Littledata tool gives you insight into your customers' behaviour online. We look through hundreds of Google Analytics metrics and trends to give you summarised reports, alerts on significant changes, customised tips and benchmarks against competitor sites. This guide explains how we generate your reports and provide actionable analytics. 1. You authorise our app to access your Google Analytics data As a Google Analytics user you will already be sending data to Google every time someone interacts with your website or app. Google Analytics provides an API where our app can query this underlying data and provide summary reports in our own style. But you are only granting us READ access, so there is no possibility that any data or settings in your Google Analytics will change. 2. You pick which view to report on Once you've authorised the access, you pick which Google Analytics view you want to get the reports on. Some people will have multiple views (previously called ‘profiles’) set up for a particular website. They might have subtly different data – for example, one excludes traffic from company offices – so pick the most appropriate one for management reports. We will then ask for your email so we know where to send future alerts to. 3. Every day we look for significant changes and trending pages There are over 100 Google Analytics reports and our clever algorithms scan through all of them to find the most interesting changes to highlight. For all but the largest businesses, day-by-day comparisons are the most appropriate way of spotting changing behaviour on your website. Every morning (around 4am local time) our app fetches your traffic data from the previous day – broken down into relevant segments, like mobile traffic from organic search – and compares it against a pattern from the previous week. This isn’t just signalling whether a metric has changed – web traffic is unpredictable and changes every day (scientists call this ‘noise’). We are looking for how likely that yesterday’s value was out of line with the recent pattern. We express this as signal bars in the app: one bar means there is a 90% chance this result is significant (not chance), two bars means a 99% chance and three bars means 99.9% certain (less than a 1 in 1000 chance it is a fluke). Separately, we look for which individual pages are trending – based on the same probabilistic approach. Mostly this is change in overall views of the page, but sometimes in entrances or bounce rate. If you are not seeing screenshots for particular pages there are a few reasons why: The website URL you entered in Google Analytics may be out of date Your tracking code may run across a number of URLs – e.g. company.com and blog.company.com – and you don’t specify which in Google Analytics The page may be inaccessible to our app – typically because a person needs to login to see it 4. We look for common setup issues The tracking code that you (or your developers) copy and pasted from Google Analytics into your website is only the very basic setup. Tracking custom events and fixing issues like cross-domain tracking and spam referrals can give you more accurate data – and more useful reports from us. Littledata offers setup and consultancy to improve your data collection, or to do further manual audit. This is especially relevant if you are upgrading to Universal Analytics or planning a major site redesign. 5. We email the most significant changes to you Every day - but only if you have significant changes - we generate a summary email, with the highest priority reports you should look at. You can click through on any of these to see a mobile-friendly summary. An example change might be that 'Bounce rate from natural search traffic is down by 8% yesterday'. If you usually get a consistent bounce rate for natural / organic search traffic, and one day that changes, then it should be interesting to investigate why. If you want your colleagues to stay on top of these changes you can add them to the distribution list, or change the frequency of the emails in My Subscriptions. 6. Every Sunday we look for changes over the previous week Every week we look for longer-term trends – which are only visible when comparing the last week with the previous week. You should get more alerts on a Sunday. If you have a site with under 10,000 visits a month, you are likely to see more changes week-by-week than day-by-day.   To check the setup of your reports, login to Littledata tool. For any further questions, please feel free to leave a comment below, contact us via phone or email, or send us a tweet @LittledataUK.

2014 saw an increasing number of people buying online. With ever-growing competition, it’s ever more important for retailers to understand what their customers want and how to best serve them. Let’s look at five main ways that shoppers will be dictating what they want from ecommerce retailers in 2015 and how you can track these trends. 1. They’re shopping more on mobile devices Not only are shoppers making more purchases on their laptops and PCs but they’re also increasingly using their mobile devices. Retailers saw mobile transactions grow 40% at the end of the last year and there are no signs of slow down. If you’re sceptical about whether optimising for tablets and smartphones is necessary for your business, add a custom Google Analytics report by Lens10 that will quickly tell you if you should go mobile. It will also show you which devices are being used to access your site so you’ll know where to focus your efforts. 2. They’re using click & collect services In 2014 we saw some of the biggest companies jump on the click & collect bandwagon to allow customers to choose when and where they want to pick up their purchases. Waitrose, Ocado, Amazon partnered with TfL to provide click & collect at tube stations. Argos and eBay teamed up to offer the collection of parcels to eBay buyers from Argos stores nationwide. Online buyers want to enjoy a greater freedom when it comes to their shopping so we expect to see more companies join up to expand their offering. With 76% of digital shoppers predicted to use click & collect service by 2017, many more companies will begin offering the service. It’s time to offer customers the option to pick up purchases on their daily commute. 3. They’re expecting convenient delivery options It’s annoying to go through the online buying process only to be faced with limited and costly delivery options at the checkout page. Customers want more flexibility with how and when their purchase will be delivered and if your competitor offers those better options, then why aren’t you? 50% of online shoppers have abandoned a purchase online due to inconvenient delivery options. This number is staggering and should act as a warning to review your delivery cost, times and the accuracy of information you provide on the site. 4. They want personalised communication As shoppers get snowed under hundreds of emails, their individual experiences have become more important. Whilst a large majority of the businesses, 94%, understand that personalisation is crucial to their strategy it’s surprising that not that many are using the tactics. Econsultancy and Adobe produced a survey that reported 14% rise in sales, which makes a strong case for making marketing more personal. Track your customers’ location, local weather, viewed and bought items, and start testing with personalised marketing campaigns to see what works for your sales. (Chart: How do you (or your clients) measure the benefits of personalisation? | Econsultancy) 5. They’re accelerating online sales UK retailers saw their biggest sales over Christmas period, with digital increasingly getting the bigger share of the overall retail market. In 2014 ecommerce sales broke the £100bn mark for the first time and IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index predicts further growth to £116bn this year Be wary of repeating the mistakes of retailers like Currys, Argos, Tesco and PC World, whose websites couldn’t handle the increased number of visitors on Black Friday. Many customers remained stuck on frustrating holding pages instead of shopping. Check out some useful tips from Econsultancy for how to prepare for Black Friday in 2015. By setting up ecommerce tracking you can understand what shoppers are doing on your website and make informed decisions on further updates to product pages. In 2015 retailers’ success will depend on their ability to meet customers’ expectations and we hope the list above has helped your preparations. If there are any other trends you see growing in 2015, do share them in the comments.