Protect Your Company Website Analytics

One of the most important tools you have when you're advertising online is website analytics. It gives you insight into where your website visitors are coming from, what their behaviours are, who your audience is, and what actions they are they taking on your website, with all the permutations thereof. Google Analytics is a free service provided by Google to help companies track their marketing and website performance more efficiently.

No Data Is Bad Data

The reason I'm mentioning this is because I frequently see companies who do not have access to their own Analytics accounts. Or they have access, but it's not admin access, so they can't make changes or add other people. Sometimes I even see cases where the company who set up the Analytics won't grant that access to the client, which as you can imagine, is not good practice at all. The data collected by Analytics for your website is your data. You need to make sure that you have it. Every marketing manager that you hire, or every external company you use for marketing or web services, will need access to this data in order to make informed decisions, and without it, they will need to start from scratch and learn everything about your online performance again from scratch. Please make sure that you're an admin on your Analytics account. It's important.

Examples Of The Data Analytics Can Supply

How many leads / sales originated from your website?
Where did these people come from? Did they type in your website address, search for you on Google, arrive via your Facebook page, click on one of your ads, or see you LinkedIn?
When these people were on your site, what product and services did they view?
Which of your products or services are the most popular?
When a person looked at a product or service, what page did they view next?
How many people arrive at your site and leave without doing anything?
How many people filled out a form, emailed you, or called you?
Are visitors viewing your site on their their mobile phone, tablet or desktop?
What products do they view from each device, and do they take action on it?
Which country/province/town are these people coming from?

Analytics can supply all of this information, and more, in 1,000's of different reporting combinations.

Getting Admin Access To Analytics

We usually recommend that you set up an email account for your Analytics account. The email address however needs to be a Google account. For example, you could use yourcompanyname@gmail.com. In addition, when specifying a recovery cell phone number, use one that does not belong to a staff member. People come and go at companies, and I've often seen instances where nobody knows what this email address or phone number is. Analytics is critical for the companies online success, and should be treated as such. Within your Analytics account, this address should be set up as the Admin email, (See Analytics help here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009702?hl=en) From this interface, you can also set up other admin users, for example, your marketing or website company. If you don’t have access to your Analytics account, supply this new email to whoever set up the account, and request that they add you. If any 3^rd party company refuses to supply you with access to your own Analytics account, they probably have something to hide, and you should run a mile from them. Apart from anything else, if you cancel your services with them, a new provider will have to start again from scratch, rather than being able to use the data to inform their strategy from the start.

Staff Turnover Or A Change In Service Providers

If you change service providers, or if a key staff member resigns, it's important to add to your process that they are removed from the Analytics account. It's easy to forget, but it's essential to protect your business data and as such, crucial that people who are no longer on the team have their access revoked. The data contained in your Analytics account can give an advantage to competitors who have head-hunted your staff, or who have hired your ex-marketing company themselves. They could get your most popular products & services, along with where you advertise and which of these advertising mediums is most profitable to you. Remove them immediately.