Google Analytics Premium review
Overall Satisfaction with Google Analytics Premium
- Implementation - Enterprise technologies, by default, carry with them the stigma of being complicated and hard to implement. With Google Analytics Premium, code implementation and platform configurations are simplified, supported by a wealth of documentation and support communities, and compared to other enterprise analytics tools take only a fraction of the time. With the continued enhancements of Google Tag Manager, implementation ease will continue to be a strength of Premium.
- Usability - The friendliness and accessibility of Google Analytics Premium really affects it's adoption across an organization. Users understand and easily learn the tool, empowering even the basic user to understand and find value in its capabilities.
- Connects it's Ecosystem - For better or worse, it's a Google world and we are all just doing business in it. Between AdWords and Display, Google will often touch the greater percentage of a company's digital marketing initiatives. No other enterprise analytics platform can provide the native abilities to pull core digital marketing data together like Google Analytics Premium.
- In-Page Analytics - This feature has given our team a headache or two, and breadth of troubleshooting threads in the support community speaks to this as well. For lack of a better way to explain, its buggy.
- Content Experiments - This feature certainly has value and it's place in the world of free analytics tools, but it is simple and limited. There is tremendous potential to have all this marketing data drive a multi-faceted and variate testing /optimization scenario. But our business will likely leverage a complementary tool for anything requiring this level of complexity.
- More data, deeper insights - Initially, Premium was primarily a volume play, and this can't be over emphasized. With Premium, Google removed the digital handcuffs that once made sampling reason enough for enterprises not to consider it. More unsampled data now means alot of things, and they are all positives.
- Expanded offering - Without said limitations, we are spending less time on work-arounds and more time on providing sophisticated solutions, both internally and for our clients. Attribution modeling and funnel analysis are a few Premium capabilities that have also allowed us also enhance our broad analytics consulting offering.
- Happiness - Ok, yes, we are a GACP and certified reseller, and as goes Premium so do the opportunities for us. But it's not our only service and we want to be smart where our resources are positioned. That said, we see first hand how the Premium product is evolving and the commitment behind it from Google. Premium will be a keystone for many digital marketers, and that makes us happy.
Using Google Analytics Premium
Almost everyone in our consultancy uses GA Premium. Use rages from the core practitioners like our data analysts, senior analysts, data scientists, and data evangelist, to other areas of our company like the search marketing team, our marketing team, even our senior sales manager and CEO use GA Premium.
Google Analytics Premium Implementation
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled - If you already have the standard free version of GA implemented, you can get GA Premium immediately (once the metaphorical flipping of the switch occurs). You'll want to start taking advantage of new features and limits which can require some configuration or implementation. For example, you get a higher allowance of 200 custom dimensions and metrics - you'll need to code the page or configure GTM. For the new data driven attribution feature, you'll need to activate it and wait for conversion threshold data limits to be met so modeling can occur. A few more "flipping of the switches" for DoubleClick integrations and scheduled exports to BigQuery. All of this amounts to a minimal amount of effort to switch to GA Premium.
Google Analytics Premium Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Yes - With Google Analytics Premium, you will receive complete SLA support, whether you purchase from a certified reseller (e.g. LunaMetrics), or you purchase directly from Google. However, if you go through a reseller, they will be serving as your direct support contact, often providing better context and overall insight into issues, or shinning the spotlight on new opportunities per product enhancements. Price is typically inclusive of support, with resellers providing additional advantages related to project implementation and consulting projects (e.g. deploy GTM, do cool things with BigQuery, etc.).
Yes - Yes, we've reported a handful of bugs, and as per the SLA, they have always been received and handled accordingly. We have a direct number to call, and are often doing so on behalf of our clients - responsiveness has not been an issue.
Google has provided an exceptional Certified Partner portal, through which we
have been able to have many of our questions, bug reports and feature requests
answered directly by Google engineers. On one particular occasion, we were contacted by Tim W., a project manager at Google, who scheduled a phone call
with us to discuss feedback relating to the new Demographic reports inside
Analytics. He listened carefully to our suggestions, relating to modifying
interest categories and making interface improvements, and some of those changes
later appeared inside the Demographic reports when they were publicly launched.
have been able to have many of our questions, bug reports and feature requests
answered directly by Google engineers. On one particular occasion, we were contacted by Tim W., a project manager at Google, who scheduled a phone call
with us to discuss feedback relating to the new Demographic reports inside
Analytics. He listened carefully to our suggestions, relating to modifying
interest categories and making interface improvements, and some of those changes
later appeared inside the Demographic reports when they were publicly launched.
Using Google Analytics Premium
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- We like the new updates to the Administration of accounts. Managing and configuring settings across accounts, properties and views has improved and become much more fluid. We can achieve most updates with 2 to 3 clicks.
- The new segment builder is user friendly and helpful for the novice users. While you still may need some coaching when doing more complex analysis with combinations of sessions and user type data, the interface for creating some really advanced segments out-of-the-box is quite intuitive.
- The overall navigation and organization is welcoming. Google Analytics Premium has logical groupings that have clearly evolved with strong consideration for usability in mind. Consider the progression towards the AABC navigation model (Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, Conversions) - an easily understood concept. The usability of Google's product will be a differentiator.
- In Page analytics is a bit clumsy and a feature our analysts tend to shy away from. There's an evolving list of some other tools our team enjoys, including ClickTale.
- Sometimes when things change it takes a little getting used to. For example, some of my colleagues preferred the old navigation functionality, with the new version lacking some full auto collapsing capabilities (so we built a plugin to do this). Small things.
Yes - Works pretty well, and I'm on the iOS app. As with most apps, there is significantly less functionality, but for what is there, its quick and smooth. Custom segments would be nice.