With the advent of Google Analytical services, digital marketers have a powerful tool in their hands. Google Analytics opens up the door for countless possibilities of tapping into user behavior and user engagement psychology. 

As a digital marketer, part of your goal is to understand what the user needs and demands are. Google Analytics is no doubt a wonderful tool to satisfy that need. But while the right approach to Google Analytical services can help you achieve success, a poor implementation leads to more harm than good. 

In the following blog, we shall look at the common mistakes that digital marketers are vulnerable to while implementing Google Analytics. It needs to be noted that while a lot of these mistakes are common for beginners, veterans in digital marketing are also susceptible to the mistakes that are listed below. 

So without further ado, let’s start the list. 

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You Are Not Focusing On Your Strategy 

Implementing Google Analytics is one thing and having an optimal strategy to go along with your Google Analytics is another thing. Executing without a strategy and strategizing without any regard for execution are both equally suboptimal. 

It’s a good practice to ask the right questions before you take an action. For instance, “Are we setting up the right triggers?”. Think about your business goals, devise a good plan, and evaluate whether the actions you are taking adhere to the plans you have in mind. 

Having the right strategy helps you identify specific domains of opportunity. It’s wise to have a strategic mindset as it helps you optimize your workflow in the most efficient way possible.

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You Are Not Implementing Google Analytical Filters 

Google Analytical services provide you a wide array of filters and features that add value to your digital marketing strategy. It’s unwise to not make the most out of these features when you are working with a large site with multiple pages. 

Filters help you clean your data. When you accumulate data from Google Analytical reports, they are seldom clean and include a multitude of things you want to exclude such as internal traffic. 

Be smart and implement filters before you use raw unfiltered data and mess up your digital marketing plans. 

You Don't Run Tests After You Set Up Tracking 

It’s very necessary to check if everything is working well before you go along with your digital marketing strategy. It’s very common for newbies to leave everything the way it is after they have implemented Google Analytical features on their site. 

It’s normal to make mistakes when you are implementing GA event tracking on your site. What’s a sign of worry is when you stop rectifying those mistakes. For you to rectify those mistakes, you first need to identify them.

Google tag managers have a fascinating preview feature that is resolved for this purpose. You can always preview the triggers to check if they all are firing on the event you have ascribed them to.  

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You Do Not Have A Good Views Strategy 

The key to reach success is having a multitude of perspectives on a specific domain. The same logic applies to Google Analytics. Many people go along with just one view set up on their site reports.  

This limits their field of vision and they end missing out on opportunities for growth and progress. As a digital marketer, you should have three domains of data for your digital marketing strategy: 

• Raw Unfiltered Data View 
• Test View 
• Working view 
  

Having different access points for your data helps you organize more efficiently. These three domains have different purposes and add diversity to your digital marketing strategy. 

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You Are Not Implementing Google Tag Managers 

People who are not tech-savvy often compromise hard coding JavaScript codes on their site when there's no genuine need for it. Google Tag Managers are a more efficient way to get everything done in a relatively short amount of time.

Google Tag Managers are free to use, help you perform advanced tracking, and automates the coding process. Hard coding event tracking is time-consuming and is susceptible to pesky bugs. Why take the risk when you have a powerful on your hands? 

For many people, grasping the fundamentals of implementing event tracking through Google Tag Managers can be a daunting task. But we assure you that the labor is worth it! Tag managers are way easier than hard coding the snippets. 

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You Are Not Excluding Internal Traffic 

It’s common knowledge in the digital marketing spheres that you have to consider internal, vendor, and partner IP addresses when you review your traffic reports. However, many digital marketers simply don’t prioritize this concern. 

Not optimizing and filtering your data can be damaging to your business goals. Data drives a business, and a failure to maintain and organize data does significant harm both in the long and short-term. 

Whether you are advertising through CPM (cost per impression) or building your marketing lists, you will end up with extra people on your lists. These amount to a waste of money and effort. To avoid getting the wrong picture out of the tracking, implement filters.  

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You Are Excluding Context From The Data Points 

As a digital marketer, you must be passionate about knowing your traffic magnitude, conversion rates, bounce rates, and so on. But whilst doing so, many end up divorcing the statistics from their context. 

What’s a good conversion rate is a question that’s wholly dependant upon the nature of the site you are working with. A context of any given number is important to understand where you currently stand competitively. 

Different sites will have different statistical representations of traffic depending on the relationship they have with their users. Data trends and comparisons are a better metric to judge your site performance. Is your conversion rate greater than the one you had last month? This is the real question.

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You Do Not Have Search Reports For The Site 

People who don't make the most out of the features Google Analytics provides often don't implement the search feature. If a search feature is available for your site, then you must implement it as soon as possible. 

Having search people enabled helps you gain granular insight into the things your users are interested in. Knowing what people are searching for always provides valuable information. With this feature, you can also locate and rectify content gaps on your site. 

Don't let the users go empty-handed when they approach your site. You can always look at the current search trends to create a relevant blog post on your site. In short, if you haven't enabled the search feature on your site, then you are missing out on many possibilities for success. 

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You Are Not Excluding Spam And Bot Traffic 

Another thing that goes hand-in-hand with the exclusion of internal and vendor IP addresses is spam bot traffic. If a significant portion of your site traffic consists of spam and bots then what's the use of such traffic? 

Having spams and bots in your data pollutes your traffic reports and ruins your digital marketing strategy. You can’t eliminate the problem for once and for all but you can take measures so such traffic is not included with the data. 

A sudden spike in referral traffic is a good indicator of such illegitimate traffic sources. You can simply set up measures that alert you of steady climbs in referral traffic. When you find fake URLs, you can easily get rid of them. Block, filter, and protect your site from such interactions! 

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You Are Not Excluding Self-Referrals

A self-referral happens when your domain shows up in your referral reports. This should not be happening. There are two major reasons why self-referral happens. Sometimes, the session is split into two when you are moving around your site. 

The second reason is that sometimes a session starts on your page without a tracking code. Whenever uses migrate from this page to a page with a tracking code, the algorithm picks your site as a referrer. Along with these two, UTM internal parameters can also cause your domain to show among the referrals. 

The go-to method to deal with this is to have an accurate implementation of cross-domain tracking. Just set up Universal Analytics via Google Tag Management, track every single page, and do not work with UTM internal parameters. 

Most people will get rid of self-referrals using the above tips. However, if you still find some self-referrals on your site, then you need to do some manual debugging. 

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You Are Not Making Any Improvements Using Google Analytics 

People who finally grasp the basics of Google Analytics often tend to get fixated on those basics. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a good practice to have a firm grasp on the fundamentals of Google analytics. But not making any improvements further beyond that point is a missed opportunity.  

As you scale up your data with the magnitude of your webpage, you are no more a beginner. Stepping into the market with competitors means your basic setup won’t help you win any longer. You need stronger, more advanced plans if you want to achieve a competitive curb in the market. 

Go beyond conversions, bounce rates, sessions, and page views. Track a higher number of entities and implement Google Analytics in the most innovative ways possible. In short, don’t stay there when you get good at the basics, move forward. 

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You Are Confusing Popular Google Analytics Jargon 

While many people are great at Google Analytics basics, many confuse popular terminology from Google Analytics. Some knowledge is very basic and is common to all the domains, but most of the terms are unique to a platform, and differentiating between them is essential to your business strategy. 

The way you grasp and differentiate the platform parlance vastly affect how we are interpreting the data. What a term stands for at one platform differs from how the term is used on other platforms. 

Ensure that your understanding of these terms is cross-platform i.e. you are aware of a term's usage on multiple platforms. A firm grasp on these terminologies will allow you to get a bet picture of the data you have in your hands. 

You Don’t Use Your Data To Learn And Grow 

Data that is lying dormant in your archives is not any good for your business strategy. You need to have sound decision-making processes to act on the data you have in your hands. Don’t swim in the data, act on it. 

It's good to strategize and take your time but spending too much on analysis stagnates your business growth. Don't wait too much, act on the data available to you, and take the right course of action. 

Another thing that people do is that they don't focus on making improvements on their site even when they have enough data available to them. Part of the reason you use Google Analytics is to improve your site. When you stop doing that, you kill the purpose of using this powerful tool. Make sure that you use Google Analytics to keep learning and growing.  

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The Takeaway 

Google Analytics is a fascinating tool to amplify your digital marketing strategies. Just like any other tool, there are bad practices that must be avoided if you want the best results. Some of the mistakes you can find above are easy to avoid while others take a bit of practice. Don't be afraid of encountering mistakes, be afraid of not rectifying those mistakes. 

And you're all set! Just follow the general guidelines of using Google Analytics and stay away from the mistakes that are listed above and you will be good to go.