Web Analytics Implementation and Configuration Methodology (WAIC)

When you take delivery of ivantage's Analytics Accelerator service – either for Google Analytics or Urchin or even both – you will be assigned an account manager whose responsibility is to ensure we deliver the project successfully, to time and to budget. Your account manager is your day to day contact for the project and ensures that the resources of both parties collaborate efficiently and effectively.

Your account manager is guided by our best practice Web Analytics Implementation Methodology – developed over nine years’ experience implementing web analytics installations using Google Analytics and Urchin – and executes the six key components of our Web Analytics Implementation and Configuration methodology (WAIC):

User requirements analysis

Technical analysis

Strategy formulation and implementation report delivery

Testing and refinement

User training

Technical training

Reporting and insight

User requirements analysis

This section is also known as ‘Business Analysis’ and starts with the initial consultation about the website and the business variables required to be measured. Items which require identification and definition include business objectives, goals, visitor tasks and the overall key performance indicators (KPIs). It also includes the creation of the Report Definition and the preliminary design of how Google Analytics standard reports will represent your website data in areas such as Top Content, Content Drilldown, Content by Titles, Site Search, Event Tracking, E-Commerce and Goals. We also construct the most suitable profile and user administration model for the your environment.

Technical analysis

From the business analysis (including report definition tasks), we will have identified the features and customisations relevant for the Google Analytics installation and how the website's data should be represented. The Technical Analysis ensures that the website architecture will accommodate all the Google Analytics coding and tagging features with the minimum of effort and disruption to the production environment. For particularly complicated installations, we reconstruct the website environment and build a prototype of how the coding and tagging should be deployed.

Strategy formulation and implementation report

This phase takes the work from the previous two and translates it into a detailed design for the implementation. The implementation report is the document which presents the implementation steps in detail and is ready to be handed over to the web site is development team for the on-page updates to be made. When the developers have finished their part of this phase, the Google Analytics installation is ready to be properly configured and customised to meet the requirements specified in the analysis phases.

Testing and refinement

In this phase, we take the work back into our control. Now that the Google Analytics has been implemented according to our Technical Analysis and tagging instructions, we configure the package's accounts and profile structure, organize the user and administrator access and then complete the technical configuration of goals and profiles. We then configure the basic and advanced Filters that we identified as being required for the solutions strategy to provide different views of the collected data.

Output from the reports in the User Interface will need testing, checking and verifying. This critical part of the process is essential to ensure the integrity of the information, and that it is accurate, robust and reliable.

User training and technical training

We recommend that, after implementation, all staff requiring access to Google Analytics participate in our Day 1 – Analytics: Introduction and User Training course on-site. Staff with more hands-on web analytics responsibility should also attend Day 2 – Analytics: Advanced Analysis and Measurement and possibly, Day 3 – Analytics: Advanced Tracking and Technical Implementations, which is also very suitable for technical staff supporting the the Google Analytics implementation.

For Urchin Software, we recommend our three-day Configuration Workshop and our one-day user training workshop.

Reporting and Insight

In this phase, we set-up reports, dashboards and custom reports for automated transmission to stakeholders. This is where the web analytics loop completes with regular meaningful reports being delivered to key stakeholders for action.

At this phase, our Analytics Accelerator service stops and our optional ongoing Analytics Insight service takes over. Analytics Insight is a report analysis, interpretation and advisory service which delivers a monthly insights report containing a comparison of the website’s past performance against Key Performance Indicators, recommended future campaign strategies and actionable insights into how the website’s commercial performance could be improved. Analytics Insight also includes monthly on-line meetings to discuss the report’s key findings, recommendations and actions.