turbocharging your google analytics data

Neil Barnes - Head of Insight & Traffic

Turbo charging

your Google Analytics

Data

Head of Insight & Traffic

Neil Barnes Friday Media Group

@neilbarnes1980

Hi, I’m Neil!

The Google Analytics interface is good…

…but at the same time very restrictive

1. Designed for single website businesses

2. Poor data visualisation

3. See data as Google thinks you should

4. Not designed to automate/integrate data

5. Barrier for key decision makers

You’re left wanting more from your data!

It needs turbo charging, But how?!

Help is at hand via Google Sheets

• A single view of your data

• Ability to build and send large reports

• A product that is ever closer to Excel

• Increased data transparency

• Integration with Google Analytics

Hook up Analytics in 3 easy steps

1. Add-ons > Get Add-ons

2. Search for ‘Google Analytics’

3. Click the +Free button to download the Add-on

You’re ready to turbo charge your data!

• Query data by multiple views

• Use formulas and functions

• Query new data combinations

• Apply filters/segments

• Ramp up sampling level

• Export more data (10,000 rows vs. 5,000 in interface)

Pull data into your Google Sheet To run manually: Add-ons > Google Analytics > Run reports

Scheduling will automate data retrievalAdd-ons > Google Analytics > Schedule Reports

Schedule data hourly, daily, weekly, monthly

Give your data some freedom!

• Report data on multiple views

• Enhance data visualisation

• View data the way you want

• Align data with other sources

• Automate reporting & save time

• Increase data transparency

Traffic Alert Monitoring

How Friday Media Group have used the add-on to turbo charge data

Identify health of websites

Automation example: Traffic Alert Monitoring

The Business Need

“To ensure abnormal trends in traffic and conversion metrics, both top-level and by

channel, are easily and readily available to all key business stakeholders and can be

monitored on a daily basis”

Custom alerts didn’t cut the mustard

• Trial & Error

• Alert triggers always shifting

• Lag in emails arriving

• No control over time email received

• Risk of people ignoring alert emails

• Breaking out by channel is time consuming

So we built our own alert report

And found this helped us as follows

• Abnormal trends spotted within 24 hours

• Knew quickly which channels needed to be put right

• Data transparency to all stakeholders

• Fully automated report

• Traffic lighting stops this being ‘a sheet of numbers’

Want to adopt this reporting template?

• Traffic Alert Reporting Template

• Take a copy of this document and follow the instructions in the ‘get started’ tab

Automation & Integration: Identify health of websites

Business Need

“For senior management to view the health of all business websites in one document, to quickly understand our strongest and

weakest performers”

The Google Analytics interface didn’t provide the data the way we wanted it

• Adopting status indicator based on ruling

• Consider both Google Analytics & internal data

• Running this task through interface was too time consuming

So we built a site status indicator report

Red = % to Target less than 100% and % YOY negative

Orange = % to Target less than 100% and % YOY positive

Green = % to Target 100%+ and YOY positive

Having all this data in one place helped

• Senior Management could quickly see our winners and losers

• Zero maintenance reporting

• Helped with target setting and setting more realistic goals

• Ensure our marketing strategy aligns with data

Want to adopt this reporting template?

• Download the Template

• Take a copy of this document and follow the instructions in the ‘get started’ tab

This is just the tip of the iceberg. How about…

• Session and event data side by side?

• Automate adwords reporting?

• Present content grouping data in a clearer way?

• Understand mobile visit share by site or by channel?

Once you’ve mastered this Add-on…

• Supermetrics

• Excel and Google Drive solutions

• Adwords, Bing Ads, Search Console integrations in addition to Analytics

• Analytics Edge

• Excel only solution

• Integrations beyond just Google Analytics

Neil Barnes - Head of Insight & Traffic

Thank You