Getting Started with Google Analytics Review: 1
By: Ganesh Kanade
Tags: Google Analytics, Cxl, Cxl Institute, Marketing Analytics, Analytics

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

If you are facing the same problem in the 21st century then my friend you should get back to the whiteboard :)

You’re probably shooting in the dark if you don’t watch your marketing budget. In growth marketing, having a data-driven approach is critical.

Digital analytics enables you to accurately target your audience and, as a result, make better use of your marketing budget. Traditional marketing campaigns can only be measured in a small number of ways, and the measuring process can take time, while digital campaigns can track metrics like views, clicks, and transactions in real-time.

Google Analytics is the must-have weapon one should have if he or she wants to get into data-driven marketing. I have been using GA for quite a while and CXL has helped me to understand it in a more comprehensive way.

If you ask me then web analytics has four main pillars:

Data collection: Whether it is your website, app, blog or any other resource, you need to collect its data at multiple levels. Analysis: You need to analyze how much traffic is coming through Google, Facebook, or affiliates. Also, how does the user behave when he/she reaches your channel? Visualization: This can help you see how each channel is performing compared to your goals. Optimization: Whether it is adjusting the user’s journey or running A/B tests, a big part of web analytics is determining ways in which you can improve channel performance.

Let’s take the example of Swiggy, an Indian food-delivering app just like Uber Eats. Swiggy runs campaigns across various channels such as SEM, social media, emails, etc. Swiggy can leverage all four pillars of web analytics to make the campaigns more robust.

Swiggy can closely monitor the traffic data from all channels.

They can then analyze which channels are performing better and what is the customer journey in each channel.

They can create dashboards and reports that will bring the required format of data to their fingertips.

They can use the insights gained to improve the performances of the channels and fix budgets for each.

So now you must have realized the power of web analytics and hence Google Analytics becomes an inevitable tool.

Google Analytics can help you in the following major three areas:

Continual monitoring: Whenever you go live with a campaign, you have the data almost instantly. This requires you to monitor the campaign results continually so as to ensure the efficiency of the campaign. Without GA, it would be very difficult to continuously measure the success of your campaign. Budget optimization: Using GA, you can get the most out of your budget. It shows the cost as well as other traffic metrics. This helps you figure out how much it takes to acquire an impression, click, lead and purchase. Funnel tracking: GA gives you a holistic picture of the consumer journey. You can track how many consumers are at a certain stage in the funnel and how many have dropped out; you can then optimize the consumer funnel.

In order to make sense of the data generated through the interactions between users and websites, it is crucial to know how the data is collected and tracked. This will give you a holistic view of the entire process. It will also help you pinpoint possible issues in the collection if you notice some anomalies in the data you receive. Data can be collected at each stage, starting from hits, which is the smallest level of interaction to higher levels such as users and channels.

We can break down the functions of GA into 4 components:

Data Collection: Once GA is linked to a website through the tracking ID, it starts collecting data of people who visit the website. Data Processing: GA transforms raw data into insightful metrics. This is a double-edged sword, it helps you directly see important metrics, but in the process, you lose out on individual customer data. Data Configuration: You can configure GA to control which data gets tracked. For example, if you are running a local business and are only interested in local consumers, you can filter the data based on location. Reporting: GA prepares dashboards which will show you the latest collated data.

In a nutshell, the Google Analytics account is structured in the following manner.

Account: The account is the primary and top-most access point for the data. It is the same as the GA account you set up.

Property: An account can have multiple properties. A property can be a website or an app. For each property, you would have to generate a Unique Tracking ID to link it to the GA account. The GA account linked with these properties tracks data from each property separately through the tracking IDs.

Views: Each property can have multiple views. Some of these views may be limited by choice, depending on who has access to them.

When a visitor lands on your website, GA tracks several things such as the location of the visitor, the device he or she is using, the path is taken by the visitor to come to your website, etc. GA then collates the data into a tabular format. The rows of the table are called dimensions. The columns are called metrics.

Dimensions: A dimension is an attribute of the visitor. An example of a dimension would be the city of origin. Dimensions are categories, i.e. they are non-numeric.

Metrics: The quantitative information is the data recorded against the dimensions. For example, for the dimension ‘city’, the number of people who visited the website from that city is a metric. Metrics are numeric.

Let’s see some of the most common metrics:

Visitors or users: The term visitors or users is defined as the number of unique visitors to your site within a certain time period. It includes both first-time and recurring visitors. Visits or sessions: A visit or a session is defined as a period of constant activity by a user. This usually has a session timeout limit defined as a period of inactivity permitted before the session logs out. Different businesses will have different session limits. For example, Netflix users will be inactive for a couple of hours while they watch a movie, but it would be strange for a reader on the ‘The Economist’ to not interact for over 10 minutes as articles don’t take that long to read. Pageviews: Pageviews is defined as the number of times a page is viewed on your site. Be sure to check this with other metrics. As a marketer, you wouldn’t want a lot of unwarranted traffic because visitors couldn’t find the desired page. Bounce rate: The bounce rate is defined as the ratio of visitors who leave after only clicking one link. This likely means the user couldn’t find anything else on the site to engage him/her or didn’t have any reason to look. Average session duration: This is an average formed by dividing the total duration of sessions by the number of individual sessions.

You can quickly set up Goals in GA. They’re used to see how well a website accomplishes a company’s goals. It is a method of determining how many visitors to your website complete the desired action.

A conversion occurs when the desired action is completed.

It has various reports, such as Realtime, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversion, which I will discuss in my next post.

In the meantime, if you don’t have a website, you can use Google’s demo account to experiment with GA.

GA is frekin powerful, looking forward to exploring web analytics more with CXL.