Digital Analytics
Facebook Analytics | CXL Review
Learn more about your customers by connecting web, app, and Facebook data
“Facebook Analytics” is part of Digital Analytics Minidegree. This is a short (around 80 minutes) course, split into four lessons. The instructor is a well-known expert in digital analytics Chris Mercer, from MeasurementMarketing.io.
Table of content:
- Get to know Facebook analytics
- Set Up Facebook analytics
- A Tour of Facebook Analytics
- Building Funnel Reports in Facebook Analytics
- Closing
Get to know Facebook analytics
Facebook Analytics is not Facebook Insights, it’s much more. This is is a completely separate platform made by Facebook, and it has its own app for both Android and iOS users.
Facebook Analytics combines your data sources (web site, mobile app, Facebook Page) so you can measure across channels and get a complete view of your customer behavior across channels.
Web
With web site tracking you can measure site activity to better understand the actions that people take. Also, you will see aggregated demographics.
Apps
Get aggregated demographics and rich insights (how many people launch your app, how often people make purchases, etc.):
- iOS — Log events from your app with Facebook’s iOS SDK. The event can be one of 14 pre-defined events (added to the basket, achieved a level in a game), or any custom events you define.
- Android — Log events from your app via Facebook’s Android SDK to observe how many users install your app, what is the frequency of app activations, how much time they spend using it, and other behavioral and demographic data.
With Facebook Analytics, you can view your Facebook Page analytics, Messenger, and Facebook Games.
You can take a look at how Facebook Analytics looks like with the Facebook Analytics Demo Account.
Set Up Facebook Analytics
In Facebook Analytics, everything is an “event”: page view, lead, purchase, add to cart. Everything that you ever measure via Facebook Analytics is called an event.
These events can come from different sources: web site, app, Facebook Page, Instagram account. You can group them with Event Source Groups.
Before you start with setting up Facebook Analytics, you need to add your event sources in Business Manager. Without using BM, you can’t save a group of event sources unless they are all linked in Business Manager. Do it either within the same business or within multiple businesses that have partner permissions enabled. To learn how to do that, visit the official Facebook Business Manager Help.
There are four steps on how to set up Facebook Analytics:
- Integrate your channels (see illustration below)
- Review the events and parameters you’re logging (sending) in Activity > Events.
- Log additional events and parameters as needed.
- Confirm that events and parameters are logging correctly.
Additional resources:
- Facebook Analytics
- Facebook’s Guide to Facebook Analytics Set Up
- Facebook’s Guide to Grouping Event Sources
- Facebook’s Guide to ESGs vs. Private Groups
A Tour of Facebook Analytics
In Facebook Analytics, you can create custom dashboards. Use them to build a customized view, or to see the most important information in one place.
Chart types that in Facebook Analytics are:
- Bar: A bar chart for the event, or events, you’ve selected to help you determine your stand out segments or components of an event.
- Breakdown: A table that requires at least one breakdown to assess parameters with unique or specific values.
- Cohort Heat Map and Cohort Trend: A cohort heat map or trend line (Cohort Trend) to display metrics about a group of people who completed an event you defined (activity X), followed by a subsequent event you defined (activity Y).
- Funnel: A funnel you define with sequential events (in chronological order) as steps to view conversion rate, drop-offs, and time to conversion.
- KPI: A high-level numerical metric for a selected event.
- Overlap: A Venn diagram that deduplicates people’s actions across different breakdowns.
- Pie: A pie chart that requires a breakdown. We recommend this chart when you apply a breakdown with mutually exclusive parameters that have only a few values.
- Trend: A line chart for the event, or events, you’ve selected over a specified time frame.
The Activity enables you to learn about your active users, the revenue they’re generating, and the actions they’re taking in your product over time through cohorts and funnels.
Note that in the People section, you can only look at information from the last 28 days.
You can use the Compare feature in Facebook Analytics to view two sets of data on a single page, each with its own filters.
To change the information displayed in charts in Facebook Analytics, select a new metric (Metric) or time interval (Time Interval) from the top right of each chart. Also, you can break down the information you see in these charts by selecting a new parameter (Show By).
Use Filters to learn about the audience of your app, website, Facebook Page, or other supported event source.
In Facebook Analytics, you can create Custom Audiences from filters, saved, or unsaved. Custom Audiences can be created for apps, pixels, and groups that only contain apps and pixels.
A Custom Audience gives you an opportunity to show ads to people who already know your business on Facebook, and are Facebook users.
You can generate a Lookalike Audience to help you reach people similar to one of your Custom Audiences.
You can use a Lookalike Audience to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they “look like” your current customers.
For further reading:
Building Funnel Reports in Facebook Analytics
As in any other analytics system, Funnels in Facebook Analytics consist of events, which act as steps you want to quantify. Create funnels to measure conversions for a sequence of actions and to see how long it takes for conversions to occur.
Note: Anyone with access to your Facebook Analytics can create funnels, but only Admins and Developers can save, edit, or delete them.
More info:
Closing
Facebook Analytics allows you to combine different data sources to measure across channels. This way you can get a complete view of your customer behavior across various channels.
After finishing this CXL Institute course, you will be able to connect your data sources to Facebook Analytics and extract useful information.
More reviews of the CXL courses:
