Weekly Tip: Keep Campaign Tracking as Simple as Possible

One of the most important tools you can use within Analytics is the campaign tracking feature. This tool allows you to pull in traffic information via your emails, banner ads, Adwords, etc. and see which marketing efforts are leading to quality visits to your site.

One of the difficult things about campaign tracking is keeping this report organized.

One trick that can help is to create a list of specific sources and mediums that your company will use. When it comes to sources and mediums- the simpler and shorter the list, the better. In fact, we recommend restricting your list of mediums to 10 or less.

The source should be the location the campaign took place and the medium should be how the campaign was delivered. The campaign level is where you can set the unique information about that campaign like location, month, content, etc.

The benefits of a simplified list is that you can still view campaigns on the singular level, but you'll also be able to see them grouped together by all emails, all banners, all ads placed on Google, etc.

Here's an example of how this can clean up your report:

Weekly Update: Google Adds New API Data Points

Google announced this week that it has added over 40 additional data points to their API. These data points mostly relate to social and mobile and other features that were updated or added this past year.

If you're unfamiliar with the API, here's a quick overview: The API is what companies (primarily developers) can use to pull Google Analytics data into applications, custom reporting tools and programs like Excel.

The API consists of different data points that are the metrics and dimensions you are accustomed to using within the interface (i.e. visits, pageviews, ecommerce, etc).

If you'd like more information, they've posted a list of which metrics and dimensions have been added here.