That’s why it’s a good idea to have Google Analytics installed. Now you can check the numbers and start searching.
But of course. You don’t do anything with the data itself yet. If you say that “we have invoiced less” consciously or unconsciously you are comparing it with something.
So go into a little more detail about what you want to find out
“I want to understand why we invoiced less this month compared to the previous month.”
Okay, perfect. That already helps us a little better.
Now the question I ask you is this. Would it make sense to compare September with August because you want to understand why you suddenly invoiced more in September?
Not really because I think whatsapp data we can all agree that in August people are on vacation and worry less about buying online.
It would be better to compare the recent month with the previous year. That way the conclusions are more valid.
In the same way you should keep
Mind that it is not the same to compare what you have invoiced this month until yesterday with the same date of the previous year. Why would you say the same? Look, I’ll tell you.
Tuesday may be your best sales day you just plug it in and go and in one period it appears more than in the other. In this case it would be better to look at the days apart from the date. If you want to compare August 1-20 of this year you should look at the date of August 3-22 of last year so that it contains the same days of the week.
For the comparison to be valid, keep that in mind
Exceptions
To have any kind of valid conclusions, you usa data must also take into account exceptions. The Covid months, for example, were an event that made online sales explode. If you compare that cycle with another, then it is not a very fair comparison.
If you compare costs of a business and you have an extraordinary cost due to a fine of 10,000 euros in one year, then that would also be something that would not be taken into account. That type of data must be eliminated from the analysis.
Limitations
If you have data at hand and more so if it is from Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics or whatever you are using, you must always consider that this data has limitations.
First of all, not everyone accepts cookies.
Then there are always limitations in measuring this data. For example, direct traffic is not what it says. At least not 100%. Some of it is direct traffic, but the rest we could call “other” because it is everything that Google or Adobe are not able to assign to a specific source. This makes me wonder why they don’t create the “other” traffic source. But anyway…