Food Blog Analytics Case Study – Tastemade Shop

Overall Picture of Tastemade’s Website Analytics

Tastemade is a global leader in online recipes and the foodie community. They publish “recipes that taste good, videos that feel good”. Their online store sells some of the most specialized, crafty and visually appealing kitchen gear you’ve ever seen – along with some of the most alluring travel content. Their marketing is some of the most innovative and creative out there; Tastemade is often among the first to successfully use a novel platform or method.

The marketing department of the ecommerce division reached out to us when they decided to pull the trigger on collecting insights for their food blog and the large-scale holiday campaign they were about to launch. They were referred to us by an analytics guru and asked us to manually audit their GA setup.

The Problem: Data Inconsistencies & Not Actionable

Shop.tastemade.com strived to become truly data driven. The marketing department lead by Michael Fellner, now the Ecommerce Marketing and Analytics Director, asked to help overcome hurdles in the following areas.

Accurate

Trust in website data as well as data from the different marketing platforms was very low. Problems included, for instance, fake traffic, GTM loaded with unused marketing tags, or Google Analytics account structure that made sampling of the high-traffic website worse instead of better.

Actionable

The data tracked was not particularly useful. Some of the biggest campaigns were missing, the most important KPI’s had few metrics that would help the analysis, channel grouping did not reflect the structure of the department’s marketing efforts and budget allocation. In short, Michael and his team were not able to make reliable data-driven decisions that would help grow their marketing.

Accessible

The Tastemade team had a hard time finding the right data. Despite Michael’s abundant marketing experience and the expansive tracking already happening, digging through GA reports was more of an ordeal than valuable time investment.

Above all, the team did not have the ability to measure a seasonal campaign that was about to launch. The holiday product and its beautiful, interactive interface was presented on the main content site; adding to cart took the user to the shop subdomain. The user journey was cumbersome, at best, to report on.

Our Custom Food Blog Analytics Implementation

Define

In order to develop their website measurement plan we ran a detailed, manual analytics audit, using our own audit checklist (feel free to copy and use this sheet, with or without our help). We also scanned tags that fire. We presented our findings to the client. As we listened to them, we were able to do a thorough intake about priorities, road blocks and near future campaigns.

Based on the above, we put together a measurement plan. We gave priority to:

• Cross-domain tracking for the holiday campaign
• Consolidating tracking tags
• Clean channels groups

Unlike most agencies, we offer and specialize in analytics services only.  We operate without bias to a particular agency or channel. The lack of bias allows us to focus on expert analytics work, as well as it helps us earn trust of all internal and external stakeholders fast.

Setup

Our Google Analytics setup included both Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. We executed a profound, tailored cross-domain setup, one that then supported a large paid search campaign for the holiday product. With our GTM tags and triggers in place, the campaign could be properly tracked and improved. Moreover, we delivered this project phase on fairly short notice, during the all too familiar holiday rush.

Thanks to our in-house GTM framework and the geekiest of geeky brains of our generous founder Thomas Bosilevac, we were able to set up the advanced cross-domain and campaign tracking in an expedited fashion.

To clean up the tracking tags, we created and executed a convention in GTM. In order to do, we met with the marketing agencies servicing Tastemade.  We consulted them on how to best use GTM for client’s benefit. 

Analyze

One of the things on the long list of tailoring Michael’s Google Analytics was channel grouping and UTM’s. We created a few different channel groups, some of which work retroactively. The channel definitions are set up as a combination of system channels and our regex definitions as well as custom order. After going live, we kept meeting with the client as a part of a small retainer, which allowed us to keep improving the channel groups over time.

Every experienced marketing director has their own channel mix and we find it to be key to data-driven success to reflect that in how their website data gets processed by Google Analytics. This step allows for better analysis on their marketing campaigns.

Further, we created a UTM routine tailored to the client’s needs. We provided a reference material, an automated Google Sheet, initial training for the team, a review of the team’s application of the routine. The UTM routine was, as it typically is for most of our clients, the connector piece that brought even more harmony to the tailored channel grouping.

Share

Our analytics clients get their money’s worth when they use the data we’ve helped them collect. They highly enjoy the value when they integrate the data in their decision making. For that reason, we do not consider a project finished until we ensure that the client has a thorough understanding of everything they can now do.

We’ve given the team a few walk-throughs of the measurement, created visualization examples in Data Studio, coached on the most useful reports in Google Analytics, accepted requests for revisions.

Results From Out Analytics Audit & Implementation

Through the engaging implementation process, the client gained a thorough understanding of their Google Analytics data, spanning the website as well as a set of marketing platforms. Tastemade continues to evaluate campaigns fast and with confidence. They’ve been able to tell the accurate ROI of all their innovative campaigns and make all of their marketing agencies more data-driven and fully accountable.

Even with a bit of turnover, they have been able to easily understand their advanced analytics without letting it consume too much of their time. That, in turn, enabled the team to focus on what they do and like best – marketing stellar cooking product on their monetizing food blog.