Departamento de Economia, Gestão, Engenharia Industrial e Turismo

New forms of business (41233) Working hours: 4h (TP)

Lecturer: Vera Silva Carlos Course: Year/Semester: 3rd/2nd
([email protected]) LGE/LLRE/LBIO

1 – INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Welcome to Google Analytics for Beginners

Introduction
Hi, I’m Justin Cutroni. And I’m Krista Seiden. We’re Analytics Advocates at Google. Welcome to Google
Analytics for Beginners. In this course we’ll take you through a basic understanding of Google Analytics.
We’ll show you how to create and implement an account, set up views and filters, read basic reports, set
up dashboards, perform basic analysis, and set up goals and campaign tracking.

Defining Digital Analytics

To begin, let’s start by defining “digital analytics” and why it’s important. So Krista, what’s the deal with
digital analytics?
Well Justin, people usually purchase goods in stages.
In marketing, we have the concept of a purchase funnel. There are different stages within the funnel that
describe customer interactions. A basic purchase funnel includes the following steps:

• Acquisition involves building awareness and acquiring user interest

• Behavior is when users engage with your business
• Conversion is when a user becomes a customer and transacts with your business
 In the offline world, this process can be hard to measure. But in the online world, we can measure many
different aspects of the funnel using digital analytics. We can track what online behavior led to purchases
and use that data to make informed decisions about how to reach new and existing customers.

Digital Analytics in Practice

Think about an online store, such as the Google Merchandise Store. It might have a goal to sell more t-
shirts. Using digital analytics, the store could collect and analyze data from their online advertising
campaigns to see which are most effective and expand those marketing efforts.
For example, the store could analyze geographical sales data to understand if people in certain places buy
a lot of shirts and then run additional advertising campaigns in those areas. They could also use analytics to
understand how users progress through their online shopping cart. If they notice that users have trouble
with a particular step on their website, they can make changes to the site to resolve the problem.
Different kinds of businesses can benefit from digital analytics:
• Publishers can use it to create a loyal, highly-engaged audience and to better align on-site advertising with
user interests.
• Ecommerce businesses can use digital analytics to understand customers’ online purchasing behavior and
better market their products and services.
• Lead generation sites can collect user information for sales teams to connect with potential leads.
While we’ve primarily talked about collecting data from a website, Google Analytics can also collect
behavioral data from a variety of systems such as mobile applications, online point-of-sales systems, video
game consoles, customer relationship management systems, or other internet-connected platforms.
That’s right. This data is compiled into Analytics reports, which you can use to perform in-depth analysis to
better understand your customers and their purchase journey. Then you can test out new solutions to
improve your business.

The process of collecting Analytics data

Google Analytics is a platform that collects data and compiles it into useful reports.

Tracking a Website
To track a website, you first have to create a Google Analytics account. Then you need to add a small piece
of Javascript tracking code to each page on your site. Every time a user visits a webpage, the tracking code
will collect anonymous information about how that user interacted with the page.
For the Google Store, the tracking code could show how many users visited a page that sells drinkware
versus a page that sells houseware. Or it could tell us how many users bought an item like an Android doll
by tracking whether they made it to the purchase confirmation page.
But the tracking code will also collect information from the browser like the language the browser is set to,
the type of browser (such as Chrome or Safari), and the device and operating system used to access the
Google Store. It can even collect the “traffic source,” which is what brought users to the site in the first
place. This might be a search engine, an advertisement they clicked on, or an email marketing campaign.
Keep in mind that every time a page loads, the tracking code will collect and send updated information
about the user’s activity. Google Analytics groups this activity into a period of time called a “session.” A
session begins when a user navigates to a page that includes the Google Analytics tracking code. A session
ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. If the user returns to a page after a session ends, a new session will
begin.

Processing and Reporting

When the tracking code collects data, it packages that information up and sends it to Google Analytics to
be processed into reports. When Analytics processes data, it aggregates and organizes the data based on
particular criteria like whether a user’s device is mobile or desktop, or which browser they’re using.
But there are also configuration settings that allow you to customize how that data is processed. For
example, you might want to apply a filter to make sure your data doesn’t include any internal company
traffic, or only includes data from a particular country or region that’s important to your business.

And Justin, one very important thing to remember.

What’s that?
*Once Analytics processes the data, it’s stored in a database where it can’t be changed*
Great point, Krista! So remember, when you set up your configuration, don’t exclude any data you think
you might want to analyze later. Once the data has been processed and stored in the database, it will
appear in Google Analytics as reports. We’ll show you what these reports look like a little later.

The Analytics account structure

Now that you know how data gets collected, let’s look at how Google Analytics accounts are organized.
All of your Google Analytics accounts can be grouped under an “Organization,” which is optional. This
allows you to manage multiple Google Analytics accounts under one grouping.

Large businesses or agencies could have multiple accounts, while, medium to small-sized businesses
generally (only) use one account. When you create an account, you also automatically create a property
and, within that property, a view for that account. But each Analytics account can have multiple properties
and each property can have multiple views. This lets you organize your Analytics data collection in a way
that best reflects your business.
The Google Analytics Account determines how data is collected from your websites and manages who can
access that data. Typically, you would create separate Analytics accounts for distinct businesses or business
units.
Each Google Analytics account has at least one “property.” Each property can collect data independently of
each other using a unique tracking ID that appears in your tracking code.
You may assign multiple properties to each account, so you can collect data from different websites,
mobile applications, or other digital assets associated with your business. For example, you may want to
have separate properties for different sales regions or different brands. This allows you to easily view the
data for an individual part of your business, but keep in mind this won’t allow you to see data from
separate properties in aggregate.

View Settings
Just as each account can have multiple “properties,” each property can have multiple “views.” You can use
a feature called Filters in your configuration settings to determine what data you want to include in the
reports for each view.
For example, The Google Store sells merchandise from their website across different geographical regions.
They could create one view that includes all of their global website data. But if they wanted to see data for
individual regions, they could create separate views for North America, Europe, and Asia. If the Google
Store wanted to only see data for external traffic (that didn’t include their own store employees), they
could set up a view that filtered out internal traffic based on IP address.
The view level also lets you set Google Analytics “Goals”. Goals are a valuable way to track conversions, or
business objectives, from your website. A goal could be how many users signed up for an email newsletter,
or how many users purchased a product. We’ll discuss Goals and Conversions in a later lesson. Be
thoughtful when setting up your accounts, properties, and views, because you can’t change data once it’s
been collected and processed. by Google Analytics.

Before we move on to user access permissions, there are a couple important things to note about views:
1. New views only include data from the date the view was created and onwards. When you create a new
view, it will not include past data.
2. If you delete a view, only administrators can recover that view within a limited amount of time.
Otherwise, the view will be permanently deleted.

User Permissions
You can assign permissions to other users at the account, property, or view level. Each level inherits
permissions from the level above it.
For example, if you have access to an account, then you have the same access permissions to the
properties and views underneath that account. But if you only have access permissions for a view, then
you won’t have permission to modify the property or account associated with that view.
 By clicking “Admin”, Google Analytics lets you set user permissions for: “managing users,” “edit,”
“collaborate,” or “read and analyze.”
• “Managing users” lets users add or remove user access to the account, property, or view.
• “Edit” lets users make changes to the configuration settings.
• “Collaborate” allows users to share things like dashboards or certain measurement settings.
• And finally, “Read and Analyze” lets users view data, analyze reports, and create dashboards, but restricts
them from making changes to the settings or adding new users.

How you configure your organizations, accounts, properties, and views can affect how your data gets
collected. Be thoughtful when setting up your Google Analytics implementation, and make sure you align
your properties and views of the data you collect with your overall business structure.

How to set up account views with filters

To see what views are currently available for a property, click the “Admin” tab at the top.
 Then, under View, click “View Settings.”
You can see that when you first create a property, Analytics automatically sets up an unfiltered view called
“All Web Site Data.” This contains all of the raw, unchanged data you collected for the property. We
recommend changing the name to “Raw data,” so you’ll know that the data hasn’t been filtered. To change
the name, we’ll simply type in the new name. Now click “Save.”

Setting up a Test View

Next, we’ll set up a “test view” to test our settings. If we configure something incorrectly, we may
inadvertently lose data we want to collect. So it’s best to test all of our configurations in this test view first.
• To set up a test view, at the top left, click the view selector pull-down menu.
• Then select “Create new view.” We’ll name this view “Test View.”
• Now click “Create view.”
 Notice that we are now in the “Test View” for this property. We recommend adding a setting to the test
view that filters your data for automated bot and spider traffic.
• For this Test View, select “View Settings."
• Then we’ll scroll down.
• Under “Bot Filtering,” select “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders”. This will help filter out bot
traffic.
• Now click “Save.”

Creating a Master View

Next, let’s create the Master view. This will be the view that we use to do all of our reporting and analysis.
We can simply copy the test view and rename it.
• To copy the view, in the top right corner click “Copy view.”
• We’ll rename the view “Master View.”
• Now click “Copy view.”
If you go into the View menu, you can see that we’ve successfully copied and created this new view. By
copying the view, all of our settings and filters we created like excluding bot traffic will also be included in
the new view.

Adding Additional Filters

Now we have three views that can be used to back-up our data, test new analytics configurations, and do
our daily reporting and analysis.

But we still need to add filters to determine what data we want Analytics to display in each view. We’ll first
set up a common filter on the “Test” view to exclude internal IP traffic. That way, we can measure online
Google Store behavior strictly for external customers, without any employee influence.
• In the right-hand column under “View,” change the view selector from “Master View” to “Test View.” This
will ensure we are creating our filters in the right view.
• Now click “Filters.”
• Then click “Add Filter.” We’ll name this filter “Exclude internal traffic.”
Analytics offers two kinds of filters, “Predefined” and "Custom" Filters. Predefined filters are templates for
the most common filters you’ll use. Custom filters let you design a filter to include, exclude, or modify
data. Since excluding data by IP address is common, Analytics offers a predefined filter for that, so we’ll
leave the filter type as “Predefined.”
• Next, click “Select Filter Type.”

• Then select “Exclude.”

• Now click “Select source or destination”
• And select “traffic from the IP addresses.”
• Finally, click “Select expression.” And select “that are equal to.”

• Now we’ll type in the IP address we want to exclude. You can find your public IP address by opening a new
tab and searching for “what is my ip?” in Google.
• Now we’ll copy the IP address into the IP address field.
• At the bottom, click “Save.”
Note that the filter we just created now shows up in the list of filters.
Once we’ve saved this filter and applied it to a view, Google Analytics will check the IP addresses of traffic
to the web property and exclude those that match the filter. It will take a little time for the filter to catch
all of the traffic. To test that the filter is excluding internal traffic, click Reporting.Then, click “Real-Time” in
the left-hand navigation. Now click “Overview.”

This shows you a report of real-time traffic to your website. If you’re on your internal network, you should
notice that your internal user traffic should decline over the next 30 minutes. Once the filters have taken
effect, Analytics won’t collect any internal activity for the IP address you filtered.
Once you’ve verified this filter is working in your test view, you can add it to your master view. Click on the
Admin tab again. Then select the View pull-down menu.

Select the “Master View.” Now click “Filters.” Then click “Add Filter.” Now, instead of “Create new Filter,”
select the radio button for “Apply existing Filter.”
This will allow you to select from a list of filters you’ve previously created. Click Save.
Now you can see that the filter is applied to the “Master View.”

Note that if you apply multiple filters to a view, each filter will be applied in the order they appear in your
filter settings. So if you have two filters, the data will pass through the first filter before passing through
the second. So be mindful of the order in which you apply your filters.
It’s that easy to create or add predefined filters to views to make sure you’re collecting and protecting the
data you need.
Take evaluation 1 (in the website) and answer the following questions:
1. What is digital analytics?
2. Describe the buying funnel.
3. What is google analytics?
4. What are leads?
5. What is the purpose of assigning multiple properties to an account?

Click through the demonstration at the end of the page (1.3)

Read further

Check out these links to learn more about setting up Google Analytics:

• Set up Analytics tracking

• Verify your tracking code installation with Google Tag Assistant Chrome extension
• View the history of account changes
• Diagnostics messages
• Common account issues
• User permissions

To learn more about setting up filters, please visit these links:

• How to verify your filter

• About regular expressions
• LunaMetrics Basic Google Analytics Filters
• LunaMetrics Regular Expressions guidebook (PDF)

For more information on Google Analytics, please visit:

• Customer journey mapping: The path to loyalty

• Adopt new data strategies for better marketing