Google Analytics Cross-Domain Tracking Is (Finally) Here
If you’re responsible for your brand or online store’s digital marketing strategy this should get you very excited.
Marketing attribution is one of the most difficult problems e-commerce marketers face today. Unless you’re in the direct response world, user purchase paths across multiple devices are somewhat of a black box. We built Enquire, a Shopify app, to enable e-commerce merchants to easily fill gaps in this black box by asking “how did you hear about us?” in a post-purchase survey.
Well, some good news, Google recently announced Google Signals, their tool to help websites track consumers across multiple devices. Facebook launched their cross-device reporting in the summer of 2014, it was only a matter of time before Google released theirs.
Google Analytics already has an attribution modeling tool that in today’s multi-device world doesn’t provide much incremental value. With Google Signals this should change. Marketers hypothetically will be able to more readily rely on user journey paths in GA and assign attribution and spend to each traffic source/campaign. The blue sky here is budget allocation improvements–for example, campaigns that may not have been getting much credit previously, may start to shine.
To note, signals can only track users who use Google products, so it’ll be interesting to see what percentage of users it can properly match across devices. Users must be opted in to Ad Personalization for Google to track them cross device. You can check to see if you’ve opted in here — by default you are.
Previous to Signals, the only accurate way to track users across devices is by forcing them to log-in and using GA’s User-Id features — not optimal for most e-commerce retailers.
Enquire + Google Signals
As much as Google Signals is going to provide a new window into user journeys, it’s important to note that this is still solely observational data. While this data can turn a blurry picture a bit more into focus, the combination of GA data + survey data will allow you to build much more reliable attribution models. Understanding top-of-funnel attribution to channels that are not so easily tracked by cookie data (i.e. word-of-mouth) will unlock the most insights.
The combination of Google Signals and Enquire’s Google Analytics integration is the perfect marriage of observational + customer survey data.
Google Signals Product Overview
Google Signals comes with a host of features that enable for more granular audience targeting and analysis, mainly cross device.
After you’ve activated Google Signals (instructions at the end of this post), you can view the reports under the Audience section in GA. It will most likely will take a bit of time prior to data actually populating in your account. The below are example reports pulled from Google’s support page.
Users By Device
Device Paths
This screen will help explain why most brands today see their multi-channel path looking like the below.
Channels
Acquisition Device
Google is currently rolling out Google Signals, if you see the below banner, you can activate it by clicking on the “Get Started” banner.
You can also activate Signals by navigating to your GA Property settings (second column), click Tracking Info and then Data Collection, where you’ll find the option to enable.
For more info on Google Signals, click here. Any questions or learnings, please share them in the comments.
