Does anyone understand Google Analytics?

Ok, this is not on my usual subject of gardens and gardening, but this is becoming a really big beef of mine.

Now I am of an age where I left school just as computers arrived…but I have managed to build my own website and surprisingly for a pre computer age bod, I can turn my hand quite well to computers.

I also (at the last count & much to the embarrassment/annoyance of my children) clocked up an IQ score of over 130 last year…..but can I even begin to get my head round Google Analytics — pah!

“ I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” (R. Feynman)”

— is the same true for Google Analytics?

Clearly GA has been written by some extremely clever programmers, analysts, statisticians and mathematicians, but they seem to have forgotten that everyone else isn’t!

For example, what does this actually mean?

Calculated Metrics are user-defined metrics that are computed from existing metrics and drive more relevant analysis and enable greater actionability without leaving the product. Use calculated metrics within custom reports, dashboards or widgets

or this?

DBM is Google’s cross-exchange real-time-bidding buying solution for large customers

Or this little beauty….

Acquisition Date cohorts by User Retention ?

Now I am sure there are many thousands of you who have grown up cohorting your Acquisition Data quite happily.

However, there are many millions of us who who have just worked out that widgets aren’t actually the things your husband threw in his ‘man-drawer’ in the garage!

So, here is a wonderful business opportunity for some bright spark out there….

Create a real self help book on Analytics…but write it backwards.

Start with the problem and then show how to resolve it, rather than tell me everything Analytics can actually do….I don’t really need to know that!

I know about plants, I can design a garden and I understand marketing, I know my own website, but using Analytics I don’t know how to begin to find out answers to simple problems like….

How can I find out what page people look at for the longest?

Can I compare the page views from before I advertised to the page views afterwards…easily.

Which page causes most people to drop off my site?

I simply don’t have the time to work out how to set up an attribution model using the prescribed metrics to analyse my content grouping sets!

Genius is all about finding simple solutions to a complex problems, anyone can come up with complex solutions.

E=mc2 anyone?

So, to the bright sparks amongst you, data is useless, information is king.

Ask what questions need answering; if you can answer these simply — well that would be genuis, wouldn’t it?