In September I attended the Google Analytics 2014 User Conference in Melbourne, which was organised by Loves Data. I love that Google brings this conference to Melbourne!
The awesome keynote speaker was Google’s Digital Evangelist Avinash Kaushik.
Avinash in action
I’m happy to share that I was stoked to find out that Avinash was coming to Australia for this conference because reading his book “Web Analytics 2.0” a few years ago was one of the reasons I got inspired to get really involved with Google Analytics data.
The keynote was a lively, entertaining and insightful presentation.
Key Take-Away: Report insights, not data
Although working with Google Analytics involves data, reporting the data is not useful for others who don’t understand the data, or what to do with it. Especially if you report a data overload! In this case, you’re just doing, to quote Avinash, a “data puke”.
Instead, when working with data, your success will be defined by your ability to use the English language to tell people why things are happening, what to do about it and the impact that will have on the business.
That is:
- Gather Insights (why its happening)
- Create actions (what to do about it)
- And understand the business impact those actions will have.
Present the information in a way that’s easy to understand, ideally with images and graphs and not just numbers.
Winners spend more time providing insights and analysis than reporting
From your insights, in terms of your website visitors, figure out what people, their sources, onsite behaviour and outcomes are best for your company and then aim to get more of them.
Be an analysis ninja rather than a reporting squirrel.
Or work with someone who is!
The slide below shows what metrics are important for each category of Acquisition, Behaviour and Outcomes.
Here’s a few more gold nuggets
1. Don’t measure numbers that don’t give any information about your ability to engage with people, eg number of Followers on Twitter. Instead measure Conversation (comments), Amplification (shares) and Applause (Likes, +1s etc) on your activity.
2. Test, test, test! Test your users mobile experience, particularly if you are paying for AdWords ads that include mobile devices. The mobile experience includes load time, landing page relevance and the ease of reading important information without having to “pinch and squeeze”.
3. Have more content than ads on every page of your website. Seems obvious but a lot of the big players get this wrong!
4. The final gold nugget is shown in the photo below
The final gold nugget of information!
Read more about the presentations at the Google Analytics User Conference in Loves Data’s blog article on 10 Tips from Google Analytics Pros.
I’m already looking forward to next year’s GA conference!
Until next time
Mel
Melinda aka Mel is a Google Partner, Google Ads & Consultant, Speaker and Trainer and co-owner of Click-Winning Content.
Mel provides results-driven services to organisations around the world and is committed to never using an acronym without explaining it first. She also likes greyhounds as pets, grand slam tennis, cracked pepper and Melbourne sunsets.
Please connect at the links below.
