Jul 1, 2019
Introducing Digital Analytics Performance Score (DAPS)
Our way to grade the key digital analytics (e.g. Google Analytics) performance metrics
The User-Centric Revolution is Here
Today, digital analytics (or data analytics, analytics) is a fundamental element of every successful, well-oiled, customer-success-driven environment. For some, it may even sound like a cliché, but, as Peter Drucker once said, it’s so much true that if you cannot measure it, you can’t improve it.
User Experience × Digital Analytics
As UX consultants we work with and on data all the time. We help smart companies to grow organically by optimizing their digital products, making them (both the products and the clients) more user-centric, more UX-aware, more customer friendly and as a result making more for themselves and their clients.
Most of the work we do, the insights we we share with our clients are based on data. Of course, years of experience, gut feeling, or a bit of luck can still sometimes solve even the most complex business/user problems, but in the long run, it’s using the data as a foundation, which is the most efficient in most cases. Hence, without data analytics it wouldn’t be possible to say if the gradual improvement is actually happening.
Analytics is great. Full stop. We’ve helped most of our clients to start using digital analytics as a business tool, and in many cases making it their competitive advantage. But that’s a story for another occasion.
By the way, it’s not that as difficult as you may think.
When we start working with a new client we always begin with the questions about data analytics. We check if/what types of digital analytics tools the client is using and we check how efficient the current setup is.
Google Analytics (or Google Marketing Platform) is the most common tool and the following description refers to it. But the concept is universal and can be referred to any digital analytics tool.
So, we start with auditing the current Google Analytics setup.
The DAPS elements
To rate the audited accounts we use our internal grade — the Digital Analytics Performance Score (or DAPS).
The final score (scale 0 — 10) depends on the analysis of 3 main aspects of the digital analytics account as a whole:
CONFIG (CFG)
Config rates general access to data [e.g. what types of data are being actually measured, how the Tracking Codes are implemented, integration with Search Console, Ecommerce Tracking]
⚙️ CFG points: 0 — 4
UTILITY (UTI)
Utility rates how the account is organized and planned in terms of its usefulness for the person who makes use of the data [e.g. Properties and Views relevance and naming, conversion Goals setup, Custom Channel Grouping]
🧠 UTI points: 0 — 3
ACCURACY (ACC)
Accuracy rates the so-called clearness of the data being gathered [e.g. Hostnames, Referrals, Query parameters, Exclusion lists]
🎯 ACC points: 0 — 3
So in general your DAPS (score) can be a number between 0 and 10.
The higher the final score, the better the performance. By performance we mean the general usefulness of the data analytics tool for the people responsible for data-based decision making. If Config is broken then the data is not being harvested at all. If Utility is poor then the frequency of using the analytics tool is lower. If Accuracy is low, data-based decisions might be infected.
This is a sample DAPS report:
For accounts with the DAPS rate below 7, we strongly recommend Google Analytics tuning.
If you’d like to see a sample DAPS report, you can download it from here.
Also, if you’d like your current Google Analytics setup to be audited, feel free to get in touch with us. It’s free too.
Thanks! 👋
