9 Crucial Google Analytics Tips to Improve Productivity

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adstriangle

11 min readJan 4, 2019

This blog post on Google Analytics Tips has a purpose. We always wish if someone would come out with the best tips on Google Analytics and put us out of our online advertising miseries.

As a beginner, one would think that Google Analytics is friendly.

With a highly intuitive interface and ease of accessibility, it is quite normal to have a perception that Google Analytics is straightforward.

But is that the case?

Well, if the platform was that user-friendly and easy to use, why would you even search for Google Analytics Tips and read our blog post?

Anyway, the bottom line is that there are many ways you can fail while using Google Analytics.

No matter how many guidelines and best practices you employ, you will never miss out on hitting brick walls and pointing loopholes in the system.

Okay, enough with the chit-chat. Let’s get to the point.

We’re going to talk about the best ways to improve Google Analytics that will help you boost your Sale figures.

So, let’s dive in!

Here are the best Google Analytics Tips to improve productivity:

Tip #1: Always have a Purpose to use Analytics

Boosting sales is not an art.

All it takes is a better understanding of the data presented before you and knowing where to make the change.

It’s not like that you come to Google analytics, track 11 odd metrics and instantly increase your sales.

To be honest, checking analytics just to find the numbers is a waste of time.

Once you have everything else in place, only then should you head over to analytics.

But before opening analytics and jumping into a world full of metrics and numbers, you should have a purpose.

A purpose, or a specific action item that you want to address.

You should have a list of tasks that you want to finish once you are on Google Analytics.

What exactly are you trying to fix once you get onto the Google Analytics interface?

Once you get onto a specific list of task that you want to accomplish and you know where to start, you can begin with using Google Analytics.

What if you don’t do that, will it not work?

See, Google analytics is not just for looking at the data presented before you.

It is more for accumulating as many insights as possible which will help you make the right changes to your online business.

If you don’t know where to start, you will get caught up in random reports and consume a ridiculous amount of time on analytics, something you as a business owner would like to skip.

Liked the tip? Let’s discuss the next one.

Tip #2: Save Time with Email Notifications

This Google Analytics tip is something you should give great thought to.

What is one of the biggest problems with Google Analytics?

The time extracting useful data takes!

You can wander around on Google analytics for hours on stretch, trying to look for something that will boost conversions or sales.

But is the time consumed not worth it?

Well, we agree on the fact that the Google Analytics platform allows for deep customizations and reporting which are incredibly useful for your business.

But with that, it also has a serious downside.

With the increasing complexity of information and interface it becomes quite confusing and finding the exact information becomes tough.

To prevent yourself from getting stuck into the black hole that Google Analytics is, go for Custom Reports.

Don’t worry, we will tell you how you can do that.

So, first head to the Admin section of your Analytics account.

Now under the ‘View’ section, select ‘All Website Data’ and then find the ‘Custom Alerts’ tab:

What does Custom Alert in Google Analytics do?

Custom alerts allow you to have regular email updates and text message notifications when something happens on your account.

Couple all this with the Alert Conditions, you have complete control over what notifications you receive.

The great thing about the Alert Conditions on Google Analytics is you can alert yourself for almost anything.

You can help yourself out by creating multiple alerts for the most important and key information that you wish to monitor.

Cool, isn’t it?

Tip #3: Apply the Opportunity Pie theory

There is a purpose of implementing inbound marketing.

You don’t just write a quality blog post and not want anything out of it, right?

Once your blog post starts driving a good amount of traffic, you want it to generate leads as well.

To do that, you employ Call-To-Actions on the blog post and wait for visitors to sign up for your newsletter or subscribe to your paid services.

To be honest, conversion rate of a majority of websites is ridiculously low.

Reason?

It’s because not everyone who lands on your website wants to subscribe to your services.

Not everyone cares about your product as you do. So they won’t convert.

To prove this, we use Avinash Kaushik’s Opportunity Pie theory:

The Opportunity Pie Theory by Avinash clearly states that not all traffic that your website gets is convertible.

So, are the standard conversion rates on Google Analytics results lying to us?

Unfortunately, yes.

Honestly, a majority of your visitors will never convert even if you give them the service for free.

That’s because they simply don’t need it or aren’t interested.

On Google Analytics, each visitor is counted in the conversion data.

We need to fight this to get to the bottom of all this!

We need to know the real sales number and to do that, we have to filter out the visitors who bounce quickly and bloat your data.

So, head to the ‘Source/Medium’ report under Acquisition.
Now, create a new segment by adding custom parameters to the audience.
Create a new segment and select the behavior tab.
Now under behavior, customize the ‘Session Duration’ element and make sure you eliminate all the sessions that are under 10 seconds.
Click Save and Voila!

You have a table with the new and REAL conversion rates below.

No with this new data, you can assess if your sales strategy is working or not.

Liked this Google Analytics Tip? Let’s get to another one then!

Tip #4: Leverage the on-site search terms

When online users land on your website for the very first time, there are chances they are going to get overwhelmed.

What most websites do to tackle this issue is employing a search bar.

When it comes to the biggest data treasures, the on-site search term report on your website and Google Analytics is just goldmine!

The on-site search term report shows you the most common searches conducted on your site and the exact keywords used.

Not just that, it also gives you a clear insight into what people expect out of your website.

You can find the report by navigating to ‘Site Search’ and ‘Search Terms’ under the behavior report section.

So, how exactly can you leverage these on-site search terms?

You can use the on-site search term report in your email marketing campaigns.

You can even create new landing pages dedicated to specific search terms.

The on-site search terms report is one of the best places to locate keyword data and leverage that data to help you drive more engagement and sales by providing what people most often search for.

Tip #5: Use Primary and Secondary Dimensions

Most Google Analytics reports allow change to the primary dimensions of the report.

This allows you to further drill down to get more detailed information.

In some cases, additional dimensions give you access to a lot more information.

Some reports also allow the application of secondary dimensions to provide more information in the same table.

Adding Source as the secondary dimension allows a visual of the Source from the traffic’s origin.

Applying secondary dimensions allows you to customize your reports to the point where you can cross-reference your data with different data points.

In addition, you can save shortcuts to any customized reports. Once on the report, you can click on “Shortcut” to add a link to the current configuration of this report on your Home tab.

All report customizations, including advanced segments, secondary dimensions, sorting, etc. will be automatically applied when you access the report with this shortcut.

Tip #6: Always Compare To Past Performances

On Google Display, the default period for which it shows the result is past 30 days.

However, it gives you an opportunity to select any range you want.

Along with that, Google Analytics provides you with the ‘Compare To’ checkbox.

This is of great help as it allows you to compare your current data with the data of any date range in the past.

How do you know that you are progressing when you the see the reports?

You know that when you compare the performance with the last report’s figures.

When reviewing any report, you want to compare them to historical data.

More importantly, you want to see the positive changes that happened over time in areas that really matter for your website.

The KPIs you shortlisted won’t reveal much without comparing your present results to historic values.

When you are trying to make improvements on your website, you would want to keep track of the comparisons.

After all, one of the most effective ways to know what works and what doesn’t is by comparing the results of the past and the present.

Along with that, it is of high importance that you review your reports quite regularly.

No matter how beautifully you design your reports, mainly custom reports, they are of zero use if you don’t review them regularly.

Once you have your main KPIs, review them weekly.

Always take time out to have a thorough review of the reports at least once a month.

Along with that, make sure you review the performance of your website immediately after any major update you implemented to check if the performance of your website is not affected negatively.

Tip #7: Create and Apply Advanced Segments

Segments have a special place in getting Google Analytics results.

They help you to improve Google Analytics to a great extent.

Segments allow you to review the online traffic based on criteria that you specify.

With this, you can compare the performance of a particular segment to that of the entire website.

One of the great things that Segments provide is the ability to be applied to any reports throughout Google Analytics.

You have the power to create segments based on dimensions, visit date or metrics, etc.

Not just that, a segment is such a powerful tool that it allows you to create reports within reports.

Segments can be effectively used to classify visitors and viewing reports on the users who have already converted and study their behaviors.

It allows you to create classes for users on the basis of the revenue generated by them.

HVCs or High-Value Customers can be identified using the Recency-Frequency-Monetary Value (RFM) segment.

This helps you to shortlist the customers who have recently made a purchase on your website, or have visited frequently and engaged.

These are the customers who are more likely to make a purchase again.

Advanced Segments also allow you to focus on new visitors who arrived on the website during a specific time when you launched a campaign.

This is great when you are measuring the performance of your marketing campaigns.

Tip #8: Make Use of Filters

We wrote this blog post to send out a message.

The more you can scrutinize the numbers that really matter, the less noise there is to distract your analysis.

Being a website owner and most probably a business owner, you need to be specific and focused than being broad and undisciplined.

Filters help you achieve exactly that.

One of the most basic applications of Filters is to segment data into smaller groups.

You can include specific sets of data, exclude other sets or to search for or replace other data.

Filters are very easy to set up as well.

You can go on creating filters at the Account level and then assign them to different views.

Make sure you always use your Test View or the Sandbox view first.

You can go on apply it later to your desired View.

Views are created to include or exclude internal IPs, Dev site traffic, Lowercase search terms, Lowercase URLs, remove query string and so much more.

Whenever you have to include or exclude, or consolidate certain data in a view, use Filters.

Tip #9: Integrate Google Analytics with Your Testing Tool

There are chances that you will be running A/B tests on your Analytics data.

When doing that, you need to bring in the data from somewhere other than just your testing tool.

We are not implying that your Testing Tool is not capable to produce trustworthy results; it’s just that you want a second look at the data in use.

Not mentioning the tons of limitations you face when doing post-test analysis using your Testing Tool.

For example, your testing tool won’t allow you to dig into different segments and observe how they were affected by the tests.

When conducting revenue analysis you will definitely need the raw data, which is ridiculously painful.

When you integrate Google Analytics with your testing tool, you can achieve a more granular level of user behavior analysis and also get a second take on the data in use.