As the saying goes, “Nothing is permanent in this world except for change.” This couldn’t be truer in the online world. The web is changing everyday and as an Internet marketer or a webmaster, you should learn to adapt and keep up with these changes to ensure the success of your digital marketing campaigns.
However, one of the challenges of keeping up with the latest in the online world is that it can be difficult and time-consuming to keep track of the changes, adjustments, and updates you have made on your website. Fortunately, there’s a seldom-used feature in Google Analytics called Annotations that you can use to keep track of the changes made on your website. Annotations allows users with access to Google Analytics to keep a record of the events of a website.
To create an annotation, the first thing you need to do is open any analytics report. There, you will see a little box with an arrow underneath the line graph. Click the arrow and it will reveal all annotations that fall within the date range of the report. Click “Create New Annotation” on the right side of the screen. Then, enter the date when the event occurred and add a description. Click save to save the annotation.
To take advantage of these nifty Google Analytics feature, search engine marketing specialist and blogger Sergio Aicardi recommends some best practices for Annotation to help your business. First, you must use annotations only when there are major website updates and campaign changes, like when you’re adding a free shipping message to a cart page or when launching a new Facebook ad.
When creating an annotation, always make sure that you label it with a category. This will make it much easier for you and your staff to find previous events. According to Sergio, when your annotation has a label, you could see something like this when you’re getting traffic from a blogger who featured your product: “REFERRAL – product was featured in a bloggerwebsite.com post.”
Sergio also recommends using annotations not only just to keep track of past website events, but also for future updates. This can be particularly useful if you have upcoming promotions or if you want to remind everyone when will the new features be live on your website. To do this, select Admin in the top navigation. Under the “View” column, select Annotations. Click on “New Annotation,” then enter the date and desired description.
