7 Critical Google Analytics Tracking Mistakes that Distort Your Data Analysis

For digital businesses, Google Analytics has always been the tool of choice for a good reason. Owing to the tool’s immense power in terms of gaining audience insights and creating targeted marketing strategies, one cannot afford blunders in terms of its proper implementation. Most of the common mistakes businesses make are incredibly easy to fix and can immensely increase your profit margins.

1)      Analytics Code Not Implemented On Subdomain

 A common mistake that businesses make is not implementing analytics code on subdomains. For websites that use subdomains, it is important for them to properly track the customer’s interaction and site behavior with your company across domains.

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2)      Exclude Certain IP Addresses

Another common mistake people make is not excluding their own company’s IP address. Failing to do so results in incorrect measurement of website traffic hence hindering the business to unleash its full potential.

Pro-Tip: Exclude IP addresses of every partner you work with to get a clear view of data.

Bonus Pro-Tip: In addition to the IP-filtered view, it’s equally important to always have a raw, unfiltered view in your analytics running as a backup.

3) Don’t Forget to Exclude Robots and Spiders

It is a good practice to exclude traffic from bots and search engine “spiders” in your analytics results. While most web spiders serve a valuable purpose, from a data analyzation point of view they show adulterated results by showing falsely inflated traffic and conversions.

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4) Permitting (Other) Traffic Linger

One more slightly challenging issue we observe with business websites is traffic appearing the “(Other)” channel grouping. This issue robs businesses of key insights related to valuable clicks, sign-ups and sales. The main cause of this happening is bad UTM tagging; so to avoid this it is recommended to use the right tracking parameters to better reflect the type of traffic as it can help avoid attribution problems helping you report more accurate ROI of your campaigns.

5) Use Google Smart Goals intelligently

Smart goals are designed to use machine learning algorithms to track micro-conversions that Google believes will ultimately lead to revenue based on detected past behavior from visitors. Since it’s a data prediction model based on logical grounds that resemble to the key events on your site so one should always play safe when dealing with this.

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6) Using only Aggregate Data

Businesses not segmenting their Google Analytics data based on key factors like demographics, behaviors and geography miss out on a ton of valuable information. With proper segmentation, businesses can better tailor their content to reach more people.

7)  Ignoring Device Behavioral Differences

In a mobile-first ecosystem where search engines evaluate websites based on experience, so it is important to be responsive, fast and mobile-friendly.

When analyzing user behavior via analytics one should never ignore device based differences as people navigate and interact with websites differently across desktop and mobile. If you are ignoring how users engage with you across devices, you’re missing out on a lot of treasured information that can help you further improve your experience on the website.

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We Hope We’ve Cleared It All!

If you can address these mistakes timely, you’ll get a better picture of what’s working in your digital marketing plan. By evading these common pitfalls, your business will get closer to unlocking the full potential of your website saving it from the road to failure. If it’s been a while that your website isn’t performing as expected, it may be time for a thorough digital marketing audit.

However, if you’d like to connect with us directly for a meeting to learn more about how WE can help YOUR website get back on track and deliver results that matter, fill out the form on our contact us page.