A dilemma that I am encountering more frequently arises when good meaning web developers create and deploy Analytics sub-accounts (Analytics calls them a ‘profile’) for their clients.
The ‘issue’ only arises after the clients engage an internet marketer, who will want to access the site’s Analytics information to better understand the website’s history and traffic characteristics.
Analytics enthusiasts like myself will refine the Analytics settings for improved reporting, specific investigations etc which requires Admin access, and this is where the problem emerges.
Granting Analytics Admin to enable these refinements, also provides access to all profiles;
ie the web dev’s others client’s in that Analytics account.
This is not desirable from either the web dev or the internet marketer’s perspective, and as a result admin rights are not typically granted. This in turn impedes the internet marketer’s ability to deliver services.
Solutions
A simplistic approach is to create a new Analytics account for the client and abandon the web dev’s profile; however this effectively means losing historical web traffic data.
My preferred approach is to use two Analytics accounts in tandem:
- Retain the original account with the client/Internet marketer having read only access
- Create an additional Analytics account that is ‘owned’ by the client, with admin rights granted to the internet marketer.
Analytics provides the ability to feed web tracking data simultaneously to two independent Analytics accounts – handy hey!
This approach:
- Preserves the website history so it is accessible by all interested parties (web dev, client & internet marketer)
- Places the ownership of web traffic data back with the client (where it should be!) This allows the client to retain their internet statistics even if they move to another web dev or internet marketer.
Checking your Analytics account
You can readily determine if the Analytics ‘account’ on your site is one of many sub-accounts by inspecting the UA number which looks similar to “UA-628649-1″ .
The final section (-1 in this case) indicates the Analytics profile number.
If the profile number is larger than the number of websites you have (eg 15) , then it is likely this is your web devs Analytics account and you are actually one of many profiles or sub-accounts within it.
Summary
In summary web traffic data is an important piece of data about your businesses, so I recommend that you take control of it and ensure you ‘own’ it.
This post was written by
Peter Cornish has an extensive background in technical IT roles; as well as over 15 years of experience in sales and marketing roles. Peter is a Web Marketing author; trainer and also provides web sales mentoring for startup businesses. More...
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