I’ve been asked what we use for analytics and tracking. The short answer is Google Analytics (like most everyone.) But, I think a better way to think about it is “how do you use your analytics platform?”, whatever it is. We find that we are creating different implementations for our clients, but every implementation has the same base elements. Below is a general approach to analytics and reporting that we use.
Core Analytics Platform
Our go-to platform is Google Analytics (GA). The reasons are both obvious and, perhaps, not so obvious.
As the most popular website tracking platform, GA is easily integrated with any website. From tracking basic actions like page views, time on site, bounce rate, and sources to easy reporting, GA is great for the basics. It also connects easily with Google Ads, making the sharing of audiences, goals, and key metrics quite easy.
Custom Audience
GA provides a hub for creating custom audiences. The most common application is to track and target general site visitors. But, with the custom audience capabilities, we can segment users based on content consumption, self-selected preferences, or any number of attributes. While the scope can be wide, the value comes from knowing what is important for your marketing efforts prior to establishing the audiences.
External Data
Importing external data into GA allows us to connect off-site data with on-site usage. The most fundamental data is media spend, impressions, and interactions. Properly set up, we can see fairly nuanced data points as well as a full, 360-degree view of media performance.
Google Tag Manager
In addition to GA’s core attributes, Google has also created a great connection with Google Tag Manager(GTM). With a bit of knowledge about the elements of the website, we can easily set up GTM to trigger events and send data back to GA for additional user insights. On-page interactions can be tracked, video interactions measured, and custom dimensions/variables set. Using GTM, we can access page elements, browser variables, or data layers to help trigger events without taking up the developer resources. By combining GTM and GA, digital marketers can gain significant insight into the users.
But, GTM and GA can also allow us to do much more. With the right combination of 1st party cookies, scripts, and database knowledge, we can create a level of visibility into individual user behavior(without violating PII rules.) How this is implemented depends on the client’s needs and questions to be answered. While not necessarily an easy lift, for some businesses, this is a worthwhile investment.
Google Data Studio
While we use GA reporting for some basic management steps, an additional benefit of GA is the integration with Google Data Studio (GDS). From management dashboards to drill-down reporting, GDS allows us to see GA data in unique ways that answer our program-specific questions.
G4 Analytics
Google Released G4 to allow marketers to more easily feed data from different sources into a single container. This allows us to see a broader range of user interactions across different environments. Consider an online lead or sale that results in a longer-term relationship managed through a CRM. For most businesses, the connection between the two is broken. But, with G4, the CRM can continue to send data, maintaining the continuity of information.
G4 also sets the stage for the next step in website analytics, server-side tracking.
Up to now, and at least through 2022, most website analytics data comes from the users’ browsers. This has been somewhat problematic in that it does require third-party cookies and calls from the browser. With some people blocking the third-party cookies, and indeed some browsers doing so by default, the data has holes. But, there are enough enabled browsers to provide good data for tracking and marketing decisions. That’s going to change.
In 2023, Google Chrome will block 3rd party cookies. Once this happens, the continuity of data from users’ browsers will disappear.
To address this, Google has released a suite of tools to allow websites to use server-side actions to send data to G4. It is through this same paradigm that marketers can think about sending data from virtually any environment to Google Analytics G4. With the right planning, the lifetime actions and attributes of customers can be visible and used to enhance their experience as well as marketing efforts.