1. Concentrate on key KPIs

The most common error with Google Analytics is getting caught up in the reports without understanding which metrics to watch and follow. While reviewing these reports can be entertaining, they are pointless if the metrics do not fit with your business objectives. It is critical to identify 5-10 key performance indicators (KPIs) that will impact your business operations and avoid getting distracted by “vanity metrics” such as the number of visitors to your website. Once you’ve identified your important KPIs, you can gain vital insights into measurements that will help you reach your website or business goals. Forget about the irrelevant data and focus on the most important reports.

2. Define and Establish Goals

Google Analytics should be customized to monitor conversions against some stated goals, just as your website must meet SMART business objectives. As a result, when you measure these conversions, it will serve as proof that you are on the correct course to meet your business goals. When you use goals to monitor conversions, your conversion rate becomes the most essential KPI, regardless of your website’s goal. When there are multiple goals, assigning an arbitrary monetary value to each goal helps, even if the value isn’t exactly aligned with the buying price of a transaction. This allows you to come closer to your business objectives in terms of goals that have a greater influence on your company.

3. Correctly configure Analytics

After you’ve set up your Google Analytics account, make sure you’re measuring the most crucial components of your organization. This is required to ensure that your data is correct. You can also have access to other tools to improve your traffic analysis. Follow the checklist for Google Analytics below to ensure appropriate setup:

• Configuration of Google Analytics
• Set up and monitor occurrences
• Keep track of campaigns
• Prepare for e-commerce
• Configure tracking for website searches.
• Enable demographic and interest reports.
• Keep track of the website’s keywords and speed.
• Use experiments to track progress.
• Learn about multi-channel funnels and how to use attribution modelling.

4. Create Your Own Dashboards and Reports

Google Analytics allows you to create custom dashboards. You may immediately obtain the most crucial data, which is solely focused on the KPIs relevant to your business goals. You can create up to 20 dashboards in Analytics. It is, however, recommended that you carefully focus on the essential indicators that you have previously determined. You will also get access to a Solutions Gallery, which contains ready-to-use dashboard templates provided by other users. While you will be presented with several design possibilities, choose the ones that correspond to your set metrics because these dashboard templates are really beneficial. Google Analytics also allows you to generate custom reports. This is an excellent approach to develop reports that are tailored to your goals.

5. Review reports on a regular basis

It’s one thing to develop your custom reports meticulously, but they’ll be useless if you don’t review them on a regular basis. It is essential that you keep a careful eye on your metrics and examine your key performance indicators (KPIs) on a weekly basis. When it comes to reports, make sure to go over them thoroughly at least once a month. Also, if you make any substantial changes, immediately do a website evaluation to ensure that the changes do not have a detrimental impact on performance or if there have been any improvements.

6. Compare to Past Performance

Google Analytics reports default to showing results from the previous 30 days, but you may change this to any time period you like. You may also utilize the “Compare To” checkbox to compare your current results to those from any previous date range. When examining reports, always compare current findings to previous data. You should concentrate on the positive changes in the measures that matter over time. KPIs won’t be able to disclose anything if this isn’t done. It becomes even more vital when putting any improvements into action. The only way to understand what works and what doesn’t is to compare it to previous outcomes, especially after substantial changes.

7. Utilize Dimensions

You can drill down to more granular information by adjusting the primary dimension of your Google Analytics reports. However, in some circumstances, supplementary dimensions might be used to deliver more information in the same report. By include Source as a supplementary dimension, you can view a visual representation of the Source from the point of origin of the traffic. Secondary dimensions enable you to personalize reports by cross-referencing your data with additional data points. You can also save shortcuts to any of your customized reports. All report customizations will be applied instantly when you view your reports using the shortcut.

8. Develop Advanced Segments

You can examine traffic based on certain parameters and compare their performance to that of the full website by creating a Segment. Segments can be applied to any report in Google Analytics. Segments can be defined depending on dimensions or metrics, visit date, and so on. Segment reports are an effective tool for reviewing reports that have real-world business implications. If you need more specific reports, ask your web developer to assist you with the advanced configuration.

9. Filters can be used to clean up reports.

Configure Google Analytics with filters to block traffic from your workplace, web developers, and even your home IPs. This ensures that only genuine and clean traffic is captured. Analytics administration grants access to these options, which allow you to prohibit traffic from other areas or systems of your website that are designated for internal use.

10. Create Intelligence Alerts

In Analytics, you may create custom alerts as well as sign up for default notifications. While Analytics Intelligence is not a substitute for regular report review, it can help you spot any significant issues or possibilities. This is especially useful in circumstances where you may have overlooked anything. The best way is to evaluate your KPI-based reports on a frequent basis, with the help of automated Intelligence alerts to back up your analysis.