determine the abandonment versus retention rate for each stage. Funnel analysis gives you the “What” (the cause). The “Why” (the reason) is a little harder to decipher.

Let’s take the example of our E-commerce funnel once again.

Our funnel analysis reveals that we have a high percentage of people going from our home page to our product page. That’s great! But if people don’t take that first step (go to a product page), it’s the #1 roadblock.

But many of those who reach the product page abandon their journey before adding anything to their shopping cart. This is where the focus should be. What can we do to improve our product pages?

  • Is it a design issue? Users don’t know how to add a product to the shopping cart? We may need to change the location, color or size of the Add to Cart button.
  • Is it a marketing issue? Maybe our positioning needs to be more effective, and we need to do a better job of emphasizing the benefits of this particular product.
  • Is it a question of price? Maybe the prices are really high compared to our competitors. When web users see it, they look at it and go.

There are all sorts of reasons why you might see friction on the funnel steps. That’s when that quantitative data really works well from a qualitative point of view, like adjusting the user experience, surveying your customers, and A/B testing your changes.

Customer surveys are a great place to start. There are many (and free) survey tools you can use for this purpose. Conduct a survey on the page where the problem arises, asking a simple question: “Were you able to accomplish what you were looking for on the site? If not, why not?”

From my experience with usage testing, you’ll find that a lot of people say they can’t find something or don’t know where to go. It’s a great opportunity to work on it.

If you’re on a tight budget, start with your friends and family. Ask them to follow the buying process on your website, but don’t give them any hints. Do they have any roadblocks along the way?

Turning insights into action with Conversion Funnels in Google Analytics

Conceptually, sales funnels aren’t a very difficult thing to grasp. We’re all consumers and we know how to do business online. We’ve all been in that position where we find ourselves lost on one website, get frustrated and leave for a competitor’s site.

This confusion represents a choke point in your sales funnel, and it can break your site. Funnel analysis helps you find these choke points. Then it’s up to you to experiment and improve the user experience.

Fortunately, setting up sales funnels in Google Analytics isn’t difficult. Follow the steps above, and you might be surprised by what you find.

For more information, don’t hesitate to contact our web analyst and tag management teams to work on optimizing your customer journey and acquiring qualified leads on your site.

Google Analytics : The ultimate guide to getting started with Google Analytics

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

Google Analytics is a great tool for tracking the activities of your site and your users. However, the sheer number of reports and information available can be time-consuming and leave you wondering where to start…

Indeed, this analysis tool can be confusing, even overwhelming, if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.
Like any tool, Google Analytics needs to be adapted to your needs, not the other way around.
You’ll need to know where to go, and which pages and reports to use, to find out what’s important for your business and the development of your website. It’s vital to get the information that can help you increase your revenues.

In the guide below, we’ll cover what you need to know to get started with Gooogle Analytics, and we’ll also show you how to install Google Analytics on your site, monitor your traffic, create advanced reports and much more.

Optimize your analytics accounts and tagging plan

Google Analytics Basics and Glossary

Before we delve into the benefits of Google Analytics, here’s a quick glossary of terms used in the interface and in this article.

Users – Users and active users indicate the number of website visitors or application users who have logged on to your website or application at least once during a given period.

Reports – Google Analytics offers over 50 free reports and the ability to create custom reports to help you analyze the demographic and behavioral data of users of your website and/or application.

Sessions – Sessions indicate the length of time a user is actively engaged with your website or application over a given period.

Traffic Sources – This report shows how users discover your website or application through organic search, paid search, referral websites and direct traffic channels. Also known as Acquisition Channels.

Direct traffic – Direct traffic is when a user starts a session on your website without coming from a traceable traffic source, for example someone typing your URL into their browser instead of clicking on your website link from Google search results.

Campaigns – Campaigns track specific ways in which users discover your website or application. Google Analytics tracks campaigns created by Google Ads and customized campaigns you create to track specific groups of traffic sources.

Pageviews – The total number of pages visited on your website or application during a given period.

Pages/Session – The average number of pages visited per session over a selected period, including repeated views of the same page.

Bounce rate – The percentage of sessions during a selected period where a user visited a page on your website or application and exited without interacting with any element of the page.

Audiences – Custom user groups you create to help identify specific types of users in Google Analytics reports, remarketing efforts, Google Ads ad campaigns and other Google webmaster tools.

Conversions and objectives – Objectives measure specific goals that you define as useful for your business, such as a purchase in your online store or the submission of a quote request form. Conversions represent the number of times users of your website or application complete each of the objectives you’ve defined.

Funnels – The path users take to reach a goal.

You don’t need to memorize them all. If you’re stuck in Google Analytics, you can hover over most terms to see a description window.

You can also click on the question mark at the top right of any Google Analytics screen to access the Google Analytics Help Center and search for specific terms and help information.

How to configure Google Analytics

To use Google Analytics, you need to log in with your existing Google Account or create a new one.

If you use Google Ads, Gmail, Google Docs, Youtube or any other Google product for your business, you must use the same account for Google Analytics. Once you’ve logged in to your Google account, you’ll sign up for Google Analytics.

To create your Google Analytics account, enter the details of your website or application.

Confirm the settings for data sharing between Google Analytics and other Google commercial products and click on Get tracking ID to complete the creation of your free Google Analytics account.

Your Google Analytics tracking ID is a number and code that uniquely identifies your website or application.

Popular app makers, website builders like Wix, content management systems like WordPress and e-commerce platforms like Shopify have specific instructions on how to add Google Analytics tracking code to your website or app.

Visit your website’s administrative dashboard to find out how to start tracking users of your website or app with Google Analytics.

Use Google Analytics insights

Using “Insights” at the top of the Google Analytics interface, you’ll be directed to the reports that are causing problems in your account.

How many users have I had this week/month/quarter/year?
What is the breakdown of users by device type/location/age?
What are my best pages in terms of page views?
Which of my destianation pages generate the most sessions?
How long do users stay on my site or use my application?
New visitors versus last month’s visitors?
What countries do my users come from?
What are my top U.S. cities in terms of users?
What is my target conversion rate?
What is the average loading time for my page?

Answering these questions can help you measure the results of your website’s marketing and advertising campaigns. Once you’ve identified the channels that attract the most customers to your site or app, you can focus your budget and time on the marketing and advertising tactics that generate the most conversions.

Optimize your analytics accounts and tagging plan

Custom settings to get the most out of Google Analytics

While you’re waiting for Google Analytics to start collecting data on your website or application, you can configure the following settings in your administration interface to make the most of your reports. Access the administration interface from the left-hand side menu.

Google Analytics objectives

Conversion reports in Google Analytics can reveal the most profitable users of your website or app. To use them, you’ll need to define one or more goals for your website or app users to achieve, such as making a purchase via the shopping cart on your website or making a purchase in the app.

Google Analytics offers templates you can choose from when creating a new goal. Choose the one that best matches the objective you want users to achieve on your site or app.

Once you’ve chosen a template, you’ll be directed to the appropriate goal type. If you have an e-commerce store and select “Buy goods”, it will choose the destination goal type.

From there, you’ll continue to detail goals and create a funnel to track the path your users take as they begin to make purchases. The funnel will track the percentage of users who start the process, but don’t finish using the steps and pages you’ve specified.

Continue to create goals as needed to track the additional tasks you want users to perform on your website or app. You can create up to 20 goals for your website or application.

Electronic commerce

E-commerce site owners can activate this option under “View Settings” to track transaction and product data from third-party shopping carts, mobile devices and other Internet-connected points of sale.

If you use a popular e-commerce platform like Shopify, you can refer to its documentation on how to send sales data and visitor behavior from its service to Google Analytics. This will allow you to view all your website data in a single application, instead of trying to match your Google Analytics data with that of your e-commerce platform.

Audience definitions

Audiences in Google Analytics represent the users most likely to achieve conversion goals on your website or application. You can track specific groups of users on your website or application by adding new audiences under “Audience definitions”.

These audiences can be leveraged with Google AdWords for remarketing and targeting. Let’s say you’re looking at facial care products online, and a few hours later, those same products appear on your favorite cooking site. This is remarketing with Google AdWords, as explained when you click on the AdChoices link.

Google AdWords displays your remarketing ad on websites in the Google Display Network. Google claims that the network reaches “90% of online users” through news, blogs and popular Google products like YouTube and Gmail. This ensures that your product or service reaches past website visitors in places they’ll notice.

Site search

If your website has a search field, you can track the queries made by your users by configuring your site search setting. To do this, search for something on your website and look for the letter preceding the query in the search results URL.

This is what you’ll need to enter in your site’s search settings. To find Site Search, click on View Settings in the Admin dashboard.

Scroll down the page until you see “Site search”. Activate this option and enter the letter of the search parameter.

Google Analytics may not show you the keywords users enter in organic Google search queries that lead to your website or app, but it can tell you what some users are looking for once they’ve arrived. You can use these keywords to create faster navigation to the pages users want most, improving the user experience.

Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool for website owners who want to monitor the health of their website in Google search results. If you’re already using it, you can connect it to your Google Analytics to get data on your main landing pages and the queries entered in Google organic search.

The option can be found in the Property Settings section of the administration dashboard, or in the Search Console section under Acquisition in the left-hand side menu.

By clicking on the button to configure data sharing with Search Console, you’ll be redirected to your website or application’s property settings in the admin dashboard. Scroll down until you see the Search Console section.

Click on the button to link your website or application in Google Search Console to your Google Analytics account. Give Google Analytics a few days to start receiving information from Search Console – specifically, more of the queries users enter into Google Search.

View Google Analytics reports

Depending on how many users engage with your website or app during a given period, you may have to wait a few hours or days to start receiving valuable information about your website traffic.

Here are some of the most important reports to consult, and how you can use them to help your business. You can access these and other reports in the Audience, Acquisition, Behavior and Conversion categories in the left-hand side menu.

Audience > Overview

Want to know how many users have used your site or application? Consult the “Audience overview” report, using the date selector at the top right of the report to view data for a specific period.

Use the Compare option to see if traffic to your website or app has increased or decreased between two periods, such as this week vs. last week, this month vs. last month, and other similar metrics.

Demographics > Overview

Identify the number of users in an age bracket or by gender (male/female) in the Demographics report > Overview.

If you’ve set up a Google Analytics goal as suggested above, take a look at the detailed age and gender reports under Demographics. Use the drop-down menu to switch between goals, and sort through the “Goal” achievements column to see which age groups and genders are best suited to conversion.

Use this information to help you create better sponsored ads on Google, Facebook and other ad networks by targeting ads to high-converting age groups and genders.

Audience > Language and region

Use these reports to display the number of users visiting your website, broken down by the language selected in the user’s browser settings, or by location. Sort by specific objectives to see where converting users come from and what language they speak most.

Select the drop-down menu to view more rows, or go to the next section of the data to see more locations and languages converting. Dive deeper by clicking on the countries at the top of the conversion page for details at state, county and city level.

Audience > Mobile > Devices

Not sure whether to optimize your website for mobile users or look into app development for your business? Check out the device report to see which devices users are accessing your website with, as well as the corresponding conversion data if you’ve set up goals.

If you notice a particular trend, for example that Android users have a higher bounce rate or a lower conversion rate than iOS users, you can test your website using an Android device to optimize it and ensure a seamless user experience.

Acquisition > All traffic > Channels

Get an overview of the best-performing channels – organic search, paid traffic, direct traffic, referral traffic, social traffic and email traffic.

For more details, including the specific sources that help users discover your website or application, click on additional reports in the Acquisition menu, such as the All Traffic > Source/Average and Social reports. These reports will reveal specific URLs and referral sources.

Behaviour > Site content > All pages

Find out which pages receive the most traffic using the All Pages report. Examine the bounce rate column of your most visited pages to determine if any need improvement so that more users spend more time and engage with them.

Behaviour > Site speed > Page load time

The page load time report helps webmasters identify the slowest loading pages that users access the most. Since page load speed can have an effect on conversions, it’s in your company’s best interest to find out what’s slowing down your top pages.

Conversions > Goals > Conversion funnel schema

Most of the reports in the “Conversions” section are a gold mine for companies looking to link revenues to specific marketing campaigns in order to determine ROI. The “Funnel Visualization” report, for example, will help you identify areas of your sales funnel that need to be optimized for conversions.

If you define a goal with a funnel, your funnel visualization report will look like this.

If you run an e-commerce business, you can use this report to diagnose a conversion problem on your contact page, for example. Correcting this problem could lead to increased sales in your online store.

Conversions > Multichannel funnel > Most common conversion paths

Not to be confused with the custom funnels you’ve set up with your goals, the “Multi-Funnel Channel Top Conversion Paths” report displays a user’s path from specific traffic channels like organic search results and social media before completing a goal.

Here, you can see that the most important traffic path that led to conversions was a user’s visit from an organic search and then directly before fulfilling a goal.

Go beyond the essentials

As you get used to the standard Google Analytics reporting functions, you can start to delve into other advanced features, including the following.

Create segments to display all the data in your Google Analytics reports for a specific subset of users, such as users from a specific country or paid traffic source.
Create customized reports that present the data you really want in a single report. It’s all about making a standard Google Analytics report more relevant to your business.
Create better visualizations of your Google Analytics data using Data Studio (as shown above).
These and other advanced Google Analytics features can help you get the business intelligence you need to grow.

Conclusion

When it comes to Google Analytics features, this article presents just the tip of the iceberg. Once you’ve mastered the basics, be sure to dive deeper into analyzing your site or app, using the data to improve your site’s traffic and conversions.

We welcome your questions and comments. If you need more information and advice on your Google Analytics and Tag Manager account, we can help you with your Data, Analytics & Tag Management.

Source: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Google Analytics

Need to evolve your digital strategy?

We carry out a complete diagnosis of your strategy and campaigns.

Fully supported by Adenlab, you pay nothing.

Our free preliminary audit will give you a clear picture of the current state of your campaigns. It will enable you to identify and plan the evolution of your performance on your acquisition channels.

Schedule your free audit

Google Tag Manager: the ultimate guide to getting started

Posted on by Adenlab Adenlab

Since its inception in 2012, Google Tag Manager has come a long way. In particular, it’s become much easier to use. But do you really know how to exploit its full potential? This short guide will help you get started and track your users’ behavior effectively. We’ll take you through the main features of Google Tag Manager, making them ever more practical and easy to use.

Contact us to analyze and develop your Analytics accounts

What is Google Tag Manager?

The Tag Management System (TMS) can easily be compared to the Content Management System (CMS). Both can make changes to an entire website, via a single interface, and without the need to go through a developer to change each tag one by one. You may wish to call in a developer for the initial installation of the Google Tag Manager code snippet.

Being able to manage your site’s tags means being able to analyze user interactions via a user-friendly interface. There are, of course, other solutions, such as Adobe Analytics’ Launch. But overall, they all work on the same model and can be easily integrated, without any programming notions.

Operation and set-up

Google Tag Manager inserts JavaScript and HTML tags, created from within its interface, into the hard-coded container on each page of your website. This Google Tag Manager container is a piece of code that allows you to have an impact on the tags.

Creating your Google Tag Manager account is quick and easy. All you have to do is fill in the information requested on the website. Once you’ve created your account, you’ll be taken to the main interface. At the top of your workspace, you’ll also find your unique identification number.

If you click on it, two pieces of code will appear:

  • The first code snippet uses JavaScript to activate tags, and Google Tag Manager asks you to paste it into every page of your website.

  • The second code snippet is an HTML iframe that is used when JavaScript is not available and must be placed after the opening tag.

To find out more, you can also visit Google’s Configure and install Tag Manager page.

Tags, triggers, variables

Here are the definitions of three important elements that appear in the Google Tag Manager interface:

– Tags: tags are tracking codes and code fragments that tell Google Tag Manager what action to take on this page. An example might be sending a page view call to Google Analytics.

– Triggers: triggers specify the conditions under which a tag should be triggered. For example, a trigger can be associated with a condition to trigger a tag only when a user displays URLs containing the path / blog /.

– Variables: variables are values used in triggers and tags to filter when a specific tag should be triggered. Google Tag Manager provides built-in variables and lets you create custom variables. A “click” class variable has a value name (such as a string of words) assigned to website buttons.

How do you create a tag in your Tag Manager?

The first thing you need to know is that you shouldn’t create a “Page view” tag if you already have a Google Analytics container on your site. Creating a “Page view” tag in Google Tag Manager in addition to the Google Analytics container will result in duplicate page view visits each time a user visits a page, skewing your data.

Once you’ve created a new tag (Tags – New), you can name it and select a Google Analytics tag type to send the data to. It is also possible to send data to other platforms. Don’t forget to add your unique identification number.

Variables: everything you need to know

Variables play a very important role in the creation of banners. There are two types of variables in Google Tag Manager: built-in variables and custom variables.

  • Built-in variables are a special category of variables that are “pre-created” and non-customizable. New containers have no user-defined variables at the outset, and some built-in variables are pre-activated.

  • Custom or user-defined variables: these are used to meet specific needs not covered by the built-in variables. In particular, Google Tag Manager is compatible with these types of user-defined variables: http source URL, proprietary cookie, data layer…

Google Tag Manager: use the preview function

Feel free to use the preview function by clicking on the button in the top right-hand corner of your workspace. Open your website in a new window. An insert should appear at the bottom. By default, the Tags window will display all tags on the page, whether activated or not.

When you add a tag to Google Tag Manager, it is not yet visible on the site. That’s why it’s important to test the tag, to ensure that it’s triggered and that the data is sent to Google Analytics.

You can then publish (click on “Submit”) your new tag from the Google Tag Manager interface.

Also worth knowing

Google Tag Manager can be used to create a tag from the simplest to the most complex. However, we advise you to try and keep things as clear and scalable as possible. Whether using an agency or in-house, we recommend that you keep an inventory of tags. Use meaningful names for each tag, trigger and variable. This will help everyone involved to understand which tags are active in the container. The “Versions” page shows you which version of the container is online on the site and lets you click on the different versions to see which tags it contains.

Go further with Tag Manager and your Google Analytics account

Google Analytics and Tag Manager are the main tools we use at Adenlab to visualize and track your Data-Driven strategy.

We will analyze your technical environment
We will prepare Workshops with your team to identify and validate the indicators and objectives you need to track and analyze.
The tagging plan for Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics or CRM will be documented.
And we will

We’ll take care of setting up the Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics environment.
We’ll also work with your technical teams to integrate elements into your site and source code.

Contact us to analyze and develop your Analytics accounts