What do you think is the first thing you should do when you go to use Google Analytics?
A site review? Hire a consultant?
Well according to Google, no. What you need first is a plan, specifically Google's Measurement plan.
And what is the measurement plan? Well, Google tells you. On their support pages, they list the 5 things you need to do before getting started with Google Analytics.
Jeff Rajeck, Senior Trainer at ClickAcademy Asia, shares about what are the first 2 things you should do when you use Google Analytics in this video; and will share the remaining 3 in the next.
1) State your overall business objectives.
That's marketing talk for 'what is your website for?'
Do you have an ecommerce site - then your business objective is to sell things.
Are you a B2B lead gen site - then your objective is to get customer contact details.
If you're a publisher, then your objective is to get people to read a lot of pages.
Whatever it is, you need to write it down, or else you will have no idea what it is you are trying to achieve.
2) How are you going to achieve your objective? These are your strategies and tactics.
Are you going to advertise? Well, that's a perfectly fine strategy. We are going to advertise so that people come to our site and buy things.
Or perhaps you are going to upsell to existing customers by putting special offers in emails - again another strategy.
Or maybe you're going to hire a social media manager to create some viral video content. Risky, but still it's a strategy.
Tactics, then are the things you do to implement the strategy. Your ads, your special offers - or that viral video that the kids are going to love. All tactics.
So, to get started you need a plan. And that plan starts with your business objective and the strategies and tactics you are going to do to achieve your objectives. simple right?
So when does Google Analytics enter the picture? Well that's for next time. So stay tuned!
Get hands-on guided training on Google Analytics at ClickAcademy Asia's Google Analytics Certification. The 2-day course covers topics from basic setup and configuration to advanced tracking features. Find out more here.
Comments