This is not a step-by-step tutorial on how to use Google Analytics annotations. Rather, it’s a list of ideas for things that you should be annotating. You’ve probably heard people talking about how fantastic a feature it is. However, for it to be useful, a few things need to happen.
- You have to actually use it
- your annotations need to help you make sense of the data that they correspond to
Annotations should help you answer these questions:
- Why did my traffic spike on this day?
- How come we converted 300% more visitors last week?
- Where did all these visitors from Maryland come from?
This is not a comprehensive list. I’m sure it only scratches the surface. If you’re new to Google Analytics, or looking for ways to leverage it for your company’s benefit, this list will help get you started.
What kind of things should you annotate in Google Analytics?
- Email marketing campaigns
You could include: name of the campaign, number of recipients, time of day the email was sent, total/unique number of opens. (tip: if you use MailChimp & WordPress, here’s a great plugin) - Networking events you attend
You can’t directly measure statistics for your attendance at these events with campaign identifiers and special code, but if you hand out 50 business cards, chances are a few of them will visit your site. You could include: time of the event, event duration, approx. number of new contacts made, number of business cards handed out (count them before you leave) - Speaking engagements
It could be a keynote address, or you’re on a panel leading a group discussion. You could include: number of people in attendance, location of the event, the topic being discussed, new contacts made, business cards handed out. - Changes to your website
This is the obvious one, but still worth mentioning. You could include: what changes you made, time of day, which pages were affected, the reason for the change. - Filters that will affect your data
This might be excluding (or including) traffic from a domain or IP address, or re-writing certain URLs. You could include: details of the filter, time it was put in place, the reason for implementing it. - Changes to your tracking code
You might make changes if you add a sub-domain, want to start tracking external clicks, or setup an ecommerce site. And it’s always possible you make a mistake that causes your data to become inaccurate. It would be helpful to have a record of it. You could include: what changes you made, why you made them, and when you made them. - Blog posts
These you will most likely have a good record of in your blogging platform, but they could be useful to see alongside your website data. You could include: topic of the post, post popularity, time of the post, the exact post title. - New business that you receive
This could be tough to annotate, and it will vary depending on what type of business you have. We just had a partner of ours find out that one of her new clients found her by searching for “life coach midlothian va.” We tracked it back and were able to identify what day the search occurred. We annotated ‘new client,’ along with the search terms they used.
We’d love to hear how you’re using Google Analytics annotations. Please let us know in the comments.
