Extend Google Analytics: Use Transaction Data to Create a Revenue Histogram

A histogram is a type of chart that visually shows the distribution of data. It's useful when looking at the average or median of a data set, to understand whether that data point is common or not. For example, an ecommerce dashboard will typically include an Average Order Value metric. Say this metric is $50. ... Read more

Add a Pseudo Box Plot to Google Data Studio

The box plot chart (aka box and whiskers) is a chart to visually display the distribution of a dataset: the maximum, minimum, median, and the range on either side of the median. Google Data Studio currently doesn't provide a Box Plot chart type, but you can create something similar using a Stacked Column chart type.  ... Read more

Data Studio Tip: Convert Dimensions to Metrics

Google Data Studio lets you hook up a wide variety of data sources and create cool reports and visualizations out of them. Sometimes, though, the wires get crossed during the import process, and there's a data type issue where your metrics (numbers) get read as dimensions (text fields), and vice versa. Luckily there's an easy, ... Read more

GTM dataLayer.push Examples (Standard, Ecommerce, Advanced)

This post shows four examples of using the dataLayer.push method to pass in extra metadata to Google Tag Manager (GTM) via Variables. #1 Standard GTM Data Layer Push Syntax#2 GTM Data Layer Push with Array#3 GTM Data Layer Push with Nested Key-Value Pairs#4 GTM Data Layer Push with Nested Arrays #1 STANDARD GTM DATA LAYER PUSH ... Read more

Collect Enhanced Ecommerce Values into GTM Variables

Setting up Enhanced Ecommerce tracking via Google Tag Manager & Google Analytics generally involves creating a data layer that contains all the relevant values, as described here: https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/enhanced-ecommerce#purchases These same values are often required to set up other marketing and analytics tags. For example, the Facebook conversion pixel looks like this: <script> fbq('track', 'Purchase', {currency: "USD", ... Read more

Event Tracking Naming Strategy for Google Analytics

HOW TO NAME EVENTS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS This post describes one proven naming strategy for Google Analytics event tracking. Event naming is critical for using Google Analytics event reporting hierarchy and drill-down structures. With a good naming system it will be easy for users to identify events they're interested in and break them down by where ... Read more

Content Marketing Analytics: Conversion Rate by Page

While Google Analytics provides many reports and metrics designed to evaluate the effectiveness of content marketing, there is no report showing the conversion rates of specific posts or pages on your site. For example, if you're tracking registrations on your site, you may want to know which specific posts are associated with signups, even if ... Read more

Top Google Sheets Add-Ons for Spreadsheets (+User Counts)

Google's online spreadsheet service, Google Sheets, allows users to install add-ons (aka plugins or extensions) for additional functionality. After making a little Google Sheets add-on of my own, Archive Data, I became curious about what add-ons are most popular. Through some web scraping I extracted a comprehensive list of all Google Sheets add-ons from the Sheets ... Read more