Digital Analytics

Digital analytics is crucial for businesses to monitor their digital footprint and make informed
decisions. It collects data from users' interactions with websites, enabling better
decision-making. Analytics can show new user acquisition, conversions, and customer issues.
Understanding customer behaviors can generate growth for businesses and websites, ensuring
efficient use of time, energy, and money.

Using digital analytics to grow your Business

The dashboard shows us how the data compares over time, which is useful for evaluating if a
change is needed on the website, and when changes have been made, are they giving us our
desired impact.
At the bottom of this graph, you will have a few selectors we can select the day, the week, the
last 28 days, or even the last 90 days. Or we can go into more settings and select the previous
calendar year. We also can set a custom date range.

Google Analytics reporting for channels on the home page with indicators such as traffic
channel and source/medium to understand where traffic came from, what channels are growing
or not. Google CPC, which is the cost per click basis, also written sometimes is as PPC price
per click, which is our Google AdWords. The referrals show different channels that send us
traffic, such as Creator Academy on YouTube, and there’s also graphs in Tech to report on
which types of devices people most used to find the website.
At the bottom if the website is set up for E-commerce. You'll see insights about customers, what
they're looking for, and how Google Analytics has increased your bottom line. When you have
this dialed in, you will have data on user registrations, purchases, smart goals, and even how
many customers interacted with what pages, moreover, you can adjust and monitor the data
and compare in tailored dates and selectors.
How Google Analytics works
Google Analytics uses an HTML tag that's installed on the website.

Google Analytics will use this code to create a cookie for all users and collect information as the
users proceed through the website. The tracking code will allow you information about where
the user came from, such as the traffic source. Suppose it came from Google AdWords or a
referral from a Facebook page and even what type of device was used. So, let's get into what
information is collected. Then discuss what information is not collected. Let's look at the
Audience page. Our audience tab will be where the analytics account will collect demographics
such as the age and gender of the user. Additionally, this page provides information about the
users' market segment, the user's location, the language in which the browser is set, and the
user's behavior as it interacts with the website. It will tell us what technology was used to access
the website, such as the browser or the O.S. system.
15 terms and definitions you should know

1. Pageviews
Pageviews are how many times a particular page was viewed. That's simple, it doesn't count the
individual visitor, but it measures how many times that individual page was viewed. So, if the
user leaves and then comes back or refreshes the page, it will count that as a new page view.
This helps in identifying the most popular pages on your website.

Pageviews are underneath—behavior on the home page. Pageviews and unique page views
are how many times our page was viewed in an individual session or event. The visitor viewed
the page it will count as a page view if they view the page and then they come back and view it
again it will count it a second time. Unique page views don't count that as it does in regular page
views. It just depends on that an individual user saw that page one time. This is separate from
just page views because page views will count how many times that visitor viewed that
individual page with unique page views it's just counting that visitor visited this one page, and it
doesn't matter how many times they returned to it.

2. Visits and Sessions

Visits and sessions this is how many visitors have come to your website. We can see this if we
go to the homepage in Google analytics. We have users and sessions what we can see here
are the users and sessions for a given day. Notice that there are more sessions than users.

3. Users
Is the number of users, how many individual users we've had on our website, and then the
sessions are how many unique sessions were generated? If the use is inactive for 30 minutes or
the user leaves the site and returns it will start a new session.

4. Hits
if it's a page view, that's a hit if it's in tracking code set to fire for that action. That's it, so it's how
many times that tracking code is firing. We'll get into a little bit later how we know our tracking
code is firing correctly. We can now check if new, returning, and active users are reported to the
audience in Google analytics; if they are not, we may need to troubleshoot this code. New and
returning Users
Under the overview tab, we are going to discuss new and returning users. New users are the
ones that have not visited the site before, and it is the first time that Google Analytics is tracking
that customer. This last part will be important later. As you recall, Google tracks customers with
a tracking cookie. If the customer blocks cookies with a VPN or dumps all cookies, they will be a
new user every time they visit the site. Returning users have had at least one visit and have the
Google Analytics tracking cookie still attached to their online search profile.

5. New and returning Users

Under the overview tab, we are going to discuss new and returning users. New users are the
ones that have not visited the site before, and it is the first time that Google Analytics is tracking
that customer. This last part will be important later. As you recall, Google tracks customers with
a tracking cookie. If the customer blocks cookies with a VPN or dumps all cookies, they will be a
new user every time they visit the site. Returning users have had at least one visit and have the
Google Analytics tracking cookie still attached to their online search profile.

6. Segments
Segments are individual slices of the complex traffic that we have. In this case, segments can
be broken down by paid search, direct search, affiliates, display search, organic search, referral,
and social media. But they can also be broken down by demographics. I can go to audience
reports and demographics, then segment users by age group. A segment is simply breaking
down traffic into smaller chunks of data to analyze it more granularly.

7. Landing Pages
Landing pages are the pages that our customers will land on when they come to our website.
These pages are counted as the start of the customer's traffic patterns. If we're driving all the
traffic to the home page, in this case, the home page here is driving, most of the traffic. But
landing pages can be any page of the website where the visitor enters the site. For example, we
could have an ad campaign driving traffic directly to a product or blog page.

Alternatively, a user could have searched a keyword from a blog page deeper into the website.
The point is every page is a landing page and needs to be cared for like it is the first page our
customers see because sometimes it just might be.

8. Bounce rate
A bounce is when a customer comes to the website and leaves without interacting with the
website. There is something tricky about bounce rate to understand. Just because it is high
does not mean it's necessarily bad. But in most cases, a high bounce rate could indicate a
problem.

Example:
E-commerce website product page -> high bounce rate is bad.
A one-page local festival page with a map -> high bounce rate is normal.
 9. Time on Page:
Time on page represents the average amount of time in seconds a visitor is on a particular
page, so this is average for all visitors on a given web page. It represents the time between the
start of a session and switching page views or events.

10. Content
Google Analytics can monitor this and give you some good insight into what pages are being
viewed

11. Direct traffic and Referral traffic

To check traffic in Google Analytics, we need to go to the acquisitions report. From here we're
going to go to all traffic. Direct traffic often is a primary driver of website traffic. This is traffic from
sources such as bookmarked pages, or if the URL is typed in directly in the search engine,
these are examples of direct traffic. Meaning they did not use another search or platform to
reach your site. The most direct traffic will be returning users.
Referral traffic is when they have a link from somewhere else. Such as social media or other
sources or even an email campaign can be referral traffic. If you have marketing affiliates, the
traffic from these sources is going to be referrals.
12. Events and Goals
Events and goals can be the same thing. But not necessarily. Events are the custom actions
that we build into Google Analytics to help us understand how individuals interact with our
website. In this case, we have enhanced e-commerce, and we have a contact us.

Goals can be set in Google Analytics to monitor the conversion rate of various activities by
visitors to your site. These activities may include a visitor making a purchase, finishing a game,
downloading an eBook, and signing up for a newsletter.

Creating a Google Analytics account

After sign up an Email account, you can choose to be notified of Google products and services,
help button from technical support or benchmarking.

In Google property, fill in name, industry category, time zone and currency display, after that,
Google Analytics will propagate specific settings and options for us to consider.
Connecting Google Analytics to our website.
Specific windows will pop up to click that we are aware of certain pieces within Google Analytics
because of what we've selected. As we move through these boxes, I want to maximize user
engagement and select a website or app. Then can choose “increase conversions” to optimize
marketing cost, and use measure content monetization to track on ads in blog site.

Google Analytics will give users the option to connect the website with a Google tag manager
and use site tags for some applications. This is a better option than using the HTML code, as
we only doing basic website install.

Connect Google analytics to website

Go to admin -> set up assistant by install tag -> install Google tag on the website. For GA4, get
the Measurement ID under Data Streams in the account property.

With WordPress Setup and Shopify, enter Measurement ID from Google Analytics settings.
Direct Code Installation (for platforms and custom setup)
Copy the Google Analytics tracking script and paste it in the <head> section of your website’s
HTML.

Google Analytics user interface

The Google Analytics user interface offers an overview of essential website metrics and allows
users to interact with various reports. The homepage presents an audience overview,
customizable date ranges, and detailed information on user activity. Key features include:

1. User Metrics: Active user trends, acquisition reports, traffic sources (like Google Ads,
direct, and paid traffic), and geographic data (such as traffic by country).
2. User Retention: Tracks new vs. returning users, with retention rates indicating how
frequently users return over specific periods.
3. Device and Page Reports: Shows visitor devices and which pages are visited, helping
to identify user preferences.
4. Ad Campaigns and Goals: Integrates with Google Ads for monitoring campaign
performance.
 5. Realtime Reports: Displays live data on visitor activity, with GA4 providing expanded
real-time insights directly from the top of the admin page.

The GA4 interface has been updated to reduce redundant data and improve accessibility of
detailed insights compared to the previous Universal Analytics (UA) accounts.