Kickstarting Your Analytics Strategy: Simple Steps for Powerful Insights

Take a Break from the Computer

Let's pause for a moment and forget about all of those ideas for now. Shut down all of the open tabs in your browser and inform your developers to take a break. Take some time off from your computer after reading this post. We're leaving the tools, technology, and analytics to one side and concentrating on the strategy side of things. There will be some Google Analytics insights thrown in here and there but the emphasis is on the overall approach, not the technical or administrative details. This can be a daunting process and often it's more difficult than the actual execution of web analytics.

The realm of marketing is subjective and based on context and individual experience. People may be relying on you to help shape decisions and devise a plan for the future. Whenever you hear the popular phrase "data-driven", it's basically the same as saying "guided". It is the people who are actually in charge of the process. As such, it is your responsibility, as well as that of your fellow pilots, to map out a course before beginning the flight in the right direction.

Understanding Measurement Strategy: Is It Going Too Far in Analytics Goals?

Understanding a measurement strategy requires one to delve deeper into the data that is being collected. By doing so, it is possible to determine what elements are important and how they should be tracked in order to achieve the desired goal. Reading further can help to gain an understanding of how to apply this strategy.

The purpose of this article is to delve further into the intricacies of communication and planning for larger or more specialized organizations. The aim is to make sure that the web analytics techniques used by your business are successful, efficient, and tailored to your particular organization.

Strategizing for Your Company's Objectives

To get started with your strategy, first, decide what type of organization you are. It's possible that you fall into multiple categories - are you a publisher? A self-service site? A retailer? Once you have this figured out, you can look into industry and space research to get you started. You don't have to come up with everything from scratch. You can look into ideas, check out competitors and read up on case studies to get inspired!

A gap can sometimes exist between the executives, marketers, analysts, and developers/web teams of some companies. For instance, the analysts investigate and present data on broad patterns, the marketers craft a presentation that demonstrates those tendencies alongside other virtual/physical endeavors, and the executives analyze the number of visitors, bounce rate, and pageviews and ask, "So, what does this mean for our quarterly revenue?" This usually leads to disarray and the developers are then assigned a task to add 100 events for each button press, form submission, hover, and hyperlink on the website.

Avoid this! Include a representative from each department in your following meeting. You don't want the process to become drawn out and unproductive. How can you ensure you get the answers you're looking for? Prepare questions in advance and be sure you have the data to answer them. It's simple- if you ask a question, you'll get an answer or be given an action to get the answer. Bear this in mind when planning a strategy meeting.

This is a sample of what an agenda may look like:

• What are the primary objectives of our firm this quarter?

• How does the website reflect the company and bolster those targets?

• What hypotheses do we have concerning the individuals who visit the site?

• What are our reflections on the promotional campaigns that are successful with regard to those people?

• Let everyone select one activity or action on the website that they think is most critical (Bonus round: confirm next quarter to see who was precise!)

• What data from the website do we require to make wise choices?

You are now prepared to begin. It is not necessary to bring the whole team together just to discuss session timeout, tracking code, Google Tag Manager containers, or event naming conventions. You can already feel the improvement in efficiency due to the fact that every team will have a better idea of what they need to ask from the data and they will be more mindful when it comes to examining it.

At the meeting, the subsequent action item is to evaluate its outcome by using Google Analytics. This platform implements default data and customized settings to interpret and respond to user behavior. We will now present several ideas to kickstart the process of constructing a complete Measurement Strategy. 

What's the Initial Step?

When formulating an analytics strategy, the first step is to decide which course of action to take and who will be responsible for seeing it through. Talk over the different approaches with your team to choose the most suitable one for your business.

Tracing the Money

Are you investing money and getting results? This straightforward process recommends commencing your plan with the Advertising and Marketing departments to ensure they completely comprehend what is producing results and what is not. Demonstrate with data how significant various channels are and question your assumptions.

If we consider social media, its usage of it is highly dependent on the field, company, and product. Even if you don't spend cash on social media, it still requires a lot of resources such as time and energy. Ensure that the work you put into social media will result in a good return and that the investment is based on data. For instance, "We are devoting our time and effort into social media to strengthen our brand, even if it doesn't directly generate leads and sales."

Who Can Reap the Greatest Advantages?

When planning for website migration/redesign, consider questions related to the content, usability, and technical specs. For new content strategies, look into which content works better, trial various messages with other tools, and observe which advertising audiences achieve the highest conversion rates.

Who Can Own It?

Although it may not be the first suggestion I would make, the most practical course of action is to keep in mind that setting up an Analytics system requires both time and energy. There needs to be a person within the organization to manage the data, measure its success, make sure that it is tracking accurately, and seek ways to make it better. Trying to assign this task to an already-overburdened employee will only result in disappointment and annoyance.

Conceptualizing Measurement

In order to illustrate a plan, we will give an example of Business-to-Business (B2B). This applies to firms that target other companies instead of individual buyers. Therefore, the first step is to confirm what kind of company is involved. Here is a list of initial points with sample responses for a B2B operation.

Q: What goal is the business aiming to accomplish this quarter?

A: Successfully concluding extensive offline transactions

Q: What are the advantages of using this website?

A: Generating leads, such as initiating a trial or providing contact information, is one of its primary functions.

A: It also assists with answering questions and providing instruction on our company.

Q: What are some ideas or assumptions about the visitors to the website?

A: Our user base consists of researchers and influencers on one side, and budget and decision-makers on the other.

A: We gain exposure through our social channels and paid advertising.

Fascinating theories! Let's delve into some of these ideas to progress toward the data. The solutions we come up with can assist us in forming a list of further steps, likely combining the release/distribution of reports stored in Google Analytics, adding extra data to Google Analytics to make reporting stronger or modifying internal procedures to guarantee measurable and precise data.

Linking Our Responses to the Actions We Take

The strategy meeting revealed that we can easily ascertain a lot of information by studying the Acquisition section of existing reports to determine the sources of traffic and how they influence the overall website activity.

It's possible to obtain a great deal of information right away with Google Analytics, and there are many techniques to enhance this data.

Acquiring Further Information on Our Audience

Finally, we can turn our attention to our Users - researching them and discovering ways to assess them. We have classified some of the people who could be visiting our sample website. Let's write down further information about these users, and the activities they are likely to perform.

Team members might be given the responsibility of assessing the various choices, being knowledgeable about the service, and evaluating the features and benefits. Meanwhile, the people who take action and make the final decision could be from accounting, IT, the head of the department, or even the CEO.

To get the ball rolling, we will concentrate on a few points for the purpose of constructing these personas more extensively. These points include demographics, selection of technology, locality, and social behaviors.

In order to take our example user analysis to the next level, we should consider the following measurements:

Specialists in the field of the Company

• Check the frequency of your Organic Traffic segment in comparison to other similar companies

• Analyze the Returning Users segment

• Evaluate the Pages/Session metric

• Consider the "About Us" pageviews

• Track Resource downloads (requires event tracking)

• Measure Engagement Conversions, such as newsletter sign-up (requires event tracking, goal setup)

People engaged in the act of making decisions

• Achieving success within one session (which necessitates the setting of objectives)

• Examining the direct traffic that is directed to the homepage (this could be notified to you via email or chat)

• Submitting forms (this necessitates an event)

• Incorporating Google Analytics with CRMs. 

Users

• Utilizing multi-session analyses for campaigns, particularly when it isn't a spur-of-the-moment buy or enrollment 

• Crafting a custom channel involving industry vertical websites

• Creating a custom channel involving affiliates and partners

• Importing cost data for paid search outside of Google

• Making full use of all campaign parameters including content and possibly even more custom parameters

Your Opportunity

Having an arsenal of questions regarding your business, website, and data is a crucial aspect of devising a strategy. With a plan in mind, you can then answer inquiries on the conduct of different users and the website's performance in the proper context.

Your industry or company's objectives can be the basis for beginning a purposeful analytics approach. This can be done simply by asking a single question.

As Google Analytics continues to evolve, businesses better understand their customers, leading to data-driven decisions. Safeguarding your Universal Analytics data can be challenging. That's where Analytics Safe comes in – we make the process of Universal Analytics data smooth and hassle-free.