Google Analytics Tips, Tricks & Traps: #1 of Many: Trick: Save your ASP

Let start turning tricks… into something useful and enduring.

How many times have you encountered the following scenario:
Months after a profile is configured, complete with goals, funnels and filters that a question arises regarding the meaning or credibility of the numbers:

• Why are our conversions so low (or high)?
• What data is actually going into this profile?
• What are our visits and visitors counts increasing with no increase in Pageviews?

Often the reasons can be in the tagging of the site but that is not the subject of this post and assumes that the tagging is unchanged “perfect”.

On returning to the profile settings, one may find a myriad of issues; errors, missing filters or filters applied to some profiles but not to all that require them, etc

Employees who set up profiles for Web Analysts are responsible to the Analysts who are responsible to their Marketing Directors, heads roll and bad things happen.

When problems are discovered there may be the temptation to fix them after dark and without documentation. There is also the problem of suspicion.

The lack of a documentation feature within GA means that any gaps between even the most detailed of Design Specifications and reality may be the result of something other than specified was implemented and the specs not amended accordingly.

Well, at the cost of a little more time, a Best Practice is suggested to end a profile configuration with a series of screen shots of your Analytics Settings Pages &mdash it may just save your ASP from the snakes that snag you on the ladder to success.