When you go online or to conferences you can find a ton of resources about Digital Analytics. The vast majority of content seems to be related to marketing technology. The transition from Google Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 is an instigator for martech providers and consultants to focus on technology in digital analytics.

I appreciate the value of collecting quality data in a technical solution for analysis and configuring tools to get the most out of them, but don’t be fooled, there’s more going on in the digital analytics space. And it deserves your attention. If I’ve learned anything in 15 years in digital analytics, it’s that digital data is useless, unless it is applied in a smart and effective way to provide value to the business. So let’s explore some other themes in digital analytics. I’ll share some resources for you to dive into topics a bit deeper.

Google Tag Manager Server-side

Google Tag Manager server-side is a way of running Google Tag Manager on a server instead of in the browser (client-side). It can potentially have a huge impact on the way you collect data for the user. This article is not going to be a how-to guide to using Google Tag Manager server-side. Instead, it will be an outline of some of the most important advantages and concerns related to this new product.

Understanding retention with customer feedback data

To get a better understanding of customer behavior in relation to the quality of the product and services a company provides, we often use customer feedback forms. We all know the concepts of NPS, CES or other ways of getting an understanding of customer satisfaction. What are the biggest differences and which one predicts retention most reliably? Let’s find out.

To get started, let’s run by the most popular methods available to measure customer satisfaction.

How to add Google Tag Manager to a Hugo static website

In this article I will provide a step-by-step instruction and code samples on how to implement Google Tag Manager and a datalayer to your Hugo static website. As a digital analytics consultant I can appreciate the value a good Google Tag Manager (GTM) implementation can have for your business or even to optimize your user’s blog experience.

10 Things you need to know about the new Google Analytics 4

On July 31st 2019, Google introduced a “new” analytics solution they called Google Analytics 4. Google Analytics 4 is Google’s answer to the changing digital landscape we are dealing with as analysts. Google Analytics 4 will replace the current Google Universal Analytics in the future.

In this article I will share 10 things you need to know about the new Google Analytics 4 tool. Consider it a way to explain what Google Analytics 4 is and why it is important for you to use. I compiled the list based on questions I received from companies and digital analysts. I’m sure there are at least another 10 things to share (and maybe I will), but this article will hopefully get you started.

Hugo shortcode to serve images in next-gen formats

In my last blogpost I shared 10 ways to improve your Hugo website performance. My last tip was to serve images in next-gen formats. This could improve the performance of your website significantly. Eventhough there are multiple next-gen formats you can integrate, the best browser compatibility will come by using WebP, created by Google. Unfortunately, not all browsers support this format yet (looking at you, Safari!). To make sure you will serve an alternative, normal format like jpg or png instead for those non-compatible browsers, you need to update the way you serve your images and provide both formats.

10 Ways to improve your (Hugo) website performance

Website performance matters. Even if I would selfishly ignore all other human visitors to my website, I would be supporting Google’s mission to make the web faster and help myself climb the ranks of Google. In this article I describe 10 ways to make your Hugo website (or any other website) faster and give users a better experience.

These are the 10 tips I will be discussing:

Create Google Tag Manager documentation with R

Creating digital data documentation can be a painstaking, boring, but extremely useful endeavor. Knowing what digital data is available to you and others can be helpful to understand the potential of your data set, as well as provide context to analysis, reporting and other ways to leverage data.

To take some of the effort out of creating documentation about the contents of your Google Tag Manager account, I have created a script that pulls data out of the environment and outputs a simple Excel file, which you can share with stakeholders.