Comments on: Get more from Google Analytics by tomorrow morning

By: iGuide

iGuide — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:02:54 +0000

Thanks, Vicky. My site has many AJAX actions I’d like to track which don’t result in a new pageview, so I can’t use the “goals” feature. I have started to track these using “fake” transactions in the e-commerce module.

I also wish there was a way I could categorize my pages, since there are too many for me to track traffic by each individual page. This is what I would use the pass through value. For example, if I had a pages titled ‘Florence’ and ‘Venice’, the pass through value would be ‘Italy.’ This way I’d be able to track pageviews by category (in this case country) rather than each individual page.

By: Vicky

Vicky — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:03:03 +0000

Hi Alex, Do you mean in terms of assigning cash values to specific on-site actions?

This is normally very straight forward to do by setting up your goals and setting an appropriate cash value for the accomplishment of those goals – as long as all your pages are tagged with GA code in the first place.

Is the problem that you are not seeing values for the goals you have set up, or that you’re not seeing data at all?

By: iGuide

iGuide — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:48:49 +0000

I’d like the ability to send a pass-through value and have it show up in my reports.

By: Vicky

Vicky — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:25:56 +0000

There’s a really important point I should add to this, which has become apparent since this post – there are a number of businesses out there who have had GA set up by web designers etc and who don’t have administrator access.

Even more problematic is when the designer has set up all their clients accounts up in the same overall GA account, meaning they can’t give clients admin access without revealing all their other clients data.

Its really important you have at least someone in your business who has admin access to GA.

And if you are starting from scratch make sure you set up your own GA account, rather than get bundled up with all your designers other clients – this data is too important, not to be able to configure it!

By: Vicky

Vicky — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:37:11 +0000

Many thanks Ela – and thank you for mentioning about campaign tracking which is such a valuable feature. There is so much you can get from starting to use GA to measure you campaigns, as you point out. But as you also say, there are some pitfalls people really need to be aware of on that front in order to get the best from the campaign data.

I think both with general set-up that I have discussed here and campaign tracking and set-up as you mention, one of the critical points for GA users to understand is that nothing can happen to the data retroactively.

Changes made, filters edited, campaigns reassigned or new things measured start from the point of the change point forward. But the back data doesn’t change according to the new criteria.

This can get messy if new profiles aren’t used, or campaign tags aren’t carefully thought through as you don’t want old/different data muddying your shiny new data.

Thanks again for you input Ela

By: Ela

Ela — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:56:39 +0000

thanks for this post. Really quick and good overview of Google Analytics. From my side, I would mention a very useful GA feature that enables to track all online marketing campaigns on GA. with GA you can track all types of online media such as banner ads, email campaigns, paid search (not only Adwords) etc.
On the other hand, what I would define as a real problem is inability to understand data and use the data from GA to optimise campaigns, make changes and improve ROI.
I would recommend for “GA beginners” to stick to default settings (maybe set up goals and enable e-commerce section if they sell online) and learn how to read data and improve online performance.

Thanks again for the great post.