Digital Analytics
Google Analytics for Beginners | CXL Course Review
It’s a data-driven time we live in, but raw data can’t help you make decisions.
We need to collect all the data, transform it into useful information, and hopefully present insights creatively so that no one falls asleep at the presentation. I’m on my way to learning exactly those skills.
Summary:
For those of you who don’t have too much time, just skip to the part of this article you came here for:
- Short introduction
- Why I chose CXL Institute Digital Analytics Minidegree program
- My thoughts about CXL Institute Google Analytics for Beginners
- CXL Institute Google Analytics for Beginners in a word (or two)
- Conclusion
Short introduction
The decision of career shift didn’t come to me as a surprise. For the last ten years, I was either writing content or making plans on when and where to post content. And truth to be told, I’m a bit bored by that.
So, I decided to make a career turn to digital analytics. And who can better learn how to convert a large amount of data into easy-to-understand and useful information than someone used to keep 30+ tabs open researching for appropriate keywords, or studying social media insights, trying to write a completely new, never-seen-before piece of both SEO and HEO art?
Why I chose CXL Institute Digital Analytics Minidegree program
If you want to land a job, you need to have proven skills and capabilities. If you want to switch careers, you have to learn new skills. The best way of learning is to actually do something. However, that’s not always possible for many different reasons. Some people can’t afford to be interns, some people don’t want to.
Time is an especially limited source and thus especially valuable. As a work-at-home mom in time of #covid-19 lockdowns, I feel particularly proficient in that subject.
Searching for the right course wasn’t an easy task. Try to google it yourself, you’ll be overwhelmed with the number of results and lack of even the smallest idea where to start from. So did what most of us do when searching for recommendations: I asked my friends.
The CXL Institute was mentioned more than once, so I went on the CXL webpage and a copywriter in me was instantly blown away. What I liked the most is that one sentence:
Become great at marketing.
That’s it, that sold the course to me.
Not a single word about certificates, nor about the salary you’ll be making after the course.
CXL Institute teaches you advanced level skills in customer acquisition, analytics, and conversion optimization.
And that’s all you actually need if you want to make a career in online marketing.
Let me take a bit more of your time and explain briefly why I noted that there were no certificates mentioned, nor the salary you’ll be making.
Go to Google and search for digital marketing certification. If the author of the article was saying that certification is a must, you could be sure s/he wants to sell you (at least) one.
And as for the salary, the only way your lecturer would know for sure how much money you’ll be making is if s/he will be your employer after you finish the course.
Anyway, the decision was made, and I started a Minidegree program on Monday, November 8th. For the next 12 weeks, I’ll be writing my thoughts on the content as well as a more or less detailed understanding of the content discussed.
If you want to give it a try, there are several free CXL courses you can take. That’s the best way to check if the CXL learning process is satisfactory by your standards.
My thoughts about CXL Institute Google Analytics for Beginners
The first course is Google Analytics for Beginners, of how to “go from zero to effective in using Google Analytics”, as stated on the course page.
The instructor is Chris Mercer, a Measurement Marketer (MeasurementMarketing.io) who started his career in radio advertising.
I noticed that right away: it was the tone of his voice, the right choice of words, and perfect diction. Google Analytics for Beginners course is over 9 hours long, but this amazing instructor slash host makes it as easy for your ears as listening to a favorite radio station — OK, minus the music.
Five out of twelve courses within Digital Analytics Minidegree are taught by Mercer. The other seven all have a different instructor. You’ll read more about them in the next period.
The accent of learning through CXL courses is on watching videos with tutorials. As seen on the screenshot above, there are several parts of the course page: table of content, video player, search bar, transcript. Below the transcript, you’ll find topics that are covered.
Search within transcript works great, and every word is tame-stamped, so click will play the video when that particular word is said.
If you prefer reading over watching, you’ll be disappointed. The transcript isn’t worth much if you didn’t watch the course. And even then, because what Mercer does is making changes in Google Analytics in real-time and talks about what he’s doing, most of the time it can look a bit messy by just reading the transcript.
There’s one thing I’d like to change about this course: Lesson slides. It would be more helpful if slides were like a lesson recap and less like a backup for the speaker. I’d like to go back to the slides once in a while, to go through the lesson without needing to watch the video again. Was I not making my own notes, I wouldn’t have anything to go back to.
I have a confession to make: before I started the Google Analytics for Beginners course, I was sure I’ll skip it. I’ve been a GA user since the beginning of time, and I easily passed the Google Analytics Individual Certification just recently.
So, full of self-confidence I skipped all the lessons and went straight to the Final Exam.
I failed famously.
You need 90% or higher to pass — I got only 43%. And let me remind you, I’m using Google Analytics at least once a week for like 10 years so far.
It’s not that I don’t know my way around Google Analytics. I can read data, interpret it, and pull out some useful information. What I was lacking is the advanced (and) technical part.
When you get your driver’s license, you don’t (have to) know much about how a car engine works, what’s the difference between cars with diesel engine vs. cars with a petrol engine. There’s no need for having to know how to change headlight bulbs.
All you have to do is just learn how to get yourself from place A to place B shifting gears and pushing the gas or brake pedal. And if something is broken, there’re car services near you eager to help.
Some people learn how to change oil by themselves, that’s true, but those are more advanced users. Average Sandras don’t know much beyond what’s necessary.
I know how to drive myself from point A to point B using Google Analytics safely and on time. But now I want to learn more about the system so I can use that power and help you make cars even better. Or even make my own car.
CXL Institute Google Analytics for Beginners in a word (or two)
As you can see from so many H3s below, Chris Mercer made an exceptional effort to cover even the smallest feature. Don’t let the title mislead you, the skills you gain will be way beyond basic.
When you finish the course, the Certificate of Achievement will be issued. You will find it in your account dashboard (My account > Certificates). From there, it can easily be shared to most major social networks. Also, you can add it directly to your LinkedIn profile with one click. It is stored under the Licences and Certifications section, with an active URL to the credentials website.
Because this is meant to be a review and not a tutorial (nor course transcript), I won’t be writing about every detail course covered.
If you have any questions about this exact course or CXL Insitute generally, by all means, feel free to write a comment or send me a message.
Introduction to Google Analytics Basics
Google Analytics helps you answer the How question. “How did we earn money?” “How did people find our website?” “How did they make a purchase?” “How our customers go through the eCommerce funnel?”
Clients come to us making lots of money and they have no idea how they’re doing it. That’s not abnormal and you’re going to hear that story over and over and over again. Maybe you’re already in that position yourself. What happens is, instead of saying Okay, money’s pouring into a black box, something happens that results come out, you’re going to use Google Analytics to shed some light on the subject and actually show (…) and say hey, let’s lift this thing up and let’s see exactly how this is happening.
When (And When NOT) To Use Google Analytics
Google Analytics is incredible at storing data, so use it to store data, but not to build reports.
You can use the Tag Manager to collect the information and Data Studio to build your reports.
Where GA Fits in the Measurement Ecosystem
Google Analytics is part of Google’s Marketing Platform.
There are two versions of Google Analytics: the free version and Analytics 360 for Enterprise level. Which one you would choose depends on how much traffic and data you’re storing and how in-depth you want some of these reports to get.
Go to the official comparison between the free Analytics and Analytics 360 by following this link.
Installing Google Analytics
Going through the installation step by step would take this article beyond basic info about the course, so I’ll leave that out.
If you need an explanation, go to Google Analytics Help, they did an outstanding job making installation as easy as possible.
Using the Google Analytics Demo Account
The Google Analytics demo account is a fully functional Google Analytics account that any Google user can access. It’s an awesome way to look at real business data and experiment with Google Analytics features.
You will need your Google account, Google Suite account, Google Apps account, Gmail account, whatever you’re using to access your own Analytics. If you do not have an account yet, you’ll be prompted to create one.
To access the GA demo account, click the ACCESS DEMO ACCOUNT.
Getting to know Google Analytics
There are different types of reports available in Google Analytics, and you need to know why you want to use each one and which specific questions are they better at answering.
Before starting a journey in Google Analytics, you need to understand two basic terms: metric and dimension.
Metric are numbers, and Dimension is an attribute of a data set.
Secondary Dimension is an additional dimension you can add to a report for a more specific analysis.
Realtime Reports
Real-Time allows you to monitor activity as it happens on your site or app. The reports are updated continuously and each hit is reported seconds after it occurs.
You can see how many people are on your site right now, which pages or events they’re interacting with, and which goal conversions have occurred.
Audience Reports
Audience reports answer the “Who are my users?” question. They provide you with insights about the characteristics of your users. You can extract information about your audience demographics (age, gender), interests, geolocation, and device of preference (mobile, tablet, desktop).
Acquisition Reports
Acquisition reports answer the “Where are my users coming from?” question. We are using them to compare the performance of different marketing channels and discover which sources send the highest quality traffic and conversions.
Behavior Reports
Behavior reports answer the “What actions are my users taking?” question. Those reports tell you what pages people visit and what actions they take while visiting. You can monitor the speed of your site, and the use of your internal site search.
Conversion Reports
Conversion reports answer the “What are the results of my users’ actions?” question. Here you’ll find metrics to evaluate the results of all actions on your business, whether it is revenue or other valuable events, such as sign-ups, leads, or subscribers.
Note: Conversion reports need to be set up before you can start using them!
Getting started: Account Settings
All of your Google Analytics accounts can optionally be grouped under an Organization. When you create an account, you also automatically create a Property and, within that property, a View for that account.
User permissions mean you can assign permission to the other users at the Account, Property, or View level. Each level takes over permissions from the level above it.
Property Settings
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.
View Settings
Each property can have multiple Views.
The View level lets you set Goals, which is a way of tracking conversions or business objectives from your website.
Always have a raw data view, and make sure its name contains a “Do Not Delete” note. This view is to make sure that you have a backup of your data safely stored. You should never add any filters to this view.
Main View / Master View is the one you use for reporting regularly.
The third must-have View is the “Test View”. The name says it all: you’ll test all your goals, filters, settings here. And only when everything looks okay for at least several days, you’ll apply those settings to Master View.
Note: New views only include data from the date the view was created and onwards!
If you delete a view, only administrators can recover that view within a limited amount of time!
Filters — The Basics
You can use Filters in configuration settings to determine what data you want to include in the reports for each view.
Simply put, Filters are rules that Google Analytics applies to the data during processing.
A useful resource of basic Google Analytics Filters will help you to get started.
Be cautious not to apply any filter on your Raw data (unfiltered View)!
Understanding Traffic: Types of Traffic
Google Analytics automatically capture Source, Medium, and Campaign name for each user who comes to your site.
Source is where your website’s traffic comes from: individual websites, Google, Facebook, etc.
Medium is how it got there: organic traffic, paid traffic, referral, etc.
Customizing Traffic Sources
To be able to identify the campaigns that refer traffic, you should always add parameters to URLs. Custom URLs allow you to collect campaign data.
There are 5 parameters you can add to your URLs:
- utm_source: Identify the advertiser, site, publication, etc. that is sending traffic to your property,
- utm_medium: The advertising or marketing medium, for example, CPC, banner, email newsletter.
- utm_campaign: The individual campaign name, slogan, promo code, etc. for a product.
- utm_term: Identify paid search keywords.
- utm_content: Used to differentiate similar content or links within the same ad.
Each parameter must be paired with a value that you assign. Each parameter-value pair then contains campaign-related information.
Understanding Results
There are four most common types of Goals used:
- Destination or Pageviews Goals: when a user views a particular page on your website
- Duration Goals: based on sessions that last over a set amount of time
- Pages per Session Goals: whether a user has viewed a set amount of pages in a session
- Event Goals: when a particular action is defined as an event is triggered.
Note: A conversion is counted once per session per configured goal.
Ecommerce
The Ecommerce reports allow you to analyze purchase activity on your website or app.
Standard versus enhanced eCommerce reporting, as explained by Mercer:
(…) standard is all about the results. Essentially, “Here’s what you sold.” And enhanced is “Here’s what you sold” and here’s how they journeyed through to “actually get the purchase done”. So it’s the how and the results, which is great. But enhanced has more of a set-up, there’s necessarily more pieces back there to set up, and more things to track, so you have to go slower.
Analyzing Reports — The Basics
There’s one step in Google Analytics that most people just leave out. Too bad, because this is the most important step. The last step is the reason we are analyzing data in the first place: to take an action.
Read this insightful article comparing Google Analytics Report vs. Analysis to find out how to get the most from your Analytics.
Conclusion
Chris Mercer’s Google Analytics for Beginners course on CXL Institute is an excellent way to dive into Digital Analytics. Even if you do have some previous knowledge and some experience, do give it a chance.
You’ll be positively surprised by the details and topics covered and be able to start making changes to your Analytics reporting right after.
Do have in mind that this course is better when you watch videos. Don’t expect to read through the transcript and understand it all.
