Do you prefer to have a nice, clean, and pleasant place to live; or a real mess where you can’t find anything? For a web analyst, it’s easier to get those skills when you’re in category #1.

Well, your Google Analytics account is like your home. OK I might exaggerate a little bit, but you got the picture! Profiles should be well organized for several reasons:

• You’re not eternal; other people might have to work with this account in the future.
• Other people – possibly not seasoned web analysts – might need access to this account.
• You want to be efficient and see your data at a glance.

I won’t discuss whether or not you should create additional profiles; others have already done that very well here and here. I assume you know what you’re doing and have to create profiles for good reasons.

1. Keep it sorted: group profiles together.

What would you think of a Google Analytic account such as this one (found on Google Images)?

It’s not that bad, isn’t it? Though, it could be better. Let’s say you want to quickly compare bounce rate between new and returning visitors. It’s not easy to do so, because both rows are not next to each other. Maybe you want to know which the most important source of traffic was for last month. Again, it’s hard to tell in a second, because profiles are not grouped by type.

Since profiles are sorted by alphabetical order, a good way to do that is to prefix profiles with numbers, e.g. “01. My Profile”.

2. Keep it simple: do not use exotic names.

Example above is still pretty clean because there are only 7 profiles out there, but what if you had 15, or 20? I often see profiles with names such as:

• GEO-SEGMENT - MySite | Ontario | KJR
• GEO-SEGMENT - MySite | B2C United States (New York)
• GEO-SEGMENT - MySite | Ontario
• www.mysite.com - Full Referrs
• My Site – Goals

Other people can’t read in your mind! Make sure you think about users that will access to the profiles. It drives me crazy to find this kind of Google Analytics configuration where you can’t find the data you want, and have to go through each profile configuration and filters to figure out what’s happening there.

Instead, use clear, descriptive names. I prefer short names so that it doesn’t spread in many rows, making it hard to read. Should I add “do not use uppercase”? “01. Master”, or “01. Main” is easily identified as main profile by anyone.

3. Keep it standard: reuse the same structure.

Although some configurations require specific profiles, you will find in most cases the same basic needs, including (but not restricted to):

• A “Master” profile that you might duplicate for additional goals.
• A “Backup” profile, exact copy of the main one, just in case the master is deleted by the client who had admin access to the account… Believe me, it does happen!
• An unfiltered profile, containing no filter so that you make sure to grab all your data even if something goes wrong in the configuration.
• A “Test” profile, to try the brand new, untested, filter you just found on the Internet!
• A “Staging” profile, in case of a website redesign, to easily grab data from new website and share access with developers.
• A bunch of “Traffic Sources” profiles, prefixed with the same number to keep together your direct, organic, paid search, etc. traffic.
• And so on…

Use your own standard, it doesn’t matter. But please, define one! As a result, you get a clean account that might look like this one. Easy to understand, easy to compare.

This post was written by Alex