Digital Analytics MiniDegree from CXL — every marketer must try — Part 11 Review
CXL Institute’s Digital Analytical Mini degree has become quite helpful in knowing from very little to knowing much more.
As always I start by saying analytics is the sexiest word, for at least the professionals who understand it, most of the students and professionals are following this as a career, rather for the pay than its actual understanding and passion. Let’s not argue over this, since it has lots of points balancing on either side of the equation.
Before I go any further I will just give a brief on myself, I am Nischith a sales & marketing professional working in the health sector. I live in Bangalore India and I am from Mysore, City of Heritage.
The information shared below is based on the learnings from CXL Institute, you need to have a bare understanding of what Digital Marketing or Google analytics is, as CXL themselves say their courses are not for beginners. Let’s dive in, I hope I give you a good insight into their teaching.
Today we will summarize what is taught and I learned in the CXL’s Mini Degree.
A disclaimer before going ahead, All the information is from CXL’s Digital Minidegree program, the summary mentioned below consists of the exact match of words from the course.
Yes, we started with the Google Analytics beginners course which is a part of the free courses available on CXL at least which you need to try before jumping into the specialization. The Basic Free Courses includes
Product analytics, Google Analytics for beginners(included in the mini degree), Google Tag Manager for Beginners (Included in the mini degree), Attribution(Included in the mini degree), Storytelling, Branding, Building a marketing agency, Data-driven influencer marketing, Marketing management, Project Management for Marketers, Product marketing for technology companies, SEO driven editorial calendar, Intro to CRO, CRO Agency masterclass, A/B testing foundations(Included in the mini degree), Supermetrics for marketers
Worth taking the course for free.
Coming back to Beginners Google Analytics the course taught on what it offers, how to utilize it at a basic level including the understanding of why Google Analytics is used,
Collect data [Google TagManager- Collection]
Store data and [Google Analytics- Analyses]
Share reports [Google Studio- Visualization]
You also understood you can start the exploration from the Google Accounts Demo Account in case you don’t have your own website, such is the ease of availability of resources to learn google analytics.
Google Analytics is quite an important tool for digital data analysis. It provides a variety of information regarding the behavior of the visitors to the website.
The Structure for handling Google Analytics,
- Setting up a Google Analytics Account [consider adding Tracking id to the website]
- Admin settings for Google Analytics
- Creating views and backing up your account
Admin access has 3 levels:
Account Level
Property Level
View Level
Different types of reports: Overview report, Flow reports, Table Reports
Dimensions & metrics in Google Analytics
Metrics are parameters on which Dimensions are explained, metrics are the numbers and dimensions are the variables.
Example of Dimensions and Metrics in Table Report
Now, let’s see different reports available at your disposal to understand the customers and insights to optimize the process. You need to note one important thing Google analytics also SEO, Campaigns with Search Engine Marketing & Social Media Marketing.
Different reports available in Google Analytics:
The Realtime Reports — “Testing”
The Audience report — “Who”
The Acquisition Reports — “where”
The Behavior Reports — “what — Actions”
The Conversion report —“Results”
Some of the important metrics which are discussed
Bounce Rate, Sessions, Pages/ Sessions, Average Session Duration, Users, New Users
Few other important concepts from the intermediate Google Analytics Module
Clean Data in Mind,
Filtering Out SPAM: Looking for spam is the first step, identifying them and taking the necessary steps discussed in the module to remove spam.
In Google Analytics everything that’s recorded is not necessarily from an actual user, It can be spam-generated traffic and fortunately, there are someway you can actually filter that out.
Dirty data is hiding the story that Google Analytics naturally wants to tell you, right? The more you could get the data cleaned the more you are able to tell the story efficiently.
Clean data excluding internal data: having your dev-ops team working on the website and you need to exclude those hits, otherwise, it would affect the priority decision taken for or against the reporting analytics.
Clean data by Making the hostname to Lowercase, the URI request to Lowercase, the Search Term to Lowercase, the Campaign Dimensions to Lowercase
Through the modules it was also made clear learning REGEX — Regular Expression is quite important.
The concept of Cross-Domain Tracking was taught and how to do it fix it in the google analytics platform
Then the most important concept taught in the beginner google analytics course is QIA Framework
Q -Question
I -Information
A -Action
Summary of the next module is Google Analytics 4 — GA4,
After going through a major transformation in the past 2 decades through Urchin Analytics, Classical Google Analytics to Universal Google Analytics to Google Analytics 4 which is evolved as the next-generation version of google analytics.
Below are the few changes updated in GA4
Brand New UI
New tracking Methods
Realtime reports
Huge improvements to debugging
New Audience Builder
New Conversion Tracking
New Funnel Reports
The elapsed time between steps and action in funnels
Next Pathing report
Free Big Query Linking
Following the Google, Analytics updates have created great hope for marketers who followed it through GA4.
We also learned a module on Google Analytics Audit,
Begining with few tools to understand and do Google Analytics,
what has to be audited in the setup :
Account Level
Property and View: Test Views, Main View, Raw View
Accuracy: Page Views
Accuracy: Hostnames
Accuracy: IP Filters
Data Source: Default Channel Groups
Data Source: Site Crawling
Content Grouping: Content Grouping and Query Parameters
User Interaction: GA Events
User Interaction: GA Goals
Personally Identifiable Information & Enhanced Ecommerce
You can refer to this link for a somewhat detailed map of Google Audit
Then there was a module on Identifying opportunities in Google Analytics,
Here we understood how to use specific cues in converting numbers to opportunities. Below is the gist which we saw in the module
- Determine appropriate goals & filters
- Set conversion goals
- Better understand your audience
- Evaluate traffic quality
- Understand the implications of key metrics such as bounce rate & page value
- Use segments & secondary dimensions
- Interpret potential errors in your data
- Using event tracking
- Audit your analytics
Next, we had a tint of A/B testing Foundations
How to run a statistically valid A/B test and what to test at an introductory level. You should take this course if you want to learn why, when, and how to run the A/B test.
We will run through the remaining summary in the next review.
Once again thanks to CXL for this wonderful opportunity to avail of the scholarship for the Mini-degree Program.