How can you get to know your users?
- Analytics
- June 16, 2020
Congratulations, you know how to use Google Analytics, create Custom Reports and instruct your analysts on what Goals matter to you. But the Analytics is just one program drawn from a large variety of analytical tools you should learn, each of which will provide you with important data about your digital assets in a given field. From Google Tag Manager to Omnibug – let’s analyze smartly:
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Google Tag Manager (GTM)
What It Does: A free Google tool that allows the injection of code segments (for example, pixels) into the website’s code without going through the hassle of re-editing it every time, often without a programmer’s assistance. It seems like simple work for the extant data worker, but sometimes there’s a need for technical and programming knowledge to reach the desired results.
How to Start: Note that incorporating GTM into your website is simple and easy (two code segments that are integrated into the website’s code) and from there the options that open up are almost limitless:
Starting with creating built-in tags for integration with Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Optimize, LinkedIn, HTML (Facebook, Tabula, Outbrain) and including adding Custom JavaScript, tracking for buttons/views/site scrolling or sending Data Layers dynamically. The interface is easy and comfortable to operate, and there is a Preview option where the integrated code can be debugged to ensure that everything is working properly, without “releasing” the changes into the website’s live environment.
The Small Print: There are thousands of guides and tutorial videos on the Internet explaining how to use the platform, and how best to take advantage of it. But as this is a “window” to the website’s code, we recommend paying close attention to the users’ access list and permissions.
Google Optimize
What It Does: A platform that connects to Analytics and allows you to run Multivariate tests, A/B tests or Redirect tests easily, swiftly and without the intervention of the development team, in order to draw conclusions to improve the measured parameters. Among the changes, you can play with the page elements and change text, font, Calls to Action, images and colors. You can define which traffic to the website will receive the experiment we’ve created: traffic from a particular point of origin, traffic from desktop or mobile, traffic from a specific Google Ads account, traffic from a particular country and many more “rules” which can be defined. After creating the experiment, it can be connected to Goals and Events that exist in the Analytics asset, which is connected to the Optimize account.
How to Start: There are two versions – the simple, free version and Optimize 360, which as its name implies provides 360-degree coverage of your website and is, of course, a paid program.
The Small Print: The free version is very easy to operate but limited in terms of its results, as it can only run about five simultaneous testers with 3 objectives for each tester. The price of Optimize 360 is set according to your needs and the number of combinations in the reports it produces.
Hotjar
What It Does: A popular platform that unites several tools for monitoring and analyzing your website. It allows you to receive a large quantity of information in a simple visual style, including Heatmaps that simply illustrate where users have clicked, the routes their mouse pointers took, their scrolling on the page and the buttons they clicked, and additionally you can download and share the recordings and heatmaps, and filter them according to device type. It also allows feedback from the users themselves by displaying and filling out a user survey in real-time and even recruit test users. It’s true!
The Small Print: There are versions for personal use, business use and agencies. The basic personal version is free (up to 2000 page views per day). Business subscription pricing starts at $89 per month (up to 20,000 views per day) up to $989 per month (up to 800,000 views per day), according to the site’s needs and traffic.
Google Data Studio
What It Does: A free visualization tool from Google that gathers all your data in one place, and allows for the creation of a simple and clean dynamic dashboard for everything you want to know, so that your customers also understand what’s happening. The dashboard can be easily, conveniently and freely connected to all of Google’s platforms: Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Gist, Search Console, YouTube and Big Query.
How to Start: Every dashboard can include several pages, with each focused on displaying different types of information: analysis of traffic sources, E-commerce panels, demographics, site speed and so on. The pages can present the information in a variety of ways like tables, pie charts, column charts, pivot tables, geographical maps and integrated graphs. In addition, pictures, text and even Google Maps visualizations can be added. Static or dynamic date ranges can be chosen, so that the information displayed in the report will be updated every day according to the selected range of dates.
The Small Print: Data Studio presents an aesthetic, easy-to-use and free interface (except for connectors to certain platforms) to display information from a number of platforms in one place, and it is the recommended solution for creating monthly reports and executive summaries, and daily tracking of data on your website. There are also hundreds of paid connectors that connect to platforms like Facebook, Tabula and Outbrain, and offer the option of presenting information from the chosen platform on the dashboard we’ve created. As with GTM, we recommend that user lists and permissions be carefully managed.
Facebook Pixel Helper
What It Does: As the name suggests – a Google Chrome add-on that helps you discover whether Facebook’s Pixels and events you’ve integrated into your page are working properly, and if not, where the malfunction is.
The Small Print: This is a free tool which is rather essential for those who use Facebook Pixel. We strongly recommend its installation.
Tag Assistant
What It Does: A simple Chrome add-on that helps ensure the Google tags you’ve installed on your site are indeed working properly. With every page the add-on will present indicators of the present tags, reporting on glitches or integration problems, and suggest courses of action and solutions. Furthermore, a series of actions on the website can be recorded to ensure that all the tags are being sent correctly and there are no data leaks.
The Small Print: Free, efficient and simple.
Omnibug
What It Does: A simple browser add-on (for Chrome and Firefox) that integrates into the Developer Tools (F12) and allows intuitive indication of outgoing requests sent by the browser. While loading the page or carrying out a particular action, the interface will present the indicators sent by that same action, including Facebook Pixels and events, Google Ads, Google Analytics, LinkedIn and so on, including information on the account to which the event and event type were sent.
The Small Print: This is a real game-changer, one of the most popular and useful extensions. Free of course, and highly recommended.
GTM Copy Paste
What It Does: A complementary extension for Google Tag Manager which integrates into the browser and helps to easily copy and paste tags, triggers and variables from one GTM account to another.
The Small Print: If you use Google Tag Manager, this is a very strongly recommended add-on to install, making life much easier.