…Now we’re better able to strategize and direct your web development and design decisions.
Although the Boomtown team has been using Google Analytics for years and utilize the program nearly every day as part of our job, Google Analytics is constantly evolving and undergoing important developmental changes and it’s important for our clients that we gain an advanced understanding of all features and implement them accurately.
Boomtown is very proud to announce that three of our teammates have received Google Analytics certifications! We’re gained a new familiarity with all Google Analytics features and can use the platform on a professional level.
In order to prepare for the exam, we reviewed all the Analytics Learning Center presentations (which we recommend reviewing these should you have specific analytics questions, for the most part they are very thorough and easy to understand)—ideal for a basic understanding of what Analytics can do. All three team members passed with scores over 90%.
The exam itself is two hours long, with 70 multiple choice and true/false questions. The test covered general, basic, and more advanced sections of Google Analytics, for instance regular expressions and ecommerce tracking.
We’re happy to apply our better understanding and new Analytics knowledge to our clients accounts and begin implementing goals, utilizing advanced funnels and other advanced features to our client profiles to better be able to strategize and better direct your web development and design decisions.
Here are some of the advanced Google Analytics features we have a better understanding of:
Filters: Google’s flexible way of defining what data is included in your reports and how it appears. Boomtown can use these to customize your reports so that data is highlighted in interesting ways. Filters can also help you clean up your data so that it is easier to read. Filters are useful for excluding IP addresses, pulling Sub-Domain traffic only, including all traffic from a domain, setting up profiles to manage specific directories, filtering a profile by visitor country (or even city), and more.
E-Commerce Tracking: If your site sells products or services online, we can use Google Analytics e-commerce reporting to track sales activity and performance.
The Ecommerce reports show you your site’s transactions, revenue, and many other commerce-related metrics. Many of the reports allow you to drill down and segment for in-depth analysis— and create reports that are critical for understanding the behavior of site visitors, for instance “days to purchase” and “visits to purchase”. Measuring the online sales cycle and generated leads and conversion tracking can be accomplished with E-Commerce tracking.
Tracking Domains and Sub-Domains: You may sometimes need to track activity across multiple domains. A common example of this is when you send visitors from your site to a separate shopping cart site to complete their purchases. Analytics offers a way to track sessions as a single visit attributed to one visitor—you need a way of sharing the cookie information between the two domains.
Goal Setup: Goals are very useful ways of measuring business objectives for your website. They correspond to a measurable action performed by visitors, i.e. navigating to a “thank you” page. We can set up goals to match your business objectives, for instance completing contact forms, signing up for newsletters, completing a purchase, or downloading a whitepaper. We can also analyze goal performance—and see how well your website is living up to business objectives. Goals help identify what specific areas of a website need improvement and are crucial to a successful web strategy.
If you have questions regarding Google Analytics or are interested in learning more about what the Boomtown team can do for you, email us at Erica.ronchetti@boomtownig.com.
