Analytic Mistakes
10 Common Google Analytics Mistakes You Might be Making
Are you using Google Analytics? If not, then, you might be missing out on the chance to unlock and harness your website’s fullest potential.
For the longest time, Google Analytics never fails to prove that it is indeed among the best tools for marketing that you can use. With the user-friendly and detailed reports on what happens on a site and why it happens, Google Analytics is the perfect tool for Search Engine Marketing companies and business owners, to know more about their audiences and the strategies that work and don’t work.
Considering how helpful the tool is, it is a must that you use it properly to reach its fullest potential. Below are some of the most common mistakes in Google Analytics you need to avoid to be sure that you make the most out of this remarkable powerhouse.
Table of Content:
Failure to Use Google Analytics from the Get-Go
There are around 30 to 50 million websites that use Google Analytics. In case your website doesn’t belong to this group, you might be missing out on one of the finest applications to help you analyze your website traffic.
If you don’t use Google Analytics or other tracking platforms for your site, it is almost impossible for you to determine the marketing strategies that work, specifically on individual page level. If you know the performance of every page, you will be able to make nuanced changes to boost the strategy of your business.
Failure to Filter Out Your Internal Session Data
When it comes to large organizations, there are thousands of monthly page views that might be coming from you or even your family members. The internal activity might end up skewing your data and giving you an inaccurate idea of the performance of your site. This is why it is a must that you set up a filter to get rid of this information from the results to make sure that the analytics you examine are as exact as possible.
Failure to Filter Out Your Spam Traffic
About 4% of all the traffic online actually comes from spam. While it might sound like just a small percentage, this might translate to a significant number of useless page views for your site.
Even though you might already have some tools in place that are meant for blocking spammers, it is still great if you can filter out the traffic coming from spam to ensure that your data remains accurate all the time. A good way of doing it is through the application of the Segment to Eliminate Spam Referrals by Analytics Edge in Google Analytics.
Improper Use of UTM or Urchin Tracking Module Parameters
The UTM parameter is a kind of tag that can be added to URLs to help you check the source of your web traffic. For example, if you are putting up some ads on several sites, the use of UTM parameters can help you check the ads that do a great job when it comes to directing more traffic to your website.
When you are armed with this knowledge, you will be able to make the necessary adjustments to your marketing strategies.
Use of Aggregate Data Alone
If you fail to segment your data on Google Analytics according to factors such as geography, behaviors, and demographics, you will miss out on lots of valuable details. For instance, 72.5% of the traffic of Huffington Post comes from the US, which means that the publication might be catering most of its content to its audience in the United States.
Through segmenting, you will be able to get the same insights to your own site so you can reach out to more people and tailor your content better.
Failure to Set Up Goals
The mistake goes back to the old study by Harvard that discovered that you can be 10 times more successful if you have goals compared to not having one. As an executive or marketers, you surely have goals, such as generating leads, improving customer engagement, and making sales. With the help of Google Analytics, you will also be able to set up goals. Maybe you want to increase your white paper downloads, get more people to click on a specific page or encourage more contact forms. This tool will also show you the progress that you made for you to make the necessary adjustments.
Failure to Track Conversions
It was reported that 22% of marketers are unsatisfied with their conversion rates. To prevent this, you can use Google Analytics for tracking this particular aspect of the journey of your users. With no conversion data, you will have an incomplete picture of the performance of your site. The main goal of your website, after all, is to increase these conversions.
Failure to Track Campaigns or Events
About 64.6% of people click on the Google Ads when planning to purchase online. Thus, if you don’t track your campaigns or events, you will never know the ads or campaigns that work and those that don’t. Google Analytics informs you of your referral traffic’s source and the specific variables for tracking campaigns. Events such as video view and email clicks can also be tracked.
Comparing Different Things
It is a must to check comparable data for you to make conclusions regarding web traffic trends. For instance, if you compare conversions in two different months, there is a possibility that holidays and other events affect these conversions that can make it hard to compare these two directly. Never make this mistake when you make decisions according to your Google Analytics data.
Overlooking the Solutions Gallery
About 5% of the population in the US could be ranked at the highest computer literacy level so most people still require help in running their websites. This is where Google Analytics could get tricky so you are making a big mistake if you don’t use the Solutions Gallery that offers access to dashboards and custom reports to help in navigating site issues.
Avoid these common mistakes to unlock your website’s full potential. Take action today!