Poor quality data undermines all other aspects of the analytics lifecycle
There are so many factors that affect your Google Analytics data, it is inevitable that over time data quality will deteriorate and with it the dependability of the reports and analysis generated. And as the data quality falls so does the validity of decisions based on it.
What is an analytics audit?
A Google Analytics Audit, is an in-depth review of your GA configuration and website tagging that will answer the following questions:
1. Is your data reliable enough to base decisions on?
2. What needs to be done to resolve any issues?
3. What changes are required to bring the configuration in line with best practice?
4. What scope is there to improve the website tracking?
An audit will review all your Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager configuration and verify that all the tagged website interactions are being correctly tracked. Where this is not the case it will recommend the action needed to fix these issues.
It will also identify website interactions that are not being tracked and assess the Google Analytics implementation for:
Data Integrity
Data Quality and Consistency
Tracking Onsite Activity
Tracking of Visitor Channels
Data Privacy Compliance
User Management
Please click here to see the detailed headings of a typical audit report.
Why does Google Analytics data quality deteriorate?
Any changes to your website have the potential to affect the web analytics data collected.
For example, adding or amending pages can result in missing or duplicate tracking code, software upgrades can change values that are relied on by event tags and goals. Changing payment processors, adding sub-domains, a blog or changing the setting on an online form, can all have unforeseen effects on the data collected.
It is also very common that over time different people may amend various aspects of the GA configuration for specific purposes or marketing campaigns. The result can be a lack of continuity in approach that leads to the overall degradation of the data.
External factors can also influence the data, such as referrer spam or the applications people use to find and view your website. And the configuration needs to be maintained to exclude or correctly classify these visits.
Please contact me to discuss your audit requirements
07786 193 199
jason@jasonriddle.co.uk