Defining your KPIs in Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers an intuitive platform but which in turn can be somewhat overwhelming to new users, since we can access all kinds of reports, either to find out where the traffic comes from, which pages are the most viewed, what is the percentage conversion, etc.

In this article we are going to see 4 tips that will help you define your KPIs (main performance indicators) in Analytics and will prevent you from wasting time analyzing data that is not relevant to your business.

1) Define the objective

Just as a good business plan has quantifiable, measurable and achievable objectives, in the same way we must be very clear about what we will use Google Analytics for:

• Do I want to measure my e-commerce transactions?
• Do I want to understand the flow of visitors on my website?
• Do I require it to evaluate the performance of my advertising campaigns?
• Am I looking for a longer stay for my users?

We must remember that Google Analytics is a tool that will help us measure our objectives, however it is up to us to determine the main indicators to which we will pay the most attention.

2) Develop a plan with micro and macro conversions

Once we complete the first step, it is time to identify what our micro and macro conversions will be. For example:

• Objective: Increase the transaction number by 50% during the month of December
• Macroconversion: % of transactions received on my website
• Microconversion: % of users who added items to the shopping cart, % of users who reached the payment form, etc.

By defining these factors, we will have a clearer vision of the points where we should put more emphasis when analyzing Google Analytics data.

More information on macro and microconversions at: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6080732?hl=es

3) Define KPIs (main performance indicators)

Very well! We have already defined our objectives and macro and micro conversions. Now is the time to explain how we will measure each of them. Let's see examples:

• Objective: Increase 50% number of transactions
• KPI: Number of Transactions in electronic commerce
• Objective: Reduce abandonment on my website by 8%
• KPI: Bounce rate

The same objective will give us a very accurate clue as to which KPIs we should use to measure the performance of our online efforts.

4) Save a history with the progress

Although Google Analytics allows us to make comparisons in the time periods that we determine, it is very important to have a backup with the progress of the monitoring. For this, it is advisable to have spreadsheets (Excel, Google Spreadsheets, etc.) with the indicators to be measured and their daily, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual, etc. performance.

In this way we will have a safeguard in case we have a problem with our Google Analytics account in the future.

IMPORTANT!

Google Analytics is designed to provide you with the necessary data that allow you to take actions aimed at continuous improvement, do not complicate yourself by wanting to measure everything, only focus on what is most valuable for your business, interpret the data and improve the performance of your Marketing actions .