Google Analytics

Do you understand what the amazing Leonardo DiCaprio is referring to? Read more to find out!

Google Analytics (GA), if you didn’t already know, is a very useful tool. As a future digital marketer, (and really just a marketer in general), having the skills and ability to use this “freemium” service is one of the most beneficial tools for the future.

It’s Important

You might ask yourself, “the name is so straightforward so why do I need to read yet another article on GA?” Well, while the name of GA may straight-up tell you what it does, there are many functions within GA that you may not know exist and can help you when trying to understand more about your company and its consumers. GA takes the numbers and metrics that people like me once never wanted to touch in their career and turns them into something that I do want to look at every day. Companies use GA to understand both current and new potential customers. THEY DON’T WANT PERSONAL INFORMATION; they just want to know about you and people like you! GA gives a deeper understanding of the customer and helps to build a bigger picture for your company using data while making the data work for you and not the other way around. GA also helps people working in SEO and not just people looking to analyze data as well.

How it Works

So, how does it work? First, you must create a Google Analytics account. After the account is created, it will bring you to your home page. This page will soon be filled with all sorts of numbers and metrics once you start tracking websites. GA helps companies move consumers through the purchasing funnel by acquisition, behavior and conversion. It uses the data to figure out how to get more customers to interact with their company. Companies such as Spotify, Airbnb, Dropbox, and Slack are just a few of the companies known for using this tool.

Google Analytics for Beginners

Next, you start tracking websites. Unlike this gif of tracking your location on a map, when you begin tracking website(s), Google Analytics places a Javascript tracking code to each page on the website. This tracking code ANONYMOUSLY collects data on the people visiting the website. (It is important to note that this data is anonymous). The tracking code can track the language of the website (code it was written in), type of browser, device accessed on, operating system currently being used, and traffic source (what brought the user to the source). It then groups the data into sessions. Each session is the interaction on the website within a specific time frame, and a session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Organizing the Data

GA for Beginners teaches you how to keep the data organized. It is important to understand how to find and filter the data. There are three different views of the data. Raw Data, Test View and Master View. It is important to save all the data you may need because you cannot change it later. Filtering the data will help you find exactly what you are looking for when trying to answer specific questions you may have when reading the data.

 

Reports

Three of the most useful groups of reports that can be found in Google Analytics are titled Audience, Acquisition and Behavior.

• Audience reports will assist you in understanding demographic, behavioral and interest characteristics of users.

• Acquisition reports show which channels brought users to your site.

• Behavior reports showed how people engaged in the site. This includes which page of the website people land on and which page they exit from.

Google Ads and Google Analytics can be linked to track your campaigns. GA for Beginners teaches about how to track campaigns and goals you may set whether they be business goals or GA goals.

 

Advanced Google Analytics

Advanced GA dives into deeper water. It gives a more in-depth description on how to use the functions within GA and how to make them more specific and less generalized to what you might need to do. The advanced training in GA teaches about how GA categorizes its users and how to more clearly understand the data in ways that interest you. The advanced GA course will teach you how to:

• categorize into users and sessions

• organize and create advanced filters

• create custom dimensions and metrics

• segment and analyze data

• re-market to consumers

Understanding the relevance and importance of each of these functions taught in the advanced GA course will serve you well later down the road when using GA as a tool for your business.

 

Google Merchandise Store Demo Account

Throughout both the beginner and advanced course of GA, it takes you through a simulation using the Google Analytics Store Demo Account to understand and analyze the Google Merchandise Store. In the simulation, GA instructs what to do when trying to perform specific functions. It is here where you learn how to navigate through Google Analytics, understand both overview reports as well as full reports, how to share reports and how to set up dashboards and shortcuts. In the advanced GA sessions, you are taught how to analyze data by channel, audience, and custom reports.

 

Findings

When working through the simulation, the audience overview report shows audience metrics like number of users, pages visited in a session, average session duration, and bounce rate.

Pictured above is a screenshot of the audience overview report. The audience of the page was primarily new users and the primary language spoken is English.

Majority of the people that visited the site speak English. 65.63% of people spoke English from the United States. This is shown lower in the report as it shows different languages and the percentage of visitors that speak each language.

 

Conclusion

Whether you’re someone who loves or hates numbers, GA turns everyone into a friend of analytics. Google Analytics has taught me the value and importance of understanding data and what it can do for any company I may work for in the future.