Universal analytics opens up new perspectives and questions
Google's Universal Analytics has been available as a beta version for just under a year. Google has announced that it will automatically migrate all Analytics settings to Universal Analytics over the next few months. This raises the question of what benefits Universal Analytics offers and what action needs to be taken.
Universal Analytics offers real added value for website operators with a login area. During the login process, the anonymized visitor ID generated by Google is enriched with personal data from the CRM or customer database in order to analyse the characteristics and behaviour of visitors in greater depth. However, the tool only displays visitor groups and not individual visitors. Universal Analytics makes analyses like this possible:
- Analysis of the customer journey/customer lifetime value: Today, a website visitor uses it with up to three different devices (PC, mobile, tablet). Universal Analytics enables cross-device tracking of registered users.
- Integration of proprietary data into the analysis: User data from the website operator, such as online game scores or number of orders, can be integrated into the analysis via data import and visualized and analysed in parallel with the existing metrics.
- Traditional analyses based on demographic characteristics or Sinus-Milieus: The website operator transfers characteristics such as age, place of residence or sales volume to the visitor ID. In this way, differences in the behavior of logged-in user groups (age, location, etc.) can be uncovered.
- Tracking the offline impact of online marketing measures: Offline data such as sales per outlet or calls to the call center are fed into Google Analytics to track the offline impact at the POS of online advertising or to analyze the correlation between online and offline channels. The Universal Analytics features can only be used to their full extent if consumers regularly log into the website. For all other website operators, Universal Analytics only offers modest added value.
The switch to Google Universal Analytics is mandatory
The familiar Google Analytics tracking is guaranteed to remain fully functional until the deadline in two years' time. However, users are urged to implement the new Universal Code on their website, otherwise they risk a data outage. However, there is definitely no need to panic. Rather, there is enough time to familiarize yourself with the new features of Google Analytics and make the changeover smoothly.
Universal analytics is changing online marketing Universal analytics is a big step towards "user-centered analysis" and enables online marketing measures to be geared towards the person behind the PC, smartphone or tablet. The legal basis is questionable: what data may or should be transmitted to Google in the USA? The tool will also provoke resistance from web users and data protectionists. Ultimately, it is a question of one's own business ethics as to how far Universal Analytics is used, as tracking down to the individual visitor is theoretically possible.
Imre Sinka
