Website analytics Archives - Website Insights

Benefits of server-side tracking

Carolyn James — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 04:50:44 +0000

The ‘Do you need server-side tagging’ calculator gives you a ‘Yes/Not Yet’ answer, based on 6 questions.
However, there isn’t a ‘one solution fits all’ implementation of server-hosted Google Tag Manager. Although the general architecture is the same across implementations, the benefits can differ, depending on how you choose to implement your tracking set-up.

Potential benefits of server-side tracking

One set of tags getting data from the browser is better for website performance.
You have control over what you send on to the destination platforms, so there is less risk that you are sending more data than you intend.
You can maximally respect users’ privacy, by opting for a set-up where advertising pixels are not accessing the browser at all.
Browsers are less likely to block requests or shorten cookie life. This means more signals will be sent to advertising platforms for conversions to be matched with users. You will probably see a lift reported conversions for the ad platform (through better attribution), but also more conversions (through more signals for ad optimisation). If your goal is to maximise conversions, your set-up will probably include pixel tracking and server-side tracking to maximise signals.
You can extend the life of specified cookies. Extending cookies is useful when the conversion doesn’t happen in the same session as the ad was clicked, leading to more accurate attribution of conversions.
More options to augment conversions sent to ad platforms with user-provided data, meaning more signals will be sent to advertising platforms for conversions to be matched with users.
Bot detection, with the possibility of filtering out traffic likely to be from bots before sending to GA4 and ad platforms.
Ability to send offline conversions to GA4 and ad platforms.
Ability to send refund data to GA4 (to correct purchase numbers).

The benefits related to conversion tracking accuracy and conversion optimisation offer an improvement on your existing situation. Whether this translates into a significant business benefit will depend on a few factors (and that is what the calculator is trying to help you with).
Note that reduction in blocking of tracking does not mean any change to your obligations to get user consent for cookies, if you are in a region where this is a requirement. Nor does it alter your obligations to disclose data collection and use in your privacy policy.

Before implementation – requirements gathering and sign-off

I have had clients who suggest they need server-side tracking, but they are not entirely clear on why they need it. There isn’t just one universal ‘server-side solution’ – each implementation will differ, depending on the client’s requirements. Therefore, an agreed set of requirements is really important to guide the solution design.

Which of the above benefits do you want from server-side tagging?

Is improved ROI on ad spend your main requirement? This solution will look different from one where the main goal is control over what data is sent to ad platforms. For example, for Meta tracking, the first would use both a Meta tracking pixel and a Meta server tag, while the latter would use only the Meta server tag.
To what extent do we need to audit and update the current web GTM tags? The server-side implementation is based on the current GA4 web tags so, unless the implementor is already familiar with our current set-up, this will be an early step.
To what platforms do you need to send data?
Do you want to send offline purchase data to ad platforms? Do you want to send refund data to ad platforms? These add another chunk of design and implementation to the project.
Is there a requirement to get user consent for cookies? If so, is a cookie management platform already in place?
For GA4, do you want to run web tracking and server-side tracking in parallel for a while to validate the server-side implementation?

More requirements means more cost, so you will want to settle on a scope before the implementation starts.

Need help with server-side tracking?

See our Web Analytics Services page. Website Insights has delivered results for over 100 businesses in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

Implementation phase

Before the tag implementation work starts, you (or your implementor) will need to set up a few things.

You will need to set up an account with a hosting provider. If using Stape, your implementor will be able to set up the account and share it with you.

You will need a subdomain that has the same domain name as your website. This will become the web address of your server Google Tag Manager container. Your webmaster will be able to set this up by adding a DNS record (provided in your Stape account) to your website server.

After that, the implementation is done in your web GTM container, your server GTM container and your Stape account.

Testing, as always, is an important part of the implementation.

What are the costs involved in implementing server-side tracking?

There will be 3 parts to the cost:
An ongoing cost for hosting your server Google Tag Manager. If using Stape, pricing is in bands, depending on server usage, starting from USD 17 per month.
An implementation cost will depend on the scope of your project.
You should also allow for an ongoing maintenance cost, for your set-up to be monitored and tags updated as needed.

The post Benefits of server-side tracking appeared first on Website Insights.

Do you need server-side tagging?

Carolyn James — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:47:11 +0000

Mastering call tracking software and GA4

Carolyn James — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 07:22:38 +0000

Websites with prominent ‘Call us’ banners or buttons are able to get a lot more data about their marketing programmes by using call tracking software. The data from these systems integrates with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and nicely supplements the marketing performance data made available by Google Analytics.

Need help with call tracking analytics?

See our Web Analytics Services page. Website Insights has delivered results for over 100 businesses in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

Definition of Call Tracking

Call tracking refers to tracking leads or sales resulting from a phone call, but there is more to it than that. First, there is data from the phone call itself – the duration of the call and the number called from (which also tells you whether this is a first time caller or a repeat call). Then there is data collected by the call taker – in a call centre scenario, the agent might record the outcome of the call. Some call tracking software makes it easy to record a call outcome when the call taker is not sitting at a computer, for example by pressing a phone key at the conclusion of the call.

The part of call tracking that seems a bit like magic is its ability to record the source of the website visit where the caller saw the phone number and made the call. This enables attribution of phone calls to the correct marketing channel, and by extension, attribution of phone call outcomes to marketing channels. This is pretty valuable information to a marketer, especially when phone calls are where sales are made or leads are qualified.

Benefits of Call Tracking

Accurate attribution and conversion tracking

Phone call tracking provides accurate attribution of phone calls to the correct digital marketing channel, traffic source, or keyword.

It helps to track conversions resulting from phone calls and optimise marketing campaigns accordingly. If a particular touchpoint consistently leads to successful phone conversions, you can allocate more resources to that area. Conversely, if certain campaigns or keywords lead to calls that rarely convert, you can adjust your approach to improve efficiency.

Enhanced customer journey insights

Phone call tracking combined with Google Analytics 4 provides insights into the customer journey, including the touchpoints that occurred before and during a conversion. Assume your conversion happens on the call and this is tracked. When the call tracking software is linked to GA4 (more on that later), this conversion will be tracked by GA4. Now, GA4 can report attribution for that phone call conversion, including the multiple touchpoints shown in the Attribution Paths report. For instance, the Attribution Paths report might reveal that a customer first came to your website through a social media ad, then organic search, and finally called your business. By mapping out these interactions, you can identify the most influential touchpoints and refine your strategies to guide more customers down this same path.

Opportunity to improve phone call experience

You can use call tracking data to pinpoint areas for improvement in the phone call experience itself. Are customers facing long hold times? Is the initial interaction with your automated system or call handler leaving a positive impression? By examining call recordings and durations, you can identify pain points and areas where the customer experience can be enhanced. For example, if you discover that many calls drop off during the initial greeting, it may be time to revise your script or invest in additional training for your staff.

How do these solutions track phone calls?

Call tracking software works by dynamically replacing the phone number on your website with one of a series of phone numbers assigned by the call tracking software. The pool of phone numbers is sufficient that a call can be associated with a website visit, even if the call is made later. Hence each call can be associated with detailed session data, including source/medium, campaign and keyword used.

This is not the only mechanism. Some phone call tracking software uses a much one phone number per marketing channel or per campaign. This allows you to attribute phone calls to channels or campaigns, but not down to the granularity of keywords.

Set up call tracking and Google Analytics 4

Creating tracking numbers and adding them to your website

Deploying call tracking on your website involves embedding a small snippet of code. You could add this code in your website builder or you could deploy it with Google Tag Manager (GTM). Using GTM provides flexibility – for example, I have seen call tracking deployed only for visits that come from paid search. If an organisation received calls at multiple locations, the call tracking software can be set up so that each location has its own set of dynamic numbers.

Once the unique tracking numbers are in place, they do more than just route calls to your business. They act as data collection points, recording vital information about each call. This includes the caller’s phone number, phone call duration, and call outcome, among other metrics. For instance, you can see whether a call was answered, missed, or went to voicemail, and even delve into call recordings if your software supports it. This data is then compiled into comprehensive reports, offering a granular view of your call interactions

By analysing this data, you can gain insights into customer behaviour, such as peak calling times, common inquiries, and the effectiveness of your call handling. Importantly, you can attribute calls back to specific marketing efforts, allowing you to assess the performance of your campaigns more accurately. For example, if a particular Google Ads campaign is driving a significant number of high-quality calls, you can allocate more budget to that campaign. Conversely, if another source is underperforming, you can investigate further and make necessary adjustments.

Linking call tracking with GA4

Linking phone call tracking software with Google Analytics 4 is usually pretty simple. It typically involves:

Adding your GA4 Measurement ID to your call tracking software. Your Measurement ID can be found in GA4’s Admin area, under Data Streams, then click on your website data stream to reveal the Measurement ID.
Creating an API Secret in GA4 and entering this in your call tracking software. The API secret can be generated GA4’s Admin area. Still in Data Streams, scroll down to ‘Measurement Protocol API Secrets’ and create a new one. Name it to reflect the intended use, as you may end up with more than one of these.
You might have to choose which events are sent to GA4 (or specify conditions such as call duration or call score) and choose the parameters to be sent with the event.
You will need to create custom dimensions and custom metrics in GA4 to receive the new data fields. Your call tracking software documentation will tell you the event names that will be sent to GA4 and the associated fields. Some of these will be dimensions (data that categorises) and some will be metrics (data that counts). You will need to add these as custom dimensions and custom metrics in GA4’s Admin area, under Data Display > Custom Definitions.

Marking phone call events as key events (aka conversions) in GA4

Marking phone call events as key events in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) makes it easier to measure the true effectiveness of your marketing programs. But be aware, not all phone call events should be marked as key events in GA4. You will need to think about what defines a key event resulting from a phone call.

Your call tracking software probably supports categorisation of phone calls and recording of outcomes. It might be that, for you, a conversion is a call where a lead was qualified or a sale was made. This will vary from business to business.

If these come to GA4 as distinct events, you can toggle them on as key events in the Administration area, under Data Display > Events.

If they do not come to GA4 as distinct events, you can use the ‘Create event’ function in GA4 to trigger a new event when an event meets certain conditions. For example, you could create a new event ‘lead_from_call’ with these conditions: ‘event name is call_tracking’ and ‘outcome is qualified_lead’ (in this example, ‘outcome’ is a custom dimension sent with the ‘call_tracking’ event). Then you would mark the event ‘lead_from_call’ as a conversion.

Marking some phone call events as key events allows for better understanding of the marketing channel, traffic source, or campaign that drove them. You will see this in GA4’s Acquisition reports or Attribution Path reports. These reports allow you to select channel group, source, medium or campaign as a dimension, and you can filter ‘key events’ to show just the call tracking-related events.

Once you have set up the end-to-end system, it is a good idea to make a few test phone calls. It is best to do this using a test script, so that you have a record of exactly what you did. The next day, you will be able to check in GA4 to see that the test call data was reported as expected.

Analysing data from phone calls in GA4 reports

My advice is to set up some reports in GA4’s Explore area. Most of the juicy data generated by your call tracking software will be in custom dimensions and custom metrics, and these are not in the standard GA4 reports.

In Explore, you will be able to set up custom reports that provide insights into phone call data. Even better, if you are comfortable using Looker Studio, you could create a GA4 data source in Looker and you will be able to build reports there, as GA4’s custom dimensions and metrics are available there.

Depending on your solution, the data could dive deep into each interaction. You can find out how long each call lasted, giving you a sense of customer engagement and satisfaction. Knowing the outcome of these calls, whether they resulted in a sale, a follow-up appointment, or a lost lead, adds another layer of understanding. This granular level of detail helps you assess the effectiveness of your phone support and sales teams.

This data can be used to optimize marketing campaigns and improve the phone call experience.

Calculating phone call ROI

Phone call ROI can be calculated by dividing the revenue generated from phone calls by the cost of generating those phone calls. Calculating phone call ROI involves inputs and a formula: take the total value generated from phone calls (it could be revenue or it could be an assigned value, if considering a non-revenue conversion) and divide it by the total cost incurred to generate those calls. This cost could include advertising expenses, the salaries of the staff handling the calls, and any technology or infrastructure costs. For example, if your marketing leads to $10,000 in sales from phone calls and the cost to generate those calls is $2,000, your ROI would be 5. This means for every dollar spent, you’re making five dollars back, an of the efficiency of your investment.

This metric helps to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and optimise them accordingly.

By continually monitoring and adjusting based on ROI, you ensure that your marketing is always geared towards maximum profitability.

Creating targeted audiences in GA4 based on call conversions

Setting up targeted audiences in Google Analytics based on call conversions can significantly enhance the precision of your marketing campaigns.

GA4’s Audiences feature allows you to create groups of website visitors that reflect users who have converted through phone calls. These custom audiences can then be used in Google Ads or other platforms to ensure your ads reach people who have demonstrated a genuine interest in your offerings.

GA4 Audiences can also be used as a filter in Looker Studio reports, allowing you to compare specific sets of users with all users.

Advanced call tracking strategies

Tracking phone leads from offline marketing (e.g., billboard, radio)

Unique tracking numbers can be used to track phone leads from offline marketing channels, such as billboard, radio and TV ads.

When you use distinct numbers for your billboards, radio spots, and TV ads, you can easily identify which channel is driving the most phone leads. These unique tracking numbers can be set up through call tracking software, which logs each incoming call along with the associated number.

When you know exactly which channel generated each phone lead, you can make more informed decisions about where to allocate your budget. By attributing phone calls accurately, you ensure that your offline marketing strategies are as data-driven and optimised as your online strategies.

Integrating call tracking with ads platforms

Call tracking can be integrated with ads platforms so that call tracking conversions can be used to optimise advertising campaigns.

We have already seen how call tracking software integrates with GA4. So, one way you can see these same conversions in your Google Ads account is to import them from GA4.

Other ways that integrations are done vary with each vendor:

direct integration between call tracking platform and ad platform.
download conversions from call tracking platform and upload to ad platforms as offline conversions.
call tracking platform integrates with a workflow automation tools, such as Zapier, with which you can transfer data to other platforms.

This type of integration allows you to track which ads, keywords, and campaigns are driving phone calls, providing a comprehensive view of your customer journey. Additionally, the ad platform receives a feedback loop of data, telling it which ad clicks resulted in conversions. With this, the algorithm can continually optimise the delivery of ads.

Don’t confuse call tracking software with Google Ads’ tracking of calls to a phone number on your website

Google Ads has a conversion type that tracks calls made to a phone number on your website, but don’t confuse this with call tracking software.

It still uses dynamic phone number generation, and uses this to associate a click on a Google Ad with a specific phone call. In this case, phone number replacement only happens when someone comes to your website from a click on a Google Ad.

Phone calls from these ads, when they exceed a specified duration, count as a conversion. This feeds the algorithm and helps Google to target ads to the right people. The account owner is also able to see which campaigns performed to achieve these conversions.

In contrast to call tracking software, no data is collected from the phone call – no duration, no outcome. You don’t pay anything for this – it is a feature available with Google Ads.

To set up a Google Ads call conversion, you first create the conversion within the Ads account, choosing ‘Phone calls’ and then ‘Calls to a phone umber on your website’. You will be asked to specify the displayed phone number you want replaced, the termination number, and the call duration threshold. A conversion ID and conversion label will be generated. You then use these to create a conversion tag in Google Tag manager, using the tag type ‘Google Ads Call from Website Conversion’.

Examples of business use cases

In practice, businesses that track phone calls will integrate this into broader business processes in slightly different ways. Here are some examples that I have encountered:

Furniture shop

This furniture store has a shop location and an online store, selling specialty furniture. Shoppers are encouraged to call and discuss their specific needs. People come to the website from Google Ads, social media and organic search, and often they use the displayed phone number to call the business.

Call tracking is used to determine what marketing channels and specifically which ad campaigns are leading to phone calls. It is also used to keep an eye on the percentage of calls that are either not answered or abandoned, which helps with planning staffing levels.

Residential care provider

This residential care provider uses call a tracking solution with IVR both for directing calls and tracking call outcomes. Callers interested in finding out about care options are directed to a call centre. Paid search ads are used extensively to bring traffic for locations with capacity, and then the website encourages people to call. The call centre operators record an outcome of each call, allowing the effectiveness of the ads in driving qualified leads.

Tech vendor

This business uses call tracking to optimise paid advertising. Google’s Performance Max campaigns are particularly dependent on data being fed back to the algorithm, to continually optimise the delivery of ads. Integrating call tracking with Google Ads is part of this set-up.

Challenges of phone call tracking

Surprise – technology alone is never a solution to a business problem! You need to make sure that the technology is a good fit for your business and you need to build processes around it. These are some of the challenges:

The most valuable data (outcome of call) is usually dependent on the call taker recording that outcome. For this, you need to plan how outcomes should be recorded when the software is implemented, and provide documentation and training for staff.
Staff taking calls need to be trained in the use of the technology.
Call tracking software costs money, so organisations need to make a financial commitment before seeing the value. The Google Ads call tracking described above is free, but it exists to serve Google Ads, not the broader goals of call tracking.
With respect to Google Analytics and call tracking, standard GA4 reports are not sufficient for reporting (see above, ‘Analysing data from phone calls in GA4 reports’). You will need to invest in additional reporting to get the most out of the data.
You can track calls, but the data is only valuable if you act on it.

Call Tracking solution brands

There are dozens of solutions that allow you to track phone calls. Some that are popular in Australia and New Zealand include Delacon, Avanser and Wildjar.

According to Builtwith.com (August 24), Delacon is the second most-used (by installed sites) call tracking solution in Australia, after Google, and the most used in NZ. Avanser is the fourth most used in Australia, and second most used in New Zealand.

Big names like CallRail and CallTrackingMetrics are also popular.

Conclusion

Where inbound calls are part of the business model, businesses should track phone calls.

By analysing this phone call data, marketing teams can identify which campaigns drive high quality phone calls. For instance, if a particular ad leads to longer, more fruitful conversations, it’s a sign that the messaging resonates well with the target audience. This insight allows you to allocate budget more effectively, focusing on strategies that yield the best results. Additionally, understanding call outcomes can highlight areas for improvement in customer service training, ensuring that every call is a positive experience for the customer.

As with any kind of analytics, you will only get business outcomes if you use the data to take action.

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Shopify GA4 ecommerce tracking

Carolyn James — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 21:51:41 +0000

Does Shopify have a native integration with Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?

[UPDATED October 2023] Shopify was late to the party when it came to integrating with GA4. Businesses were busy implementing GA4 for at least a year before the official sunsetting of Universal Analytics on 1 July 23. However, for most of this time, there was no simple Shopify-GA4 integration, as there was for Universal Analytics.

Options were either using an app or using Google Tag Manager plus pasting some code into the theme.liquid files and sales confirmation page of your store (I’ll talk more about these options later in the post).

In March 2023, a Google Analytics (GA4) integration was released in Shopify, via the Google & YouTube app (previously known as the Google Channel app). This was a welcome step, as it made GA4 set-up easier.

Need help with ecommerce tracking?

See our Web Analytics Services page. Website Insights has delivered results for over 100 businesses in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

How to set up GA4 for Shopify using the Google & YouTube app: Step-by step instructions

1. Login to your store

2. Choose Apps

3. Search for Google & YouTube app and select it

4. Connect to your Google account

Click Connect Google Account. If not already connected, you will be prompted to a window to log in to your Google account. Use the same Google account that is associated with your Google Analytics (GA4) property. If your Google account is already connected, click Open Sales Channel.

5. Connect your Google Analytics (GA4) property

Once connected to your Google account, you will see a session with heading ‘Looking only to set up Google Analytics 4?’. Click on Get started.

Select the Google Analytics (GA4) to connect (If you have more than one property, you will see a list). Click Connect.

You will see a confirmation that your GA4 property is connected.

Should Shopify store owners implement GA4 themselves?

I would recommend that Shopify store owners think twice before jumping in and doing it themselves, and then finding it is not working as expected. These are some of the reasons:

You still need to create your Google Analytics (GA4) property and work on several configuration settings. The decisions you make for these configurations will depend partly on how your Universal Analytics was configured and partly on what are the appropriate settings for your website and business.
GA4 still has some gaps that you only get to know through experience. When I implement Google Analytics (GA4) on an ecommerce store, I add some custom metrics and custom dimensions to provide more data points for reporting.
A thorough testing process will need to be carried out (Using Debug mode) to ensure that data are pulled correctly from Shopify to Google Analytics (GA4).
Google has done some behind-the-scenes linking of Universal Analytics properties to GA4 properties and attempted to ‘auto-migrate’ configurations from UA to GA4. This usually requires a bit of clean-up.

Given that the set-up is a one-time effort, you may be best to use a consultant, to be sure that it is right. Website Insights can implement GA4 for you.

Are there other options for implementing GA4 on a Shopify store?

Yes, there are free solutions and paid solutions. Free solutions obviously require more work on your part and/or they are less comprehensive solutions. You will be able to find advice and options by searching the web, participating in GA4 forums, or considering the free apps in the Shopify app store. If you are looking for a paid solution, you could either choose an app from the Shopify app store or use a consultant who will implement GA4 for you.

Free solutions

I really like the Analyzify GA4 kit – I have used this several times. Despite being free, it is presented like a product ,i.e., updates have been released and there is a dedicated web page where you can go for the latest code and instructions.

The kit consists of:

Code snippets that are pasted into the Shopify theme file and the order status page. These code snippets push the necessary data to the data layer, where it is available to Google Tag Manager.
A Google Tag Manager container, available as a json file that can be imported into Google Tag Manager. This contains the tags triggers and variables that send the data to GA4.
Instructions provided on the web and on YouTube.

Paid solutions

Two that I will highlight from the Shopify app store are Analyzify and Elevar because I hear people recommending them – and this is backed up by multiple 5-star reviews in the app store.

Not to be confused with the Analyzify GA4 kit talked about above, the paid Analyzify solution is fully implemented and tested by the Analyzify team.

Both of these vendors offer server side tracking as a premium offering. Supplementing browser-based tracking with server side tracking is recommended if your Shopify store relies heavily on digital advertising, as it allows more data to reach the advertising platform. This allows a more accurate picture of attribution when a person visits your ecommerce store multiple times, and gives the platforms’ algorithms more data and deeper understanding to work with when finding audiences for your ads.

What’s in the future?

Shopify introduced a new feature late in 2022 called ‘Customer events’, where you can add ‘Custom pixels’. Here, you can add scripts that send data to other platforms. So, theoretically, you can place code for sending data to Google Analytics (GA4) scripts, Facebook, etc, here. It will be up to vendors/platforms to develop code that will work here. This feature is in a ‘secure sandbox’, limiting the extent to which you can track events. Edward from Littledata talks about other limitations of Shopify’s web pixel feature in this blog.

When should you start using GA4 on your Shopify store?

I posted the first version of this article a couple of months before Universal Analytics came to an end. At that time the answer was ‘as soon as possible’. Now that Universal Analytics has stopped collecting data, I hope that most Shopify stores will be set up with GA4 or an alternative analytics product.

If you need help with this, or you need to troubleshoot your GA4 set-up, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The post Shopify GA4 ecommerce tracking appeared first on Website Insights.

How you can use GA4 to analyse mobile web traffic

Carolyn James — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 02:43:38 +0000

Why should you analyse mobile traffic?

As a website owner or marketer, you need to know how to analyse mobile traffic on your website. This allows you to understand the behaviour and preferences of users on mobile devices.

Need help with GA4 mobile vs desktop?

See our Web Analytics done with you Services page. Website Insights has delivered results for over 100 businesses in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

Your audience is likely to use mobile devices – a lot!

It is estimated that over 50% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices; not surprising when every person in the street seems to be glued to a mobile phone! Additionally, more than 3.6 billion people around the world use social media, with the majority accessing these platforms via mobile phones.

By analysing mobile traffic, you can gain insights into user interactions, engagement metrics, and conversion rates specific to mobile users. This helps you identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to enhance the user experience on mobile devices. This information is also invaluable for optimising your marketing campaigns that drive traffic to your website, and lead to conversions.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) allows you to track and measure different aspects of mobile traffic, helping you make data-driven decisions for your website and your marketing campaigns.

The importance of a mobile-friendly website

A mobile-friendly website is important for 2 reasons – optimal user experience and better SEO performance.

Mobile users expect a seamless browsing experience with easy navigation, fast load times, and responsive design. A user-friendly mobile website enhances engagement.

By analysing mobile traffic using GA4, you can gain insights into user behaviour on your mobile website. This data allows you to identify pain points, optimise user flows, and enhance the overall user experience. Furthermore, a mobile-friendly website leads to lower bounce rates, increased time spent on site, and ultimately, higher conversion rates.

SEO crawlers are constantly scanning websites to gather information and assess their relevance for search engine rankings. These crawlers prioritise mobile-friendly websites, as they understand the growing preference for mobile browsing. By providing a seamless mobile experience, you increase the chances of your website being indexed and ranked higher in search engine results.

5 ways to analyse mobile traffic in GA4

GA4 Tech reports
This is where you will answer the question ‘what number/percent of my website visits are from mobile vs desktop vs tablet. It’s important to know whether your audience is predominantly on mobile or on larger screens when planning and designing new pages. For example, I know that tables in my blog posts don’t look great on a phone screen, so I avoid using tables.
Comparisons
A comparison lets you see 2 or more sets of data together on a page, e.g., traffic acquisition for ‘mobile’ versus ‘all users’. This particular comparison will help you to plan strategies for acquiring website visitors. You can design all sorts of comparisons to answer all sorts of questions – use your imagination!
Secondary dimensions
Adding a secondary dimension to any table report in GA4 applies a second level of breakdown. For example, when looking at the pages report, the first breakdown is by page path. Adding a secondary dimension of device category helps you to identify variations in user behaviour across mobile, desktop and tablet.
Exit report by device category
‘Exits’ is a metric available in the Explore reports but not in standard GA4 reports. This tells you which pages were the point of exit from the website. When broken down by device category, you can see whether some pages have a higher rate of exit when viewed on mobile. You could look into whether these pages are not designed well for the mobile format.
Pathway exploration with a breakdown to examine mobile traffic
This is another report available in the Explore reports but not in standard GA4 reports. It allows you to explore the pathways that users took through your website. It is not the kind of report that you should print, as it changes dynamically as you head down one path and then another. Do people follow the pathway that you would expect? If not, what is stopping them?

Now let’s look at how we can see each of these views.

1. Using Tech reports to understand mobile traffic

For a breakdown of your traffic by mobile, desktop and tablet, open the Tech details reports and use the drop-down to change the dimension from the default of ‘Browser’ to ‘Device category’.

I have customised some of the columns in the resulting table. I have swapped ‘Conversions’ for ‘Session conversion rate’.This makes it easier to see how the device types compare when each has a different number of sessions.

The table shows that mobile traffic accounts for the majority of website visits, but desktop traffic has a slightly higher conversion rate. If this trend continues, you could look at how you could improve the conversion rate on mobile devices.

2. Using Comparisons to understand mobile traffic

Users of Universal Analytics will remember Segments. GA4 doesn’t have segments in the main reports (they are available when you create reports in ‘Explore’). However, GA4 has Comparisons, which are essentially the same thing.

A Comparison is a good way to compare the behaviour of one segment of users with that of all users. It helps you identify any significant disparities in user behaviour and trends. This is particularly useful when you want to understand how mobile traffic differs from overall traffic.

To create a Comparison of mobile users versus all users, start in any report, find the set of icons at the top right, click the left-most icon, then choose ‘Add new comparison’.

The dimension you need to specify is ‘Device category’. You can search and select it:

Choose ‘mobile’, click ‘OK’ and then click ’Apply’:

The reports now show both the mobile segment and all users, differentiated by colour.

These charts show me that:

mobile users make up most of the website traffic
these people are more likely to come to the website from social media platforms and less likely to come from paid search, compared with all users.

Tables are expanded in the same way, making them a little harder to read but offering a wealth of information. The table below is the Events report, showing both standard events tracked by GA4 and some custom events. By setting up custom events, you can track specific user actions, such as clicking or tapping on buttons, form submissions, or video views. This data allows you to understand how users engage with your mobile website, helping you identify opportunities to optimise user flows and improve conversions.

If you wanted to take Comparisons to the next level, you could add further conditions, for example, compare user behaviour between Apple mobile devices and Samsung mobile devices.
Once a comparison is applied, it persists as you navigate from report to report, until you remove it.

3. Using Secondary dimensions to analyse mobile website traffic

Secondary dimensions are applied to table reports. The first column (the default dimension) has a blue plus sign on its right. Click this and you can select a secondary dimension. Choose ‘Device category’ to apply a further breakdown by mobile, desktop and tablet. This kind of table can help you to spot differences in behaviour between users on different categories of device.

4. Using an Exit report to analyse mobile web traffic

The metric ‘exits’ is not available in GA4 standard reports. So, head over to the Explore section in the main menu and start a new blank exploration. The variables section will be empty. Add the dimension ‘Page path and screen class’ and ‘device category’ and drag these over into ‘Rows’ and ‘Columns’, respectively.

Add the metrics ‘Views and ‘Exits’ and drag these over into ‘Values’.

The resulting chart shows you where the rate of exit is different on mobile devices. In this chart I can see a few pages where the rate of exit is higher on mobile devices than on desktops. Could that be because these pages are not user-friendly on a mobile device?

5. Using a Pathway Exploration to understand mobile traffic

There is no ‘one right way’ to use the Pathway exploration. It has the capability to show sequences of events or sequences of pages visited. If I want to explore sequences of pages visited, I create a new Pathway exploration and first create a Segment of page_view events. I do this because I want my chart to show only pages that were visited, not all events. To create the Segment, click the plus sign beside ‘Segments’ in the Variables column:

Then specify the segment like this:

Then, on the right, I clear the default chart by clicking ‘Start again’ on the top right of the screen:

Choose ‘Page path and screen class’ for the starting point:

Then choose the page path where you want to start your exploration, for example, ‘/’ for the home page. This will show you the pages that people visited after the home page (whether at the start of the session or at any time they were on the home page).

You can click on any of the pages in the right-hand column to see where people went next. Clicking again will collapse that branch, and you can explore another branch.
Now, to see mobile traffic compared with other traffic, go back to the Settings on the left and chose ‘Device category’ as Breakdown in the Tab Settings column:

Now you will see ‘mobile’, ‘desktop’ and ‘tablet’ at the bottom of the chart. Hover over ‘mobile’ and just the mobile traffic will be highlighted.

Mobile browser versus mobile app traffic

When setting up Google Analytics 4, it’s important to know that mobile browser and mobile app traffic are tracked differently.

If you have a website but not a mobile app, you will set up GA4 to track only web traffic. This will track traffic that comes via any browser, whether this is on a desktop, tablet or mobile device. If you have both a website and a mobile app, you should set up specific GA4 tracking for the mobile app. You will need to set up separate data streams in GA4 for iOS app and Android app.

It is usual to track both browser and app traffic into one GA4 property. This provides a comprehensive view of your overall traffic. GA4 has more ways to identify a user than ‘device-based’ (a change from Universal Analytics), so this single GA4 property can identify some users across their desktop and mobile visits.

Traffic from advertising on social media

If you are advertising on social media, it is likely that the audience you are hoping to reach will be mobile users. By leveraging advanced targeting options, you can reach users based on their demographics, interests, and behaviours.

These ads aim to capture users’ attention and entice them to click through to your website. Once they land on your site, it’s important to have Google Analytics 4 (GA4) set up to analyse their actions and behaviour.

Does mobile traffic convert as much as desktop traffic?

I can’t answer that for you, but you will be able to answer that question for your website, using GA4. To answer this question, you will need to define what constitutes a conversion on your website and track these goals using GA4.

To measure the overall contribution of mobile traffic to conversions, you can use the Conversion report in GA4, adding either a Comparison or a Secondary dimension to differentiate mobile traffic from other traffic.

Leveraging this data for marketing results

Conversion information allows you to make data-driven decisions and optimise your marketing strategies, including for mobile and social channels.
Remember, every website is unique, so it’s essential to define your goals and track them accurately to get a comprehensive understanding of how mobile traffic converts compared to desktop traffic. With Google Analytics, you have the tools to uncover valuable insights and improve your conversion rates across all devices.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Google Analytics (GA4) provides valuable insights into mobile traffic and user behaviour that can inform your digital marketing strategies. By analysing data on mobile users, conversion rates, and user interactions, you can optimise your website and improve the user experience for mobile visitors.

The post How you can use GA4 to analyse mobile web traffic appeared first on Website Insights.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Setup Assistant – pros and cons

Carolyn James — Thu, 25 May 2023 11:23:04 +0000

First impressions are that Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can be set up with wizard-like speed using the Setup Assistant. I don’t agree. I have been implementing GA4 for a couple of years, and I never use this. As we get closer to the 1 July date when Universal Analytics will stop collecting data, Google has been steering us to use the GA4 Setup Assistant with messages popping up in Google Analytics.

If you are not sure what I mean by the Setup Assistant, you can find it at the top of the Property Settings in both GA4 and Universal Analytics.

Need help with implementing Google Analytics 4?

See our Web Analytics done with you Services page. Website Insights has delivered results for over 100 businesses in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

What the GA4 Setup Assistant does and doesn’t do

Initially, my reasons for not using this were that it only did a small part of the job. It created a GA4 property, set the time zone and country, and applied the same user permissions as existed for Universal Analytics. Those are only the very first steps in a Google Analytics 4 setup.

In most cases the Setup Assistant didn’t get any data flowing into the GA4 property. It is able to get some data flowing if you currently have a ‘gtag code snippet’ on your website or you have used Google Tag Manager to implement Universal Analytics. But if your current implementation is another of the common set-ups (e.g. built-in integration as offered within Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and some other website platforms), then the Setup Assistant won’t complete this step. Instead, it leads you down another path and, frankly, it’s easy to get lost.

The Setup Assistant, in taking you one step at a time through the process, doesn’t give you an understanding of the whole picture. It’s like you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Plan your implementation and use Google Tag Manager

I prefer to plan the whole implementation, using a plan template that I have created, and then execute the plan. I almost always use Google Tag Manager for GA4 implementations (as I did for Universal Analytics implementations) as it offers more flexibility to track lots of different website actions. Once it is installed, you can add more tracking as it needed. Often I can re-use GTM triggers that I’ve previously created for Universal Analytics or for Google Ads.

Importing Conversions and Audiences using the GA4 Setup Assistant

As time went on, the Setup Assistant became bigger, with new ‘features’. Now, my reservations were not that it did too little, but that it attempted to do too much, with unsatisfactory results.

If you try to use the Goals Migration Tool in the Setup Assistant, you will probably populate a list of conversion names in the Admin >Conversions section, but there may not be any data flowing to them. The migration tool tries to set up event rules to capture the data for these goals. When I tried it, these rules were based on what I had specified in the Category, Action and Label fields of my goals in Universal Analytics. But, hang on … this was never going to work because these were not the firing conditions for the goal, they were just how I named the underlying events. The firing conditions are defined by the trigger in Google Tag Manager, and the Goals Migration Tool does not have access to this. I see that in the Troubleshooting section of the Goals Migration Tool documentation, there is this: “If you’re using a tag management system like Google Tag Manager, use that system to send traffic and events to your Google Analytics 4 property.”

I don’t think that statement belongs in the troubleshooting section; it belongs right up the top. Because if you are using Google Tag Manager, you should not use the Goals Migration Tool at all. Just send your events to GA4 via a tag in Google Tag Manager then, when you see them in the Admin > Events screen (maybe the next day), toggle them on as Conversions. The ‘import’ steps are just not necessary.

Also, before you just replicate what was in Universal Analytics, you should re-confirm which actions you want to track as conversions. There might be some new ones, or it might be time to retire others. It will be important to choose appropriate event names for these (GA4 has some recommended event names and formats).

Importing Audiences from Universal Analytics to GA4 is similarly convoluted. It involves installing a Google Sheets extension, importing audiences from Universal Analytics into a Google Sheet and then exporting them from the Google Sheet into GA4. Only some audiences are eligible for migration. This process lacks transparency and isn’t quick. GA4 is the tool we will be using in the future – isn’t it much better to learn how to create audiences in GA4 and set them up from scratch?

One thing that the Setup Assistant does well is importing Google Ads links. You don’t have to be a user of the Ads account to import the link from Universal Analytics to GA4, which is an advantage, if analytics and Ads are looked after by different people. Of course, you will still need to check that this is the right Google Ads account to link to.

GA4 Configuration Settings that the Setup Assistant does not cover

In GA4 itself, there are other configurations you need to set or check. Minimally, Enhanced Measurement, referral exclusions, data retention time and various data collection and ads personalisation settings. These need to be thought through. Some have implications for your privacy disclosures, so that is something else for the website owner to work through.

Don’t forget to test

Don’t forget testing – you always need to test using debug mode, dummy transactions and by comparing data between GA4 and Universal Analytics.

My recommendation – don’t use the Setup Assistant

In my view, the GA4 Setup Assistant is not helpful. What’s more, clients have been confused by messages that pop up in both the GA4 and Universal Analytics interfaces, telling them that their GA4 setup is not complete (when often it is) and linking to the Setup Assistant and the Setup Checklist.

I recommend planning and then implementing from scratch, with testing. This will provide a set-up that is transparent and that works correctly. It does require some specialist knowledge of GA4 and Google Tag Manager. You are better to spend your time in learning about these things rather than struggling with a Setup Assistant that gives a partial result.

To end, since this article is mostly ‘what not to do’ , I’ll also point you to this excellent GA4 guide from Data Driven, where I and other analytics people provide useful advice on implementing GA4.

The post Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Setup Assistant – pros and cons appeared first on Website Insights.

How to Read Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Reports

Carolyn James — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 02:25:22 +0000

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a robust and powerful analytics tool that provides indispensable information about your website and visitors.

You may already be using GA4 to track your website’s visitors, but if your analytics reports are not giving you information that helps to direct your marketing and grow your business, you may be missing an opportunity.

Even with GA4 up and running, it’s not easy to see the valuable insights that really matter to you. Google Analytics 4 has the power to collect a lot of great data, but it can’t highlight what is important for your business.

In this article, I will point you to some GA4 reports that are good places to start to look for actionable data.

(Also check out this new article on using GA4 to analyse your mobile traffic).

Need help with how to read Google Analytics?

See our Web Analytics done with you Services page. Website Insights has delivered results for over 100 businesses in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

How are people reaching your website?

People can arrive at your website from a search engine or via links in emails, social media, Google ads or other websites. It is important to understand traffic sources (e.g. whether they are organic traffic) and their trends, since they are influenced by different marketing activities.

In GA4, it’s called Traffic acquisition and this report can be found under Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

This report shows how people are reaching your website, broken down into broad channels. Initially, I would focus on these key metrics – Sessions, Engaged sessions, Average engagement time per session and Engagement rate. You will get an idea of the relative contribution of each channel, and whether the channels bring people who stay to look around your site after arriving. Note that all Google Analytics 4 reports are for a period that you can specify in the top right of the interface.

A session is counted for each visit to your website or app. Engaged session is the number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, or had a conversion event, or had 2 or more screen or page views. Engagement rate is the percentage of engaged sessions (Engaged sessions divided by Sessions), so generally speaking, the higher engagement rate, the better.

Your website may not have traffic from all of the possible channels. Visitors coming from Social, Paid Search and Email will depend on your marketing program. If you are linking to your website from email campaigns but not seeing the data in the Traffic acquisition report, it is likely that you haven’t tagged the email links for analytics reporting.

If you would like to see a breakdown that is more granular than Traffic acquisition, try viewing this same report by selecting Session source/medium from the column header drop-down.

What are people looking for when they find your website through Google?

Search engines are how people find you online, and Google is the most widely used. You will want to make sure that you are showing up for the search queries that you would expect people would use to look for your business. The reports that uncover this information are not in the GA4 menu by default. First we will look at what these reports tell you, and then we will see how to configure them.

Queries report

The Queries report lists the Google Search queries that generated impressions of your website URLs in Google organic search results.

Understanding the correlation between how users search and the relevancy of your pages to those queries provides insight into how to optimise your content.

The number of impressions that each page generates and the average position of impressions let you understand how well the search engine correlates your content to user queries. You can further understand user segments and user acquisition via Exploration reports as needed.

Clicks and click-through rate let you understand how well users correlate the search results with their intentions.

Google organic search traffic report

The Google organic search traffic report is similar, but with landing pages as the dimension.

To uncover nuggets from these reports, ask yourself:

What search queries would you expect to see here but are missing?
Are there pages that you would expect to be found by search, but they are not?
Do some of your pages or some search queries have very low click-through rates in comparison to others?
Are you showing up often for search queries that don’t reflect what you offer?

These reports can highlight where you need to work on improving the match between the topic/intent of the page, the actual content on the page, and the page title and meta description that appear in Google search results. A good match across these 3 things make it easier for Google’s algorithm to show your page in the search results in response to a searcher who is looking for a business like yours.

A tip: if you want to see how each of your web pages shows in Google’s search results page, type site:example.com/ into Google search, where example.com/ is your website. What you are seeing are the page titles and meta descriptions. Titles and meta descriptions have 2 roles – they tell the search engine what your page is about (along with the content on the page itself) and they entice the searcher to click on your page. Make sure you use meta descriptions to improve searchability. If you don’t fill this field in your content editing tool, Google will select some text to display under the search title.

How to set up Search Console reports

I mentioned at the start of this section that some set-up may be required. If you don’t see anything under these standard reports, it will be because Google Search Console is not linked to your Google Analytics 4 property. In this case, follow below part One and Two to set up the link and reports.

Part One: link GA4 to Google Search console
You can make the association in the Google Analytics 4 Property settings if your Google login is already the owner of the Google Search Console account. The steps are shown in the following screenshots.

Step 1: Open admin settings in Google Analytics 4, in the admin panel, scroll down to Product Links. Here you click on Search Console Links.

Step 2: Click on the blue button Link. This will open a configuration screen.

Step 3: Click on the Choose accounts button. This will open a list of accounts you can add to Google Analytics 4 accounts.

Step 4: Make sure you pick the right account (if you have more than one), and then click on the blue Confirm button to the right top corner.

Step 5: Click on the blue Next button.

Step 6: Click on the Select button and pick the correct Web Stream.

Step 7: Review the summary and Submit if everything is right.

Upon submission, the next page confirms LINK CREATED.

Step 8: Click on the X button to the top left in the LINK CREATED page, you will now see a summary of the link created!

Part 2: add the reports to the menu using the Library

Now the link is created, let’s add the reports to the menu.

Step 1: Open Reports in Google Analytics 4 and scroll down to the bottom of the page, then click on Library in the menu on the left.

Step 2: In the Library, find the Search Console card in Collections.

Step 3: click on the 3 dots and choose ‘Publish’.

Where can you find Search Console reports in Google Analytics 4?

Google Search Console is a powerful tool to help marketers and webmasters gain invaluable search metrics and data. If you have followed the above steps, you can find your search console data under Reports. Click on a report to see more details, or customise it.

Where are your users coming from?

Total website traffic is interesting, but if you have a local business, you want to know that you are attracting website traffic from the local area. The location report, found under User > Demographics, provides an Overview and then Demographic details.

At the top of the report, you have the option to display results by other dimensions such as Region, Town/City, Language, Age, Gender or Interests.

You can also add a secondary dimension by clicking on the + sign next to say Country, this lets you break down the results further.

Are your marketing activities leading to valuable actions on your website?

You probably have forms on your website where people can contact you or opt in to your mailing list. In GA4, these valuable actions can be flagged as ‘Conversions’, and reports will help you understand the pathways that lead to them.

A conversion is a user action or user behaviour that you count because you consider it important. It could be a purchase, game level completion, form submission, or even website / app scroll activity.

If your GA4 implementation was planned with your business goals in mind, conversions will have been enabled and configured, and you will see data in the Conversions columns in many of the reports. If you can’t see this, it is worth getting some help from your analytics expert (check out my ‘done for you’ and ‘done with you’ Google Analytics services), since conversions give insight into the characteristics and behaviours of your ‘converters’, so you can keep fine-tuning your marketing.

Specifically, the Conversions report can be found under Engagement > Conversions, where the default report has the dimension of Event name. You can also add a secondary dimension by clicking on the + sign next to the Event name, to further drill down to the details.

One report that I recommend you look at is the Conversion paths report, found under Advertising > Attribution > Conversion paths. Note that the Advertising section is at the same level of Reports but not within Reports.

In Advertising, to start you can find some useful Advertising snapshots. The Advertising snapshot helps you better understand customer journeys and conversion performance. I like its visual simplicity and impact, showing how each of the channels contributes to conversions and conversion value. In the Conversion paths report you can change the summary view by changing Default channel group to Source, Medium or Campaign.

Save your favourite reports for easy reference

If you would like a variation of a report, e.g. with a filter applied, you can use the Edit button, at the top right of the report, to customise and save it with another name. When you do this, it will be available under the Reports > Library. If you don’t see Library, you don’t have permission. In the Library, you can ‘Edit collections’ to add your new report to the menu.

How can we help you with Google Analytics 4?

In conclusion, GA4 provides a wealth of data, but it is not always easy to know what to look for. When people are starting out with GA4, I always recommend that they start by focusing on a few predefined reports that reflect what is important to them.

The next step you could take in personalising custom reports is to use a reporting tool on top of GA4. For my clients, I generally use Looker Studio, a tool that lets me generate interactive and clear reports for the data that matters to the business.

Website Insights offers web analytics ‘done with you’. I can help you with measuring the right things on your website, interpreting the data and using it to do better with your online marketing efforts.

The post How to Read Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Reports appeared first on Website Insights.

What is Google Tag Manager?

Carolyn James — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 19:27:43 +0000

An important component of website tracking is Google Tag Manager (often referred to as GTM). If you are a website owner, GTM may be invisible to you as it works ‘behind the scenes’ to deliver data to Google Analytics and other platforms.

Need help with Google Tag Manager or conversion tracking?

See our Conversion Tracking Services page. Website Insights has delivered results for over 100 businesses in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

In the world of marketing measurement, GTM allows your measurement to be customised to your particular website. Every website is different, with different ‘calls to action’ (the actions you want our users to take). Most websites are also changing frequently to present new content and new offers to the audience.

Why do you need Google Tag Manager as well as Google Analytics?

GTM answers questions that can’t be answered with Google Analytics alone, by allowing you to track pretty much any action on your website. For example, form submissions, video views, and perhaps specific button clicks or specific navigation sequences that are important to you. You may want to assign ‘goal status’ to some of these actions so that you can look more closely at the attributes and behaviours of the people who carried out these actions.

What’s more, if you are using GTM, you don’t need to ask a developer to add code to your website each time you want to track something new, as it is all done within the GTM account.

As a website owner, why should you care?

Although you may not be working with GTM yourself, it is good to understand its capabilities, especially if you are driving decisions from data.

Website owners should also be aware of who has user permissions to important accounts such as Google Analytics and GTM. Make sure you have administrator access. You will need a Google account in order to have access. If someone else has set up these measurement tools for you, they should add your Google account as an additional administrator. Then you will always have access, and will be able to add and remove other people’s access.

How can you tell if GTM is installed on your website?

I recommend Google Tag Assistant (Legacy) for this job. It is a Chrome extension – you can Google it and install it on your Chrome browser. Then open any page of your website, click on the Tag Assistant icon, enable it, and then refresh the website page.
You will see whether Google Tag Manager is installed:

Understanding your GTM account

A Google Tag Manager account is structured like this:

Account
- Container
  - Tags, Triggers, Variables

One container generally relates to one website. Within the container are tags, triggers and variables. These are the components that do the work of sending data to other platforms when someone visits your website.

Tags, triggers and variables are created in the GTM web-based interface. In the container, you will see a menu on the left that includes Tags, Triggers and Variables.
Don’t be put off by the three zeros in the middle under Workspace Changes. Zeros here are good – that means there are no in-progress changes that have yet to be published.

GTM Tags

Click on the Tags menu item to see the tags. Tags you will see most often in a GTM container are sending data to:

Google Analytics (Universal Analytics)
GA4 (the new version of Google Analytics)
Google Ads
Facebook

The role of each of these types of tags is slightly different. Google Analytics and GA4 are analytics platforms, so the tags are for tracking website traffic and actions. Tags sent to Google Ads and Facebook are likely to be conversion tags. They send data when conversions happen on your website, so that these platforms can correctly attribute conversions to their Ads and report back to you. Conversions are the things that you have designated as the goals of your website. Online purchases on the website are also counted as conversions.

The tag type will tell you what kind of tag each one is.

In the Type column, for Google Analytics, there will be Universal Analytics tag types. One of these will be triggered on ‘All Pages’ and others may be triggered by specific events.

For GA4, you will see a GA4 Configuration tag and GA4 Event tags.

For Google Ads, you will see Conversion Tracking tags and possibly Remarketing tags. If there are conversion tags, the container will also need a Conversion Linker tag.

For Facebook, you will see Facebook Pixel tags. One will be triggered on ‘All Pages’ and others may be triggered by specific events.

Tags triggered by events usually represent conversions that you want to track, e.g. form submissions, email address clicks, phone number clicks.

The tag name may also reference the tag type if the implementer has used a consistent naming convention for tags. For example, they may have prefixed the tag name with ‘GA’, ‘GA4’, ‘GAds’, ‘Fb’ or similar.

GTM Triggers

Click on the Triggers menu item to see the triggers.

Triggers are created so that the tag will be sent when a specific event or user action happens on the website. They include condition statements that specify when a tag should fire.

Often you will see the same triggers being used across tags that send data to Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook and other platforms, as usually we want to record the same conversions in all platforms.

Triggers need to be thoroughly tested. In order to get accurate data, the trigger must always fire when the desired user action happens, and never fire for any other action.

Examples of triggers commonly seen in a GTM container:

Pageview of a specific page
Click
Link clicks
Visibility of an element on the page
Video view
Form submission
Scroll depth
Custom event

GTM Variables

Click on the Variables menu item to see the variables.

You will notice that they are divided into Built-in variables and User-defined variables. One of the first things you need to do in a new GTM container is configure the Built-in Variables by selecting those you want to use.

Variables are essentially formulae. Depending on where they are applied, the output will vary, as the name ‘variable’ implies. A simple example – the variable ‘Click Text’ will look for the text that the user clicked.

Variables can be used in tags and in triggers.

In tags, a variable can be set to define a constant that is re-used often. Most GTM accounts will use a ‘GA Settings variable’ to hold the Google Analytics tracking ID (UA-xxxxxx) and any other information that you want to send with every tag.

Variables can also be used to pick up a piece of information that is variable, and pass it in a tag.

In triggers, variables can be used to specify the conditions when the trigger should fire, for example:

Page Path starts with /contact-us/
Click URL starts with https://bookings.bookingengine.com

The Data Layer

The Data Layer is an important ‘middle layer’ that allows data to be transferred from the website and made available to GTM. When a website has GTM installed, the Data Layer will be populated with data with each new page load.

While some of this data is populated by default, the website developer can send additional data to the Data Layer, making it available to be picked up by GTM. You can send pretty much any data from the website to the Data Layer.

There are standard schema for some types of data, e.g. ‘Enhanced ecommerce’. Standard formats enable data to be understood by Google Analytics and displayed in the Ecommerce reports.

Preview and Debug Mode

Preview and Debug lets you test tags before you publish them, and to troubleshoot published tags.
When you open Preview mode, the website opens in an adjacent tab. As you interact with the website, the Preview and Debug view shows you events as they happen, tags that were fired/not fired, trigger conditions that were met/not met, variables available to GTM, and the progression of data available in the Data Layer.

What can I track with GTM – some common use cases

You could track email address clicks.

Example trigger: ClickURL contains tel:

You could track phone number clicks.

Example trigger: ClickURL contains mailto:

You could track form submissions. There are a few ways you could do this, depending on the form itself and the workflow. The trigger could be based on a pageview of a thank-you page, or ‘element visibility’ when a thank-you message displays in place of the submitted form. Some forms push a ‘form submit’ event to the Data Layer and this can be tracked as a Custom Event.

You could track video views – GTM has a built-in trigger for YouTube video views. As well as tracking start and completion, you can track progress milestones where you can specify percent or seconds viewed.

You could track Ecommerce events. This requires that events are pushed to the Data Layer, e.g., ‘purchase’ event. The accompanying data must be in a standard format for the receiving system to understand it (Google has published a specification for ‘Enhanced ecommerce’). The GTM trigger fires on the event and the tag picks up the ecommerce data and sends it to the target platform.

Where to from here?

Now it’s up to you to decide – are you happy to understand what Google Tag Manager can do at an overview level, or do you want to learn to use this tool? If you want to learn to use it yourself, you will find some very comprehensive courses online. Be prepared to take some time and practice to really get to grips with GTM. If you would prefer to hand this over to somebody else, I may be able to help. See my Google Tag Manager Services and get in touch for a chat.

Feature image by Helena Hertz on Unsplash

The post What is Google Tag Manager? appeared first on Website Insights.

Google Analytics for content marketing

Carolyn James — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 04:02:46 +0000

Writing an article for your website is a time-consuming process – although you have the knowledge in your head, you spend time structuring the article, crafting the words and fact-checking to avoid errors.

So, it’s worthwhile knowing which articles are being read over and over. These blog posts are known as ‘evergreen’.

You’ve invested in the article – now you need to get a return.

Need help with website insights using Google Analytics?

See our Web Analytics Services page. Website Insights has delivered results for over 100 businesses in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

There are a couple of ways you can get mileage from your effort:

Replicate the winning traits in other articles
Use these pages to bring people in your target audience the next step towards being your customer.

How do you find out which articles are read the most?

Your Google Analytics account will tell you which articles are read most.

In Google Analytics, go to the Behaviour section of reports
Choose ‘Site Content’ then ‘All Pages’
Set a long time period, e.g. a few months
The report shows pages, ordered from most to least pageviews.

If your website content is arranged with all blog posts within a directory, e.g. pages are /blog/pagename or /articles/pagename, then you could filter this ‘All Pages’ report by typing ‘blog’ or articles’ in the filter box.

Otherwise, you can just browse the list to find the most-viewed articles (if the report is many pages, it will be easier to increase the ‘show rows’ so that all rows show on one page).

Landing Page Reports

You will get a slightly different perspective by looking at the Landing Pages report (under ‘Site Content’, then ‘Landing Pages’). Here, you are looking at first pages of every website session. Usually, this means the page was found in search results, or perhaps linked to from social media. You can uncover more about the source by adding a secondary dimension of Default Channel Grouping.

Once you have found the articles that continue to attract views, dig into this some more. What was the topic? What search terms were people using when they found them? Did you use video or images that may have contributed to the popularity? If other people linked to your article, what was the context? Then you can experiment with your next articles, replicating what seems to have worked.

Call to action

Put a ‘call to action’ on the pages that are most viewed. You could offer people a downloadable giveaway on the topic and ask for people’s email address in return for this resource. If you use an email service provider such as Mailchimp, you can easily set up a form and embed it in your page. You can set this up so that the email address is tagged with topic, so that you can follow up with relevant communication.

Segway to your services

In the article, make the connection to what you offer. Tell people how you can help them with the ‘problem’ that brought them to your article. Link to a page that expands on this service.

Replicate your success

Content marketing is a discipline in itself, involving optimising web pages to appeal to both search engines and people. Even if you are not an experienced content marketer, you can still ask yourself what your popular posts have in common.

Are they about particular topics where you are uniquely positioned to provide information that people are looking for? Are they long form or short form? Do they include images? Had you put extra effort into optimising these pages for search engines to attract organic traffic? Did you promote them widely on social media?

Experiment with replicating the traits of those articles. You can either do this in new articles, or go back and revise and refresh your older articles.

It will also be very useful to learn the basics of SEO (search engine optimisation). Then, as you plan content for the future, you can be more deliberate about creating content that has a higher chance of being seen by more people.

Conclusion

You’ve put a lot of effort into providing value on your website, so don’t neglect to use it as a tool to help build your business. Use Google Analytics to identify your evergreen articles, and use these to turn your readers into leads.

The post Google Analytics for content marketing appeared first on Website Insights.

Why should you use Google Analytics?

Carolyn James — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 11:18:03 +0000

‘How often do you look at your Google Analytics reports?’ The presenter posed this question at a webinar on search engine optimisation. We selected from multi-choice answers on our screens and the results were revealing. Most people were at the ‘hardly ever’ or ‘never’ end of the spectrum!

So, why would a business owner want to look at Google Analytics?

Because it can provide you with data that is part of the bigger practice of ‘knowing your numbers’. If we only tracked end results in our businesses, we might be in for some surprises at the end of the quarter or the year. So we measure other things to tell us whether we are on course, and adjust our activities accordingly.

We can measure offline marketing activities; for example, we might track the number of sales conversations we’ve had, and the number of proposals sent. In the same way, Google Analytics tells us how we are going with our online marketing activities. Making better decisions about future marketing is the link between analytics and growth.

Need help getting started with Google Analytics?

See our Web Analytics done with you Services page. Website Insights has delivered results for over 100 businesses in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

How should you approach Google Analytics?

Start by asking yourself why you have a website and what roles it plays in your sales and marketing. Ask yourself the same questions for your other online channels.

Think about the journey people take from becoming aware of you, to then engaging with your brand or content, then purchasing from you. It may help if you draw a diagram or flowchart showing the customer journey and how it maps to your online channels. This will help you to see what you need to measure.

How do people become aware of you and find your website?

Social media? Paid advertising? Organic search? Referred from other websites?

Can they take actions that indicate interest in your products or services?

Download resources? View sales pages? Join your mailing list? Book a free consultation?

Can people buy from you on your website?

These are the journeys that you need to measure. Well-chosen metrics will tell you, at a glance, which channels and activities are the best contributors to awareness, engagement and new business.

In summary, the first step is to decide what you want to measure that will be a meaningful business indicator.

Implementing Google Analytics

You could just connect Google Analytics to your website and leave it at that – but you would get little value from doing that.

The indicators that you choose to measure are not always tracked by default because every website is different. Therefore, your chosen indicators should be set up as ‘goals’ in Google Analytics. You could learn how to do this yourself, or get a web analytics expert to help you with this.

You’ll also need to configure your account to enrich your reporting, by doing things like:

Link Google Search Console to Google Analytics
Link Google Ads to Google Analytics
Turn on ‘Advertising Reporting Features’ and ‘Demographics and Interest Reporting’

If you use email as one of your marketing channels, and those emails include links to your website, you should adopt a system to tag these links, so that individual email campaigns can be differentiated in analytics reports. Most email service providers will offer a way to do this.

When you implement Google Analytics, you may be advised to implement Google Tag Manager as well. If you are serious about measuring your online marketing, this is a good idea – Google Tag Manager makes it much easier to track goals and ecommerce without needing your web developer every time you want to track something new. Like Google Analytics, it is a free tool.

What reports should I look at?

If you are fairly new to Google Analytics and haven’t yet got your account customised and optimised, my article ‘How to read Google Analytics’ offers some suggestions for where to look to make connections between data and business value.
In this article, I suggest:

The Channels report (found under Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels) to see how people are arriving at your website.
The Search Console reports, especially ‘Queries’ and ‘Landing Pages’ (found under Acquisition > Search Console) to show what people were looking for when they found your website through organic search.
The Location Report (found under Audiences > Geo > Location) to show where your users are located.
When you have your goals configured in Google Analytics, the Top Conversion Paths Report (found under Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels) is really useful. It will tell you which of your marketing activities are leading to valuable actions on your website.

Once you know which business indicators you want to track, you will want to do this easily and regularly. You will be ready for custom reports, which answer your specific business questions.

There are a couple of ways you can go about this. In Google Analytics, you can create Custom Reports, which allow you to choose the dimensions and metrics, and to add filters. You can also apply ‘segments’, which allow you to view any report with a chosen filter applied. These are useful for a one-off investigation, but the presentation of the data is not very user-friendly.

A better way to do this is to create custom reports in Google Data Studio. This free tool gives you huge scope to present data in a way that focuses on what you want to know. You can draw data from multiple systems, e.g. Google Analytics and Facebook. The other things I like about Google Data Studio reports are that they can be interactive, they can update automatically from the underlying data and they are easily shared.

Start making online marketing decisions confidently

When it comes to online marketing, many small business owners focus on ‘doing stuff’. They don’t spend any time measuring the results and adjusting the plan.

Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Google Data Studio are free tools that can help you with this. It is worth investing in some upfront planning, set-up of the tools, and learning how to interpret the data. Every business is different, so you will need to make sure you are measuring the right things for your particular business. Then you will have a valuable feedback loop to help you make online marketing decisions confidently. Website Insights can help with this – ask me about web analytics services that are the right fit for your particular business.

This article was first published as a guest post for Your Time Matters.

The post Why should you use Google Analytics? appeared first on Website Insights.

Website analytics Archives - Website Insights

Benefits of server-side tracking

Potential benefits of server-side tracking

Before implementation – requirements gathering and sign-off

Which of the above benefits do you want from server-side tagging?

Need help with server-side tracking?

Implementation phase

What are the costs involved in implementing server-side tracking?

Do you need server-side tagging?

The 6-question check

How to use this calculator

How server-side tagging actually works

Frequently asked questions

Mastering call tracking software and GA4

Need help with call tracking analytics?

Definition of Call Tracking

Benefits of Call Tracking

Accurate attribution and conversion tracking

Enhanced customer journey insights

Opportunity to improve phone call experience

How do these solutions track phone calls?

Set up call tracking and Google Analytics 4

Creating tracking numbers and adding them to your website

Linking call tracking with GA4

Marking phone call events as key events (aka conversions) in GA4

Analysing data from phone calls in GA4 reports

Calculating phone call ROI

Creating targeted audiences in GA4 based on call conversions

Advanced call tracking strategies

Tracking phone leads from offline marketing (e.g., billboard, radio)

Integrating call tracking with ads platforms

Don’t confuse call tracking software with Google Ads’ tracking of calls to a phone number on your website

Examples of business use cases

Furniture shop

Residential care provider

Tech vendor

Challenges of phone call tracking

Call Tracking solution brands

Conclusion

Shopify GA4 ecommerce tracking

Does Shopify have a native integration with Google Analytics 4 (GA4)?

Need help with ecommerce tracking?

How to set up GA4 for Shopify using the Google & YouTube app: Step-by step instructions

Should Shopify store owners implement GA4 themselves?

Are there other options for implementing GA4 on a Shopify store?

Free solutions

Paid solutions

What’s in the future?

When should you start using GA4 on your Shopify store?

How you can use GA4 to analyse mobile web traffic

Why should you analyse mobile traffic?

Need help with GA4 mobile vs desktop?

Your audience is likely to use mobile devices – a lot!

The importance of a mobile-friendly website

5 ways to analyse mobile traffic in GA4

1. Using Tech reports to understand mobile traffic

2. Using Comparisons to understand mobile traffic

3. Using Secondary dimensions to analyse mobile website traffic

4. Using an Exit report to analyse mobile web traffic

5. Using a Pathway Exploration to understand mobile traffic

Mobile browser versus mobile app traffic

Traffic from advertising on social media

Does mobile traffic convert as much as desktop traffic?

Leveraging this data for marketing results

Conclusion

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Setup Assistant – pros and cons

Need help with implementing Google Analytics 4?

What the GA4 Setup Assistant does and doesn’t do

Plan your implementation and use Google Tag Manager

Importing Conversions and Audiences using the GA4 Setup Assistant

GA4 Configuration Settings that the Setup Assistant does not cover

Don’t forget to test

My recommendation – don’t use the Setup Assistant

How to Read Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Reports

Need help with how to read Google Analytics?

How are people reaching your website?

What are people looking for when they find your website through Google?

Where are your users coming from?

Are your marketing activities leading to valuable actions on your website?

Save your favourite reports for easy reference