Google Analytics for Beginners

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 roles for: “Administrator,” “Editor,”
“Analyst,” or “Viewer.”

 “Administrator” lets users add or remove user access to the account, property, or view.
 “Editor” lets users make changes to the configuration settings.
 “Analyst” allows users to share things like dashboards or certain measurement settings.
 And finally, “Viewer” 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.”

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.”
 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.