Analytics are like a first aid kit: they sit around un-used until you really need them. However, if you don’t have Google properly connected, you are out of luck! When we take over management of a website we typically see that Google Analytics may be installed. However, even if activated, analytics are usually not set up to track all the things you really need to know.
Here are the top 15 extra items we add to the default Google Analytics tracking:
Demographics
If you configure your settings properly, Google Analytics will add age and gender data to your reports.
Scroll Tracking
An important measure is how far each user scrolls down a page. This report is available on a page-by-page basis. This is helpful if you want to know how well that looonnngg page is performing.
Contact Form Submissions
How many people submit questions via your contact forms? We track every form on your website and also source those contact forms to the websites that referred these visitors.
Telephone Calls
Many people will call you directly from your website, just by tapping on your phone number, often from a mobile device. In the example below, we sourced phone call clicks by channel that referred the visitor.
Emails
If you display your email address on your website, you should track how often people email you directly. We call these mailto: links and in the example below we show a break down of what kind of device people use when they email you.
Downloads
Do you offer downloads of PDFs or other files from your website? Yes, we track those! We can show what page your visitor performed a download from, and what file they downloaded. In the example below we are also showing visitor country.
Videos
Every video interaction is tracked, whether it’s a YouTube or Vimeo Video. We can tell what video is watched and from what page. We also track how much of the video your visitor watches. There’s some pretty compelling data video usage data for some of our clients!
Outbound Links
Do you offer links off of your website? Maybe to your Facebook or LinkedIn Profile? Perhaps to partner websites? This data can be really helpful!
Beyond Google Analytics, we use a few other top-notch analytics tools for our customers:
- Google Search Console is an excellent source of your keyword phrases and rankings. We prepare a keyword summary report each month.
- Google Tag Manager is the tool we use to setup Analytics on your site and tag all the actions and events.
- Crazy Egg offers heat maps of your website that show where people click. Very cool!
