Who are the visitors to our website and where are they coming from? Which page is opened the most, which sections perform the least and which online campaign generates the most traffic? Chances are you already use Google Analytics to find the answers to such questions.
Google Analytics allows organizations to easily access website statistics themselves and use this information for SEO and marketing purposes. Yet there are also a number of snags and catches to this practical application. What should you take into account?
1. Details are not always correct.
When there are large amounts of data, Google Analytics stores the data sampled. Thus, the information reflects only the trends.
2. No JavaScript, no data.
Google Analytics collects visitor information based on a Javascript tag in the website. Therefore, if a browser has Javascript disabled, no statistical information is available about this visitor.
3. Problems with cookies.
Google uses cookies to track visitors. Therefore, if the user has blocked cookies, Google cannot collect this data. In addition, after 30 minutes of inactivity (cookie timeout), a visitor’s session ends and a new session begins, splitting the collected information in two.
4. Time-related problems.
Filters in Google Analytics only work from the moment they are set up. Thus, historical data is not included retroactively. Moreover, data is not always available in real-time but only at a later time.
5. API processing.
Errors can occur when communicating with the Google Analytics APIs. Thus, in such a case, a recovery process is required to reestablish the same application.
6. No possibility to combine and compare data from other systems and applications or share dashboards with multiple users.
Google Analytics provides users with its own web interface to create dashboards based on filtering criteria. However, these dashboards cannot be shared with multiple users, but are tied to a Google user account. In addition, the application also has no capabilities to compare or combine the statistical data with data from other systems and applications. To overcome these problems, Google offers several APIs to unlock statistical data about your website stored in the cloud and store it on-premises in your own database.
Our Solution
With the above bottlenecks in mind, we created a solution for mobile.de, the largest automotive retailer in Germany, that allows effective communication with Google’s APIs. With this solution, data from Google Analytics can be easily accessed and stored on-premises in a database and then aggregated in a data mart. Based on this local storage, reports can be automatically created whereby this data can be compared or supplemented with internal customer data.
Independent
In addition, mobile.de, which has a need for a very wide variety of reports, can use this solution to compose the layout and content of organization-defined reports based on templates and determine when these reports should be generated for specific users or groups, without being dependent on third parties.
The organization is also able to create ad hoc reports and dashboards based on the datamart data combined with its own internal data by using data visualization and reporting tools. These dashboards and reports can then be shared with multiple users. Even people are now able to do some form of forecasting based on this solution.
Talend
The solution was realized in Talend, software based on open standards that allows us to offer scalable enterprise grade solutions for our customers. Within Talend, we used the component framework that allows us to develop components that can be applied to multiple projects or customers and/or shared with third parties. The major advantage of this solution is that the open nature of Talend allows us to connect this solution to virtually any system and application of an organization, making it possible to combine and/or compare statistical data from Google with data from these systems and applications to arrive at new insights.
Business success story: also for your organization
Talend enables us to connect this solution to your systems and applications with relative ease, so that you too can achieve a business success story based on Google Analytics.
Curious about the technical ins and outs of this solution? Then read on in our white paper.