Why do you use Google Analytics? Understanding your customer’s behavior and experience is probably a key component of your marketing strategy. To be effective, you need to know that your data is trustworthy and accurate. So, how do you know that your data is trustworthy? Google Analytics audits can reveal any flaws, missing pages, irregularities, and more.
What is a Google Analytics Audit?
Google Analytics provides valuable insights into customer behaviors. We use the data to build marketing campaigns, customize services, and create new content. It’s an effective strategy, but only if you can trust the data is complete and accurate.
Unfortunately, since things change so frequently, it’s common to end up with holes and misrouted information that negatively impacts your data integrity. Imagine what happens if you have thirty visitors a day to a page on your site that’s not connected to Google Analytics. You could be missing some significant opportunities.
A Google Analytics audit involves a comprehensive review of your website’s setup and configuration to ensure everything tracks properly. It checks for various issues, like having the correct time zone and tracking on all pages.
What Does a Google Analytics Audit Look Like?
A Google Analytics audit generally involves the actual audit, strategy, and implementation. Performing the audit only helps if it leads to an actionable strategy that you can implement to regain trust in your data.
The Google Analytics Audit
Google Analytics audits involve a deep dive into your existing setup. Usually, it helps to follow a checklist to ensure you don’t miss anything.
Account Setup and Profile
It’s a good idea to review your account basics, even if nothing has changed since you set up Google Analytics. Additionally, it’s crucial to check your admin dashboard to ensure everything is correct. Even if you don’t find an issue with any of this information, it’s better to be safe than sorry. It may seem strange, but an incorrect URL or time zone could wreak havoc on your data.
Tracking Code
Once you ascertain that your profile information is correct, move on to the tracking code. If pages have missing or incorrect tracking codes you won’t get accurate data. It may seem tedious, but it’s crucial to your data’s integrity.
Configurations
You probably have several filters, groups, and exclusions set up in Google Analytics. Do they all work well, or could you refine them to get more accurate results? It’s important to look at those bot and spam filters to ensure they aren’t negatively impacting your data.
Attribution
If you run campaigns and ads, this step in the Google Analytics audit is crucial. It’s not easy to figure out which ads work well if you don’t get correct information on which ones draw traffic.
Data Collection
You probably have several reports set up to show you different information, like audience and conversion, but can you trust your analytics data? It’s necessary to reevaluate each report to search for issues, and that’s where things can get complicated. Since the reports reveal unique data sets, each one can have different issues that impact the tracking.
For example, your Acquisition Report could have channels with 100% bounce rates that suggest there may be some tracking issues, like double-tracking. If you look at your Pages and screens Report, you may find different issues with bounce rates because they may suggest a faulty event setup. Though both reports involve bounce rates, the underlying issues could differ.
Conversions
Conversion data is necessary if you operate an e-commerce store on your site or track other goals and events. Ensuring that your tracking and goals account for every conversion tells you what works and drives future campaigns. You could make costly mistakes if you can’t rely on the conversion data you receive from Google Analytics.
Developing a Strategy
If your goal is accuracy and consistency, then you need a reliable measurement strategy. Based on the information discovered during the audit, it’s possible to build a long-term strategy for success. The strategy should include custom Google Analytics configurations that work for your business and deliver the data you require to move forward.
Implement the Corrections
Implementing the strategy by correcting issues and adding tracking is the final step. With everything in place, you can have faith in your data again.
Keep in mind that unless you have extensive knowledge of Google Analytics and your website, you could easily miss something. A professional with experience performing Google Analytics audits generally completes a more comprehensive audit.
How Do I Know If I Need a Full Google Analytics Audit?
We perform audits for many things, like finances and SEO, so it only makes sense to do one for the information you use to make business moves. Like other audits, there are clues to suggest you need a Google Analytics audit.
- Your current Google Analytics plugin doesn’t allow you to edit tracking options.
- It’s time for a new website and you need to know that your tracking will carry over.
- You have several campaigns but can’t figure out what works and what falls flat.
- Some key data points come up missing in your Google Analytics reports.
- You have too many tags in Google Tag Manager.
- It’s time to work up your budget decisions, but something feels “off” about your data.
These are just some of the potential indicators of a Google Analytics issue. If you can’t shake the feeling that your data is not quite right, an audit could clear things up and give you the confidence to move forward.
Why You Need a Google Analytics Audit
As you can see, a Google Analytics audit realigns your setup so that you can trust the data reflects your customer base and behavior. Trustworthy data helps you make sound decisions for your business plan so that you can initiate positive growth and improve the bottom line.
