Don’t be in a hurry to dump Google Analytics
As your online platforms mature and expand, you’ll inevitably arrive at a point when you will want to implement a web analytics solution that is richer in functionality than the free Google Analytics toolset.
It’s a wise choice to make since you’ll want to integrate your analytics solution with your customer relationship and content management system for smarter, rules-based marketing automation. But don’t be in too much of a hurry to completely dump Google Analytics – here are five good reasons why it may still have a role to play in your analytics solution stack.
Don’t be in a hurry to dump Google Analytics
1. SEO integration
Google Analytics features superb integration with search engine optimisation (SEO) in Google’s webmaster tools. This makes it easier and faster for your SEO team to access important SEO reports. Google Analytics, meanwhile, notifies you quickly via alerts when Google is experiencing difficulties indexing your site.
2. Cost source data integration
Linking Google Analytics to your Google AdWords accounts is one of the simplest ways you have to track marketing cost data. In addition to importing AdWords data into Google Analytics, you can also import data from other marketing tools into the tool using an application programming interface (API).
Combining this information with Google Analytics’ attribution modelling functionality gives you a view of return on investment that goes beyond the last click.
3. Benchmarking
The business probably keeps asking you for data about how your web team’s performance compares to the competition. Because it is used across so many sites, Google Analytics gives you access to insightful and accurate reports that help you to benchmark your performance against other web sites.
4. Increase conversions
Re-marketing integration into AdWords Google Analytics offers a multitude of exciting ways to create unique audience lists and then use them within search and the Google Display Network to create marketing campaigns that can dramatically increase your conversions. This should be reason enough on its own to keep using Google Analytics.
5. Strong audience insight signals
With Google’s omnipresence across the digital landscape – search, YouTube, Double-Click ad serving, Android – it has a wealth of data sources at its disposal. For that reason, Google Analytics audience insights reports – showing your users’ demographics, interests or affinity categories – are invaluable as you try to get a bigger piece of a market segment that performs well for your site.
Closing words
There aren’t that many reasons I can think of why you should turn Google Analytics off as soon as you implement an enterprise-class analytics tool. One risk is that it might introduce some confusion to the business when its numbers differ widely from those produced by your new analytics suite.
But this issue is easily manageable by accepting that the paid-for analytics suite is the one that you’ll depend on for most reporting. On the whole, the benefits of keeping Google Analytics in place outweigh the risks and downsides. I’d love to hear your reasons for keeping or ditching Google Analytics after buying a new analytics solution – let me know in the comments below.
Source: Bizcommunity
