One of most frequently asked questions we receive from new clients is “How often do we need to check our Google Analytics data?”
The infuriating yet correct answer is “It depends…”
Now it depends on factors such as
- Your weekly / monthly traffic levels
- The frequency and value of your transactions / enquiries you have established as Goals
- Your organisation’s website reporting requirements
- The campaigns you are currently running
- Your job role
In reviewing our client list we work with digital marketing professionals, Marketing Directors, Marketing Managers, Business Owners and digital agencies – all of them regularly access their Google Analytics so they can be effectively measuring and analysing their digital campaigns and website performance.
If you are a digital marketing professional generating content, monitoring social channels and running campaigns then the chances are you are in your Google Analytics on a daily basis.
If you are like me, then you quite possibly have Google Analytics permanently open and could be spending significant time in there monitoring website performance, monitoring landing pages and actively looking for actionable insights.
But we know from experience that many clients just do not have the time to check their Google Analytics data on a daily basis.
As an absolute bare minimum, we advocate a full deep dive into your analytics data on a monthly basis so you have a clear understanding of what’s working and which aspects of your website and campaigns require closer attention.
The Benefits Of Checking Your Google Analytics Data Weekly…
But for many of our clients we strongly encourage them to access their Google Analytics as a minimum once per week to check all your key metrics are reporting correctly.
We show clients the key metrics they should be focusing on in their weekly check, especially if they are short on time.
And the good news – it can only take as little as fifteen to thirty minutes per week to check your key metrics are reporting as they should be.
If you are not checking your Google Analytics weekly you may not pick up that your:
- Goals / conversions may have stopped working
- Paid campaign traffic may not be tracking correctly
- Campaign landing pages may be going to a 404 page / Page Not Found
- Campaign landing pages may be under performing
- Event tracking such as enquiry form submissions may not be recording properly
“Our Key Goal stopped working…”
One of our clients is a Further Education College that uses Google Analytics goals to track online application submissions.
It’s critical for them to be continually reviewing which campaigns and channels deliver the most online application submissions.
One week, unbeknown to the marketing team, the College’s web development team changed the online application process and the URLs for the destination goal.
As a result the online application goal stopped firing – in doing so they lost a couple of days online application submission data.
This was obviously annoying for the marketing team but could have being much worse – fortunately the College’s marketing officer was doing her weekly Google Analytics check, identified the error and was able to amend the destination page for the goal accordingly.
Had the marketing officer not undertaken her regular weekly Google Analytics check this error may have gone unnoticed for days even weeks.
Two key takeaways from this situation:
- Reinforced to the marketing team the importance of the weekly Google Analytics check
- Reinforced the need for clear communication between the web development team and marketing team when amendments to the website are undertaken
“One Campaign was landing on Page Not Found…”
Another client running multiple paid Facebook campaigns noticed that one particular campaign was significantly underperforming within hours of the campaign going live.
They discovered the ad was going to a Page Not Found on the website instead of the landing page.
Fortunately because they were monitoring landing page performance in their Google Analytics reports they were able to identify and resolve the issue before they wasted too much of their campaign budget .
For this marketing team this incident reinforced the importance of checking Google Analytics reports such as Real Time Reporting and Landing Pages as campaigns go live to check that campaign traffic can access the landing page correctly.
The good news , especially if you are pressed for time, is that your Weekly Google Analytics Check does not have to take hours.
We show our clients how to check the key metrics are reporting correctly in easily under thirty minutes.
So if you are not already reviewing your Google Analytics data on a weekly basis, seriously consider allocating thirty minutes to this activity.
You may be pleasantly surprised by what you discover…