If you just turned on Google Analytics 360, you might be asking,
“what should I use first”?
First off, congratulations! Now that you have upgraded to the premium version of Google Analytics, or Google Analytics 360, you can supercharge your analytics strategy and take advantage of a host of GA 360 features and benefits.
In this blog post, I’ll share 5 features you should try out once you’ve activated GA 360.
1. Set up an Unsampled Report with Custom Tables
Let’s start with one of the main reasons companies get GA 360 – access to unsampled data. One of the ways you can collect unsampled data on a daily basis is by setting up a Custom Table.
Custom Tables are highly valuable. You can leverage this reporting feature of GA 360 to collect unsampled data on an ongoing basis. Custom Tables specify a combination of metrics, dimensions, segments, and filters that you want Analytics to process as unsampled on a daily basis.
To create a Custom Table, go to Property > Custom Tables in the Admin panel of your GA.
This pulls up a report that allows you to build your custom table – click into +New Custom Table, and the report configuration tab will come up.
Below is an example of a Custom Table set up, that pulls in sessions and date, and runs on a daily basis.
For your own Custom Table, choose your dimensions, metrics, and any filters and/or segments you want to apply. Hit save and voilà – you now have yourself a Custom Table that will update daily and present you with the bounty that is unsampled data.
2. Visualize the Customer Journey with Custom Funnels
Custom Funnels are really just a next level option of Custom Reports in GA 360 that will allow you to take up to 5 stages (i.e. parts of the funnel), of which each can have up to 5 rules (i.e. the definitions to isolate the stage – this channel, device type, region, etc.). This section will walk you through how create your own Custom Funnel and analyze the data.
Where to find: Go to Custom Reports > New Custom Report and then Select Funnel (BETA) as the report type.
Here’s what the report configuration itself looks like, and a breakdown of what each element is meant to do:
Below is an example of a Custom Funnel where you can see how users travel from the homepage to two key converting tools.
You can see that 95% of users do NOT go from the homepage to Tool 1, and that 16% of users DO travel from Tool 1 to Tool 2. You can use this to test existing hypothesis about the user journey and prove or disprove current assumptions.
For instance, if an existing hypothesis is that users land on the homepage and then go to Tool 1, this funnel can be used to disprove that, and test where users DO go.
Once you have this, say you want to analyze where the 95% of users who don’t go to Tool 1 end up going instead. You can create a segment directly from the funnel to further dig into the behavior of this user group. Simply click into the section showing the dropoffs and you’ll be shown a popup with two options – Create new segment and Create new segment and remarket.
You can use this one of two ways. First, you can create a segment and dig further into user behavior. Say your investigation leads to two ways you can remarket to the audience.
You can then use the remarketing option to instantly create an audience in GA, which you can then target using Google Ads, or Display Video 360 (DV360). How cool is that?
3. Enable Data Driven Attribution
Unlike standard attribution models, Data-Driven Attribution uses actual data from your Google Analytics 360 account to build a model for attributing credit to channels for conversions.
This effectively creates a custom attribution model that is built using your actual data. All you have to do is turn on the feature with the click of a button in GA 360.
To be eligible for Data-Driven Attribution, you must at minimum:
- Be a Google Analytics 360 customer
- Have either Ecommerce Tracking or Goals set up (you should already be leveraging these features since they’re critical to measuring success)
- Have a Google Ads account with at least 15,000 clicks on Google Search and a conversion action with at least 600 conversions within 30 days
To continue using the model, you’re required to meet these thresholds for the past 28 days:
- 400 conversions per conversion type with a path length of 2+ interactions
- 10,000 paths in the selected reporting view (roughly equivalent to 10,000 users, although a single user may generate multiple paths)
How to Set Up Data-Driven Attribution
Where to find: Go to Admin > View > View Settings. Under Modeling Settings, turn on Enable Data-Driven Models and Save.
That’s it – literally all it takes is a click of a button (as long as you’re meeting the minimum thresholds specified) and Data-Driven attribution begins analyzing your data and building your custom model. Your model will be available in your Attribution reports within 7 days, after which you can start to play around with GA 360’s attribution reports and tools.
For more on this topic from yours truly (including a deeper dive on how to use the tool for analysis), click here.
4. Activate GTM 360 (and start using Zones)
Some people might not realize this – but GTM 360 actually comes with GA 360, and you can use GTM 360’s powerful features as soon as you activate both, GA 360 and GTM 360.
How do I activate GTM 360?
The same way you activate GA 360. Once you’re in your Organization Settings, select Tag Manager and switch the Service Level to 360 (if you’re purchasing GA 360 from Seer, we as the reseller will set this up for you).
Once you have this set up, you should be able to use all of GTM 360’s features moving forward.
Unlimited Workspaces: Think of workspaces as siloed folders that different users can work in. A workspace allows you to create multiple sets of changes for your container, and publish them separately. This way, users can independently work in their own workspaces and develop their configurations without having to worry about version control or messing with someone else’s tracking updates (or unintentionally publishing them). Tag Manager lets you create up to 3 workspaces at a time while Tag Manager 360 gives you unlimited workspaces.
If there are multiple users working in your container at a time, then this feature can be pivotal when it comes to version control.
Zones: A Zone in Tag Manager 360 can link multiple Google Tag Manager containers with your main container on page load, so that the linked containers are allowed to fire tags on your website too.
On projects that span multiple sites, Zones provide a way to streamline what code is hardcoded on the site, and can simplify efforts across dev teams.
For example, you can create a container and hardcode it across all your websites – one piece of code across all site pages – and then create individual containers for specific brands and sites and then load them into the Master Container using zones.
When a new container is created, instead of the additional dev work of adding the container to the sites – you just load it and publish. You can configure the boundaries of a zone to define which pages the zone is active on (including specific hostnames,pages, or even elements), and you can restrict the kinds of tags that a linked container can fire. Note you can also restrict different tag types for each Zone.
For more on GTM 360 and Zones, check out our blog post.
5. Get to know Your Google Marketing Platform Home
Google Marketing Platform Home is where you go to get an integrated view of all the Google products you’re currently using, as well as to manage your GA 360 and GTM 360 account. You can turn 360 on and off for your accounts from your platform home amidst many more features.
It consists of an Integration Center, where you can manage your integrations, link new products, and learn more about potential integrations available to you. There’s also an Administration section where you can manage users and permissions and billing for all your Google products.
A Recently Viewed section also provides a list of accounts and advertisers that have accessed your account lately. This centralized view of your GA 360 products allows for more visibility and flexibility when it comes to Admin management and user controls. Go to https://marketingplatform.google.com/home to get to know your suite or watch the video from Google below:
If GA 360 or GTM 360 seems like something you’d be interested in, note that Seer is a GA360 Premium Reseller. Feel free to reach out to us if you’d like to chat or take a quick sec to fill out the interest form below for more information.