What should your analytics report look like?

by Promotoon November 15, 2017

As digital marketers, we often get caught up thinking everyone appreciates our metrics and jargon.

Traffic, rankings, CTR, bounce rates…

While there is a huge amount of value in these metrics, for the most part… they don’t matter to clients.

Here’s why.

I was in a meeting with a prospective digital marketing client who was already working with another agency. I asked them if they had any reports that I could see to get a better idea of where they were at.

They said, ‘We get sent this every month to us – have a look’. They slammed a 40 page document in front of me which I looked upon in disbelief.

It was a screenshot of every Google Analytics metric in addition to 5 pages of keyword rankings. It was automated, dense and absolutely useless to them. They didn’t know what any of it meant, and frankly they didn’t care.

Clients don’t care about a +1 position change in Google for some obscure keyword that get’s no traffic. They don’t care about a 1% decrease in bounce rates for tablet users.

What all clients do care about is understanding the results at a high level. Is our website getting in front of more eyes than it used to and are we getting more customers?

It is our job as marketers to distill all the different metrics so we can advise, guide and implement changes that will ultimately help the client. Clients have businesses to run and are experts in their field, they don’t need to be bombarded with our jargon.

That brings us to the question, what does a good report look like?

We have completed a huge overhaul on our reporting – focussing on what we believe are the most important metrics. But more importantly, we have changed how we present them.

Rather than sending over 50 pages reports, we send 1 page infographics. Rather than boring tables, we use graphics that are easy to understand.

We report on the usual metrics like traffic, conversions, bounce rate etc but we also provide our insights. Automated reporting solutions can’t describe what’s happening holistically but as marketers, we can.

These reports give our clients a deeper understanding of what we do which ultimately allows for a better result.

To any client of marketing services out there – the next time you receive a report that is full of jargon and metrics you don’t understand, call your agency and ask for something more useful.

To any agency out there sending bad, automated reports – don’t.

Ready to grow your website?

Or call us on 0433 773 196

Join the
Free Web Analysis
If you're looking for a second pair of eyes on your website, we'd be happy to take a look and send you a free report.
Send me the goods
close-link