The Holy Grail of Web Analytics
For those of you who
love to wade through the plethora of standard reports offered by Google
Analytics and spend hours mulling over reams of data trying to find that
elusive key metric please feel free to skip this article.
However, if like most
of us you want quick access to key web analytics custom reporting data
and your boss (and his boss!) are breathing down your neck then look no
further than the superb blog post written by the outstanding Avinash Kaushik over at Google.
Avinash provides
details of what can be only described as the holy grail of web analytics
custom reporting, in fact he practically does the reporting for you and
provides you with a link to three awesome downloadable reports! Minus
your data of course...
He is a huge fan of eliminating standard
reports and turns the idea of what a standard report is on its head by
introducing the concept of creating a focused custom “micro-ecosystem”.
The creation of a
relevant micro-ecosystem should reduce the number of reports, be a one
stop destination for most answers on a topic and most importantly be
hyper relevant.
The
process of creating a self-contained micro-ecosystem with relevant data
involves 3 simple steps.
1. Identify and understand who will consume the data.
2. Understand their needs and success criteria (this involves actually talking to them!)
3. Use your experience and initiative - what do they really want?
The micro-ecosystem
example he provides is an analysis of the performance of a Paid Search
Marketing program with an ecommerce focus - which should probably apply
to the vast majority of visitors reading this post.
He identifies three
key parties that would usually require the valuable data offered by a
micro-ecosystem and they include the SEM team, the Website Director and
VP of Digital.
The
micro-ecosystem in this case is simply one report with three tabs
containing relevant information for each of three parties above.
In summary, the
information in each tab looks at three key areas namely input, activity
and outcomes. He then provides an in-depth analysis of the data in all
three scenarios and why the data in the each tab is important to the
relevant team.
For
the SEM team the data provided concerns things they do everyday and
that will impact their bonus such as impressions, ad performance and
CTR. It also provides details on CPC and Total cost. However, he does
point out that this report will serve as a great base for initial
analysis by the SEM team but that they will perform further reporting
and deep dive analysis.
Further up the chain the report for the
Website Director will look at what is happening under the bonnet and not
just the upfront stuff. They are focused on what is happening under
their responsibility and on the site. The key metric here is revenue and
figuring out if there is a mismatch between this and the number of
visits.
Lastly the report for
the VP will contain fewer relevant metrics. The focus here is not just
on revenue but also on cost and productivity.
The process described
above outlines a super efficient way to present relevant web analytics
data and keep everyone happy. Adhering to this process should pay rich
dividends in terms of eliminating data dumps, focusing on what is
important and having one central location for web analytics reporting.
This process has
changed our approach to web analytics custom reporting here at Bigturns
forever (especially for Adwords campaigns) and we hope that you can find
some value in it as well.
Oh and before I forget here is the link to the reports.
Note: This is the
Google Analytics V5 version created by Rob Taylor who updated the
original version provided by Avinash. Don’t forget to login to Google
Analytics first.
Finally,
here is the link to the blog post which
also contains some nice bonus items at the end.