3 Easy Google Analytics Reports for Customer Journey Analysis
In this post, I'm going to show you 3 reports in reviewing your customer journey and how to use those insights to drive action for the future.
The first thing to note about Google Analytics (and most web analytics platforms) is that they each default to last-click attribution. This type of attribution basically states that the platform is only tracking conversions from the last click from a source. What we need to do is check our total conversions by the channel from a last-click perspective, how each channel assisted in conversion, the top paths people take to convert, and actions to take as a result of the data.
1) Conversions by Channel: Go to Acquisition→All Traffic→Channels
From the report, we notice that referrals and direct traffic are your top performers from a transactions perspective, but most traffic is coming from organic search. From a high-level, you might think that we need to improve referral traffic or find some way to incent traffic to bookmark or regularly return. You might also think that you have an organic search problem, but you need to look a little deeper to see if each of these channels were a part of the larger customer journey.
2) Assisted Conversions: Go to Ecommerce→Multi-channel Funnels→Assisted Conversions
Now we're getting somewhere. From the assisted report we can see that the referral channel, however the best at closing sales from last-click attribution, operates better actually as an assist - MIND BLOWN. Also interesting but makes sense, the direct channel is the closest channel to directly closing sales via last-click. Paid Search is better at being an assist channel, and (my God) if our goal with social media was to sell, or help sell stuff, it's abysmal at both.
Pro tip #1: Ensure that when you look at the assisted conversions report you update your conversions in the report to specifically reflect the main conversion you directly want to reflect. Otherwise, you are going to get all of the conversions you set up which would yield incorrect results. You can change this at the top of the report:
Pro tip #2: If your business has a longer sales/conversion cycle due to price point, sales contact, etc. You should change the lookback window in the report that is set to a default of 30-days.
Time to get a closer look at the top paths people take and see what we could possibly focus on from a marketing perspective.
3) Top Paths: Go to Conversions→Multi-channel Funnels→Top Paths
From the assisted conversions report we saw which marketing channels are great assisters, which ones are great at both assisting a last-click attribution, and which places weren't good at either (sad). We need to take this one final step and review what most people do as far as top paths and see what we could to get better.
If we looked at this report you might be focused on most transactions but you should look closer. You can see that you do still need to focus on organic search because your average order was almost 3 times the size of the first entry.
Pro Tip #3: Switch to Source/Medium Path and use Landing Page URL as a secondary dimension to see exactly which search engine people are using and what landing page people are going to. This will give you insight on the entry point of these users.
Recommendations:
By looking at each of these three reports (and following my pro tips) you are going to be able to understand, on a high-level, the customer journey your shoppers take. Based on the data in this post, I would ensure that the keywords and phrases are a good mix of branded and long-tail words. You also need to make sure the SEO standards of the website are at the highest level. If you haven't set your site up in Google Search Console you need to do this and submit an XML sitemap of your site. This isn't how Google indexes your site, but it definitely helps them contextualize it as well as gives its robots and spiders a map of how to move through the site. If you don't have any means to do this yourself, you can plug in your website into this XML generator and then submit it within the Search Console.
Conclusion:
For most users, Google Analytics implementations are using the default last-click attribution setting. This means when you first check out conversions it is only referring to how well the channel performed as the last channel a user came from prior to buying. To understand your customer's actual journey you need to rely on assisted transactions and top paths. This will give you the key to your customer's points of entry in a cross-sessional manner so you can understand what channels you might need to improve over time.
Pro tip #1: Ensure that when you look at the assisted conversions report you update your conversions in the report to specifically reflect the main conversion you directly want to reflect. Otherwise, you are going to get all of the conversions you set up which would yield incorrect results. You can change this at the top of the report:
Pro tip #2: If your business has a longer sales/conversion cycle due to price point, sales contact, etc. You should change the lookback window in the report that is set to a default of 30-days.
Time to get a closer look at the top paths people take and see what we could possibly focus on from a marketing perspective.
3) Top Paths: Go to Conversions→Multi-channel Funnels→Top Paths
From the assisted conversions report we saw which marketing channels are great assisters, which ones are great at both assisting a last-click attribution, and which places weren't good at either (sad). We need to take this one final step and review what most people do as far as top paths and see what we could to get better.
If we looked at this report you might be focused on most transactions but you should look closer. You can see that you do still need to focus on organic search because your average order was almost 3 times the size of the first entry.
Pro Tip #3: Switch to Source/Medium Path and use Landing Page URL as a secondary dimension to see exactly which search engine people are using and what landing page people are going to. This will give you insight on the entry point of these users.
Recommendations:
By looking at each of these three reports (and following my pro tips) you are going to be able to understand, on a high-level, the customer journey your shoppers take. Based on the data in this post, I would ensure that the keywords and phrases are a good mix of branded and long-tail words. You also need to make sure the SEO standards of the website are at the highest level. If you haven't set your site up in Google Search Console you need to do this and submit an XML sitemap of your site. This isn't how Google indexes your site, but it definitely helps them contextualize it as well as gives its robots and spiders a map of how to move through the site. If you don't have any means to do this yourself, you can plug in your website into this XML generator and then submit it within the Search Console.
Conclusion:
For most users, Google Analytics implementations are using the default last-click attribution setting. This means when you first check out conversions it is only referring to how well the channel performed as the last channel a user came from prior to buying. To understand your customer's actual journey you need to rely on assisted transactions and top paths. This will give you the key to your customer's points of entry in a cross-sessional manner so you can understand what channels you might need to improve over time.
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