Time saving way to frame your digital analytics questions

Asking for analytics help can seem a bit daunting for managers unsure of an analytics. There are a number of reports and a number of items that need to be checked to get to answers about marketing or objective.  Taking the time to check can eat up well beyond the scope of the time available in a small business.  If you are a bit unsure of where to start, here are four initial ideas to share when asking for analytics help.  

• Frame your objective for the site relative to the business - Because there are a number of technical ways to display a webpage, there can be a number of ways to arrange analytic tags and goal setting.  Frame objectives narrows the technical scope of goals and tags; It makes no sense to tag a page that is not representing a transaction or objective.
• What has been checked technically about the site? - Reviewing the facts can give users an idea of what diagnostics have been previously tried.
• Review the reporting used. Reveal what reports that are consistently checked, to understand what metrics are important .
• What online and offline marketing media has been used? - Answering this question helps to frame referral sources, useful for understand what marketing is impacting more detailed reports, such as multichannel reports. It can also be useful in deciding online marketing choices, ranging from augments to SEO to strengthen relationships gained from content marketing.

Do not assume that a lot of website traffic is needed to gain answers.  Analytics provides value when it is linked to marketing planning, not just "accounting" for what is arriving (though there can be some diagnostic review of the data involved). Reviewing what has been tagged and the importance of settings can get into "coding minutia", but they are valuable in making sure the data is collected as accurately as possible.

There are more technical diagnostic to analytics - tips will be covered in a few upcoming Zimana posts. But for now, use the above for approaching analysts specialists and starting the initial discussion on what to do.