Google Analytics Audit Template

Use this template to evaluate the data in all of the reports available in Universal Analytics from Google Analytics. Audit your Google Analytics data easier and focus on how to use the data rather than reporting the data.

Google Analytics Audit Checklist & Template

How to Use the Google Analytics Audit Template

Each section of Google Analytics has its own Sheet. The links to the different sheets you find in the bottom of the analytics document.

Each of the different reports in Google Analytics have their own set of questions such as:

• How often do customers come back to make a purchase?
• What channels do they return to the website from?
• Does the business have to pay for every visit does a lot of traffic come from organic channels such as Google, Direct and Email as well?
• What is the customer acquisition cost divided by the customer lifetime value (ROI)?
• Is the ROI increasing or decreasing over time?
• Do users come back to the website regularly?

You shouldn’t necessarily answer all of them but they will help you look at the report in a new light and perhaps get some new insight out of it.

Next to each set of questions, there is a column where you can add your findings and one column for where you can add your recommendations.

The final columns are meant for you to do time evaluation. This is pure Beta on my behalf and it is a series of estimations based on my experience working in different projects that are set to become data-driven. People aren’t used to working data-driven, but to use this template might actually help them begin, and for you, it might assist in making better time estimates.

Full of Links to Analytics video tutorials that will help you interpret each section of the analytics audit

What is a Google Analytics Audit?

There are loads of technical audit templates and checklists available online if you simply do a Google search. They focus on whether or not the Google Analytics account is set up the correct way and if the script is implemented in a proper manner.

It also focuses on whether or not you have a test view, master view and raw/original view set up for your Google Analytics. Whether or not you have all the accounts linked and if they are linked the right way. That way you will have both your search console data and AdWords data in the same place as you do the rest of your analysis.

This isn’t only important for your Google Analytics set up, but also because of other connections and linked accounts that will collect data from Google Analytics such as Google Data Studio and YouTube to name two.

The difference between this Google Analytics Audit checklist/template and other templates

The difference between this template and other templates is that this one focus on the actual analysis. It will give you a set of questions per report view that will help you to the right kind of analysis framework to start using the Google Analytics data for your own growth. The audit results should help you move forward in a direction where you become more data-driven and have to rely less on guesswork.

Audit of Audience Reports

Audiences are important to analyze from a motivational perspective. Your user, customer, client or consumer will have a certain behavior which is dependent upon what motivation they have to visit your website.

By knowing what signals to examine and how to examine them, you can figure out what hypotheses to test when trying to optimize your conversion rate, user flow or content adaption, based on your audit.

Audit of Behavior Reports

What behaviors are more important that others to stay on top of when trying to make decisions that will drive your growth?

• What are the most important and valuable pages on your site that everyone who converts visit?
• Which are the most important landing pages?
• Where do most people drop off?

To answer such questions in the right place and through the right segments is of utmost importance if you want to base your website changes on data-driven decisions rather than on gut feel alone. It will also give you the safety you need when questioned about different types of content decisions on your website as the behavioral data will give you proof of what content people want.

Audit of Acquisition Reports

Many people look at their data without deaveraging it. This means they skip looking at different types of data from different types of perspectives.

One such important perspective to open up when you audit your Google Analytics is to study where your traffic comes from and how different sources convert on your website. You also need to understand why this is the case?

How can you segment your reports so you find the answer to why Organic Search has a lower conversion rate than Paid Search for example? Could the landing pages perhaps explain the difference?

Audit of Conversion Reports

Of course, the audit also includes the right type of questions to ask your data in order to get the juicy conversion optimization hypotheses you need to improve the performance of your website and increase your overall sales.

The Google Analytics Audit Template/Checklist takes you to the next level in terms of being able to spot what it is that stops your website visitors from converting.

Can I use this Audit template for other Web Analytics Tools?

Although this audit template is most suitable for Google Analytics audits, and the logic in tools such as Adobe analytics is a lot different, the audit template still helps you ask the right questions to similar data types.

It does not deal with questions about Hotjar Analysis, weelytics, Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, Heap, Crazy Egg or segment.io questions at the moment but it will for sure include bits and pieces from those tools as well as the audit should be able to take a closer look at the whole user journey and answer both the why and the how in terms of making users do what you want them to do.

You can always choose to download the template and then not subscribe to the double opt-in email you are sent to your inbox. That means you can test it without never having to hear about this again. So, why not?