Item: Google Analytics
Rating: 10
Author: Joshua Van Horsen

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently utilize Google Analytics with Marketing to gather data on the traffic visiting our site, how our site is being found, how it is being used, and how potential guests are navigating through our sales funnels. Google Analytics also provides us information on mobile vs. desktop users and the type of devices our guests may be using to access our content.

Pros and Cons

Google Analytics does a great job allowing us to define conversion goals, and sales funnels and then track how users are ultimately using our site. The information collected through this data can then be used to optimize our site to reduce lost visitors that we were unable to convert into a sale.
Google Analytics allows us to segment our sites visitors and look at where these visitors are coming from and educate us on what attracts visitors to our site. This is incredibly important to us in determining where our marketing might be falling short, allowing us to adjust our messaging and track results.
Paired with Google Adwords, Google Analytics is a powerful platform for collecting data on our paid advertising vs. our organic traffic.

One of my biggest complaints is that Google Analytics removed the functionality of tracking search keywords and phrases referrals from within the service. While a slimmed-down version of this functionality is still available through Google Webmaster Tools, the need to utilize multiple tool sets is limiting and unintuitive.
Without some research and understanding of how Google Analytics Event Tracking works, I feel that there is minimal support or explanation of how to track downloadable content on your sites. This is a major shortcoming, and something that Google should make more obvious. The feeling of going to pull download data on an item, only to find out no data has been collected for the last 2 years is horrible.

Return on Investment

Google Analytics has only had a positive impact on how we track our users and understand how they use our site. This data gives us the information we need to make intelligent decisions in how we market to our guests and where we can improve our sales funnel.
We have also used Google Analytics to conduct some A/B testing on site creative, which informs us as to what creative converts better, and how we can make changes to our site to provide better usability and navigation to our customers. By making small changes to the site, collecting data and then comparing it against previously collected data, we can make informed decisions on what works and what doesn't.

Likelihood to Renew

Having used Google Analytics for the last 9 years, I have no intention of discontinuing my service. Google Analytics is a fantastic product that provides me with almost everything I could wish for. The positives in this product outweigh any negatives that you might find. I can not think of a single reason to not immediately start using Google Analytics for your business.

Likelihood to Recommend

I unfortunately have very limited experience with other analytics services, so in that regard my opinion is slightly biased. As a free product, Google Analytics is hands down a fantastic value and a terrific tool for everyone from professional marketers, to beginning bloggers or search engine marketers.

Implementation Rating

I think my biggest take away from the Google Analytics implementation was that there needs to be a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it before you start. Originally the analytics were added to track visitors, but as we became more savvy with the product, we began adding more and more functionality, and defining guidelines as we went along. While not detrimental to our success, this lack of an overarching goal resulted in some minor setbacks in implementation and the collection of some messy data that is unusable.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Yes - Originally implementation was broken into 3 main phases to allow for troubleshooting within the in-house team.
Phase 1: code added to all site pages and review of tracking data.
Phase 2: Creation of event tracking needs and implementation in site.
Phase 3: Conversion code added and Sales Funnels created

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled - The biggest lesson we learned through change management was the need to understand and communicate how this new tool was going to be used, and define the structure and constraints in with it would be controlled. Items such as Sales Funnels, Event codes and timeline notes and tracking required pivotal conversations and communication to ensure our data was being collected in a controlled manner.

Implementation Issues

Loss of data due to rollbacks in test environment. As the production site was updated with old code, data stopped being collected.
Poorly implemented conversion tracking on our end that resulted in false-positive data on conversion revenue.

The Power of Data is a No-Brainer

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Google Analytics