Why Owning Your Website's Google Analytics Account Is Even More Critical In 2020

What Is Google Analytics?

While not something you may look at on a day-to-day basis, Google Analytics is the single most important tool for insight on website performance and visitor data. This free, sophisticated platform provides useful metrics on how people are visiting your site, how long they are staying, and where they are navigating. 

How Does It Work?

When a Google Analytics tracking code or javascript snippet is added to your website, it collects data in real time – so as the page is loaded by a visitor, a hit is transmitted to the platform with its associated data. This data, along with certain data collected by platforms such as Google Search Console and Google Adwords is then organized into your single Analytics account.

One of the biggest advantages of actively collecting this data? You will forever have access to the historical record of the performance of your website which now can be easily juxtaposed to the changes in marketing efforts that you may be implementing. 

SEE ALSO: Top 5 KPIs to Watch in Google Analytics [A Beginner's Guide]

Why Ownership Is So Important

Would you give an outsider full access to your QuickBooks account?

You should treat your website analytics in the same manner. Along with ownership of your site, you are entitled to be the sole owner of the data accompanying it. The best way to ensure that you never lose access to your account is to make sure that your company is the only party with full access to the platform. This can easily be set up utilizing Google Analytics User Management Levels.

Understanding User Management Levels

Manage Users: User management provides ultimate control with the ability to add and remove users and make administrative changes to an account.

Edit: Edit access provides the ability to make full data related changes to an account such as setting up goals, filters, etc.

Collaborate: With Collaborate access, you have full access to view all tracked data and the ability to set up personalized dashboards.

Read & Analyze: The lowest form of access, Read & Analyze gives you access to all tracked data and the ability to modify data for personal use only, such as applying segments and dimensions.

Assigning Access To Staff

Not sure what kind of access to grant an individual? Take a look at a few common examples below:

Business owner or internal Director of Marketing: The person primarily responsible for ownership of your website and its data should likely have full access to Manage, Edit, Collaborate and Read & Analyze. This person should be knowledgeable about the platform and easily have the ability to grant access levels to new or existing users.

Marketing firm: Ideally, your marketing firm should have access to all user privileges except for managing users. When launching a campaign, marketers will commonly need to perform advanced tasks such as segmenting data, excluding office IP addresses and tasks that require a high level of access. Furthermore,  if you ever decide to part ways with your marketing firm, your Manage User access provides you the ability to easily and cleanly cut ties.

Staff members: For your more knowledgeable and savvy staff members (or ones that may be interacting with a Marketing firm regularly), Collaborate access will be necessary. Here they can access technical data and take a firsthand look at any reports or dashboards set up by any third party marketing team.

Why Is Historical Data So Important Anyway?

As a business owner, you should be especially protective over your account’s historical data. Without this information to use as a benchmark, it will be very difficult to prove the efficacy of any current or future marketing efforts. Consider this, if you can only view data from today moving forward, how will you know if any results are better or worse than what you were doing previously? Make sure to know your data as you begin to assess ROI on your marketing investment whether internally or externally managed.

Google Adwords Integration With Analytics

Google Analytics and Google Adwords are both valuable tools for your digital marketing efforts individually, but bring even more insight when combined. When linking both platforms together a clearer picture can be painted from the ad spend and performance, to the behavior once they enter the site and fill out a contact form. Take a look at our blog here on information on ownership of Adwords accounts.

Questions About Your Google Analytics Account?

Way too often our team hears horror stories about Google Analytics accounts tied to a previous developer or firm with no existing relationship. If you have questions or issues accessing your Google Analytics account, feel free to reach out to our team. Our staff can assist in troubleshooting login issues, help regain ownership through Google, or configure an existing account.