Google Analytics 2.0

As I promised, I am going to continue to tell you about Google Analytics and get more in depth with the features and capabilities of the program.

Google Analytics is a tool that provides data on the performance of your website. It is really amazing how much you can learn about your website with Google Analytics. You can understand the actions that your website visitors are pursuing on your website. You can also understand in depth who your visitors are and their background on the device that they are using, and the search engine that they used.

HIERARCHY OF ACCOUNTS

·      Accounts: An account is created to access Google Analytics and the reporting of your website.

·      Properties: A property can be a website, mobile app or device. An account can hold multiple properties.

·      Views: Views are where you can access the data. A view can only show data going forward. You cannot see reporting from a date prior to the creation of that view.

·      Users and permissions: As you add additional users to an account, you can permit or restrict access at each level. Users can be added in at the account, property, or view level.

SETTING UP GOALS

Goals are set up to track actions and conversions on your website or mobile app.

·      Goal types: There are several different types of goals that you can set:

o   Destination: Driving visitors to a specific location

o   Duration: Length of time spent on a landing page

o   Page/screens per session: The number of landing pages that a person visits within a 30-minute timespan

o   Event: An action that is triggered (video play, ad click…etc.)

·      Limits of Goals:

o   You can have up to 20 goals in each view

o   Goals are permanent; you cannot delete them

o   Goals start recording data once the goal has been created.

·      Smart Goals: Used to optimize AdWords, measuring conversions. Smart goals are set up at the view level. Smart goals uses machine learning to determine the sessions that will likely lead to a conversion.

KNOW THE TERMINOLOGY

·      Session: The duration of time a user is active on a website, with a time limit of 30 minutes

·      Source: the location your traffic came from; it could be a sear engine or a website domain

·      Medium: the classification of the source; it could be organic, paid ads, or a website referral

·      Tag: a snippet of code that sends data to the third party, google. Tags are used to collect data and track ads

·      Tracking Code: The analytics tracking code is added to the HTML code to track performance on each landing page of your website

·      Tracking ID: A series of letters and numbers that is used in tracking code so that it can send data to Analytics with the account and property it belongs to

·      Property Number: The second set of numbers in the Tracking ID

FURTHER EDUCATION

Google Analytics offers a certification that can really help you stand out among a pool of applicants. This certification is highly well known and considered to be of great value to a candidate, especially for marketers and analysts. There are a series of videos that you can view to fully comprehend the features and capabilities of Google Analytics, with each series of videos followed by a practices assessment. I highly suggest that you watch this video and take the certification test. Even if you don’t plan on being a marketer or an analyst, it is important to have an understanding of Google Analytics to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of your company’s website. What are you waiting for? Start watching the videos today; get your certification tomorrow!


Source: https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/6083659?hl=en&ref_topic=3544906