25 Google Analytics tips, tricks and hacks that were presented as part of the ObservePoint Analytics Summit conference.

1. Google Analytics Crash Course
25 Tips/Tricks/Hacks in 30 minutes
@peter_oneill

2. Quick introduction to me
• Australian living in London
• Worked in Digital Analytics for over 10 years
• Founder of L3 Analytics in 2010
• London based Digital Analytics Consultancy
• GA & GTM Certified Partner
• Merging with AEP Convert to form LeapThree
• Support with Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics
• Services from Set-up to CRO, Personalisation and Data Strategy
• Work with clients of all sizes and across all sectors
• Founder of MeasureCamp
• Co-founder of MeasureBowling
@peter_oneill

3. Quick explanation of this session
• I originally was going to give 10 Google Analytics tips/tricks/hacks but
decided that wasn’t enough
• Now targeting 25 within what is left of my 30 minutes
• Some are basic, some are advanced
• They cover business principles, Google Analytics set-up, reporting and
analysis
• If one is boring or not relevant – give it a minute…
@peter_oneill

4. Before you open
Google Analytics
@peter_oneill

5. Understand the purpose of Digital Analytics1
@peter_oneill
 To provide intelligence that informs
business actions leading to an
improvement in performance for
online organisations
Photo Credit:
HikingArtist.com via
Compfight cc

6. Create a Google Analytics solution for non analysts
• Do not create a Google Analytics set-
up for yourself
• That only you understand
• Ensure that everyone can understand
the reports
• They are the people who have to use
the information
• No abbreviations or only being able
to access information by combining
multiple custom dimensions
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@peter_oneill

7. Invest time to understand information needs
• Talk to people, talk to all the end users of
Google Analytics data
• Understand the decisions they are making
and actions they are taking
• Write down a plan for all the information
you need to capture in Google Analytics
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@peter_oneill
Know what you need to
know

8. Track the most useful information first
• Basic – basic page tags only
• Core – macro conversion actions and critical
information on visitors/content
• Silver – micro conversion actions and directly usable
information on visitors/content
• Gold – tracking of non critical features and
interesting information on visitors/content
• Platinum – integrated data across multiple data
sources
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@peter_oneill
5 Platinum
4 Gold
3 Silver
2 Core
1 Basic

9. Be creative within your Google Analytics solution
• One of the biggest barriers to getting value
from Google Analytics is Creativity
• You need to think of the data to capture before
it can be tracked
• What information is needed to inform business
questions/actions??
• You can capture
• the weather
• how many product sizes are in stock
• how long until a subscription expires
• whether the holiday booking people are looking for
is during school holidays
• This information is not out of the box
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@peter_oneill

10. Useful information
to capture
@peter_oneill

11. Record the Page URL and the Page Referrer
• Always record in a content grouping or hit based
custom dimension
1. the full URL of the page being viewed
2. the referrer to this page
• Key use is identifying the cause of 404 error pages
• URL that generated error
• referrer to that page
• Create a custom report to display this information
• Use to identify & fix broken links on your and 3rd party
websites
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@peter_oneill

12. Record the number of search results returned
• Record the number of search results in a custom dimension
• Key use is to identify search terms with ZERO search results
• Fix it so people can find what they were looking for
• Or identify a new business opportunity
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@peter_oneill

13. Record Form Validation errors
• Record the form name, field name
and error message in hit scoped
custom dimensions
• Create a custom report to identify
cause of form errors
• Understand where users are having
issues
• Or where your developer needs to
adjust their settings
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@peter_oneill

14. Google Analytics
campaign tracking
@peter_oneill

15. Use all 5 Google Analytics campaign parameters
• There are five campaign parameters available
to you – use them all
• Ignore variable names, treat as a hierarchy
• Capture the granularity of campaigns
• Example – Email
• type of email (promotional or operational)
• email category OR distribution list
• name of email
• email campaign OR date email sent
• link identifier
• Bonus – if need more parameters, using
session scoped custom dimensions and
populate using View filters
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@peter_oneill

16. Tell your vendors to add GA campaign parameters
• Many companies STILL don’t use campaign tracking
• Especially crazy when paying for a service such as
emails, display ads & affiliates
• In nearly every case, the vendor can flick a switch to
add Google Analytics campaign tracking
• Tell them to do so
• If they say they can’t or there is a fee, then their
solution is not that advanced or they are trying to hide
your data from you
• I recommend switching to their competitor
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@peter_oneill

17. Don’t forget GA campaign tracking for Social Media
• Companies don’t worry about tracking social
media
• Their comment “it appears as a referrer in
Google Analytics”
• My response “only if the visitor clicks through
from the website and there is no redirect”
• If visitors click through that the Facebook,
Twitter, etc apps, no referrer is recorded
• It appears to be Direct traffic
• You don’t get full credit for your work
• Please, invest the time & track social links
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@peter_oneill

18. Google Analytics
configuration
@peter_oneill

19. Create GA goals for negative experiences
• Goals can be about negative website experiences
• Create a goal for viewing 404 Error pages
• Create a goal for experiencing Form Validation errors
• If “Goal Completion Rate” is above X%, take action
• Set own limit but should be below 5%
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20. Create a GA goal for All Sessions
• This is a method to get a Last Click sessions report
• Create a goal for “All Sessions” – it is a destination goal which “begins with /”
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@peter_oneill
• Select the Assisted Conversion report
within Multi-Channel Funnels
• Select “All Sessions” Goal as the
Conversion for the report
• The “Last Click” metric now
represents sessions
• The report displays last click sessions
by Channel (or medium or source or
anything else)

21. Create a goal for each funnel checkpoint
• There appears to be a backlash against
funnels but they are still very useful
• Goal funnels can’t be segmented
• Instead create a goal for each checkpoint
• This generates a horizontal funnel
• Can then view funnel for all dimensions
values within any report
• Use to identify differences in performance
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@peter_oneill

22. Create Calculated Metrics for each funnel stage
• Better still, use Calculated Metrics to calculate completion rates for each funnel stage
• Use the goals already created, create calculated metrics based on goalY / goalX
• Create custom reports with these calculated metrics to show progress through the
funnel at each stage, allowing you to compare across dimension values
• http://www.l3analytics.com/2015/11/03/a-powerful-use-case-for-ga-calculated-
metrics/
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@peter_oneill

23. More useful
information to capture
@peter_oneill

24. Rename your pages in Google Analytics16
@peter_oneill
• Page names must be:
1. Unique
2. Hierarchical
3. Intuitive
• Page names based on URLs often
don’t meet these rules
• They are default to the CMS or
designed for SEO purposes
• Rename all your pages in the tags
you send to Google Analytics
• Make them as useful and user
friendly as possible

25. Record the type of each page
• While renaming pages, group them
• Capture the “Page Type” as a Content Grouping
in Google Analytics
• This can be used to understand website Entry
Points
• Will come back to this point later
• Or for understanding website navigation at an
aggregated level
• E.g. click from Product List A to ANY product page
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@peter_oneill

26. Record the type of visitor
• The best possible segmentation is for
different types of visitor
• So capture if each visitor is a prospect or
a customer in a session scoped custom
dimension
• Use to compare performance for known
customers vs people discovering you
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@peter_oneill
• This is complicated to set up, full instructions in this blog post
• http://www.l3analytics.com/2016/01/18/understanding-your-website-visitors-prospects-
vs-customers/
• Can extend to different segments of customers e.g. loyal customers vs discount
shoppers

27. Record Product Availability
• People can’t buy what is not available
• Record the % of product variations that are
in stock on a product page
• E.g.
• Product A has 7% availability (1 out of 14 sizes)
• Product B has 29% availability
• Product C has 75% availability
• Product D has 100% availability
• Product Availability is a common reason
for product underperformance and lost
sales
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@peter_oneill
Product A
Product C
Product D
Product B

28. Record the basket value in a Custom Metric
• One frustrating aspect of Enhanced Ecommerce is it
doesn’t expose basket value or any price data prior to
purchase
• Record in a product scoped custom metric
• Value of products added to basket
• Value of products removed from basket as a negative value
• Value of products in a transaction as a negative value
• This custom metric gives you the value of Abandoned
Baskets
• Share with senior management
• Caveat that this value doesn’t calculate quite right for
purchases across sessions
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@peter_oneill
Photo Credit: gabriella szekely

29. Useful reports
@peter_oneill

30. My favourite report – pivot Entry Point vs Medium
• Landing Page report, switch to Page Type content grouping as primary dimension,
pivoted against Medium (would prefer Channel) with a quality metric such as
Bounce Rate or Conversion Rate as a second pivot metric
• If you can’t find insights here, you are not looking hard enough!
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@peter_oneill

31. Create a Performance Diagnostic report
• Each row is a different metric, each column is a different segment
• Look for the bugs and the opportunities using internal benchmarks
• An online version of this is currently in beta – http://profitgrid.io/
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@peter_oneill

32. Create a tactical report for Ecommerce
A. Most popular product
B. The money maker
C. Something is wrong
D. Another issue here
E. Opportunity product, make
more visible
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@peter_oneill

33. Create a tactical report for Publishers/Content
• Article #2
• Popular
• Not very effective
• Access via other
sites
• Article #11
• Less popular
• High reads, shares &
comments
• Access via internal
links
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@peter_oneill

34. One to go…
@peter_oneill

35. Hit based segmentation is possible!!
• Hit based segmentation is a missing feature in
Google Analytics but it is possible
• This is for scenarios like
• Category – video interaction
• Event - <name of interaction e.g. play, pause, watch
50%, watch 75%, complete>
• Label - <video name>
• If create Segment A, it returns all sessions
where the visitor saw 75% of a video AND had
an interaction with “Product A Video”
• Using Segment B, it returns all sessions where
the visitor saw 75% of a video AND had an
interaction with “Product A Video” in a single
GA hit e.g. saw 75% of “Product A Video”
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@peter_oneill
Segment A
Segment B

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