Enquiries Logged on the Wrong Day

A Tuesday enquiry counted on Wednesday

A quote request arrives at half past nine on a Tuesday evening, and the email lands in your inbox at that time. In Analytics, the goal is recorded on Wednesday.

The hourly report says your busiest time for enquiries is around midnight, though you know most people write to you after dinner.

Nothing is broken. The view runs on another clock: Eastern time, perhaps, because whoever set it up worked in Ontario, or whatever the setup screen offered.

Every report that splits by day or hour carries the shift, and so does every decision made from one.

Where the clocks are set

• Each Analytics view has its own time zone, in its settings.
• The AdWords account has one, chosen when the account was opened.
• WordPress keeps one under Settings, General, starting at UTC.
• Booking and registration software may follow the vendor's own office.
• The mailing service schedules sends by its own setting.

The third catches many sites. WordPress starts at UTC, eight hours ahead of Vancouver in winter, so form entries it stores after four in the afternoon carry the next day's date.

What a three-hour shift does

On Eastern time, anything after nine in the evening here lands on the next day. Sunday night's enquiries count as Monday's, and a month's last evening counts in the next month.

The hourly report runs three hours late, so the after-dinner peak appears near midnight and the lunchtime enquiries in mid-afternoon.

For a business whose customers write in the evening, the day-of-week reports end up describing a week that never happened.

Finding the setting in Analytics

In Analytics, open Admin, choose the view in the right-hand column and open View Settings. The time zone sits near the top, chosen by country and then by zone.

Choose Canada and the zone your customers live in. Most of BC runs on Pacific time, though the Peace region and the East Kootenays keep Mountain time.

Check every view, not only the one you usually open. A property may have a raw view, a filtered one and a test view, each with its own setting.

Daylight saving needs no attention, because a named zone moves with the clocks.

What changing it does to earlier data

The new zone applies from the moment you save it. Earlier data is not recalculated, so everything before the change stays on the old clock.

The day of the change comes out a few hours short or long, depending on the direction, and shows in the graphs as a dip or a spike.

Add an annotation on that date saying what changed, so nobody later mistakes the dip for a bad day.

When comparing across the change, compare whole weeks or months, which the shift barely touches, rather than single days or hours.

A worked example

A basketball camp rents two school gyms for spring break and the summer holidays, running sessions a week at a time for players from eight to sixteen. Parents register and pay through its website.

A web company in Ontario had created its Analytics view years before, on Eastern time, and nobody had looked at the setting since.

Summer registration opened at seven on a Tuesday evening in February. Parents signed up after dinner, and the rush went on past nine.

The reports split that evening across Tuesday and Wednesday, and the hourly report put the busiest registrations at ten and eleven at night, so the director scheduled the next reminder email for ten.

A test registration at a noted time then turned up three hours late in the hourly report. The real peak had been at seven and eight.

The view now runs on Pacific time, with an annotation on the day it changed. The reminder goes out at half past six, and the reports finally match the AdWords account, on Pacific time all along.

Matching it to AdWords

AdWords has its own time zone, shown in the account's settings. Daily budgets reset at its midnight, and ad schedules run on its clock.

An account on Eastern time with ads scheduled from eight to six shows them here from five in the morning until three in the afternoon.

When Analytics and AdWords disagree, a day of ad costs and a day of enquiries cover different hours, and any cost per enquiry worked out by the day is wrong.

AdWords restricts changes to its time zone, so where it is right, make each Analytics view match it. Where it is wrong, ask whoever manages the account first.

Test with an enquiry at a known time

The quickest proof is a test. Send an enquiry through your own form, note the exact time, and find it in the hourly report the next day.

A goal three hours late means Eastern time. Eight hours late in winter means the view was left on Greenwich time.

Do the same with the registration system: compare the time on a test booking's confirmation, in its export and in Analytics. Three different times means three clocks to set.

Why the hour matters

For many businesses the time of an enquiry is useful in itself. It shows when customers are thinking about you, and so when to answer, advertise and send email.

A trade or clinic whose enquiries peak after dinner might check messages once more at nine, or promise a reply first thing the next morning.

The same report guides ad schedules and newsletter send times. Shifted by three hours, it puts ads and emails in front of people who have gone to bed.

The counter-case

A business whose enquiries arrive in office hours, and which reads only monthly totals, loses little to a wrong zone: a few late enquiries move to the next day.

A view set to Mountain time is an hour out, which matters mostly for the hourly reports.

The fix still takes two minutes, and earlier data stays as it is. Set the zone where your customers live, note the date and match AdWords.

Two minutes in the settings

1. Open View Settings in every Analytics view.
2. Choose Canada and your customers' own time zone.
3. Annotate the change on the day you make it.
4. Check that AdWords uses the same zone.
5. Check WordPress and the booking software too.
6. Send a test enquiry at a noted time.
7. Compare whole weeks across the change, not days.

Step three is the one people skip and later wish they had not. Without it, the short or long day of the change becomes a mystery in next year's comparisons.

Counting what happens once a visitor leaves the website and walks into the shop is covered in a discount shown only online to count shop visits.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.