Why is it that Google Analytics is reporting different sales and conversion numbers than your website backend? If you run an ecommerce website or a website with lead forms, you’ve probably noticed that your ecommerce and goal reports show different numbers than your backend. And by backend I mean your systems behind the website.
For instance, you might run a WooCommerce og Shopify store (or any other type of webshop). Whenever you compare your sales numbers and revenue from Google Analytics with the numbers in your CMS, there’s almost always a difference. Read more →
A few months ago, I was invited to participate in the beta test of a new tool marketed as a virtual web analyst. Andrew Dempsey reached out to me and introduced me to Needl Analytics. I spent some time with the tool and had it analyze data for some of my clients, and I also spoke to Andrew about my experience with the tool and my suggestions for improvements. While Needl Analytics isn’t perfect, it’s very impressive for a tool in the beta stage. Read more →
I’ve previously written a post on how to track clicks on internal links and call to actions. It’s really useful to measure which call to actions are actually clicked. But in some cases we might need more details. Such as knowing how long time it takes for our users to place that click. If users are taking a very long time before clicking a primary call to action, we might be able to help them by tweaking the text or our headers. Read more →
One of the fundamental configurations in Google Analytics is to setup Goals. Goals are what allows you to analyze your website’s ability to drive users to what you want them to do (i.e. their Goals). Basically, goals are the actions on your website that provide value for you and for your customers. In turn, you’ll use Goals and Goal Conversion Rate to analyze the performance of e.g. your paid traffic channels. Read more →
You’re probably familiar with the All Pages report in Google Analytics. This report tells you basic data about all of your pages. Things such as the number of entrances (landings), exit rate, bounce rate and so on. But the two first metrics - Pageviews and Unique Pageviews - often lead to confusion. Because, what’s the difference between Pageviews and Unique Pageviews?
This is a really short post since the answer is simple. Read more →
Do your website meet the actual expectations of your visitors? People rarely arrive at your website by chance. They have an intention and are there for a reason - regardless of what triggered their visit. And often times regardless of what you think their intention is. That’s why, it’s so important to understand those intentions so you can optimize for them. Perhaps your site navigation needs to be simplified. Or your homepage should have some different promotions. Read more →
I do Google Analytics training sessions very often, and often for non-analysts. One of the questions that pop up most often is something that might seem basic for full time web analysts. Namely, just what are Users and Sessions? And what is the difference between Users and Sessions in Google Analytics? What do those metrics mean and how do Google Analytics track and count Users and Sessions?
Many people think Users are the same thing as people. Read more →
Once in a while, I need to identify so-called dead pages on a website - that is, pages with no pageviews. Usually, this is necessary when migrating a website to a new CMS. In that case, it’s useful to know if there are pages that can be safely deleted/omitted (just remember proper redirects). A similar use case is when cleaning up a website in order to remove unnecessary content. However, since Google Analytics only track pages that are visited, it’s not possible to find dead pages in Google Analytics alone since those pages will not show up in any reports. Read more →
Every website owner and web analyst reaches a point where there’s a need to get Google Analytics data in Excel. While the Google Analytics web interface is very user friendly and easy to work with, it quickly becomes an obstacle when doing more advanced analysis. Very often, we also want to do the same analysis from month to month for reporting purposes. Or maybe we need to merge Google Analytics data with other data - and Excel then gives us more tools than the Google Analytics interface. Read more →
Google Analytics Annotations are a built-in feature of Google Analytics. It lets all people with access to Google Analytics account add comments to nearly all reports (at least those with charts). Everybody should use annotations to comment on traffic changes, traffic spikes and other important events. This can save you a lot of time. You won’t have to do the same data dives every time you wonder why something happened to your traffic. Read more →