2 Questions to Ask Before Logging Into Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most popular website analytics tools out there. But for a lot of nonprofits, even just logging in can feel overwhelming.

In this short video, I’ll share two simple framing questions to ask before you even log in so your time in GA stays more focused and productive.

This video is one of several excerpts from our Nonprofit Website Office Hours on Google Analytics 4. You can also see the full recording on YouTube.

Video Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

How do you get the most out of your website analytics? It starts before you even log in.

One of the biggest mistakes we see nonprofits make with Google Analytics is logging in without a specific purpose in mind. But think about it: If you don’t know what you were looking for, it’s even easier to get turned around.

You’re just going to find a ton of numbers and charts that seem interesting but don’t actually help you understand your website or your visitors or ultimately move your mission forward.

So before you even log in for the first time, we recommend getting clear on two questions.

First, what question are you trying to answer? What is the specific information you want to know? What are you trying to learn?

Understanding exactly what you’re looking for gives you a much clearer place to start. It grounds you a bit and helps you focus on the reason you’re logging into Google Analytics in the first place.

Because when you log in, you’re going to be greeted by a ton of information. Knowing what you came to do and what question(s) you’re trying to answer will help you stay on task — and help you resist the rabbit holes that are easy to fall into once you start getting into the data.

And then the second question: What do you plan to do with that answer once you have it? How will you use this information? What are you prepared or hoping to do with it?

We want to move past just being interested. We want to resist that temptation to just see what we find. We want to use this information to do something meaningful, to propel our mission forward in some meaningful way.

If you don’t have a great answer here, it might be a clue that this is turning into what we call data for data’s sake. And we want to avoid that as much as we possibly can.

The more we can connect to these two framing questions, the more we can make sure the time we’re spending on analytics is ultimately going to be time well spent.