Let’s talk data

I cannot express this enough, be sure you are collecting a ridiculous amount of data and monitoring it regularly. I’ve worked with hundreds of clients over the years, and one of the first things we look at, when we begin to plan a marketing strategy, is data. One common denominator between the most successful companies I’ve worked with, is the collection of good data.

It‘s not just enough to connect your Google Analytics to your website. If you want to get a real understanding of your users behavior, it’s important to set up specific goals for key KPI’s. If you aren’t particularly savvy with setting up personalized goals in your analytics, I would recommend hiring an expert to ensure you are set up for success. It’s no longer just enough to measure time on site, sessions, purchases, bounce rate. If you want to see real results and make changes based off of those results, you need to ensure you’re collecting information at every step from entry to exit.

I am a firm believer in cross referencing data. Because we don’t live in a world of perfect data, there will ALWAYS be a variance in reporting. If you have an e-commerce store, then it’s likely your platform provides a dashboard for reporting. Many times you will see that a report pulled from, let’s say Shopify, has slightly different numbers than the same report from your analytics. But which is correct? The answer is neither. They both are not 100% accurate. That being said, you will notice the same base information. Be sure you monitor the results from both. If you happen to notice that one report is extremely different than the other, then you have an error in how your data is being collected.

There are a couple of companies I recommend looking into, if you want to really hone in on what’s happening with your users. The first company is Praxis Metrics (https://www.praxismetrics.com/.)

The reports that Praxis can provide are unreal! Not only can they help you clean up your analytics, but Praxis can help you generate a more thorough dashboard to help you quickly get an understanding of the goal you set in place. The other company is Databox (https://databox.com/ .) Databox has some great features that help you gather all of your data at one time in the same place. In both cases, I’ve seen these companies help businesses reduce the stress of reporting, gain real-time insights, and help provide a more accurate understanding of what’s working or not in marketing initiatives.

When creating online ads, email campaigns, coupons, etc, you must ensure you set up the correct pixels for reporting. If you aren’t setting up your ads correctly, your data will not report correctly. Be sure you’re working with an expert to ensure that your content is being created to generate the data you need. For example, you can run multiple different ads on Facebook, but if your pixels aren‘t linked correctly, one of the ads may appear to be performing worse than another, but in reality is actually performing better. Not only will it throw off the report of the ad campaign, but it will throw off the report for the entire sales funnel.

One other way to collect data is through heat mapping. This, by far, is one of the most under utilized tools out there that almost everyone has installed. To me, if you want to gain real insight on user behavior, a heatmap is a MUST! I’ll talk more on heatmaps in my next article. Until then, be safe and enjoy life.

Thanks, Elizabeth