Most of us will be enjoying some well-earned time off over the Christmas period, but that doesn’t mean the websites we run are taking time off too. In fact, if you’re running an e-commerce website this is most likely you’re busiest time of the year!

If you’re looking for a way to automatically monitor your website over the Christmas period, then take a look at Google Analytics custom alerts.

You can set up custom alerts in Google Analytics to notify you of important changes in almost any of the website metrics you monitor (if you’re not regularly checking your website data, then you should be). These alerts are sent via email or mobile phone text message and can be sent to you daily.

To set up custom alerts:

1. Login to Google Analytics
2. Click on Admin (top right)
3. Select the account, property and view you want to set up the alerts for
4. Click custom alerts in the view column
5. Click on NEW ALERT

Some example Google Analytics custom alerts

Here are a few custom alerts you can set up to monitor your website for you over the Christmas period and beyond…

Monitor – Big Traffic Drops

You can monitor any large changes in your daily visitors with this alert. You might want to adjust the percentage drop to suit your normal visitor number fluctuations.

Alert Conditions

All traffic

Visits > % decreases by more than > 50% > Same day in the previous week

Monitor – No Visits (Tracking not working)

This one will alert you if you ever receive zero visits in a day. This is a good alert to let you know if something is wrong with your Google Analytics tracking, as zero visits normally means the tracking is not functioning correctly.

Alert Conditions

All traffic

Visits > Is less than > 1

Monitor – Big Traffic Spikes

How about if you get a big spike in visitor numbers, you might want to be alerted to that to so you can investigate and react (if you’re not expecting it!). You might want to adjust the percentage increase to suit your normal visitor number fluctuations.

Alert Conditions

All traffic

Visits > % increases by more than > 50% > Same day in the previous week

Monitor – Cost Per Click (cpc) Traffic Drops

If you’re using Google AdWords or BingAds you can monitor your traffic from the cost per click medium (you can apply this to any traffic source or medium) for any drops. This is useful for monitoring any issues with your ad delivery on these channels. You might want to adjust the percentage drop to suit your normal visitor number fluctuations.

If you wanted to apply this alert to just Google AdWords or just BingAds then you could create a custom segment and base the custom alert on that.

Alert Conditions

Medium > Contains > cpc

Visits > % decreases by more than > 50% > Same day in the previous week

Monitor – Goal/Conversion/E-Commerce Drops

If you’re monitoring goals on your website (if you’re not, get in touch now because you should be) you can monitor large increases or decreases in these using custom alerts. You can easily change this alert to suit your requirements.

Alert Conditions

All traffic

Transactions > % decreases by more than > 50% > Same day in the previous week