Validate your Google Analytics or G4 implementation

Your Analytics account structure will depend on a number of factors such as how many websites you need to collect data from and the structure of your business itself (e.g. regional divisions, product lines). This will determine how many properties you need to set up and how many data streams. For example, if you have multiple websites linked to your business, you will set up one Google Analytics account, a property for each site and data streams for each site. In this way, you can segment your data per brand while also being able to have an overview of the big picture to make top-level decisions.

We will check to see if your website is connected with Google Tag Manager (GTM). GTM is a valuable tool that can help you manage your Google Analytics event tracking tags and other tracking code. If your site is not connected with GTM, you may be missing out on important event data. We will use Google Tag Assistant to check that every tag and trigger is firing correctly.

Filters can help you to segment your data in order to better understand which areas of your site are performing well and which need improvement. Filters are used to exclude certain data from views, so you are only focusing on a specific aspect of your campaign. If these are incorrectly set up, data integrity can be affected.

There are six levels of access:

1. View – able to view reports and account settings
2. Analyst – able to create dashboards in addition to the same priveledges as viewers
3. Marketer – same as above in addition to editing audiences, events, conversions and attribution models
4. Editor – can edit all account data and account settings other than manage user roles
5. Administrator – full access and control of the entire account
6. No access

Additionally, you can give access at the account level or property level, so if you have different people handling each property, you don’t have to give them access to the full account. It is important to only give users the level of access they need to do their job, so as to keep the various roles separate and ensure your data and confidential information is secure.

Referral traffic can skew your data and make it difficult to interpret. We will check for referral traffic by looking for unusual spikes in traffic from specific referrers such as payment processors like PayPal or a CRM form that redirects back to your website such as Zoho.

Nowadays, many companies use subdomains to set up their eCommerce store or blog separate to their main website in order to generate backlinks to their domain. This can make tracking sessions tricky, however cross-domain tracking enables you to link your domains and/or subdomains so if a user starts on your main website and ends up on your separate shop domain, this will still be tracked as a single session. We will ensure your cross-domain measurement has been correctly configured to reflect accurate user data.

Bot traffic and internal traffic can skew your Google Analytics data and give you a false sense of how your website is performing. We ensure you are filtering out bot traffic and internal traffic to give you a more accurate picture of your reach and CTR.

We will check those events that are considered a conversion have been marked as a conversion event. Additionally, we will ensure your conversion reports have been correctly set up to reflect the correct event data.

Linking Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with other Google Marketing Platform (GMP) tools is an important step for marketers to get the most out of their analytics data. By connecting GA4 to other GMP tools, marketers can gain insights on customer behavior and identify opportunities for improvement across the entire marketing funnel. Connecting GA4 to GMP tools such as Google Ads, Display & Video 360, and Optimize allows marketers to gain a holistic view of the customer journey. For example, by linking GA4 to Google Ads, marketers can see how their ads are performing in terms of conversions and ROI. This helps marketers optimize their campaigns to drive more conversions and increase ROI. Furthermore, by connecting GA4 to Display & Video 360 and Optimize, marketers can gain insights into how customers interact with their ads and website.

This helps marketers create more targeted and personalized campaigns that are tailored to their customers’ needs and interests. By linking GA4 to other GMP tools, marketers can gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers’ behavior and use this data to improve their campaigns. This allows them to maximize their ROI and ensure that their campaigns are as effective as possible.