Problems with analytics, conversation data and assisted conversions
-
Hi guys. Having issues with analytics.
Firstly, it doesn't record all our sales accurately. My boss downloaded a sales report directly from our site, and it doesn't match up to the analytics, our actual sales were significantly higher than Google analytics was reporting (by about a 1/3). Any idea why Google is missing so many of the conversions?
Also, I'm trying to work our how many assisted conversion we are getting from our ad words campaigns. I've been looking through our top conversion path data to try find conversions that started with a paid click.
However, I seem to have some inconsistencies. We have only one ad words group that is on the display network (Re-marketing V1 Ad group 1) , and according to analytics we have a conversion from it (See Screen shot 1). However, there is no record of this in our ad words data. (See screen shot 2).
This is over the same time period.
I don't know what to take from this. Can anyone help?
Isaac.
-
Jasmine is correct in that GA is not a proper data source for 100% accurate information.
Unfortunately there are many reasons for this.
The free version of GA often basing data on a sampling of visits. If you go to the Conversions/ECommerce/Overview/ report, in the upper right corner you can see whether it's a sampling and if so, what the percentage sampled is.
Another issue is that if the Google Analytics code didn't fire properly during a session or part of a session, that information will not be tracked properly in its entirety or partially. Sometimes that's because site visitors have browser types or browser plugins that block scripts, and other times its because of a breakdown in data transmitted between the visitors browser, your site and Google's analytics servers.
She's also spot on with recommending that you dig into the multi-funnel channel report.
bottom line - it's important to understand that only your actual internal site server system can provide you with accurate sales data, though that might lack certain deeper insights regarding origination and demographics. Any other analytics program can help provide insights, however should only be seen for trend analysis purposes.
-
Hi Issac,
From my experience with GA, it is never 100% accurate to real sales data. Every company I've worked with has had similar issues. Google Analytics is no replacement for BI or CRM data. Also, depending on how much data you have running through the free version of GA, you may only be seeing a sampling of your total traffic.
I would suggest looking at the multi-channel funnels report instead of the assisted conversions report. It will summarize where your conversions are coming from based on where the click was in the total conversion referral path.
AdWords is a first click attribution platform, whereas GA is a last click attribution platform. It is likely that you will have referred that user by a search ad then they came back via retargeting within a 30 day window. Maybe you can look into the conversion path for this one goal and see where most of your clicks are originating?
Let me know if that was helpful!
Jasmine
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Referral issue in Google analytics
We have an eCommerce website that counts paypal as a referral source in Analytics. The site takes people to Paypal to make a payment and then back to the website to a Thank You page once that payment has been made. Due to this, Analytics sees this as a conversion that has come from Paypal, and also records it as a referral source, when we know this is not really the case. This also distorts the data in analytics and prohibits us from clearly seeing which channels sales have come from. Is there anyway in Analytics to include Paypal as a part of the website so that it does not record Paypal as a separate referral website?
Reporting & Analytics | | Gavo0 -
Site account in Google Analytics
Hello I have a question about my site account. On 2014, during a week, my ID tracking of Google Analytics was removed of the site, in this period the volume of users and sessions is lower than the other weeks. But I don't understand why are the sessions and users still reporting during this period without ID Tracking
Reporting & Analytics | | Arkix0 -
Track subdomains in the same analytics property/view
Hello to everyone, this is my first question (kind of a newbie here :-D). I have a website that spans over 4 subdomains + the main domain and I'd like to have a place where I can see the total page views, events and goal completions. Main domain is langhe.net, and subdomains are eventi.langhe.net, servizi.langhe.net, shop.langhe.net, about.langhe.net. The website is based on wordpress and I'm using google analytics for wordpress by yoast as analytics plugin. The configuration of the plugin is as follows: all the website have the same UA-XXXXXXXX code The Subdomain Traking field (setDomainName) is filled with .langhe.net Cross-Domain tracking is enabled Cross-Domain Primary Domain (setDomainName) is langhe.net Cross-Domain Tracking, Other Domains field is filled with: about.langhe.net, eventi.langhe.net, servizi.langhe.net, shop.langhe.net. In the GA property I've created an Advanced Custom Filter configured this way: Field A -> Extract A = hostname (.*) Field B -> Extract B = request URI (.*) Output To -> Constructor = request URI $A1$B1 Field A Required: yes Field B Required: No Override Output Field: yes Case Sensitive: no I was wondering it this is the best way of doing it, or if there are other "best practice" ways to obtain what I'm looking for (for example with this configuration it's become quite difficult to separate the traffic sources for each website). Thank you in advance 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | Enrico_Cassinelli
Cheers!0 -
Moving data between Google Analytics Properties
Last summer we setup another Google Analytics property for us with Universal Analytics and have been running this alongside the old Google Analtyics property. is there a way of exporting all the old data from the old property into the new Universal Analytics property?
Reporting & Analytics | | ese0 -
Is it possible to attached separate analytic codes for each campaign?
I am having difficulty in using different GA codes for each individual campaign- this must be possible. Can someone please advice. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ChrisDingley0 -
How do I keep the SEOmoz bot from showing up in my Google Analytics?
I noticed today that we had a huge spike in visits on December 9th of this month. We are talking like 13,000 more visits. The network the visits were from was psinet inc. Any suggestions on how to keep these bots from registering in my Google Analytics? Is there an ip address I can exclude?
Reporting & Analytics | | Hosmercars0 -
Google Analytics/ Contact 7 Plugin
I have a site that uses the contact 7 plugin for its contact form sitewide in a sidebar and on a contact us page. I've set up a goal in analytics and tracked using the "on_sent_ok" hook but the number of goals GA is creating is far outweighing the number of times the form is actually completed. I figured my initial mistake was to use the contact-us page as the page tracker variable for the goal but wondered if it was counting all form completions AND anyone who went to the contact page. So I amended it to a contact-us/thank-you page that no site visitor could navigate to, and since I have no goals completed, even though we're getting enquiries through the form. Am I being dumb here and missing something quite simple?
Reporting & Analytics | | PerchDigital0 -
Seeing / and no / in Google Analytics
When I look at my Google Analytics code, I see that the same content will show up twice, once with a / at the end of the URL, and once without. My site is at http://www.skypeenglishclasses.com. Does anyone know why this would happen? Is it duplicate content?
Reporting & Analytics | | Paulguy0