SOP 082: Set up Google Analytics alerts to monitor your main KPIs
This SOP will make sure you catch any meaningful changes, in real-time, without logging into Analytics every day.
Last Updated / Reviewed: 07/27/2024
Execution Time: 30 minutes
🚀 Goal: To receive email notifications when web metrics change in a meaningful way.
🤞 Ideal Outcome: You have a meaningful set of metrics that are consistently being monitored and you’re alerted when any of them might require your further attention.
🤔 Why this is important: Monitoring every single metric every day isn’t productive, and a lot of times is also not possible due to time constraints. Having Google Analytics do that for you every single day allows you to focus on what really matters.
🧐 Where this is done In Google Analytics.
🗓️ When this is done: Review your alerts quarterly, or every time you know you want to monitor a new KPI.
👨 Who does this: The person responsible for web analytics in your business.
__⚠️Prerequisites or requirements: __N/A
Click here to get the most up-to-date version of this SOP
Getting started
Open the Template 030: Google Analytics Alerts Planning Worksheet (web version). Go to “File → Make a copy” and make a copy of this document.
Now that you have a copy, use the spreadsheet as you follow along with this SOP and start defining your metrics.
Template 030: Google Analytics Alerts Planning Worksheet (web version)
Identify the core KPIs that you want to be alerted of
Note: For most of these metrics, you might want to break them down in specific channels, devices, or any other dimension.
Note 2: Some of these metrics require you to already be tracking conversions on your website, remember that you can only get alerts for metrics that you have already set up and are already tracking on Google Analytics. If you haven’t done so already follow SOP 168: Set up and track custom events in Google Analytics 4 (web version)
Sessions
Monitor variations in the number of sessions that you’re getting.
Examples:
- X% increase on social media traffic - Allows you to monitor if one of your posts is trending on a social network.
- X% increase from referrals - Allows you to monitor if you’ve been mentioned somewhere on the web recently. (Conversely, an alert to monitor a decrease would allow you to monitor if you lost mentions)
- X% decrease in organic traffic - Might mean you just lost some search rankings on your website.
- X% decrease in overall traffic - Alerts you that something might be wrong with one (or more) of your channels and you should look deeper into it.
Bounce Rate
Monitor possible quality/speed/availability issues with your pages.
Examples:
- X% increase in bounce rate from organic search - If your bounce rate increased considerably you might want to take immediate action before you possibly start seeing your rankings declining.
- X% increase in bounce rate from paid traffic - Might alert you for cases where you’re sending traffic to the wrong landing pages, spending your budget inefficiently.
Page Views
Monitor overall value, or page views to specific core pages (i.e. checkout page, pricing, etc).
Average Page Load Time
Monitor possible server performance issues that might be affecting your pages.
(Goal/Ecommerce) Conversion Rate
Monitor changes to your conversion rate.
Example:
- X% decrease in conversion rate from paid traffic
Revenue
Monitor revenue changes.
Transactions
Monitor changes in transaction amounts.
AOV
Monitor changes in average order value.
Custom Events
- 404 Pages
- CTA Clicks
- Lead Magnets Downloaded
- Checkout Views
- Any other custom events that you have set up in Google Analytics and are relevant to your business.
Determine how frequently you want to be alerted and under which conditions
For each KPI you defined above, determine whether it’s worth receiving an alert, daily, weekly or monthly.
If you are unsure:
Check how that KPI changed daily overtime, for the last 60 days.
If you see that your KPI is usually stable like so, set it to daily:
If you see that your KPI is seasonal/unstable like so, set it to weekly or monthly (whichever suits better to remove high instabilities):
Remember: Your objective is to aggregate a time period that takes away common variations but still manages to alert you of relevant changes as soon as possible. In the case above, for instance, to remove the weekend seasonality the ‘Week’ period was selected, when that happened the KPI now looks more stable and alerts can now be setup:
Determine the conditions under which you want to be alerted, the options available are:
- Less/Greater than X
- Increases/Decreases by more than X
- %Increases/Decreases by more than X.
Note: Select a condition that (based on historical data) you believe will send you an alert only when something meaningful might actually have happened. You want to avoid setting your conditions so strict that they send you an alert every day even when nothing meaningful happens, but at the same time you don’t want to set it so loose that it misses important events.
Set up your alerts in Google Analytics 4
01▸ Log into your Google Analytics 4 account.
02▸ On the home page, scroll to the bottom and click “View all insights”.
03▸ Click “Create”.
04▸ Scroll to the bottom. In the “Start from scratch” section, click “Create new”. You will be creating new insights which will let you automatically monitor performance of your site.
05▸ Set the conditions in which you want to monitor your site.
- Frequency — How often do you want to monitor your site metric? Choose between daily, weekly or monthly.
- Metrics — Choose the metric in which you want to monitor. Choose the site metrics that’s most important to your site such as conversions, revenue, or page views.
- Conditions — Choose the condition where if fulfilled you’ll be notified right away. Example: When page views is 30% less than last week.
06▸ Set the name of this insight. This is the name you’ll see in the notifications, so use a descriptive name.
07▸ Lastly, enter the email you will use to receive the email notification.
08▸ Click “Create” from the top corner.
That’s it! You’ve now created an alert to monitor your key website metrics.