My talk at the ObservePoint Analytics Summit covers 25 tips, tricks & hacks in 30 min. The target was 30 but I couldn't fit them all in, these are the 5 which missed the cut.

1. Google Analytics Crash Course
5 Tips/Tricks/Hacks (that didn’t fit) in 30 minutes
@peter_oneill

2. Understand Google Analytics definitions
• Understand where Google Analytics
data comes from
• Users are not people
• They are a count of unique cookie IDs
• They are not shared across devices or
browsers
• They are deleted regularly
• They are unique to that time period
• It is an inflated number and we don’t
know by how much!
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@peter_oneill

3. Wherever possible, group values
• Absolute counts of days, words, etc can be
very hard to interpret for non analysts
• They are fairly meaningless at a granular level
• Much easier to understand:
• short, medium, long
• new, recent, old, very old
• Make the data useful, make it information, let
the business use it
• If using GTM, very easy to adjust the business
logic on these values
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@peter_oneill

4. Record the customer ID and GA client ID
• When visitors are logged in, record their Customer ID in a
hit/session scoped custom dimension
• For all visitors, record their Google Analytics client ID (cookie
value) in another session scoped custom dimension
• http://www.simoahava.com/analytics/improve-data-collection-with-
four-custom-dimensions/
• This information can be used to identify visitors sharing logins
• Different devices used at same location at same time
• Different devices used in different cities/countries over time
• Plus a variety of other purposes
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@peter_oneill

5. You don’t need all Enhanced Ecommerce stages
• Returning to the idea of Core tracking first,
this also applies to Enhanced Ecommerce
• Critical steps are
• View Product
• Add to Basket
• Checkout (once)
• Transaction
• Get this tracking right, the rest can wait
• It gives you an Ecommerce funnel at product
level
• Plus category, brand, etc
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@peter_oneill

6. Use the full Enhanced Ecommerce Category variable
• You can capture five pieces of information within the Enhanced Ecommerce Category
variable
• The standard report displays all five levels as a single variable but custom reports &
the API allow you to split into five different product scoped custom dimensions
• Same as campaign tracking, capture as much granularity as possible
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@peter_oneill

7. THANK YOU
@peter_oneill
I can be found at
• peter.oneill@leapthree.com
• @peter_oneill
• +44 7843 617 347
• www.linkedin.com/in/peteroneill