Why Analytics Projects Fail
“Hey, we’re launching this Commerce site and we need to know if we made more money, can we track that?” I’m paraphrasing, but seriously, this happened. The first ‘shake my head’ moment would be that a site is nearly ready to launch without fully understanding HOW to track it. The second is looking at this project in a vacuum, assuming this is a piece of a larger strategy. There I go again, assuming.
How to win at web analytics
Ready for the simplest answer in the world? Plan! It’s really that easy. You don’t need a data analyst to tell you what the business goals are. You may need them to uncover deep metrics that lead to better sales, but your overall goals should be about the business as a whole. So when you start discussing a new project YOU should be the person that says:
- What metrics will we look at to deem this project a success?
- What is our plan for ensuring we can track those metrics?
We always like to do analytics tagging guides during the wireframe or design phase of website redesigns. This is because often one of those ‘necessary metrics’ will require some level of development assistance. Better the developer team knows about this before they get too far down the line. It also helps to understand what kind of advanced tracking you may need, such as events or custom dimensions.
Don’t do piece-meal analytics
It is a minimal effort to apply Google Tag Manager code across the entire site as it is to do it on a single page. Yet I have been approached numerous times to implement GTM on simply the order confirmation page for commerce tracking. This is reason number two of why a lot of analytics projects fail because it often is never thought of as a whole. Do yourself a favor, even if you are only implementing a new site section make sure to revisit your analytics strategy to ensure all of the pieces fit together nicely!
If you need help with this we are happy to help, but just by keeping the two simple questions listed above you will be lightyears ahead of many of your competitors!
