Not everything that counts is counted. And not everything counted, counts. With Google Analytics there are 100,000 plus reports you can pull. So what are you counting? How are you choosing which reports to pull? And what do they even mean?

Google analytics is like the command centre or the central nervous system for your online store. Anytime you want to see anything, you open the analytics, and it’s going to tell you what’s going on. How’s your social performing?  How’s organic performing?  You just open the reports and you see what’s happening. It’s really what you’re basing all of your decisions on. And there’s the rub.

As a Google Partner, we access the same data as everyone else, but we interpret it in ways that are more profitable for our clients. How? We make sure we’re tracking the right information.

Are you making critical marketing decisions off the right or wrong information?

As a Google Partner, we access the same data as everyone else, but we interpret it in ways that are more profitable for our clients.

Lots of times sites will have self-referrals. Say, for example, you made $1million off of your site last month and $100,000 in sales were through referrals. Google Analytics breaks things down by channel: paid, organic, direct traffic and referrals. Someone comes from another website to you and then they buy. That’s generally affiliate marketing. If there’s a promotion somewhere, then they see it and come to your site and buy. So it’s going to give credit to that referral channel. But often that channel is not tagged properly, so you don’t actually know where those sales are coming from. It may attribute the sale to direct traffic, or you may have a referral that’s working really well, but you’re not seeing the picture. If there’s a profitable channel, you’ll want to know it and put more money there. So you need to be able to see it.

Making sense of a sea of data

Data. You can get lost in it so easily. There is probably 100,000 plus different reports you can pull. So which reports should you be looking at and what does it even mean?  I read a quote this morning and it said ‘not everything that counts is counted, and not everything counted counts’. It’s so true. What are you counting?  How are you choosing which reports to pull?  To successfully navigate Google Analytics and leverage it to better serve your business, you need to approach it from a Business Intelligence perspective. Combing through it and connecting the dots the way a data analyst would. At least, that’s how we do it.

Not everything that counts is counted, and not everything counted counts.

For example, we once noticed that when women between the ages of 45 and 55 were on a particular site between 11am and 1pm, the value of those women were $50 per visit, when the average visit was $10. So we recommended our client prioritize targeting mature women in the workforce who shopped during their lunch hour – a simple strategy that proved to be very profitable. Unfortunately, busy Marketing Directors who are often put in charge of analyzing the GA reports don’t even think to have that conversation. It would serve them well to enlist someone who does.

– – –

Written by Sean Jimenez

About the author

Sean Jimenez is a serial entrepreneur and recognized as one of the leading digital marketing experts in North America. He is also the founder of soulpepper, a digital marketing agency on a mission.

soulpepper is a digital marketing agency on a mission. We help companies that are up to something good, increase leads, attract more customers and drive more dollars to their bottom line. Subscribe to our newsletter for more great ideas on how to build your ecommerce empire.