Analytics with Google Analytics

Web tools

- Google Analytics and Google Analytics 360, which are part of the Google Marketing Platform - Adobe Analytics - Woopra - Kissmetrics - Webtrends - Piwik Because of its functionality and widespread adoption in the market, Google Analytics is seen by many marketers as the single source of truth for website traffic, engagement, and conversion data.

Value of Web Alaytics

- data led decision making - information source - deduce the story - understand the customers better - reveal conversion challenges - learn what customers like and don't like - interactions with the website

Benefits of Analytics

- track user behavior online that can help you make informed, data-lead decisions which should help you run effective campaigns and commercial performance - get closer to the customer - understand users - gain insight from real customer activity - forecast using trends and patterns - accountability of media spend and resource allocation - stronger focus - prioritization of resources - higher conversion rates and ROI

The Experiments Feature

. This allows digital marketers to view and manage A/B tests for page performance. You can use this feature to test new layouts, content types, and formats, and to measure them against KPIs

Linking Google Search Console to Google Analytics

1. Ensure your website is verified in Search Console - it must be verified in Search Console to link to Google Analytics. 2. Log in to Search Console and Google Analytics. 3. Click the Admin cog at the bottom left of the main Analytics menu. 4. Click on the Property settings in the center of the Admin area. 5. Scroll to the bottom of the Property settings page and click Search Console Settings. 6. Select which Google Analytics views to share Search Console data with. 7. Click Save to complete the link

To set up a goal in google analytics

1. Navigate to the Admin tab and find the Goal set-up area. 2. Click on the left-hand cog to enter the Admin area. 3. Navigate to the 'Goals' section on the right-hand side under 'View' 4. Add a Goal by clicking +New Goal. 5. Choose to Add a Predefined goal or a Custom goal.

Goal Funnels

A goal funnel can provide marketers with valuable information. For example, it shows where visitors leave your website. It highlights places where information is unclear or inadequate, or where the online process has good flow or bad flow. Marketers can use this data to better understand and optimize the customer experience on their websites and the overall consumer journey.

Real-time reporting

A nice feature in Google Analytics is the real-time reporting function. This provides a live snapshot of activity on your website related to visitors, content, traffic sources, and goals. It's very useful when you want to get a real-time view of campaign launches, TV appearances, and other activities that might have an immediate impact on traffic volumes. However, it's not useful for historical reporting, because it only shows data in real time and it can't be downloaded. It just gives a view on what's happening right now. Understanding traffic spikes both in real time and in reports can allow marketers to understand the ROI of awareness-generating activities like TV, print, and radio. By evaluating how many additional conversions, goals, or sales occurred as a result of a traffic spike, versus the cost of generating that traffic using offline channels, it is possible for marketers to assign an ROI value to their offline marketing investment.

Audience Report

Demographic Report Interests Report Geo Report Audience Behavior Report Technology Report Mobile Report Cross Device Report Benchmark Report

User reports

Demographics: The Demographics report provides an overview and details of the demographic makeup of your website users, such as their age, gender, and location. Tech: The Tech report provides an overview of your users by platform, whether they are website or mobile app users. GA4 aims to unify the reporting for traditional website and mobile app engagement, so organisations that use both can evaluate the performance of their platforms sideby-side in one analytics interface.

Custom events

Destination URL goal tracking is an important element of Universal Analytics. To create something similar in GA4, you need to create a custom event. You can do this in the Events section located in the configuration area in the left-hand menu of GA4. From there, you can set the criteria to create the goal. To track the 'thank you' pages of ecommerce websites, a GA4 custom event configuration might look something like this: 'event_name', equals 'page_view' 'page_title', contains 'Order Confirmed' This tells GA4 to look out for people viewing the page on your website with the title "Order Confirmed". Every time GA4 records an instance of someone on the Order Confirmed page, it counts it as a purchase conversion. Similar to Universal Analytics, it's also possible to create custom events in Google Tag Manager. Once the custom event is set up in Google Tag Manager, you can then set it as a conversion in the Event section in GA4, located in the Configuration area.

types of custom reports

Flat Table Reports allow you to have your dimensions on the left and metrics across the top in table format - these are the simplest type of custom report. Explorer Reports allow you to click into dimensions for further detail on the metrics - these reports are more complicated. Map Overlay Reports allow you to view a world or location map with a series of metrics you define.

Why measure goals

How much of your resources, time, and budget to invest in a channel What channels and campaigns work at driving different goals What content on the site works to drive goals

Site Search Report

If you have a search bar on your website, then the Site Search Report could prove to be useful. The Site Search Report allows you to view the search terms visitors used. You can configure Site Search within the property settings by entering the query string for your website search feature. Site Search is a useful data mining tool, as it allows you to track what users are typing into the search bar on your website. You can use this information to expand your keyword pool or to gain insight into what your website visitors are specifically looking for, which in turn can inform site improvements and even new product development.

Creating a Session Duration goal

If you want to measure how long people are engaging with specific pieces of content on your site, like the spec of an automobile model or a certain blog, you can create a Session Duration goal. You can also create a Session Duration goal to measure sessions which exceed a certain time duration. You could use this goal when user engagement with a site is important.

Linking GA4 to other tools

Linking to other tools You can use the property section in the admin area to link GA4 to a range of tools, including: Google Ads Search Console Big Query For businesses who also use a mobile app as part of their customer engagement, you can specify an iOS or Android Data stream to link your app to GA4. This is available in the Data Streams section in the Admin area. These mobile app data streams will run alongside your website data stream, allowing you to view both app and website engagement together in GA4.

Social Report

Marketers also have the option of looking into their social activity in Google Analytics. The Social Report enables you to view information about sources of social media interaction, social media conversions, and social plugins. It is a limited report. Google Analytics is a Google product and, as a result, it doesn't have a native link to other social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Google Analytics Demo Account

On the Demo account page, click Access Demo Account Select your email communications preferences, then click Save The Demo Account is added to your Analytics Accounts Use the Demo Account to explore and get familiar with the Google Analytics tool. For example, you can experiment by: - Accessing Real-time, Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions reports - Setting date ranges - Exporting report

Advertising Reports

Once GA4 and Google Ads are linked, you can view details of your user visits and conversions in the Advertising section of GA4. This section also tracks other channels like both Paid and Organic Social. The top conversion paths report provides details on the different channels that users visit and engage with on your website. This is similar to the multi-channel funnels reports in Universal Analytics.

Predefined goal templates

Revenue: Choose this template if you are tracking goals like 'reservations made' or 'tickets purchased'. Acquisition: Choose this template for account creation goals. Inquiry: Choose this template for a goal like 'reading reviews'. Engagement: Choose this template for goals like adding to favorites, playing media, sharing content, and contributing to content.

All Pages Report

The All Pages Report is a sub-report in Site Content. It gives a list of page-name metrics associated with each page. Using this report, you can see what pages drive the most engagement and what pages need improvement. It's a very straightforward way of seeing what's working and what's not

Assisted conversion report

The Assisted Conversion Report can help you understand the assisted value of channels and campaigns and provides insight into how different channels function at each end of the funnel, from awareness to completed conversion.

Google Analytics Tabs

The Audience tab: Who is coming to your website? The Acquisition tab: How are users getting to your website? The Behavior tab - What are users doing on your website? The Conversion tab - What actions are users taking to complete set goals?

Behavior Flow Report

The Behavior Flow Report gives a view of user journeys through a website, beginning with a landing page, then moving to their first, second, and third interactions with the website. By analyzing the Behavior Flow Report, marketers should be able to optimize their website content and improve the user journey, which should help drive users towards making more on-site conversions.

E-Commerce Report

The E-commerce Report in Google Analytics enables you to view ecommerce overview information, shopping behavior, checkout behavior, product performance, sales performance, and product list performance. The E-commerce Report requires certain specialist coding to link your website transactions to Google Analytics. But you don't need to be a coder to implement ecommerce tracking on many retail platforms.

Using the E-commerce Report

The E-commerce Report is an excellent way to track revenue online and attribute it back to channels. It also contains details regarding transaction and product types, so you can understand which channels drive what transactions and order values. The report gives you insight into the time it takes to purchase a product, from first visit to sale, as well as details about transactions, sales, and product performance. It's possible to apply enhanced ecommerce settings to ecommerce stores, to assess other detailed ecommerce metrics, like discounts. Within the E-commerce Report, it's possible to dive further into the traffic sources that drive sales, so you can focus your efforts on those channels that efficiently drive the most sales. You could also aim to improve channels that are less effective and pull back completely on poorer performing channels. Furthermore, once ecommerce is set up on your site, revenue and transaction data will be available in most Google Analytics reports, so you can review many other data points and reports in relation to revenue value

Events Report

The Events Report records how users interact with various elements of your website. This report will automatically track any Google Analytics events you have set up in your website code or through Google Tag Manager.

Goal Reports

The Goals reporting area can help you understand different goal-conversion rates over a particular timeframe. This, in turn, can help you to understand trends and how to optimize performance. You can view goal overview information through the Goals Overview Report in the Conversions tab.

Site Speed Sub-Report

The Page Timings Report is a sub-report in Site Speed that contains information on page views and the average load times for the various pages on a site. Furthermore, the Speed Suggestions sub-report allows you to view speed improvement suggestions for pages on your site, while the User Timings sub-report allows you to view the average user timings on a site.

Real time and dashboards

The Realtime reporting area in Google Analytics provides real-time reports on your website activity. The key reports in this area fall into the following categories: Locations Traffic Sources Content Events Conversions In the Customization area, you can create Dashboards. To create a Dashboard: Click the Create button Select a Blank Canvas Enter a name for the Dashboard Click Create Dashboard Add Widgets Click Save Export and share the Dashboard as you see fit

Referrals Report

The Referrals Report shows 'referring' sites - these are sites that link back to your website. You can use the Referrals Report to identify the high-value links for SEO and for driving quality traffic or conversions. Factors that influence traffic from referring websites include the quality of the site that is linking to your site, and the relevance of its content to what you offer

GA4 framework

The framework that GA4 is built upon is very different to Universal Analytics. GA4 incorporates machine learning modelling to provide data on Users, Interactions and Events, while Universal Analytics relies on cookies to track sessions on your website. As cookies are phased out, it will be more and more difficult to use Universal Analytics to track your website performance, hence the need for a different means to report data. Using Event, Traffic, and User Modelling, alongside the machine learning capabilities that are built into GA4, it is anticipated that the data reports GA4 provides will be robust enough to allow marketers to analyze performance without using cookies. However, GA4 does currently use cookies to track visits from users who opt-in to cookie tracking on their device and browser. These visits will form part of the foundation for the traffic models it will use when cookies are no longer in use.

Create and configure a GA4 property

To create a GA4 property to run alongside your Universal Analytics property: Navigate to the Admin Area of Universal Analytics In the center of the Admin area under Property, click on the GA4 Set Up Assistant option Follow the Google Analytics setup guide Add details about your website and / or mobile app Once complete, you will be provided with a GA4 tracking code and Measurement ID

Search Console Report

To get information on your organic search and SEO efforts, marketers can use the Search Console Report. This report allows you to view information regarding SEO performance in Analytics. First, you must link your Google Analytics account to your website's Google Search Console account. Once linked, you can view SEO information on landing pages, countries, devices, and some search queries that are used in Google searches.

Purpose of multi-channel funnels report

To help you understand the complex nature of a digital marketing conversion or purchase journey across channels, you can use the Multi-Channel Funnels Report. It assigns a value to each channel that played a role in completing a goal or transaction. This allows you to see what each channel contributed to a purchase or goal, and helps you understand its value in the decision-making process. Once you know how much a channel contributes, and where it is most effective in the user journey, you can optimize that channel for success.

Link tools

To link these additional tools, you need to access the product linking section within the Property settings. Each of the available tools for linking are listed there and you simply follow the instructions to link the tools. In most instances, you need to have Admin access to both tools in order to link them. Benefits: There is increased data availability. Google Ads imports cost and impression data from the Google SERP, so you're not just seeing visit data. Search impressions and keyword rank from users who aren't logged into Google when searching give additional SEO insights. You can assess the value of channels in more detail to understand conversion rates, CPA, and ROI

Increase budgets for high-performing campaigns

When you find out which campaigns and channels drive the most conversions, traffic, and sales, you may want to improve the budgets that are allocated to these high-performing campaigns. To do this, identify your clusters of high-transaction, high-revenue, or high lead-generating times and search queries in Google Analytics. Then, in Google Ads, increase the daily spend and keyword bids, or percentage bid modifiers, at peak times using ad schedules. This should drive more traffic at the most important times and from the most important keywords. In the same way, you can decrease the amount you spend on low performing times and queries

Attribution models

We have been talking about how channels interact with each other to drive conversions and sales, so we can assign credit to each channel along the journey for the part it played in the decisionmaking process. This is called attribution. There are different models you can use to understand the value of your channels. By default, Google Analytics is set to 'Last Click' attribution, where the final channel before the conversion gets all the credit. However, there are several other attribution models that can be used, including Last Click, First Click, Linear, Time Decay, and Position-based

What is Web Alaytics?

Web analytics involves the collection, measurement, and analysis of website data. Web analytics tools can provide lots of useful information about the origin of website traffic, how website users navigate and interact throughout a website, what content and web pages they're most engaged with, and how they exit the site.

Bounce Rate

When trying to evaluate how engaged people are with your content and landing pages, you can look at the bounce-rate metric. This is visible on the All Pages Report and shows what percentage of visitors landed on your website and left without looking at any other pages or content on the site. Think of it like visitors landing on your site and then bouncing away without looking at anything else. A high bounce rate can be the result of irrelevant content, poorly structured pages, or badly rendered websites. However, it's important to consider the context when analyzing bounce rates. For example, a landing page could have a high bounce rate if the CTA is to a phone, or if the information required is on the landing page, and the user doesn't need to explore any further.

Export and schedule reports

While all data can be presented, cut, spliced, and segmented on screen, much of the real data analysis happens when you export the reports. In Google Analytics and all other web analysis programs, it is possible to export and schedule all reports into Excel spreadsheets, Google Sheets, and PDFs for sharing and further analysis. Most marketers use Excel or another spreadsheet tool for most of their analysis and data manipulation. You should use the format that works best for you.

Content Drilldown

Within the Site Content Report, you can also view information about content drilldown by page and page path, landing page, and exit page.

Creating a Pages per Session goal

You can create a Pages per Session goal to record sessions where the pages viewed exceed a predefined number

Behavior Tab

You can see who is coming to your website in the Audience Reporting tab, and how they got to the site in the Acquisition Reporting tab. Now, let's look at what your users did when they got to your website. You can discover the content they viewed and how they moved through the website itself using the Behavior Reporting tab. Working out how users move through your website can be complex and overwhelming. You can begin to understand these user journeys better by using the Behavior Flow Report.

Conversions Reporting Ta

You can use the Conversions Reporting Tab in Google Analytics to focus in on metrics relating to the valuable actions that users can take on your website. You can find out if you are meeting, exceeding, or missing your KPIs by using this reporting section. KPIs can differ, depending on the type of business. For example, ecommerce KPIs typically include sales transactions, AOV, ecommerce conversion rates, cart abandonment rates, and repeat purchases. Non-ecommerce KPIs for lead-generation sites might include cost per lead, total leads, trial sign-ups, conversion rates, unique leads, and comments submitted. All these KPIs can be tracked and measured in the Conversions Tab.

Goal Flow Report

You can view goal flow information in the Goal Flow Report. This report shows the path your traffic travelled through a funnel towards a goal conversion. It allows marketers to see the source, medium, page, or other dimension that leads up to the goals set in Google Analytics.

Site Speed Report

You can view site speed information through the Site Speed Report. This data is particularly useful, as many website visitors will leave a website if it takes too long to load. That's why it's important to know the load time of your pages, and to see if it's having a negative effect on user experience. The Site Speed Report helps web developers and marketers to better understand bounce rates, and detect any compatibility issues with browser types. It also helps them improve the overall web experience.

Creating an Event-Tracking goal

You create an Event-Tracking goal when you want to track interactions with your site that cannot be tracked with standard analytics code. This could include actions like video views or PDF downloads.

Site Content Report

You might want to look at the individual pages on your website, and see how users interacted with each page. You can do this by using the Site Content Report. This reporting area allows you to view reports on how you can improve your content to achieve better results from users.

Key settings setting up your account

account property view filter

Dimensions Terminology

describe data. They are things like country, channel, location, age, gender, and device used. Channel name Month Country Device

Benefits of Google Analytics

free easy to implement easy to install user friendly interface customizable reports & dashboards Basic + advanced options seamless integration with other google products post-click integration with non google traffic sources (ex: yahoo, bing, facebook) valuable insights

Tracking Code

google analytics code test the code installation google tag assist sending data advanced coding and analytics tracking

First party data

information you collect from your audience through your owned digital channels

Metrics Terminology

measure data. Metrics might include visitor numbers, revenue, goal completions, and so on. Sessions Users Percentage new sessions Page views Pages per session Average session duration

Goal - measuring analytics

purchase inquiry from completion brochure request newsletter sign-up file download increased session duration pages viewed per session

Overview Sub report

shows information on any event type and values you have coded into your website in one single view

Source/meduim Report

the Source tells us where traffic is coming from and the Medium is the type of traffic. Sources include Google, Bing, Facebook, Direct, and Twitter. Mediums include CPC, organic, display, social, and referral.

Importing goals

you can import goals and ecommerce transactions from Analytics into Google Ads. Simply choose the Import feature in Google Ads and select the goals you want to pull across.

Collaboration

you need to have a single source of truth when it comes to data. In other words, you need to ensure that everyone is working from the same data source. To do this, you can grant access to other users within your Google Analytics account and apply different permission settings. You can do this in the User Management section at an Account, Property, or View level.

Life Cycle Reports

Acquisition: The Acquisition report provides an overview and details on the channels that bring users and traffic to your website. Engagement: The Engagement report provides an overview and details on website interactions, known as events. Some examples of events are when a user downloads content, watches a video, or visits certain pages. You can also measure your events and conversions in the engagement reports. Monetization: The Monetization report provides an overview of ecommerce revenue generated on your website, and through your mobile app, if applicable. It details ecommerce purchases, in-app purchases, and if serving ads on your website, you can also track how much revenue you are generating from these ads. Note: Unlike Universal Analytics, ecommerce tracking isn't automatically configured for GA4 in most out-of-the-box ecommerce packages like Shopify or Squarespace. In order to add ecommerce tracking for GA4, you will need to get a website developer to add the unique GA4 tracking code to both your ecommerce checkout and 'thank you' pages, and then test the integration. Retention: The Retention report provides data on repeat visits by various cohorts, as defined by GA4

404-error pages

All Pages Report can help to identify any 404-error pages on your website by showing you the number of hits on your Error page. To do this, click on the Error 404 page in the list of all pages in Google Analytics. Open a secondary dimension and select 'previous page path'. This will show you all the pages that led to the 404-error page, and you can investigate and fix the links on these pages.

Secondary Dimensions

Alongside customization, it's possible to further segment your data. You can use Secondary Dimensions to do this. These are additional fields which can be added to standard or custom reports to get deeper insights into your data and trends.

Annotations

Annotations are small, written notes that appear as speech bubbles at the base of Google Analytics graphs. It's very easy to add an annotation. Simply press the triangle below the graph and click the new annotation button. Then, enter the details of your note. Mark it as public or private and press 'Save'. Now you will have a written record of what happened on a particular day, which you can look back on to see if it impacted traffic data over time.

Campaigns Report

Another key report is the Campaigns Report. Digital marketers engage with consumers on multiple devices and channels, not all of which are Google channels. But you still need to track how these channels drive value from your websites. To track non-Google traffic in Google Analytics, you can use the Campaigns Report. This allows you to report on a range of other digital marketing campaigns within Analytics, such as email newsletters and banner ads. The drawback of the Campaigns Report is that it only shows traffic sources and onsite engagement. You don't see cost data, impressions, CPCs, or other performance metrics. For this, you still need to refer to the individual channel interfaces - unless you schedule direct uploads of cost data to Google Analytics.

Custom segments

Custom Segments can be used in conjunction with Google Ads to help marketers make informed decisions about optimization. Try creating custom segments for your most important customer and conversion groups, as they are very powerful ways of getting insights from your data segments.

Security risks for collaboration

Data breaches Unintended or purposeful deletion of user accounts or assets Incorrectly changing settings within the tool Incorrectly modifying custom reports, filters, segments, goals, and funnels

Top conversion paths report

For a very useful visualization of the typical journeys that consumers make on their paths to purchase, we can use the Top Conversion Paths Report within the Multi-Channel Funnels Report. This report provides more granular insight into the most popular journeys users take to conversion. It shows the numerous steps and channels that drive conversions or transactions online. In this way, you can identify your opening and assisting channels, as well as your closing channels, in a visual and shareable way

Funnel Visualization Report

Funnel Visualization Report The Funnel Visualization Report is another report found in the Goals reporting area. This report should be set up during goal creation. It's very straightforward to use and it provides information about the various stages of the conversion process.

Running in Parallel

GA4 and Universal Analytics can run in parallel on your website during the transition phase, and until Universal Analytics is retired. Most businesses will continue to use Universal Analytics for day-to-day reporting for the short-term future. This is because GA4 support isn't readily available on platforms like Shopify, Squarespace, and other ecommerce providers yet. In addition, many reports available in Universal Analytics are not yet available in GA4. Although new reports are being rolled out in GA4, it's not as robust as Universal Analytics for reporting at the moment, but this is likely to change as more features are added over time. For now, we simply need to create a GA4 property and add it to our website. Once added, this will allow you to track data in both GA4 and Universal Analytics, and continue to report using Universal Analytics

Walkthrough of conversions report

Goals e-commerce multi-channel funnels

GA4 Conversions

Goals have been renamed as "Conversions" in GA4, and are triggered through website events. Most website events are tracked automatically in GA4. You can mark an event as a conversion in the Events section, or you can create custom conversions in the Conversions section in the left-hand menu. GA4 uses a cross-channel data-driven attribution model to try to determine how different channels interact and work together to drive conversions. It is anticipated that this setting will give a clearer picture of how multi-channel digital marketing efforts contribute to driving conversions.

Common Conversion Metrics

Goals: This is the number of valuable actions taken on the site, including sales, leads, or downloads. Conversion rate: This is the percentage of visitors that complete a goal. Transactions: This is the number of individual sales or shopping basket items sold on an ecommerce website. Revenue: This refers to the monetary value of the ecommerce sales.

Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4, known as GA4, is the latest iteration of Google Analytics. Unlike previous versions of Google Analytics, such as Universal Analytics, GA4 is not built to measure website visits or sessions, but rather it is built to measure website and mobile app interactions. These interactions are known as events. Events can be user actions like starting a visit, watching a video, downloading content, or viewing a specific page. Many of these events are tracked automatically by GA4 without the need for additional coding on your website.

Ecommerce Websites

If your site accepts transactions, your web development team will need to set up a special ecommerce code. This code will capture all revenue, product types, and transactions, and will share them directly with Google Analytics. Traffic sources, keywords, and campaigns are linked to these transactions to help you understand the revenue value of your channels. Personally Identifiable Information, or PII, about purchasers is not shared with Google Analytics There are three main versions: Classic Analytics: Any users of Classic Analytics should be upgraded to Universal Analytics as a priority. Universal Analytics: Universal Analytics has been the standard for the past number of years. Google Analytics 4: Google Analytics 4 is currently available, but it will take time to gain widespread adoption.

Multi-channels report types

In digital marketing, there are closing channels and assisting channels. Closing channels are the channels used just before a goal or transaction is completed. Some examples include PPC, SEO, direct email, or remarketing. However, consumers use numerous channels as they move along their paths to purchase, and these are known as assisting channels. Some examples of assisting channels are display, social media, video, and other top-of-funnel awareness and consideration-driving channels

Setting goals in google alaytics

In the Admin area, at View level, select Goals Click the Add New Goal button In Goal setup, select a template or choose a custom setup, then click Continue In Goal description, name your goal and choose a goal type, then click Continue Complete the Goal details, and click Save

Google Ads Search Query Report

In the Google Ads Search Query Report, it is possible to view information on matched search queries. These are the actual words and phrases that people type into the Google Search engine to trigger your keywords. You can also see the position in which your ads appear on the Search Engine Results Page or SERP, and the hours of day most likely to drive traffic, engagement, and conversions. This data can be used to identify high-value search queries and the time of day for peak conversions. As Google Ads offer multiple marketing options, it is possible to see Google Ads performance data for Search, Shopping, and Video campaigns directly in Google Analytics. All the channel options available within the Google Ads suite can be viewed in terms of their own specific metrics within these reports. All channels can be optimized and benchmarked against each other to maximize budget and performance.

Perfect attribution model

There are many models to choose from, but none are perfect. The model you choose should be unique to your business and should depend on your website goals and KPIs. It's worth testing how your channels look with each model, to see which tells your consumer story most effectively. To help you understand which models might be best applied to your activity, you can use the Attribution Report. This report contains a Model Comparison Tool. You can use this tool to view the value given to each channel in the path to conversion, based on the model chosen. It allows you to see what channels would look like if you applied different attribution models to them.

Creating a URL Destination goal

This is for tracking 'thank-you' pages or purchase complete pages. These are the pages that a website visitor sees after buying something, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a piece of content. It will say something like: "Thank you for downloading the whitepaper"; or "Thank you for your purchase - order complete".

Benefits of collaboration

This means that everyone is using the same reporting tool and seeing the same data as a single source of truth, so collaboration between teams and team members is enhanced. Having various access levels means that you can control how much data people see and need to see, based on their seniority and ability to analyze data. So, for example, you don't need to overwhelm people - for example, senior executives - with data they don't have time to analyze or understand

All Traffic Report

This report allows you to find visitor traffic, conversion, and engagement data for different predefined channel types, known as default groupings or channels. Default Groupings or Channels include the following: Direct: 'Direct Traffic' is when the user types the website URL into the browser and directly accesses the website. You should understand the impact of offline activities on your direct traffic, such as TV advertising, as well as other factors that influence direct traffic, such as short, memorable, or easy to spell domain names. Organic Search: 'Organic Search' refers to non-paid search visits from SEO sources. Social: 'Social' refers to traffic from social channels, as defined by Google Analytics, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Email: Tagging your email links as newsletters or email sources will allow Google Analytics to categorize this traffic as email. Affiliates: 'Affiliates' refers to traffic from other websites, with whom you have an agreement to drive sales of your product. Referral: 'Referral' is traffic from sites that link to content on your website. Other: 'Other' traffic is traffic whose dimension Google Analytics doesn't know how to define. This can be erroneously tagged email, social or PPC traffic, or new traffic sources. Paid Search: Paid Search refers to PPC traffic directly linked through Google Ads, Bing Ads, and so on. Display: 'Display' is traffic from banner display sources, and premium or Google Display Networks. It generally doesn't include social display.

time-lag report

Time-lag reporting can help you understand how long it takes for a consumer to commit to purchase or signup, by showing the length of time between their first visit to your site and the day they complete a conversion.

Tracking Data Effectively

Tracking: Firstly, tracking. You need to confirm that the analytics tracking code is applied across every page. You also need to ensure that it is has been customized to cover all relevant domains, so you can track customer interaction with your website, ecommerce transactions, and so on. Different Views: You also need to confirm that different Views are implemented in order to maximize Google Analytics' tracking capabilities. Useful Views include time zone, default page, currency, Google Ads cost source, and site-search tracking. Visits from inside company: You shouldn't track visits from inside your company or from your partners, as this can skew traffic and conversion numbers. So your Google Analytics Views should include Internal IP filtering, so that data reports don't include employee or partner traffic. Unfiltered view: It's best practice to have an unfiltered view for reference purposes. This is usually called an 'All Site Data' view. It doesn't have any filters applied, so you always have a baseline to report against. Define KPIs: Remember, everything you are tracking in Google Analytics is to help you deliver on Key Performance Indicators or KPIs. So before you begin analyzing your campaign data, it's important to define your KPIs, so that the campaign's effectiveness can be benchmarked against these metrics. Likewise, it's essential that Goals are set up in Google Analytics as a way of measuring these KPIs. Track offline marketing activity: The final word on website analytics is to consider the importance of appropriately tracking offline, as well as online, marketing activity. Not all purchases or actions happen online, so it's important to track how offline factors can influence user behavior and conversions, so you can take the appropriate action and make more informed decisions

Goal Types

URL Destination: The goal is measured when visitors reach a certain page on your website - for example, the purchase 'thank-you' page, registration complete page, inquiries received page, or subscription success page. Time on Site or Session Duration: The goal is measured by how long a visitor spends on your site. Sessions per Visit or Pages per Session: The goal is measured by how many pages each visitor sees before they leave your site. Event: The goal is measured by the on-page interactions taking place on your website. For example, video plays can be tracked by installing the event-tracking code in the video play button; calls can be tracked on mobiles when someone clicks the number on the page and calls directly from the phone

URL Builder

Use the URL Builder to configure a specific URL for the campaign you are creating. Your traffic source - for example, Facebook Your traffic medium - for example, Paid Social Your campaign name - for example, 'Summer Sale 2019' Your ad content - for example, '20% Off Summer Sale'.