Google Analytics Health Check Checklist: Property Settings

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1 Google Analytics Health Check Checklist: Property Settings One of the reasons Next Steps Digital exists is because we not only want to dispel common misconceptions about Google Analytics (and everything else in our industry), but we want to show you the exact steps to take to create a successful Google Analytics implementation. Out of the box, Google Analytics allows you to create a new property after you finish setting up the account details. This initial step is where most marketers go wrong. They only set up one property. We recommend creating four to five properties when setting up your Google Analytics account (depending on whether you have an ecommerce site). Within each property, you ll establish additional views to contain reports you want to see regularly. Assuming that your account is tracking one ecommerce website, the following are the recommended steps for setting up properties in Google Analytics. Implement the settings below at Admin > Property.

2 SETTING UP PROPERTIES - Property > Property Settings Tracking ID Verify and document the tracking ID (UA-XXXXXXX-1) in your Google Analytics Implementation Guide (make sure you make a separate copy for yourself). Property Naming Maintain a naming convention that includes a descriptive name that anyone can understand when looking at your implementation. Also number individual properties as indicated above. Default URL The default URL will be used by reports throughout Google Analytics, including in in-page analytics views. Be sure you specify http or https. For example, our URL is Default View This is the default view for integrated services (e.g., AdWords, AdSense) to use when pulling data from Analytics. Industry Category This is a drop-down menu with predetermined selections. Making a choice allows you to use the benchmarking feature and compare industry sites comparable to yours and their traffic counts. ADVANCED SETTINGS - Property > Property Settings Allow Manual Tagging Manual tagging shouldn t be used without prior campaign tagging experience. It is useful at the property level specifically for tracking other campaign types outside of AdWords. Property Hit Volume In the free version of Google Analytics, an account that exceeds 10 million hits per month is in danger of not processing all user data for each property and view. The premium version allows more.

3 IN-PAGE ANALYTICS - Property > Property Settings Use Enhanced Link Attributions Enhanced link attribution lets GA collect separate data for multiple links on a page that have the same destination. It requires a tag in HTML code, and enabling in GA. It slows GA, so use only if needed. Start In-Page Analytics Use embedded mode in most cases. Use of full-view mode is recommended only if your site has trouble loading in embedded mode. Adjust Search Console Search Console reports in Analytics provide information about the performance of organic-search traffic. The accounts must be linked, and then you enable Search Console data sharing in property settings. MANDATORY PROPERTIES 01. Backup & Recovery Property (Do Not Modify) This is your pristine, unadulterated collection of all Analytics data. It will have no filters. It serves as backup should something go wrong. 02. Ecommerce (Debug) Property (Test & Development) This provides a means of testing new Analytics configurations (by looking at real-time reports) before they go live. 03. Master Analytics Property (Production) This gathers a property s most important or most often used views. It becomes the primary property for daily GA work.

4 RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL PROPERTIES 04. Management Analytics Property Group views of particular interest to upper management. You ll be able to answer inquiries faster. 05. All Traffic Sources Property Consolidate information about all sources of traffic, organic and paid, in a single property for quick access. 06. Inside or Outside Sales Property Group reports of sales transactions. MORE USEFUL PROPERTIES 07. Organic Traffic Property Views of organic (non-paid) search traffic. 08. Paid Search Traffic Property Views of various paid-search campaigns Traffic Property Views of campaigns. 10. Referral Traffic Property Views of visits to your site that came from sources outside of the Google search engine. 11. Direct Traffic Property Views of visits to your site that came from a bookmark or entering a URL from your site in a browser 12. Development Properties Test newly created pages or subdomains (multiple pages), and/or monitor new launches. 13. Any Other Subdomain Properties

5 Every subdomain on your site should have its own property. TRACKING INFO - Property > Tracking Info Tracking Code Once a property is established, Google Analytics supplies JavaScript to be added to each page to be tracked. If you use PHP, use the code to create a file named "analyticstracking.php." Put it and additional code from GA on each PHP template page. Data Collection Enable Remarketing and Advertising Reporting Features. The former ensures data gathering for remarketing. The latter enables you to get several reports that provide data about who your users are. User-ID Enabling User-ID lets you track users as they come to your site with different devices over multiple sessions so you can discover how users interact with your content over an extended period. Session Settings I ndividual sessions or campaigns end after the default amount of time set here. Once you have data, use average time spent on your website to set the length of sessions. Mobile properties should have longer campaign timeouts (inactivity that doesn t end a session). Organic Search Sources GA tracks users coming from about 40 organic search sources. Add more if you know they actively direct traffic to your site. Referral Exclusion List E xclude specific domains from your referral traffic, such as sister sites that users may be expected to come from, or third-party ecommerce plugins. These are not true referrals and should be tracked differently. Search Term Exclusion List Exclude your company s brand names; they will be counted more accurately as direct traffic. Exclude any term(s) already used in a custom channel grouping to ensure against duplicate counts.

6 PRODUCT LINKING - Product Linking > AdWords AdWords is Google s paid search platform. If you are using AdWords, link it to your Google Analytics account to compile data from it. AdSense Google AdSense is a program that populates websites with relevant PPC ads and shares revenue with the host site. If you are using AdSense, link it to your GA account to gather more information. Ad Exchange Ad Exchange is an ad marketplace that has partnered with Google s Display Network. Make sure your Ad Exchange account is linked with your Google Analytics account. ALL PRODUCTS - Product Linking > All Products BigQuery BigQuery is a developer tool for executing fast queries over large data sets. Integration is only available for Google Analytics Premium properties. DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) Google's cross-exchange real-time-bidding buying solution for large customers enables users to create remarketing audiences from within a Google Analytics Premium account and then share the audiences with a DBM account for targeting. DoubleClick Campaign Manager This ad management and serving solution manages digital advertising programs for agencies and other advertisers. Integration allows GA Premium customers to view and analyze DCM data in Analytics. DoubleClick Search

7 DoubleClick provides the ad technology foundation to create, transact, and manage digital advertising for the world's buyers, creators and sellers. Google Play Google Play, an app development tool, no longer integrates with Google Analytics. Postbacks Postbacks is a feature that lets you inform your non-google ad networks when an install or deep-link conversion is detected. This helps ad networks optimize ad campaigns. Search Console Search Console gives you a better understanding of what your organic users are searching for. If you have a Search Console account, link it with Google Analytics. AUDIENCE DEFINITIONS - Property > Audience Definitions Audiences Audiences let you add cookies to site users browsers or mobile devices and, from these lists, remarket to them through AdWords. If you are using PPC, create remarketing audiences in your GA platform. Dynamic Attributes When remarketing (a PPC strategy), vertical attributes in your page tags create remarketing audiences, and dynamic attributes created in GA link those vertical attributes to your AdWords account. CUSTOM DEFINITIONS - Property > Custom Definitions Custom Dimensions Dimensions are attributes of your data. GA allows you to create custom dimensions to collect and analyze data that Analytics doesn't automatically track. Custom Metrics

8 Metrics are quantitative measurements of Analytics data. Google Analytics allows users to create custom metrics for the program to track. This is where you create and implement these metrics. DATA IMPORT - Property > Data Import Data Import If you have a set of data from another program or another account you wish to add to your current one, you can do so here. SOCIAL SETTINGS - Property > Social Settings Social Settings Create a filter here to determine how social activities associated with your web property are identified in reports. This allows all Facebook references, for example, to be documented the same way, creating cleaner, clearer reports.