Learn More About Your Patrons Than Ever Before

ArtsHacker.comNo doubt, Google Analytics (GA) is fantastic but one long running limitation is the lack of ability to track an individual user’s path through your website. This limitation has led to fundamental business plan for metrics competitors like Marketo, Eloqua and Pardot but all that may be changing with the introduction of GA’s new User Explorer feature.

Ga calls it a user-centric analysis tool but in English, that simply means it tracks the website behavior of unique individuals regardless of which device or browser they use. Google continues to go out of their way to protect user anonymity (all you ever see is a numeric ID assigned to the users, never any identifying info) but here’s how Google describes the enhanced data reports in a GA blog post from May 6, 2016:

With User Explorer, you can now analyze the actions that an anonymous individual has taken on your site or app. These insights can help improve the user experience when people interact with your business online.

For example, you might want to understand how your top 10 customers interacted with your site or apps. With User Explorer you can get insights into visitors that spent the most with you over a given time frame and analyze each of their journeys on your site over that time period. This analysis surfaces individual interactions that can uncover new opportunities for optimizing their overall experience and path to conversion. In addition, User Explorer opens up new possibilities to help inform your marketing activities. For example, User Explorer can help you identify anonymous individual customers who have not converted recently and help them re-engage with your site using existing marketing channels.

I published an article today at ArtsHacker with more information, where you can find the new User Explorer reports, and what the reports contain.

Read the article at ArtsHacker.com

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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