Preparing Your Measurement For The Peak: Vendor Agnostic Approach

As we head into a busy time of the year with high commerce activity on the horizon, I’ve put together a set of tips to help you prepare your measurement strategy for the peak season.

This will ensure you’re set up for success and avoid frustrating issues like data loss or last-minute analytics requests.

The strategies I’ll cover aren’t tied to any specific analytics vendor. Whether you’re using Google Analytics (GA4), Piwik Pro, Amplitude, or Mixpanel, these tips apply to all tools.

While I might reference these platforms for clarity, the advice is designed to be universally actionable.

Some of what I’ll discuss might not be directly applicable to every analytics tool, but understanding the key actions you should take is essential.

It could even spark ideas for workarounds or help you decide if another tool might better serve a specific need.

So, how do you prepare your measurement for the peak period? Here’s a quick rundown of the things you should do, and we’ll dive into:

• Proactive Alert System
• Review Historical Data
• Plan, Define, Document
• Don’t Assume Anything
• Audit Your Setup & Validate Data Collection
• Real-time Monitoring and Reporting
• People Still Matter
• Review Your Reports & Dashboards

Let’s dig into the details of each point.

Proactive Alert System:

A proactive alert system is essential, not just because the peak period is approaching but as a core part of your overall strategy. It’s a no-brainer, especially as you gear up for a busy season.

Here are a few areas where your alert system should be active:

• Budgets (e.g., BigQuery spend, server-side tagging costs)
• Anomaly detection (spotting unexpected changes in data)
• KPIs and critical metrics (tracking increases or decreases)
• Issue identification (such as checkout errors, 404s, untriggered analytics events, missing UTM parameters, etc.)
• Health Check Status Alert (site or measurement is down, tagging server is down, etc.)

For instance, in Google Analytics, you can use Custom Insights to set up alerts, while Piwik Pro offers its own alerting system called «Alerts«. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has budget alerts, so there’s likely a feature for this in your tool of choice.

If your analytics tool doesn’t natively support alerts or offers something robust, third-party solutions can fill in the gaps and provide additional functionality.

When setting up your alerts, it’s essential to define which issues, changes, milestones, etc., your team wants to be proactive about.

Once that’s clear, configure the alert system within your Martech stack and, if possible, validate it to ensure it works as intended.

Review Historical Data:

As the peak period approaches, it is essential to analyze historical data and review past data from previous peak seasons (if available) in your analytics tools.

Doing this will give you valuable insights into things like:

• Website traffic and user activity: Understand how high visits and engagement are expected to reach during the peak busy period.
• Channel performance: Identify which channels performed best (or worst) and why this will help shape your strategy and marketing decisions.
• Data loss: Check for any periods of data loss (e.g., users or transactions) to prevent it from happening again.
• Business and user trends: Analyze previous periods to estimate how your business performed and how users interacted with your site.

By reviewing this historical data, you can fine-tune your strategy for the upcoming peak and inform the alert systems we talked about earlier; for example, if you expect sales to increase by a certain percentage, set up alerts to notify you when performance hits a specific threshold, whether it’s above or below your target.

Plan, Define What You Need & Document:

As the peak period approaches, proper planning is needed and an important piece.

You need to clearly define the metrics, KPIs, events, and actions that matter most to your business (or your client’s), as it helps ensure you’re measuring what truly drives value.

Beyond defining the events, it’s equally important to document the data you collect.

This documentation will be invaluable when building reports and dashboards to give business stakeholders the insights they need to measure performance before, during, and after the peak period.

Your planning should go beyond data collection; it should align with your overall business goals.

This includes determining which metrics you’ll focus on during the peak period, identifying the necessary actionable reports, understanding how you’ll use the data (e.g., remarketing, CRM integration), and outlining the actions you’ll take based on the insights.

This stage is also the perfect time to identify the remarketing audiences you need to create, as well as to engage with stakeholders and start key conversations, something I discussed in the next section.

Don’t Assume Everything:

When you are the sole analytics person on a team, it’s tempting to assume you know what the business or your clients want to measure.

However, making assumptions can lead to last-minute scrambling to set up event tags in GTM that the business or client wants or adjust reports and dashboards.

To avoid this, make sure to involve all relevant stakeholders in the conversation early on. This will allow you to ask the right questions and clearly understand their business goals and measurement needs.

By addressing these details upfront, you can avoid the dreaded last-minute analytics requests and ensure you’re not left dealing with critical data loss due to missed planning.

Audit Your Setup & Validate Data Collection:

It can be frustrating to only discover during or after the peak period that your tracking is broken, that you were missing certain key event data on visitor activities, or worse, that you’re reporting duplicate data (the ultimate headache!).

To avoid these nightmares, make sure to audit the tools you use for data collection and reporting.

For example, perform Google Analytics Audit, GTM Audit, and privacy audits to ensure everything is in tip-top shape.

These checks help you spot data quality issues, privacy violations, and missed opportunities in your analytics setup. They also show you what’s working well and what needs fixing.

But auditing your analytics stack isn’t enough; remember to validate event tracking and ensure proper QA of your implementations before rolling them live.

Focus on critical actions like purchases, checkout flow, and lead generation to ensure your conversion tracking is spot on.

Lastly, check the integrations between your analytics tools and any third-party products.

Make sure there are no linking issues and that everything is connected correctly.

Having these issues fixed before the peak period will save you headaches down the road.

Real-time Monitoring and Reporting:

Let’s face it: you can’t monitor data collection 24/7 (and you shouldn’t have to).

That’s why having tools to handle this for you could save you lots of time.

If your store runs on Shopify, as an Elevar customer, you’re covered with such checks.

You could also use tools like ObservePoint and TrackingPlan, which can help by continuously monitoring for data quality issues in real-time, saving you from unpleasant surprises.

These tools can also double as part of the alert system I mentioned earlier.

Another essential element is a real-time dashboard or report.

When making one, it should include key insights stakeholders need, such as website performance, store metrics, or campaign effectiveness.

A well-designed dashboard can save you from constant email inquiries like, «How many users visited today?« or «What’s the traffic from Meta looking like?«

While the real-time reporting in GA4 might not be that robust for what you want to achieve, you can achieve it by using BigQuery with Looker Studio for a more robust GA4 real-time reporting.

Tools like Piwik Pro also offer real-time dashboards, and your analytics platform may have similar capabilities.

Make the most of these options to keep everyone informed and reduce stress during the peak period!

People Still Matter:

Setting up your measurement strategy for peak success isn’t just about the tech. It’s also about the people.

Having knowledgeable human resources on hand is necessary.

For example, you’ll need someone who can handle unexpected requests, like tracking a new web interaction that wasn’t in the original plan.

Or someone to perform manual checks to ensure everything is running smoothly or investigate issues flagged by your monitoring tools.

Equally important is maintaining an active communication channel. Clear, timely updates between teams will help ensure everyone stays aligned and can act quickly when needed.

People and collaboration remain at the heart of any successful measurement strategy!

Review Your Reports & Dashboards:

Analytics teams often pour most of their energy into data collection, leaving reports and dashboards as an afterthought.

But what good is data if it doesn’t answer the critical questions stakeholders will ask during the peak period?

Take the time to review your dashboards and reports (whether in Looker Studio, Power BI, or another tool) to ensure they’re ready for insights and action.

Are they showcasing the right metrics? Do they need adjustments, corrections, or updates to reflect what matters most during this busy season?

A well-prepared dashboard not only saves you from last-minute fixes but also keeps stakeholders informed and confident in your analytics setup.

Conclusion:

Preparing for peak periods doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By focusing on proactive alerts, reviewing historical data, planning strategically, auditing your setup, and fine-tuning your reports, you’ll be well-equipped to handle the rush and deliver valuable insights to stakeholders.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments what steps you’re taking to gear up for the peak season.