Best top 5 actionable insights from Google Analytics
-
Buongiorno from 14 degrees C cloudy wetherby UK
With a whole gamut of books out there are written around the topic of "Actionable Web analytics" where you have to wade through chapters of how to suck eggs and how to get analytics part of your business culture (whatever! most clients who look after their websites are entry level Marketing Execs who pay the digital agencies to do the thinking for them) I'd like to cut to the chase and list out say a top 5 of actionable insights a client would actually give the time of day for so heres my top five, whats yours?
1. Landing page bounce - showing them the £5k landing page designed with no conversion thinking is turning off customers
2. Synching up PPC campaigns to analytics and showing them how much money they are waisting
3. Goal funnels - Showing them there 20 step shopping conversion funnel gets abandoned at step 3
4. Non brand keyword traffic (although a stack of this gets blocked by "not provided" Big groan...)
5. Event tracking on there 10 page carousel anner showing them no one clicks on banners 2 - 10So under the strict label of "Actionable data only" from Google analytics whats your best insights you share with clients in the hope that they may actually give data reports the time of day!
Grazie tanto,
David -
Interesting question.
Some metrics that I have shown clients that they really respond to are:
The number of refferal sites/refferal keywords, and refferal traffic after a successful linkbuilding campaign. Especially if you can link it to sales.
Definitely CTR from SERPs
Geodata can inform a lot of decisions about purchasing advertising outside of a country wide campaign on AdWords.
The last one would agreeing with you on Goal Funnels.
-
This insight might need some help from the client however showing them what keyword driven leads are actually generating sales (esp through PPC) is a huge data set. A lot of times the keywords driving the most # of leads for the lowest CPL are not the ones bringing in the sales.
-
We did have the best summer in eons mind! Ok regarding event tracking on carousels...
I write the code & the dev team puts it in place so i kind of 50% understand but if it helps here is an example of a site that has event tracking on carousel banners:
http://www.perspex.co.uk/ (the event tracking has been added to the read more link)Hope this helps
-
ps - sorry forgot my temp: Shivering at 15 on the Isle Of Wight as a generally lovely summer comes to a depressing close
-
Nightwing,
(Hang on while I convert this to something you will understand..... oh yeah, 33 C and slightly humid at about 90%. I am so glad it has cooled down here!)
First good question, second like Dan - tell me about the carousel event tracking!! Good one.
Dan gives one I love in the CTR comparison before and after meta / titles, etc.
Another is to insure that GA and GWMT are linked and to show search queries. I never cease to be amazed by the gold in this data. When I show it to clients they light up.
Best
-
ps - how do you set up event tracking for different frames of a carousel ? im going to use that on a client straight away, thanks for that
-
Good list id go with most of those but i would certainly add CTR from search, demonstrating improvements after implementing meta descriptions and titles you have spent hours crafting & tuning to perfection.
As compared to clients probably non existent meta descriptions before you got involved where google was just sucking first bit of copy it came across which was probably totally irrelevant and devoid of a CTA, as well as boring default titles i.e. 'Welcome to brand X website' compared to your new version: 'Brand X gonna rock your world'
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google analytics suddenly stopped tracking all my landing pages
Hey guys. I love the new update of GA. Looks so clean. So, of course, I was excited to see how my landing pages were doing. I went to behavior, all content, all pages. And I noticed it's only showing me 19 pages out of the 93 I have indexed. And none of the top ones at all! Can't find them anywhere in GA! Anyone seen this before? Thank you so much
Reporting & Analytics | | Meier0 -
Can you track two Google Analytics Accounts on one site?
If you have a site that had an old analytics account and then implemented a new one is it possible to run tracking code that records to both accounts without causing your site or data issues? We are doing this so we don't loose data at any point - ideally it wouldn't have been split between the two but making one redundant isn't an option. Ideally we would have merged the data from both accounts and had one - however the research we have done points to this not being a possibility - unless one of you guys knows different? It would be great if anyone has experience on any this.. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ChrisAllbones0 -
Can you arrange Google Analytics source/medium traffic by percentage change?
I'm doing a year to year traffic audit for a client. I would like to analyze Google Analytics source/medium traffic by percent change. Is there a way to do this? Do I have to create a custom variable? 9BH70RO
Reporting & Analytics | | VanguardCommunications0 -
How would I create this type of report in Google Analytics?
I work for an e-commerce site. I would like to run a weekly report to see what every category pages increase and decrease for pageviews would be. How would I do that?
Reporting & Analytics | | EcommerceSite0 -
Google Analytics Organic Accuracy?
Hi, On a cool summers day, I was quenching my thirst for SEO Knowledge in the depths of Google analytics, When I stumbled upon a most troublesome sight. I was Browsing the data inside Acquisition->Keywords->Organic and comparing them to Acquisition->Search Engine Optimization->Landing Pages, to find the results quite questionable.. Since Keywords->Organic measure the visits from the organic results, and Search Engine Optimization->Landing Pages measures the clicks onto one of my landing pages from Google, I assumed they should be the same or very close, (besides Keywords->Organic having visits from other search engines) but they were not the same, as a matter of fact it was telling me that Keywords->Organic visits = 1,474, 27.19% of total(5,422) and Search Engine Optimization->Landing Pages, clicks = 1,548 154.80% of total (1000). Even worst the Search Engine Optimization -> Queries clicks = 1,123, 160.43% of total(700). I have been searching, and come up empty handed in the answer so does anyone know why Google is showing me different results and strange numbers that don't make sense? Any information is greatly appreciated?
Reporting & Analytics | | KBB_Digital0 -
Setting up goals in Google Analytics
Hello! This question is seems so obvious that I'm also ashamed to ask... almost. If the goal of a website is to have a visitor complete a contact form, when setting up the Goal in Google Analytics (as a "URL destination") the URL of choice would be the form's thank you page, correct? Because that's the page that proves the visitor completed the task we want them the achieve. Right? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | SmileMoreSEO
Erik0 -
Do Google Analytics filters affect link building?
We recently made a few link wheels for specific product pages. We've been having great results with all of the wheels except for one. The one we are having issues with is the only link that we were using a Google Analytics filter on; it looks like this http://domain.com/page.htm?zSource=Specific Keyword%tracking My question is does Google ignore links that are obviously utilizing their analyitcs custom filters? We're doing some more testing to try to find out if it truly is the link or if the wheel is a bad one. There are so many things that could go wrong but with so many of our link wheels working well, I wonder if the filters are what is causing such results.
Reporting & Analytics | | MichealGooden0 -
Google Analytics Options
A couple of months ago, I read about a new web stats application that is real time but more importantly let's you track user actions on a page (i.e. which buttons were clicked for example). This information would obviously be very helpful in continuing to improve site performance. Anyone have suggestions or know the name of this application? I do not mind paying but am not looking for an enterprise class application.
Reporting & Analytics | | Mont0