A lookup table in Google Tag Manager makes it much simpler to manage lots of values in your tracking setup. It can drastically reduce the number of tags required and turn your messy GTM into a neat environment. It's especially useful with larger setups where you have multiple tracking requirements and flexible to accommodate new tracking needs as they arise. You can easily add or remove values from your lookup tables, and not worry about having to change any codes. The lookup table variable allows you to define a set of key-value pairs where the output variable (the value that you are sending to Google Analytics) is linked to the identifier (the key). It works like this: When [input variable] equals to  _______, set [this output variable] to_______. For example, you could use the lookup table for: Assigning different Google Analytics property IDs for various domains/hostnames, eg. when [website hostname] equals to littledata.co.uk, set [property ID] to UA-010101 (see example below) Setting different pixel or conversions IDs for different country websites, eg when [website country code] equals to 2, set [pixel ID] to 88779 (requires having website country code variable defined) Defining your event categories, actions and labels (see example below) Remember! There’s no limit to how many values you can have in the lookup table, but the fields are case sensitive. So if you have multiple capitalisations of some input, then include all of them in the lookup table and assign the same output for each. I have previously explained setting up the tracking of user actions as events in GTM, but when you need to track multiple events, one tag just doesn't cut it anymore. And instead of creating several tags to cover each event or action, here's how you would create the lookup table to cover multiple values in one place. Creating lookup table variable for event parameters In the Littledata software interface, you get an option to switch between different report types or view them all. I want to track when people click on different report types, so instead of creating 5 different tags for each user action, I will set up a lookup table to cover all of them in one place. But firstly I need to know which variable to use as the input. You can only have one type of input variable per the lookup table so you want to pick a variable type that applies to each (ideally). For this, I will check how each report type option has been set up in the code by inspecting the element (inspect/inspect element depending on the browser you're using and usually accessible via right click). Here's how each report type has been set up: <a href="/report-list/m2i4MnmXcewDSzZ3c/all" class="current" id="ga-all">All <span class="count">120</span></a> <a href="/report-list/m2i4MnmXcewDSzZ3c/trends" class="" id="ga-trends">Trends <span class="count">80</span></a> <a href="/report-list/m2i4MnmXcewDSzZ3c/pages" class="" id="ga-pages">Pages <span class="count">37</span></a> <a href="/report-list/m2i4MnmXcewDSzZ3c/tips" class="" id="ga-tips">Tips <span class="count">3</span></a> <a href="/report-list/m2i4MnmXcewDSzZ3c/benchmark" class="" id="ga-benchmark">Benchmark <span class="count">0</span></a> Looking at the above, I can see that each report type has a unique ID - here that's the best one to use. Now to set this up, go to Variables, click ‘New’ and select 'Lookup Table' as your variable type. For the input variable, I will use {{Click ID}} as explained above, but you, of course, use whatever unique identifier you have available. For your output, you want to define the event action you are going to send to the Events report in Google Analytics. Should you set the default value? You can set a default value for the output when there is no match found in your table. With the event tracking, I sometimes find it useful to enable to identify if I set up my tag correctly. If my trigger ends up being too broad, the default value option will pick up additional values not defined in the table. I will then see these values in Google Analytics reports and this way I can tidy up the trigger to be more accurate. So this is what your variable should look like now. Click ‘Create Variable’ and there you have it. In your GA event tag, the newly created variable would look like this. Other uses Multiple Google Analytics properties If you have a single GTM container installed on multiple domains but you're tracking them across different Google Analytics properties, you want to ensure that you're sending the data to the correct one. Instead of having multiple variables to store different property IDs, you can have them all neatly in the same table defined by the hostname. This way any tracking activity on each site will go to its own dedicated property. Excluding test or other data If you want to make sure that any data outside of your main site goes to a test or other Google Analytics property, you can do so by setting the default value. The default value is the output that is not found in the table. With this setup, any activity tracked on www.mainsite.com goes to property ID UA-121212. If the activity wasn't on www.mainsite.com, then it sent to property ID UA-121212-2. Use lookup tables for something else? Confused? Get in touch or comment below!

Events in Google Analytics are important for understanding how people interact with your website. They give you additional insight into their behaviour and how effective your pages are for leading users towards a conversion. With event tracking you could see how many users clicked on a button or played a video, scrolled down a page or clicked on your contact and social media icons. I mostly use Google Tag Manager (GTM) for analytics setup so I will show how to set up event tracking for clicks on buttons with GTM. Instead of hard coding events in the code, GTM allows you to create, test and amend tags within its interface. Before you go ahead creating your event tags, make sure your built-in pages and clicks variables are enabled. This will avoid you having to go back and forth between different sections. The setup below covers only one action - a click on a specific button - but if you have multiple actions to track, then look into implementing a lookup table variable. Tracking button clicks Here's my scenario. I want to track our BENCHMARK YOUR SITE button that allows users to sign up to our free software plan and get benchmarked against competitors.   And here's how to set it up. 1. Create a tag It will be a Universal Analytics tag type where tracking ID is a constant string variable (you need to create this variable before using it) and track type 'Event'. Think of your event tracking parameters as a way to organise the events into a hierarchy: Category – the main aim of the button or its placement Action – what the user clicked or the action Label – provides additional information like on what page the button was clicked or the outbound link they clicked on Value – if you have a numerical value to set for your click (not in my case tho) In my example, the category is ‘Get started’ because we have a number of similar buttons across the site with the same purpose to get the user started with the signup, so all of them have the same event category. For action, I specify the type of button that was clicked on so I can compare how these different buttons perform - 'Benchmark your site' in this case. My event label is the {{Page Path}} where they clicked on the button. The buttons take the user to the same place so I’m more interested in which pages these buttons were clicked on. Alternatively, if you have buttons that take people to different URLs you might want to track that instead. Is it a non-interaction hit? This is an important one to keep in mind. By default this is set to False. If you don’t want this event to impact your bounce rate, then change it to True, which you would do if the click or action didn’t take the user to the new page, or if you didn't want it to be included in your bounce rate calculations. Now click 'Continue' to go to the trigger setup. 2. Create a trigger Trigger is like a rule that allows you to tell the tag, ie specify the conditions, when it should fire. Under 'Fire On' select ‘Click’ as your trigger type and then ‘New’. For configuring the trigger, you have a choice between two types: Just Links – use this when the target is a link or anchor tag <a> All Elements – use this when the target is any other element that’s not a link To determine what’s best for your purposes you need to have a look at how your button is set up. You can do this by selecting ‘inspect element’ or simply ‘inspect’ depending on what browser you’re using. It’s usually available when you right click on the button or element.   Our button has been set up the following way: <a href="https://littledata.uk/signup" class="btn btn-ltd btn-green">benchmark your site</a> It has a link so I will use 'Just Links' for targets and I have a choice between three elements to use in further configuration: https://littledata.uk/signup as click url btn btn-ltd btn-green as click class benchmark your site as click text It is best to use a unique condition if you can. This way, if similar class or click url gets reused in other parts of the website you don't have to go back to this trigger to update it. With 'Just Links' you will get additional configuration options: Wait for tags - delays opening of links until all other tags have fired or the wait time has lapsed, whichever happens first Check validation - fires the tag only when opening the link was a valid action, without the tag will fire whenever the user clicks on the button/link Enable when - this options is shown only when either of the above is ticked so you can be specific about where you want the trigger to be active If you want the trigger to listen to the interactions on all pages, then set that section to be  URL or Page Path matches regex .*. (without that very last full stop - that one's for the sentence) In my case, I only want it to work on benchmark pages and all of them start with /benchmark/. The very last step in trigger setup is specifying on which actions or clicks the tag should fire. As said above, I'm using the button's click class here. All done? This is what your tag should now look like. Click 'Create Tag'. 3. Test Test your tag in GTM's preview mode by checking two things: the tag fires in the preview interface, and the tag is seen in Google Analytics real time view under 'Events' with the event parameters you specified   I hope you got on with the setup above just fine, but if you have questions or clarifications, feel free to ask below.   Further reading: Know who converts on your site with Google Analytics goals Using lookup table variable in Google Tag Manager Intro to Google Tag Manager's key concepts and terminology Image: Courtesy of suphakit73 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net  

We’ve just released a bunch of improvements for Littledata software to improve your data analysis and reporting. Grab yourself a cuppa and read on to learn what’s new, including the ability to choose which reports you want to get, updated spam filter, and more. Settings improvements We want to give you more control over your subscription so we've added further customisation options to your settings. Update subscription name You can now update your subscription name to be something more descriptive than the default property name we select. If you have multiple views for the same website or a very long property name, you can change the name to something more snappy and understandable. Select which reports you want So far you've been getting a set of standard reports without being able to pick which reports are important for you. That's changing! You can now select the metrics and segments you care about and want to get reports on, and turn off the ones you don't. You can do this by going to your subscription settings, and updating the Metrics & Segments sections. Report improvements We believe that analytics reporting should be simple, clear and unpolluted with unnecessary details so we've made your reports easier to understand. Simpler report titles With a lot of changes to the website traffic, the interface can get quite busy with numerous reports trying to get your attention. We made the titles much simpler by focussing on the main change that the reports are about, thus allowing you to skim your reports and see what's happened more quickly. Time tag Our trends reports look currently for daily and weekly changes in your website traffic, and previously you had to rely on the report title to see which time comparison the specific report is for. To make it clearer, we have taken this information out of the titles and added time tags instead. Now you can quickly see which reports are daily or weekly comparisons. Don't let spam referrals skew your data I have previously written a guide on how to remove spam referrals and I know from experience it can be time consuming and frustrating to set up. You have to identify these spammers in your data first, then check other more common ones to add to the list, write a regular expression, then create one filter, then another and so on. Did I say it can be frustrating? Our spam correction feature takes the exasperation out of this process by adding filters to your analytics view once you authorise the fix. Whilst we've had this feature for some time now and it's as popular as ever, we have updated the list with many more spam referrals. We'll send you a tip report if we find fake referrals in your traffic, and you can clean up your data by clicking on 'Fix this now'.   Feel free to ask questions or send us your comments either below or via the Intercom Messenger available when you're logged in.   Further reading: Under the hood of Littledata New in Littledata: tailored tips, new report and more (

Google Analytics is a powerful tool… when implemented correctly. I can’t even count the number of times we've had enquiries from and spoken to companies who don’t trust the data in their reports because it's incorrect or incomplete. And it all comes down to wrong configuration and setup. Checking and amending correctly the very basics of your analytics setup will provide you with data you can rely on and an accurate foundation for further more advanced configurations, like Enhanced Ecommerce tracking. So here's a list of questions you should be asking whilst checking your Google Analytics (GA) property and view settings. This is assuming you're on Universal Analytics (analytics.js) so not all setup options may apply if your site is on Classic analytics (ga.js). I'll also cover a few common setup issues at the end. GA property settings Go to Admin > Property > Property Settings. Is your default URL set up correctly? The default URL is used in Content and in-Page Analytics reports to display page previews. Do you have a correct default view picked? By default, this will be the first view created at the time of initial GA setup. If you're using AdWords Express or Google Play, then you want to check the view here is the one you want to connect to either of the services. The default view will also show you all the custom and advanced segments you've created in other views. Have you set your industry category? Pick whatever matches your property most closely if you want to be included in the benchmark reports. Have you enabled demographics reports? Demographics and interests reports give you additional insight into your users. Recently I explained how to set this up in Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager V2. Do you need enhanced link attribution? Enable this if you have pages with multiple links that take people to the same destination or a page element that has multiple destinations, eg internal search. This will help with identifying which particular elements or links were clicked. In addition to enabling this in the property settings, you also need to add a line of code to your GA tracking code, or, if using GTM, toggle Enhanced Link Attribution to true in your pageview tag under Advanced Configuration settings. Should you link with your Search Console? Link your Search Console site with your Google Analytics property to see Search Console data in your GA reports, and access GA reports directly from the Links to your site and Sitelinks sections in Search Console. GA view settings Property settings sorted? Great, now go to View > View Settings. Is your view name descriptive? Use easy to understand naming to describe what the view is for, eg excluding admin, domains included, ecommerce data only. Have you set your default URL? Similarly to the property settings, make sure you use the correct default URL here to improve your Content and in-Page Analytics reports. Have you set a correct time zone? The beginning and end of each day for your reports is calculated based on the time zone you have set. If you need to update this, you may see a flat spike in your data caused by the time shift. Do you need a default page? Setting a default page is useful when you have two separate URLs loading the same homepage. Here you can configure those pages to be considered as the same URL. This will affect your reports so make sure you do this correctly Should you exclude URL query parameters? Specify any parameters you don’t want to see in your reports. I've found a blog post from Lunametrics useful for understanding when and how to exclude URL query parameters. Is your currency correct? Especially relevant for sites with ecommerce tracking for making sure that the reports show your order values and revenues in the currency you operate in, and not in $ that it converts to by default. Have you ticked bot filtering option? Whilst this option doesn't help with eliminating all of the spam referrals, ticking this box will exclude at least a few of them. To get rid of all of your fake referrals, here's a thorough guide on how to exclude them with two filters. Get yourself a cuppa if you're going to clean up your data. Does your website have a search function? Enabling the site search is useful for understanding what your website visitors are looking for. It should be pretty painless to set up if you have a query included in the URL, and we've covered the steps to set up internal site search tracking in one of our blogs. Other common setup issues Here are also a few very common setup problems that I keep coming across again and again. Have you got an unfiltered view? It's good practice to have an unfiltered view that you keep clean from any filters and customisation. This way you can always double-check your data if anything goes wrong in another view. Is your bounce rate less than 10% whilst your pageviews have doubled? This may be happening due to pageviews firing multiple times. You can use Tag Assistant plugin for Chrome to check if that's true. Are you getting referrals from your own domain and your payment gateway? This is skewing your data so checkpoints 3 and 4 on how to exclude referrals from your domain and payment provider. Tracking multiple subdomains in the same view? By default, you see only request URI in your reports without a domain, which isn't very helpful if you are tracking more than one domain in the same GA view. You can improve this by adding a hostname to URLs with a custom filter. Check Google's guidance for how to do it. Are you filtering out internal traffic? To minimise your data being skewed by internal colleagues or partner companies you may be working with, exclude their IPs with the help of filters. Are you on top of website traffic changes? OK, so this one isn't quite about the problem with the setup but if data has an important role in your business, you can make your analysis more efficient. Google provides you with the ability to set up alerts for important changes in your data, but our software does the work for you. Instead of trawling your data for hours or spending further time on configurations, you can set up alerts and personalised reports within minutes.   Have you experienced other setup problems that aren't covered above? Let me know and I'll include them. Image Credit: Images courtesy of vectorolie and ratch0013 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You know marketing is essential but have you specified what makes you different and unique, your objectives and how you are going to achieve them? Recently I went to a workshop, organised by Innovate UK and Enterprise Europe Network, to do just that: learn about achieving business goals by using strategic marketing. Strategic marketing is essentially a structured plan that helps you achieve competitive advantage or other business goals through a set of defined activities that are most appropriate for your aims. We were taken through a number of exercises that helped us define how we position ourselves and what we are trying to accomplish, whilst aligning the marketing efforts and tactics with overall business goals. It was especially useful to bounce my ideas off others so if you’re going through similar exercises, I recommend you do the same. It really helps to sense-check your thoughts and how you describe your business with someone outside your company. Below I'll go through my top takeaways and methods that I found most useful when devising a strategic marketing plan. Define the purpose/mission of your business Think about what you are trying to achieve as a business – is it clear or does it need further refining? Why are your services and products needed or wanted, and who are your customers? If you have a clear purpose or a definition of what you’re trying to achieve, it will help you plan your marketing activities and inform other business activities. Having an easy to understand idea of your purpose also helps guide your resources and avoid spreading them too thinly, which is especially valuable if you’re a small business where resources are limited. Define your value proposition A value proposition is what you promise to deliver to your customers through your services or products. Here you need to think what makes you unique, better or different from your competitors. If you struggle to offer a reason why your offering is more valuable than your competitors, then you may get stuck competing on price only. I found the Geoffrey Moore’s model particularly useful for defining the value proposition. It goes like this: The  ____________ (product name) Is a ____________ (product category) for ____________ (users/customer segment) who ____________  (statement of desire/problem) that ____________  (compelling reason to use) unlike ____________  (the next best alternative) allows ____________  (the main difference). And here’s an example we were given: The iPod is a portable music player for music lovers who want to listen to their music anywhere, anytime unlike portable cd players or 
MP3s with less storage the iPod allows easy access to all your music Define your marketing goals We used SMART method to define 3-5 marketing goals for the next 12 months. Being specific about the number of goals you’re trying to achieve within a year helps to focus on specific outcomes you’re trying to achieve. It also helps to measure your success after 12 months or another timeframe you set for yourself. Specific - clearly defined 
and specific goal rather than a generic and vague one, eg increase signups Measurable 
 - quantifiable goal, eg how much or how many Achievable – realistic to complete within a set timeframe, eg a few months Relevant to you and your customers 
- choose what matters or matches needs Time-bound - that you have the time, money & resources to achieve your goals within a specific timeframe Define your segmentation, targeting and positioning Segmentation is an activity where you divide the broad market into specific customer segments by their common characteristics, and devise your tactics around targeting each segment. A few ways you could segment your customers are demographics, geography, psychographics, lifestyle, behaviour, etc. Once you have a clear idea of different customer groups, you will be better placed to pick the most attractive or suitable segment to target. When selecting your target segment, see if there are segments that are the easiest, cheapest or quickest to reach, whilst being realistic about your capabilities and resources to target those segments. Positioning your business gives you a distinct image of your benefit(s) to the target audience that you are going to communicate. If you have a number of segments you can target, then define your positioning for each segment. Same applies to the Geoffrey Moore’s value proposition model – write it out for each customer segment. Define your marketing tactics Once you have a clear idea of the customer segment(s) you’re targeting, why they would use your services or products, and what you’re going to communicate to them, you can pick specific marketing tactics that are going to help you do that. Some examples of tactics are producing ebooks, using online ads like PPC, sharing data findings via blog, and organising webinars. If you need inspiration or ideas, there are plenty of resources online when you search for marketing tactics, marketing strategies, growth tactics and similar. Define your marketing KPIs Decide on a set of metrics that you are going to use to measure the success of your marketing efforts. By having the right KPIs, you can evaluate if you’re on track towards your goals, and adjust your activities if necessary. To give you a few examples of what you could measure: Cost per lead or enquiry Average order value Landing page conversion rate Customer lifetime value Impressions / clicks / visits I hope this has helped you to start thinking about defining your business and marketing activities more strategically and in line with the over-all goals. There are lots of great templates online that you can use to assist with outlining your plan - for example, check out Smart Insights resources bank that has lots of useful PDFs for marketing planning and more. If you'd like to discuss further, comment below!

Wouldn't you want to know how well people convert on your site? Setting up basic conversion goals will enable you to measure site engagement – based on time on site, destination page or particular events - and what drives that. Below I’ll cover the reasons why you should set up goal tracking in your Google Analytics, different types of goals available, goal value, and then explain how to set them up. So why should you track goals? Goals are great for tracking important actions that are crucial for your business and understanding how people convert on your site. Once you set up goals, you will be able to analyse conversion rates in the Goals reports. Conversion data will also appear in other Google Analytics reports, like the Attribution and Acquisition reports. This will help you identify which marketing campaigns and channels get users to complete the goals you have previously defined. The destination goal also allows you to set up a funnel to visualise the path people take through your site towards completing a purchase, signing up or another conversion. Seeing how people navigate through your site in a visual way makes it easier to identify where they drop off. If you see a lot of exits on particular pages, then review those pages to see if you can improve them to minimise the exits and guide more people towards converting. If you see a lot of people skipping certain pages, then your path to conversion might be too long or contain unnecessary steps. For more info on flow visualisation reports, check Google’s help pages. What kind of goals can you set up? You can set up a destination goal to track how many users reached a certain page, eg thank you, purchase confirmation or pre-order request pages. Then there’s a duration goal that tracks how many users stayed for a specific amount of time, eg for at least 15 minutes. You can also set up a pages/screens per session goal to see how many users view a specific number of pages during a session. An event goal is for when a user triggered certain events on the site that you have already set up, eg clicked on an ad, submitted a form or saved a product. What else should you know about goals? Goals have a few limitations in Google Analytics: You can set up only 20 goals per view. If you need more, you can either create another view or repurpose existing goals. Goals apply to the data after you’ve created them. Goals can’t be deleted; but you can turn them off if you don’t need them. Use names that make sense so that anyone using your Google Analytics data can understand what the goals are for. Keep track of when you changed the goal by adding annotations to your reports. Do you need the goal value? Setting up a goal value is optional. You should set a monetary value for your goal when you want to track how much you earned from converting users and you’re able to calculate the worth of each lead. If you know that 5% of people who sign up on your site end up buying your service, and the average value of your service is £1000, then you can set £50 as your goal value (5% of 1000). When setting up a goal value, make sure the currency corresponds to what you use on the site or are familiar with. You can do this in Admin > View > View Settings. Are you an ecommerce site? If you’re an online retailer, then instead of using goal values you should be using Ecommerce or Enhanced Ecommerce tracking for Google Analytics. These reports will be much more insightful for tracking your store performance. So how do you set up goals? You need to set these up at the view level. Go to Admin > View > Goals, and click New Goal. Google has added some goal templates that you can choose from if you’re happy to use their naming. Alternatively, select 'Custom' at the end of the list and click ‘Continue’ to the goal description. For your goal name use something that is easily understood by others using your Google Analytics account, and the goal details will depend on the type of goal you're setting up. Setting up destination goal You can follow the blog I've previously written on setting up the destination goal and funnel. Setting up duration goal Click ‘Continue’ and specify the minimum amount of time you want to track. Setting up pages/screens per session goal Here you specify the number of pages someone viewed per session. Setting up event goal Set the event you want to track as a goal by using exactly the same category, action, label and value as in the event. If you want to use a goal value here, you have the option to use the event value you’ve already set. Verify your goal - click ‘Verify’ to check if it works. If the goal has been set up correctly, you should see an estimation of the conversion rate your goal would get. If you’re not getting anything, check each step carefully and Google's help pages on why your conversion tracking might not be working. Once you’re happy with the setup, click ‘Create goal’ and check the results in your analytics reports after a few days or weeks, depending on the amount of traffic you get.   If you need help with the setup above or have another way of using goals, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

UK-based websites are 5 percentage points better than their US peers at keeping mobile users engaged (with a lower bounce rate), and 2.5 percentage points better at keeping the users from desktop / laptop computers engaged. For bounce rate from email marketing, the difference was also 5 percentage points (a 14% better performance from UK websites). The comparison is based on the Google Analytics data from 209 UK companies and 95 US companies collated by Littledata. The British web industry has benefited from earlier smartphone adoption in the UK (81% vs 75% in the US; source: MarketingLand), and overall greater internet usage from UK consumers (source: Econsultancy). That should put UK-based developers in a great position to sell their experience to other countries with increasing internet adoption An example is MADE.com, a London-based furniture retailer which has used superior online customer acquisition to drive growth across the UK and continental Europe. Littledata founder, Edward Upton, explains: “It’s usually hard to get a hold of industry data to compare digital product performance against similar companies, but Littledata’s benchmarks provide a simple way for companies to find website features that are underperforming.” If your website beats those benchmarks that should not stop you improving. Whilst it’s great to know you’re doing well in a particular area, there are many comparative metrics you can check with our benchmarks to fully understand your performance overall. If your site is struggling with engaging users, then check out our suggestions on improving your bounce rate . Want to know how your site performs? Head over to Littledata Benchmark page and click 'Benchmark your site' to check your performance against others. How Littledata benchmarks work? We gather data from thousands of Google Analytics profiles, and anonymise them in a series of benchmarks, to give insight into how your marketing efforts are paying off. With this benchmark data, you can stop being in the dark about how your website performs and sign up to see how your site compares. Our customers also receive daily insight into site or app performance with our actionable trends reports. You can explore these and other benchmarks via Littledata Benchmark index page.   How would you use benchmarks in your daily work? Leave your comments below.

Google Analytics custom campaign tracking is essential for measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Let's say you were promoting your new ebook across social media and emails, how would you know which social post or email blast was the most effective? That’s where Google campaign parameters come in (also referred to as UTM). You simply add them to your URLs, which are then used in your web-based, email or ad promotions. When someone clicks on them, the custom information linked to these URLs via parameters is sent to your Google Analytics reports. If you don’t tell Google the specifics of your campaigns, then they will be rolled into existing buckets without the ability to identify them. This most commonly happens with emails and social posts that by default get classified as referrals. But once you start tagging your campaigns, you will see those social initiatives and email newsletters separated by campaign names and other information you provided. Tagged up links can also be used in email signatures, listings on other sites and social media profiles. By using campaign tagging you will understand better which URLs have been most effective in attracting users to your site or content, for example you'll see which: Email newsletter brought you the most traffic Ad was best at bringing you converting visitors Facebook post engaged the most users If you have goals set up, then you will also see how visitors from individual campaigns convert on your website. Using custom campaign data in reports You can access custom campaign data in Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns report, where you will see your various campaigns based on the parameters used in URLs. You can also switch between viewing your campaigns by source and medium tags that you’ve used. Another report you can use is the Assisted Conversions (under Conversion > Multi-Channel Funnels) that summarises how your channels, or campaigns, contribute to your conversions. To see the campaigns, you need to click on 'Other', find 'Campaign' and select it. Now you will see data related to your campaigns only. Check Google's guidance on understanding the Assisted Conversions report. Be consistent Consistency is very important in campaign tagging so make sure that the parameters you use in your campaigns are exact. For example, if you use email, Email and E-mail, Google Analytics will record them as three different mediums in your reports. So, set your naming conventions and if you have a bigger team, then agree on what they are and make sure everyone is aware of them. What tags can you use in your campaigns? There are five types of information you can pass on with the tags/URLs. Three of them should always be used: Campaign source (utm_source) - identifies where the traffic comes from, eg newsletter, google. Campaign medium (utm_medium) – advertising or marketing medium, eg cpc, email. Campaign name (utm_campaign) – what the campaign is called whether it's a promo code or specific promotion, eg winter sale. The other two, whilst not required by Google, are useful for tracking additional information: Campaign term (utm_term) - identifies paid search keywords if you’re manually tagging your paid keyword campaigns, eg red shoes. Campaign content (utm_content) – helps differentiate between same type of content or links, useful when doing AB testing or using multiple calls to action, eg logo or text link. How to tag your campaigns? It’s easier than you might think. You can do it manually if you know how, but the available URL builder tools online make it super simple to tag your links correctly. But if you're using Adwords or Bing then you can enable auto-tagging so you don't have to worry about tagging them. For websites use the Google URL builder tool to append URL parameters. For Android, use the Google Play URL builder tool to append URL parameters. You also must have Google Play Campaign Attribution set up in your Android SDK. For iOS, use the iOS Campaign Tracking URL Builder to append URL parameters. You must use Google Analytics iOS SDK v3 or higher for this to work. For manual tagging, you need to enter a question mark after the URL and before adding your parameters. Then pair up the parameters with their values, eg utm_source=newsletter, and separate campaign parameters with an ampersand. After the question mark, parameters can be placed in any order. You'll end up with a link that'll look something like this: http://www.littledata.io/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=welcome, which is ready for use in your promo activities. Auto-tag your campaigns To make campaign tracking and tagging simpler, we have created a tool in Google Sheets that automatically creates a tagged up link. You'll need to fill the values for parameters and the formula will do the rest for you. To use it, you'll need to make a copy to store in your own Drive (via File option). Get campaign tracking sheet with URL builder   Got questions? Comment below or get in touch!