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 →
I am constantly surprised annoyed about how short sighted many sales and marketing people are thinking about ecommerce and online performance. In many organisations, it’s not that big a surprise. People in sales and marketing are very often measured by short term goals. So they are naturally using their weekly or monthly sales reports.
But once in a while, it can be a real eye-opener to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Read more →