M27: Google Analytics: Introduction and Significance

Presenter:
Dr. Tejinderpal Singh
Associate Professor
University Business School
Panjab University Chandigarh

Hello everyone, Welcome to the first Module of this week and name of this Module is
Google Analytics: Introduction and significance. In this module, our focus will be on just
understanding the basic concepts of Google Analytics and why a website owner should
use Google analytics to understand the insight of visitors behavior.

Just tell me one thing, as website owners what is the important information you would
like to know about your visitors. Just think for a while. (Pause)

Very right , you would like to know about , how many visitors are coming to website,
how much time they spend, From which location are they coming, are they coming
through desktops or through mobile phone etc. Similarly, there can be so many other
aspects about which you would be interested to know.

Now the question is, how I can get this type of information. There is no button on the
website, we have discussed any WordPress plug in so.

Don’t worry at all. We have one very powerful tool called Google Analytics. In this
background, this module is dedicated to the fundaments of Google Analytics and you
will specifically learn

What is Google Analytics Platform?

How does Google Analytics works?

Why every digital marketer should make use of Google Analytics?

So let us jump into another phase of digital marketing. Hope you will not only enjoy it ,
but also learn a lot in this Module. So, let us begin.

If you remember, in the very first week, I have discussed with you the process of digital
marketing and the most important phase of this process was measurement and
tracking. We discussed, it is very important to measure and track your marketing efforts
so that you may take the corrective actions, if there is any gap in the performance.

No doubt, in the offline marketing, over a period of time, we have developed many
methods to measure the performance of marketing efforts. However, the accuracy of
such methods, tools, techniques is still questionable and marketer are hesitant to use
the data produced by these tools.

The scenario is different in case of Digital marketing. Here you can measure and track
the results of marketing efforts with 100 % accuracy with sophisticated tools available
like Google Analytics and others.

So first let us see, what is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free tool from the Google for Web analytics. Google analytics was
launched by the Google in the year of 2005 when it acquired the Urchin, a web statistics
analysis program. Presently Google analytics is available inside the brand of Google
Marketing Platform, a product from the Google.

Google analytics tracks the information collected from the website or mobile app and
present in in very structured form to the admin or users . It helps in understanding the
audience insight and you can track the ROI of marketing efforts. Let me briefly explain,
how Google Analytics works.

There are four phases of the Google Analytics.

Collection

Filtering

Processing

And Reporting

In the very first phase that is collection, Google Analytics collects the raw information
from your website or mobile app with the help of a Tracking Code. A tracking code is
unique code, generated by the GA that we have to embed in our website. Once you
embed this code in the website, GA will immediately, start collection the information.
The information is collected on various parameters as defined by GA algorithm. GA
uses various signals like browser settings , cookies, browsing behavior etc with the help
of code embedded in the website to collect the information

How to set up Google accounts and embed the code in a website that we will learn in
the next Module.

The next phase is filtering.

Google analytics collects lot of information from the websites in very huge volume. But
all the information may not be relevant for the marketers and other users. So, in this
stage, GA filters information and keeps the relevant information only for further
processing.

Third phase is Organization

The information is filtered in at the back end and GA organizes this information into
various meaning full segments or categories. There are number of categories in which
the information is classified

The last phase is presentation

After the organization of information GA presents this information to the user in very
understandable and meaningful way in the form of various reports that you can easily
browse and download to further analyze the data and to take the decisions. What are
those reports?, we will discuss them time to time in the subsequent modules.

Data Categorization By GA

Let us see how GA categories the information

Primarily , Google analytic Categorizes the whole data into three main categories like

Acquisition

Behavior

Conversions

Let me briefly discuss , about these categories

First we have the Acquisition

Acquisition simply means how you are acquiring the traffic to your website. We know
there may be many sources from where the traffic is coming to the website like direct by
using our domain name, through organic search, through social media, by referral. But
we don’t know with which proportion the traffic is coming to our website from these
sources. Here GA will provide us the complete information in this regard. We will see
more details of acquisition category in the Google Analytics Interface.

The Second Category is , Behavior

The behavior data is related to what visitors are actually doing on our website. Here,
you will get the information how the content of the website is performing, is it engaging
or not? . Here the information is provided on sessions, page views, bounce rate, exits
etc. If these terms are new for you, don’t worry at all , I am going to explain them very
soon.

The third is conversion.

What is the meaning of conversion; it is defined in the context of the objectives of

website. For someone, it may be sales, for someone, it may subscription, for someone,
it may be registration and so on. In this section GA will show you how people convert
on your website, which is very essential to improving the conversion rate.Conversion
reports are further classified into different sections like goals, eCommerce, multi-
channel funnel, and attribution. I will talk about these reports in the subsequent
modules.

So, this was the just basics introduction to the Google Analytics and how does GA
Works. In the next part I will talk about why GA is a must tool for every digital marketer.
Just join me there.

PART-2

I hope , you got a little bit idea about what Google analytics can do for us . There are
large number of metrics that GA is providing to its users to take the various decisions.
Let us discuss, why is it important for every digital marketer to understand and use this
tool.

Google Analytics is Free:

Google Analytics is very powerful tool. Many people think that it will be very costly. but
to your surprise the Google Analytics is totally free. You need not to pay even a single
penny to the Google to use Google Analytics.

Just create an account with Google Analytics and it will start working for you
immediately. So what else do we want? Thanks to the Google.

Data collection process is automatic

Google Analytics save your lot of time as the data collection process is automatic. As I
have discussed you need to just embed an unique code in your website, the process of
Data Collection from your website will start immediately. Google Analytics presents the
reports in a very simple and understandable way. You can access these reports directly
from the Google Analytics dashboard in various formats.

Detailed insights of the audience:

The audience reports of Google analytics, provides a detailed information about the
people who visit our website like their age, gender, interests, devices, and location and
much more. This type of data is very useful to the digital marketers to take the decision
timely.

Customization of Reports

As web analyst or digital marketers, there are so many instances when we need reports
in a customized form. A report will be called customized when we want data according
to our requirements not a standard format.

GA Google Analytics comes very handy in this regard. There is a full flexibility in a
Google Analytics to create the reports in a desired format.

In Google Analytics, there is a specific tab called Customization and you can use this
tab create your own reports

So I will talk about the customization of reports in detail at an appropriate time

Integration with other platforms

This is a very good feature of Google Analytics you can integrate the Google Analytics
with so many other platforms without any problem. For example, Google Analytics
perfectly works with the Google ads. Although a rich data is provided by the Google ads
to measure performance of Ads, but you can further have the insights about your ads
and customers who are clicking on the ads by analyzing it in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is not restricted to the desktop only it perfectly works on tablets and
mobile phones both on android and IOS platforms.

I will talk about how to integrate the Google Analytics with the Google AdWords in the
subsequent Modules.

Real time reporting

You need not to wait for hours to collect the data from Google Analytics. There is a very
good feature in Google Analytics where you can have the real-time reporting like how
many customers are there right now on a site, how much time they have spent, from
which source they are coming, which device are they using and so on . So it will help
you to take the decisions in the real time as well. For example if you want to change the
price of a product you can change the price of a product on the basis of real-time
demand by analyzing the data in real time

GA Add- ons are available

There is no doubt that Google Analytics is a great tool at its own to capture the web
analytics. But There are a number of add-ons available for Google Analytics. These
add- ons are released every month and These addons are very useful to increase the
quality of data and the productivity of Google analytics . Google Tag Assistant, GA
Debugger, Tag Manager Injector and many more are examples of GA Ad-ons.

Ability to measure internal site search

Most of the websites have internal search box to search their site internally. Like, you
can see in e-commerce sites the search box is there to search for various products and
product categories. Google Analytics can provide you the detail about what people are
actively searching for on site. It will help you to

Discover Keywords for SEO

Discover Keywords for PPC

Expand Your Product Assortment

Optimize Performance of Site Search Visitors

Data from social platform

Another very good feature of Google Analytics that you can analyze the traffic that is
coming from social media sites. As we know that social media is a good source of
traffic. So there is a need to understand such Audience in a better way

Google Analytics can clearly measure from which social media platform traffic is coming
to your website most. So accordingly, you can change your budget of promotion in
favor that platform.

So, this was an introductory discussion on Google Analytics. We understood What is

GA, How does GA work and why every digital marketer should Google Analytics to
analyze the web data.

In the next module we will practically see, how to work onGoogle Analytics with the
help of some dummy data.

Thank you so much.