Welcome to the last Part 10 where we’ll look at the Google Analytics custom alerts. You can find the previous chapters of the guide here:
1. Google Tag Manager
2. Tracking code
3. Check the implementation
4. Profiles and filters
5. Settings
6. Goals setup
7. Virtual pageviews and events
8. Campaign tracking
9. Advanced segments and custom reports. Dashboards.
10. Custom alerts
Custom alerts are very useful if you don’t check your Google Analytics data and all the metrics every day.
There are two ways to setup a custom alert:
- Go to Admin, drill down to the profile you want to create the custom alert for, and choose Custom Alerts from the Assets tab, or
- From Reporting tab, choose Intelligence Events -> Overview, it will show the Automatic Alerts tab by default, switch to the Custom Alerts tab and click the Manage custom alerts button.
Setting up custom alerts in Google Analytics
You need to name your custom alert, choose the profiles you want to apply it to, and select how often you want to monitor the data (daily, weekly, monthly) and the email address to receive notifications. In the Alert conditions section specify the segment of traffic you want to monitor, the metric and a triggering threshold for the alert.
Your next question may be what custom alerts to setup. There are so many great blog posts on custom alerts listing many different options you can use, depending on your site. Here is one of them: 55+ Google Analytics Custom Alerts – The Check Engine Light For Your Data at Luna Metrics.
And some of my favorites (don’t forget to specify the percentages that make sense for you):
- Traffic drop & spike:
All Traffic
Visits -> % decreases by more than -> X% -> same day in the previous week
Visits -> % increases by more than -> X% -> same day in the previous week
- Traffic flat line / no data:
All Traffic
Visits -> Is less than -> 1 (daily)
- Drop / Spike on conversions:
All Traffic
Goal 1 – Conversion Rate -> % decreases by more than -> X% -> same day in the previous week (or weekly)
Goal 1 – Conversion Rate -> % increases by more than -> X% -> same day in the previous week (or weekly)
- Ecommerce drop / spike:
All traffic
Revenue -> % decreases by more than -> X% -> previous week
Revenue -> % increases by more than -> X% -> previous week
- 404 errors:
Page -> starts with -> /your-custom-404-page-URL
Visits -> Is greater than -> 0
- Bounce rate spike:
All Traffic (or for example specific group of landing pages)
Bounce Rate -> % increases by more than -> X% -> same day in the previous week
- Organic traffic drop:
Medium -> Matches exactly -> organic
Visits -> % decreases by more than -> X% -> same day in the previous week
This is the last part of my Google Analytics Implementation Guide. Hope you find it useful.
Still have questions? You can ask them as comments below and I’ll try to answer.
Margarita Evtimova
Margarita Evtimova is a Google Analytics fan, who also loves SEO, conversion optimization, online marketing and social media. You can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.