Getting a clear snapshot of online performance can be a tedious task. Indeed, analytics platforms can be difficult to use or understand and often demand a deep analytical knowledge. Here at GreenTDigital, we do believe that businesses should have an easy access to their key data.
In today’s article, we’ll be sharing one of our favorite reports: A weekly performance heat map.
What are the main objectives?
- Create the report
- Reveal our favorite ways to use this report
- Help you customize the report
Before getting started?
To create the report, we will be using the Google Analytics plug-in available on Google Spreadsheet. If you are new to this, we would kindly advise you to find out more on Google help or to check out our previous articles related to this specific question.
How to create the report?
Although the template is shared with you here (Link to the template), we do believe it’s necessary to explain a few steps that would allow you getting the most out of the reporting possibilities.
Configuring the report
The report configuration will consist of 3 different steps:
- Choosing the view ID on Google Analytics
- Setting-up a starting and ending date
- Selecting the metric that matters
The list of available metrics is quite extensive, hence we would advise you to start with one of these:
Sessions: ga:sessions
Goal completions: ga:goalCompletionsAll
Transactions: ga:transactions
Revenue: ga:transactionRevenue
We’ll be using only these ones for now to keep the report as simple as possible. Do keep in mind that it is perfectly possible to combine more than one, in order to add more layers to your analysis.
Once your report is configured, you just need to “run” the report to access to the next step.
Report creation
We’ve tried to keep the report creation simple: Name the tab, select a channel and pick a device.
Name of the tab
The name should be “data” by default. However, you can play with the template as much as you want: add tabs to the report configuration or change the different elements set initially. The only thing that we will ask you is to add any variations to their dedicated cell.
Channels and Devices
We have created dropdowns to reduce the risk of misspellings. If you don’t select any, you will have all the available data appear at once.
The channels displayed are those from the default channel grouping. If you add any, If you add any, you should do so on the dedicated “data validation” tab.
Revealing our favorite ways to use this report
Desktop vs Mobile
Knowing the trends on Mobile and Desktop is crucial to adapt your online strategy:
- When to launch a campaign?
- When to spend more aggressively? On mobile? On Desktop?
- When to close the campaigns?
Year to year analysis
Playing with the starting and ending dates on the report configuration allows you comparing performance year to year or month to month.
The template doesn’t include this option, so please do not hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to have a more customized solution.
Conversions vs Revenue
Depending on your KPIs, it can be interesting to frequently compare your conversions and your revenue. Knowing when you get conversions is good, but knowing when you get most of your revenue is more important.
Helping you customize the report
To facilitate the readability of the report, we have added some conditional formatting rules. The rules are set to represent the “weight” of each cell. You can choose different percents to adapt your analysis.
How does the conditional formatting work?
Conditional formatting will show how each cell contributes to the total.
We have set 5 different colors
- Less than the smaller percent
- Between the first and the second percents
- Between the second and the third percents
- Between the third and the fourth percents
- Greater or equal to the fourth percent
Please bear in mind, that you need to select a value in each section to make the conditional formatting working.
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Please do not hesitate to comment or get in touch if you want more customized solutions.
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