Finally: Advanced Google Analytics
After about 5 hours and 2 overpriced lattes, I have finally finished the Advanced Google Analytics course. It had the same layout as the beginner course, however it went into more detail about how to actually use Google Analytics (GA) instead of why we should use it. The four parts of GA: collection, configuration, processing and reporting, all work together to help businesses better understand how customers view and use their website. We can see if they make conversions (sales, subscriptions, etc.) at the end of their visit. Collection begins by giving a JavaScript code to each page, or action you wish to track. These are called hits. Hits can track page views, events, and transactions. For example, you may wish to track how many users come to your website and also how many users click on the video on the page. After assigning these JavaScripts, you will be able to add filters, goals, etc. to the data you're collecting. This is the configuration and processing stage. Finally, the reporting stage. By seeing the report, you can now visualize what your business needs to succeed.
Don't Forget!
Nothing Good is Free
Google offers a paid service called Google Analytics 360 (GA 360). A small business or student blogger like me, will be just fine using the free version of GA. However for larger companies, GA 360 is the way to go. GA 360 collects more information and processes it faster. For example, the data volume capacity goes from 10 million hits per month to 20 billion per month with GA 360. Other features such as Rollup Reporting which allows you to combine data from different properties, is only available with GA 360. These are just a few examples of the added benefits GA 360 comes with. Here is a comparison chart
Google Analytics Demo Account
For a hands on experience Google allows us to learn on their Google store account.
Personally, the most interesting (and most easily understood) part of GA is that we can see how people get to our webpage. These are called traffic channels. Check out the visual below.
I chose to sort the channels by which one brings in the most revenue. Referral is at the top contributing 77.97%. Referrals are other sites that bring users to your site. If we click on referrals we can see who is bringing the most traffic to us.
According to this chart gdeals.googleplex.com is giving us the most revenue at 51.52%. However, if we pay attention to the Ecommerce Conversion Rate column, we can find out which percentage of traffic from that site completed a purchase. At first glance, us.search.yahoo.com comes out on top with 100% conversion rate which is awesome! But that conversion was from one single user. So the only user that came through that site ended up finishing a purchase. The runner up at 23.62% is gdeals.googleplex.com. 23.62% of users that came from that site checked out at the purchase screen. The gdeals.googleplex.com is bringing in a relatively large conversion rate and we should take note of that. Looking at this from an analyst point of view, I would invest in gdeals.googleplex.com.
Overall Google Analytics is a miracle worker for businesses. Educated decisions can be made with data to back it up. If you plan on working in the business world, Google Analytics training is a must.
