Making data-driven decisions with Planet 4
A few use cases for both Data Studio and Google Analytics
*This post is co-authored by Ibraheem Elawadi, Michael Parker and Luca Tiralongo
The Planet 4 prototype was launched on January 31st. Starting with a brand new Analytics set up (via a flashy new Tag Manager container) and pursuing the consolidation of the standard set of KPIs identified, it is time to have a look at how Planet 4 is performing and set a solid baseline on how data should inform decisions and not only serve as vanity metrics.
Why setup a Data Studio Dashboard?
Besides getting more features and ease-of-use, the key reason behind setting up this Data Studio Dashboard is to improve productivity by spending less time on reporting and more time on analysing.
Starting from one link, everyone who puts content on Planet 4, manages the site, or runs reports can visualise performance data at any time, both for an overview or to take instant decisions.
>>> Access the P4 DataStudio Dashboard <<<
Remember, a dashboard is not an analysis tool. A dashboard is designed with the purpose of giving quick, helpful visualisations of data, but it cannot (and should not) give all of the answers.
This is the tricky thing about designing a dashboard: making a dashboard that is informative, but at the same time simple and not too cumbersome. The most interesting answers are often found when you dig deeper (perhaps because of something that prompted you in the dashboard). And to dig deeper, you need to jump into Google Analytics and start getting into the juicy stuff.
When to use the Dashboard?
Anytime you want (without needing Google Analytics access or to ask your P4 Webmaster).
Designed with a user-centered approach, the P4 dashboard consolidates KPIs in 3 pages: Conversion, Acquisition and Behaviour, allowing folks to get information in a simple, straightforward way, and with no need for interpretation.
Here are a few scenarios* on how the P4 Data Studio Dashboard can help you take data-driven decisions like pushing successful Planet 4 content, reshaping unsuccessful ones or focusing more on successful acquisition channels rather than others.
*Do you have other suggestions or cases to submit? Please comment below and we will update the article with the answers!
#1 — I want to know how P4 drove people to action in the first 10 days of April for the Plastic campaign.
Page 1 (Conversion). Select the date in the drop down. Select “Plastic” in “Campaign” filter on the left menu. Enjoy.
#2 — I am considering a mobile-first campaign for Instagram stories and need to know the average monthly mobile traffic from Italy.
Page 2 (Acquisition). Select the dates in the drop down (remember, P4 was launched on January 31st, 2018). Select “mobile” on device list. See the world map? Enjoy.
#3 I want to know how the latest Amazon Reef press release was consumed and shared in the first week of its launch (April 16th).
Page 3 (Behaviour). Select the dates in the drop down. Since it’s a fairly recent content it should be among the top results in both Scroll Depth (100% if the page was viewed entirely, 75% if up to 3 / 4 and 50 % half its length) and Social Shares.
In case it’s not among the top content, select it from the “Page” drop down on top left. Enjoy.
#4 I want to know how many times the Ocean Plastic Toolkit (Pdf) has been downloaded from the “A Million Acts of Blue” page
Page 3 (Behaviour). Select the dates in the drop down. Since it’s a fairly recent content it should be among the top results in File Download. In case it’s not, select it from the “Page” drop down on top left. Enjoy (and maybe shorten the URL of the document?).
#5 I want to know what are the next pages visitors go when leaving the “ACT” page
Well, in this case the Dashboard cannot help you.
You need to go in Google Analytics > Behaviour > Behavioural flow and analyze individual details.
#6 I want to know what are the previous pages visited before landing on a specific take action page (or story)
It’s the same report as just mentioned, except you will need to click on the page in question, in this case the “Let’s End the Age of Plastic” petition page, and select ‘Explore traffic through here’.
Once selected, you will see both the previous (Step -1) and next (Step 1) page paths for the selected page (Step 0).
What’s missing from the Dashboard. And a note.
Donation KPIs: Some of you may have noticed that there are no donation-related KPIs (e.g. Funnel Conversion Rate for donation) . The reason is simply because we cannot extract these as of now, the current donation module does not allow 3rd party tracking tools. That’s on our to-do-list.
Social Sharing: The Social Sharing commands changed on February 27th, so data related to social sharing can be extracted only from March 1st onwards.
Comments KPIs: We are working towards a solution that extracts the N of comments form P4 and fires events to GTM, but since that is an in-tool metric we have to make sure we don’t break the current setup. On our to-do-list.
A note on Direct traffic…
You might notice a large portion of Direct traffic in the Acquisition reports (page 2). This may be caused by a lot of reasons: cross-domain tracking, URL shorteners and a few more. We need to investigate to minimise the Direct traffic portion and get more accurate referrals reports.
Get in touch, help this Dashboard grow further!
The next steps will be for the team to focus on cross-domain (e.g. MeRa — Members Returning for Action), donation (e.g. Conversion Rate for donation) and Comment KPIs, but please if you’d like to learn from the dashboard and can’t use it, if you have a scenario that we missed in this article or simply have a suggestion please leave a comment below or send the team an email. We will be in touch.
