Better data enables better decision making, and it begins with how you track it – to provide more context to what’s already out there. Because by knowing more about the context, you’ll be better equipped and informed. When I’m interviewing prospective interns or senior roles for our marketing team and we get to questions about their knowledge of Google Analytics, I always ask them two questions to get a sense of their proficiency level: Have you worked with Advanced Segments Do you know how to use Event Tracking and can you explain how it works? To me, both are essential for getting a better sense of the data and the users on your site. With this post I’d like to explain the importance of Event Tracking and how we use
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Guest Posts
Following Krista’s excellent post on using secondary dimensions in Google Analytics, this post will explain the GA represents your data using its internal data model and why it’s important to understand this. You’ll see that certain combinations of metrics and dimensions don’t mean what you might think, and that some are actually completely invalid. We’ll cover examples of secondary dimensions and custom reports where seemingly sensible reports are invalid and how to spot and avoid these mistakes. Introduction We see the world through our eyes, we smell the world through our nose, we taste it in our mouths and we feel it in our finger-tips. We perceive the world using the same senses but, philosophically we have unique, individual perspectives when we think about the world and what it means
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“Ultimately, data collection boils down to a simple thing: gathering meaningful data. What meaningful means is something that must be negotiated uniquely for each business case, each project, each product, each organization, and each platform.” Whenever I think about this quote by my friend Simo Ahava (who has a blog chock full of wonderful content), my thoughts immediately drift to Custom Dimensions. What are Custom Dimensions? Custom Dimensions, as you may have guessed based upon the name, are simply custom ways to collect data for use in Google Analytics. By analyzing meaningful data stored in Custom Dimensions we are able to understand more about user behavior on our sites, which will guide business actions. The more we know about the user and their behavior, the more informed our decisions will be. One
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I run Google Analytics training workshops that take users from ‘never seen it before’ through to ‘grown up GA practitioner’. A key success metric for me is how many people answer ‘Yes’ when I ask if a certain piece of functionality is new to them. If folks are learning new things, this is good! I have certain ‘favourites’ when it comes to the new functionality question. These are not new but they are seldom used so they appear to be new. They’re certainly exciting because they add power to the product and streamline how users use it. They’re golden! Take a look at these three examples. Are these new to you? They’re easy to learn and will add new super-powers to your GA skills. 1: Keyboard Shortcuts You can
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