Calculate your Google Analytics Power Score

When Google decided to make Analytics free it did agencies and brands a great service. They could use data insights about their customers, markets and businesses to make informed decisions without a costly technology barrier.  Unfortunately the tool being free set the expectation that using the tool would be free and that advice  and support on getting the most out of the tool would be free too.  All too often GA is installed but no-one is taking the time to maximise its value.

How well are you set-up for Google Analytics?  Answer the following questions and calculate your own Google Analytics Power Score. Award yourself 2 points for each positive answer but remove 1 for each question you don’t understand.

1. We have a dedicated person or team in-house who really know how to answer business questions using GA
2. We have a budget for Analytics work every month
3. We have set up more than 4 visitor Goals inside GA and linked each to quantifiable business value
4. Our team focus on the numbers that really matter to the business (revenue, transactions, cost of acquisition) rather than the vanity metrics (sessions, clicks, likes)
5. We use data from Google Search Console to regularly analyse the search terms for which we appear in Google and use this to plan content
6. We use GA data to remove Adwords campaigns and keywords that have a poor return on investment
7. We have implemented a change to content or functionality on our site or in our app because of insights from our Analytics
8. We use data from the GA API to power dashboards or command centre screens in our office so that everyone can see how we are doing
9. We have used audience Segments to understand the age, sex and location for our best customers and changed our marketing or content as a result
10. We treat returning visitors differently from new visitors
11. We’ve cleaned up our GA implementation so that visits from our own staff and from agencies is excluded
12. We’ve studied our visitor behaviour to understand how many visits they make before they become a customer
13. We monitor internal search and use this data to discuss product and content changes
14. We separate branded and non-branded keywords in analysing and planning our activities
15. We have implemented Google Tag Manager so that our marketers can run their own experiments
16. We have studied Behaviour Flow to improve the experience for mobile visitors
17. We use Custom Intelligence Reports and email them to key people to monitor changes in our audience behaviour
18. We have linked registered mobile and online visitors to study multichannel use of our site or store
19. We are comparing previous data from previous months and years to build a picture of long term trends
20. We have an evolving landing page strategy that helps visitors to become customers
21. We have used content groups to allow us to understand the areas of the site or app that are of most interest and value to our audiences
22. We track events on pages such as downloads, video views and partial form filling
23. We use other analytics tools to build a more complete picture of our digital and social activities and those of our competitors
24. We are exploring how to integrate GA with offline activity using technologies such as EPOS to provide a 360 degree view of our customer
25. We upload marketing cost data to Google so that we can compare the costs and return on investment of all of our paid activities
26. We monitor the speed of downloading and try to improve performance of heavier pages
27. We analyse Top Conversion Paths and Assisted Conversions to understand how our social and marketing activities impact on sales
28. We are using remarketing lists and email to recover visitors who abandon their shopping carts
29. We train our staff to set up their own GA dashboards, segments and reports
30. We know that GA will change every 3-6 months and will have the resources to take advantage of the changes

If you scored more than 40 then you are definitely a power user of GA – well done.  If you scored less than 20 you should think about how you can get more value from Analytics.  Talk to people who are driving their businesses with data. Scored less than 0? Time to find a new agency partner or if you are an agency, find a new line of business.