Advanced Google Analytics

Google Analytics Academy

Contents
How Google Analytics collects data ......................................................................... 4

Introduction........................................................................................................... 4

Website data collection ...................................................................................... 4

Anatomy of a "hit" ................................................................................................ 4

Categorizing data into users and sessions ............................................................. 6

New vs. Returning Users ................................................................................... 6

Defining Sessions ............................................................................................... 7

Joining Google Analytics data with other sources ......................................... 8

Applying configuration settings - Transforming data using configuration rules . 9

Data Filters ........................................................................................................... 9

Goals ................................................................................................................... 10

Channel and Content Groupings .................................................................... 11

Custom Dimensions and Metrics .................................................................... 11

Data Import......................................................................................................... 11

Storing data to generate reports quickly ................................................................ 12

How to create a measurement plan ....................................................................... 15

Click through the measurement plan ............................................................................. 16

Managing multiple accounts or properties ............................................................ 19

Accounts ............................................................................................................. 19

Properties ........................................................................................................... 20

User permissions............................................................................................... 21

How to set up advanced filters on views ............................................................... 22

Predefined Filters .............................................................................................. 22

Custom Filters .................................................................................................... 22

How to set up Custom Dimensions ........................................................................ 25

Overview ............................................................................................................. 25
 Set up .................................................................................................................. 25

Using Custom Dimensions in your reports .................................................... 27

How to set up Custom Metrics ................................................................................ 27

How to set up Event Tracking ................................................................................. 30

Introduction to segmentation ................................................................................... 33

Default Segments .............................................................................................. 34

Custom Segments............................................................................................. 34

Using custom segments for analysis ..................................................................... 35

Using the Channels report for analysis .................................................................. 38

Using Multi-Channel Funnel reports for analysis ................................................. 42

Attribution Modeling .......................................................................................... 42

Multi-Channel Funnel reports .......................................................................... 43

Using activity, cohorts, and benchmarking for audience analysis ..................... 45

Using Custom Reports for Analysis ....................................................................... 51

Introduction to remarketing ...................................................................................... 54

Introduction to Dynamic Remarketing .................................................................... 56

Course Conclusion .................................................................................................... 59

 Data Collection and Processing

How Google Analytics collects data

Introduction

Hi, I’m Justin Cutroni. And I’m Krista Seiden. We’re Analytics Advocates at Google.
Welcome to Advanced Google Analytics. If you’ve already taken our course Google
Analytics for Beginners, you should be well prepared to take this next step in your
understanding of Analytics.

Website data collection

Let’s start by showing you some specifics on how Google Analytics collects data.
Remember that website data collection begins with a snippet of JavaScript tracking code
that’s included on every web page of the site where you want to collect data. The goal of
the tracking code is to track each user interaction that occurs on your website. These
interactions can be as simple as loading a page or something more specific like clicking a
video play button or a link.

The Analytics tracking code uses the domain of the website you are tracking to define it
as a “site” in your reports. With the tracking code installed, Google Analytics will drop a
cookie in the user’s browser for that website and any related subdomains. This makes it
easy to track traffic on a single website URL domain or subdomain by default.

Note that if you install the same default tracking code on pages with different
domains, Analytics will count these users and sessions separately. If you need to
track users across different domains, you will need to set up cross-domain tracking,
which we’ll discuss later.
Anatomy of a "hit"

With each user interaction on your website, the Analytics tracking code sends what’s
called a “hit” to Google Analytics. A “hit” is a URL string with parameters of useful
information about your users. It looks something like this:
If we break down the URL string, you can see that it’s passing some useful information to
Analytics about the user that triggered the hit. For example, we can see things like:

 the language the user’s browser is set to

 the name of the page they’re viewing
 the screen resolution of the user’s device
 and the Analytics ID that associates that hit to the correct Analytics account.

This is just some of the information passed in the hit, depending on the user interaction
with the site and what is being tracked. The hit will also include other information like a
randomly-generated user identifier. This will allow Google Analytics to differentiate
between new and returning users.

The three most common types of hits are:

 “pageview” hits
 “event” hits
 and “transaction” hits

A “pageview” hit is triggered when a user loads a webpage with the tracking code. This is
the most common type of hit sent to Analytics. Every time a user opens a page with the
tracking code, a new pageview hit will be sent.

An “event” hit lets you track every time a user interacts with a particular element on your
website. For example, you can track whether users click a video Play button, a particular
URL, or a product carousel. Event hits pass four parameters of data in the URL: event
action, category, label, and value. You can use these to categorize interactions in reports
that are specific to your website. We’ll go into more detail on event tracking a little later.

A “transaction” hit (also called an “ecommerce” hit) can pass data to Analytics about
ecommerce purchases such as products purchased, transaction IDs, and “stock keeping
units” (or SKUs).

If you’ve set up Enhanced Ecommerce within Google Analytics, you can also pass
additional ecommerce data like product category, whether items have been added or
removed from a shopping cart, and how many times users viewed a product on a
website.
There are additional hits such as “social hits” that can pass likes, shares, or tweet data;
and “page timing hits” that allow you to report on page timings, but the Pageview, Event,
and Transaction hits are the three most common.

We’ve discussed some of the information passed in hits such as Language and Page
Title. But Google Analytics widens that data using other sources such as IP address,
server-log files, and other ad-serving data. Using this additional information, Analytics
can understand things like:

 a user’s location;
 specifics about their browser and operating system;
 their age and gender;
 and the source/medium that referred them to a site.

You’ll recognize many of these parameter names passed in the hit or widened with
additional data because they get turned into the dimensions that make up your reports in
Google Analytics. Remember that dimensions are just ways to categorize metric data like
all the metrics for a specific “country” or “device type.”

Once the hit is sent to Google Analytics and combined with additional data, all of this
information is ready for processing by the Analytics servers. Understanding how
Analytics collects and processes data can help you better understand your reports and
what the data means.

Categorizing data into users and sessions

Let’s look at the first few steps in which Google Analytics processes data.

 First, Analytics determines new vs. returning users.

 Then it categorizes hits into session (or periods in which the user engaged with
the site).
 Next, it joins data from the tracking code with other data sources.

New vs. Returning Users

In the first step, Google Analytics differentiates new from returning users. When a user
arrives on a page with tracking code, Google Analytics creates a random, unique ID that
gets associated with the user’s browser cookie. Analytics considers each unique ID to be
a unique user. Every time a new ID is detected, Analytics counts a “new user” and sends
it over with the hit. When Analytics detects an existing ID, it sends a “returning user”
value with the hit.

There are a couple of limitations to note about differentiating users. Since Analytics uses
a browser cookie to determine unique users over a given session, this information will be
lost if a user clears or has blocked that cookie in their web browser. If a user clears their
browser cookies, Google Analytics will set a new unique ID the next time a browser loads
a tracked web page. Analytics will then count that user as “New,” rather than “Returning.”

Google Analytics can identify users over multiple sessions, as long as the sessions
happen in the same browser on the same device. Analytics doesn’t recognize users who
visit your website from different devices by default and will count each device as a unique
user. If you wish to track users across devices, you’ll need to turn on the User ID feature,
which we’ll cover later.

Defining Sessions

Next, in order to understand a user’s level of engagement with a website, Google

Analytics groups user hits based on the time in which they were generated. To measure
these periods, Analytics uses a metric called “sessions.”

Remember that on websites, a session begins when a user navigates to a page that
includes the Google Analytics tracking code and generates a “pageview” hit. It will end
after 30 minutes if no other hits are recorded. If a user returns to a page after a session
ends, a new session will begin.

Let’s look at a few examples of how hits can be organized into sessions.

For our first example, If a user visited the homepage of the Google Merchandise Store
and then left immediately without clicking on anything, Google Analytics will record one
“pageview” hit for that user in a single session.

But let’s take a look at a second example: A user lands on the homepage of the Google
Merchandise Store. The session begins with a “pageview” hit. Then the user clicks the
play button for a video that is being tracked with event tracking. This triggers an “event”
hit. Google Analytics will record two hits for that user in that session: a “pageview” hit for
the home page, and an “event” hit for clicking the play button.

In a third example, a user visits the store and lands on the homepage. They immediately
open a new tab in their browser to view another website and they spend more than 30
minutes on that site. Then they go back to the tab with the Google Merchandise Store
and click the play button on the video. Google Analytics will record two separate sessions
for that user.

The first session will include a “pageview” hit and the second session will include an
“event” hit, since the first session will have timed out, while the user was viewing the
second tab.

While sessions time out after thirty minutes of inactivity by default, you can change this
setting in your configurations to better align with user behavior on your site. For example,
a site with a goal to get users to watch videos may not want sessions to timeout after
thirty minutes. They can extend session timeout to the average watch time of the videos
on the site. Click the link at the end of this lesson to view instructions for changing the
default session timeout.

Once Google Analytics has organized data by session, it can calculate a number of the
metrics that show up in your reports such as sessions, pages per session, average
session duration, and bounce rate.

Joining Google Analytics data with other sources

In the third step of processing, Google Analytics will join the data collected by the
tracking code with other sources that you’ve specified. Let’s look at two ways to add data
from external systems using the measurement protocol and linking to other Google
accounts.

The measurement protocol lets you send data from any web-connected device like point-
of-sale systems or web-connected kiosks to Google Analytics. Unlike the tracking code
which sends hits automatically, if you want to collect data from a system outside of
Google, you must pass the data collection hits manually in a URL string.

The measurement protocol defines how to construct your hits using a customized
tracking ID and send those hits to your designated Google Analytics account. You can
find more information about the Measurement Protocol in the Analytics Developer
documentation linked at the end of this lesson.

Google Analytics can also link data from other Google marketing tools like Google
Ads, AdSense, or the Google Search Console.

This allows information like Google Ads clicks, impressions, and cost data to be viewed
in your Analytics account.
These are the first three steps Google Analytics takes when processing data. Watch the
next video to see how Analytics finishes processing data.

Applying configuration settings - Transforming data using

configuration rules

In Google Analytics, you can setup data configuration rules that determine how your data
will be processed. This includes implementing features like data filters, goals, data
grouping, Custom Dimensions, Custom Metrics, and imported data that can help you
better define and analyze the data in your reports.

Data Filters

As we discussed in Google Analytics for Beginners, you can set a filter on a view that can
exclude particular data, only include particular data, or modify the data during processing.
This helps you align the data that shows up in your reports with your business
needs. Filters are essentially “rules” that Google Analytics applies to the data during
processing. If the “filter type” is true, Google Analytics will apply the filter to the data. If
the filter type is false, Google Analytics won’t apply the filter.

There are two reasons you might want to apply filters. You may need to transform the
data that shows up in a view. For example, you might want to include only data from a
particular country in a view devoted to reporting on that country. Or you might want to
exclude any internal employee traffic from a view reporting on customer data.

The filters you choose to implement will depend on your specific measurement
objectives, so it’s important to plan what data you want to collect before you set up your
filters. We’ll discuss filters in more detail a little later.

For More - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033162?hl=en

Goals

There are four types of Goals in Google Analytics:

 Destination (or Pageview) Goals are based on when a user views a particular
page on your website.
 Event Goals are when a particular action defined as an event is triggered.

These are the two most common types of Goals, but you can also set up additional goals
to measure user engagement:

 Duration Goals are based on sessions that last over a set amount of time.
 “Pages or Screens per Session” Goals are based on whether a user has viewed
a set amount of pages in a session.

A conversion is counted once per session per configured goal. So if you’ve defined an
Event goal of downloading a PDF, and the user downloads the PDF five times in the
same session, this action will only count as one conversion.
During processing, when Analytics detects hit data for a goal, it calculates the goal
completions, goal value (if you’ve indicated one), and goal conversion rate, and includes
these in your reports.

Note that in Google Analytics, conversions and Ecommerce transactions are credited to
the last campaign, search, or ad that referred the user.

For More - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1012040?hl=en

Channel and Content Groupings

You may want to organize the data you collect in different ways than the standard Google
Analytics reports. Channel Groupings let you organize your data into customized
channels, while Content Grouping lets you aggregate metrics within reports based on the
organization of your website.

For more - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6010097?hl=en

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2853423?hl=en

Custom Dimensions and Metrics

You learned about dimensions and metrics in Google Analytics for Beginners. But you
also can create your own dimensions and metrics in Analytics called “Custom
Dimensions” and “Custom Metrics.” Custom Dimensions help you define a group of
metric data that’s specific to your business and then apply that as a dimension across
your reports.

 Custom Dimensions can be used as a secondary dimension in standard reports,

a primary dimension in a Custom Report, or as a segment. We’ll discuss Custom
Reports and segments later in the course.
 “Custom Metrics” can be collected for any standard dimension or Custom
Dimension that can’t be measured by any predefined metric in Google Analytics.

You can also upload your own data to Google Analytics including hit data, extended data
that is stored in a Custom Dimension or Custom Metric, and Summary data that lets you
sum up any uploaded metrics. Typically, this information is exported from an offline
business tool like a content management system or customer relationship management
system into text files.

For more - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2709828?hl=en

Data Import

Data Import lets you combine this offline data to the hit data that Analytics collects from
your website. This will allow you to include your own business-specific data you collected
independently to give you more context and insight in your reports.
These are only a few of the features you can configure to help customize the data you
collect for your business. Note that you’ll need to set up these data configuration rules
prior to your data being processed.

Once data has been processed, you can’t retroactively apply configuration settings to
that data. We’ll discuss how to set up these configurations and use them for analysis a
little later in the course.

Storing data to generate reports quickly

Once configuration settings have been applied to your data, Google Analytics will
transform the data into dimensions, calculate metrics associated with those dimensions,
and store each dimension in its own aggregate database table for fast retrieval.

Remember that when Google Analytics collects data like location, device type, and
browser type, it turns this data into dimensions that make up your reports in Analytics.

All Google Analytics reports are a single dimension, and the corresponding metrics for
each value of that dimension. You’ll notice that most reports in Analytics use rows for
dimensions, and columns for the associated metric data.

When you set up configurations like Goals or Enhanced Ecommerce, those metrics will
be included as well.
Analytics calculates the metrics that get grouped in various dimensions in two ways.
Metrics are either calculated in aggregate such as total sessions, users, or pageviews, or
specific dimensions (like Sessions or New Users per country). These are based on
calculations Google Analytics performed during processing when it categorized the data
it collected into users and sessions.

Let’s look at how a few key metrics are calculated:

 Analytics can derive the “Time on Page” by taking the timestamp of a pageview
hit and subtracting that from the timestamp of the next pageview hit.
 “Pages per session” is simply the average of how many unique pageview hits the
user generated during their session.
 Average session duration is the average time spent from the first hit until the last
hit before a user leaves the site or the session times out.
 Bounce rate is calculated by looking at users who only had one interaction on
your site without a second interaction to calculate the session duration or time on
page. If this occurs, the pageview of a bounced visit is assigned a session
duration and Time on Page of zero.

When Analytics creates dimensions and metrics during processing, it has to determine
the scope of those dimensions and metrics in order to know how broadly applicable they
are to your data.

Some dimensions might organize data about a single hit, while other dimensions might
apply to data across an entire session or individual user.

Dimensions and metrics can have one of three scopes:

 hit-level
 session-level
 user-level

During processing, Analytics will determine which scope gets applied to each dimension
and metric. You can only pair metrics with dimensions if they are both in the same scope.

For example, pairing a “hit-level” dimension like “Page Title” with a “session-level” metric
like “total number of Sessions,” wouldn’t make sense, since “Page Title” changes with
each hit, but the “sessions” count changes with the completion of each session.

While Google Analytics pairs dimensions and metrics of the same scope together for you
in standard reports, you will have to manually set the scope for any Custom Dimensions
or Custom Metrics you create. You can find the scoping for different dimensions and
metrics at the end of this lesson.
When Google Analytics has determined the dimensions and associated metrics, it links
this raw, unfiltered data with the unique property ID for your account.

Each reporting view you’ve created adds the data (with filters and configuration settings
applied) to “aggregate” data tables, which are processed daily. These aggregate tables
are used to quickly display the standard reports in Analytics.

But you also have the ability to generate more customized reports in Analytics using
features like secondary dimensions or by creating a Custom Report. When you do this,
Analytics checks to see if there is an aggregate table with the appropriate data. If the
table doesn’t already exist, Analytics goes back to the raw session data to process and
create the report from scratch.

In some instances, there is so much data to be joined that Analytics will show a sample
of the data in the returned report, rather than calculating all of the data that was collected.

For standard users, session sampling occurs at the property level, not the view level.
This means that the sample set will be determined at the property-level before view-level
filters are applied. So views that have filters applied may have fewer sessions in the
sampled calculation. For Analytics 360 customers, sampling occurs at the view level, so
view filters won’t impact the sample size.

It’s important to understand that when data is collected and processed, it can’t be
changed. For example, if you set a filter to exclude data on a view, that data will be
permanently removed during processing from the reports in that view and cannot be
recovered.
After Google Analytics has finished processing, you can access and analyze your data
using the reports. It’s also possible to access your Analytics data using the Google
Analytics Core Reporting API. This allows you to build your own reporting tools or extract
your data directly into third-party reporting tools.

How to create a measurement plan

In order to guide what data you need to collect in Analytics and which features to set up,
you’ll need a clear measurement strategy for your business. You’ll want to take some
time to define your business objectives and how you expect to measure those outcomes.

There are key actions that users take on websites that fulfill your business objectives like
making a purchase. We call these “macro” conversions, since they represent the broader
goals of your business. But there can also be smaller goals that bring users closer to
your main objectives such as signing up for an email coupon or a new product
notification. We call these “micro” conversions, since they nudge users closer to your
macro-conversions.

Different businesses will naturally have different macro- and micro-conversions:

 For an e-commerce site, the macro-conversion might be to purchase a product

with a micro-conversion of subscribing to a newsletter.
 For a lead generation site, the macro-conversion might be filling out a contact
form with a micro-conversion of following the site on social media.
 For a content publisher, the macro-conversion might be engaging with a
particular amount of content with a micro-conversion of clicking into an article.
 For an online information and support site, the macro-conversion might be
completing a guided support flow to successfully solve an issue with a micro-
conversion of rating a support article.

Once you’ve defined your macro- and micro-conversions, you can start putting together a
measurement plan. A measurement plan is a way for you to align your business
objectives with your Google Analytics configuration settings. Your measurement plan
should include an overall business objective, different strategies that support that
objective, and tactics that will help you achieve your strategies. Each tactic will have key
performance indicators (or KPIs) that help you measure your macro- or micro-
conversions.

Macro conversions usually measure the tactics that support your various strategies.
Micro conversions are metrics that help you better understand the user behavior that
leads to macro conversions.

Once you’ve identified the macro- and micro-conversions, and created a measurement
plan to measure your business, you can decide how to set up Google Analytics to collect
these metrics.

Keep in mind that this is just one example of a very abbreviated measurement plan.
Yours will likely be richer and more detailed, depending on the complexity and ambition
of your business.

A measurement plan is a great way to document the data that is most important to your
business. Use the interactive Google Merchandise Store measurement plan at the end of
this lesson for an example

Click through the measurement plan

Business Objective
Sell merchandise that promotes the Google brand

You can think of the Google Merchandise Store as an average, medium-sized e-commerce
business. At the top of their measurement plan is the main objective of the store, which is to sell
branded merchandise that promotes Google.

Strategy
Create an online advertising campaign that directs customers to the
Store website to purchase Google-branded merchandise.
To accomplish their objective, the Google Merchandise Store has a strategy to create an
advertising plan that makes it easier for customers to purchase Google-branded merchandise.

Tactic
Increase Android-branded merchandise referrals
To measure the success of their ad campaign, the Store will use different tactics. Since Android is
making a big branding push, one tactic is to increase referral traffic to Android-branded
merchandise pages.

Key Performance Indicators (Metrics)

Tactics are measured by key performance indicators (or KPIs). KPIs are the metrics the Store will
use in Google Analytics to measure their success.

Increase Android-brand merchandise referrals

 The Google Store will want to measure increases in referral traffic to their website to understand
whether they're increasing customer awareness of Android-brand merchandise.

Increase new users to Android-brand merchandise pages

The Google Store will want to measure increases in new users to their website to understand
whether they're increasing customer awareness of Android-brand merchandise.

Increase Android-brand merchandise page views

The Google Store will want to measure increases in pageviews to Android-brand merchandise
pages to understand whether they're increasing customer awareness.

Tactic
Increase revenue of Android-branded merchandise
The Google Merchandise Store will also want to measure the success of their ad campaign based
on sales of Android-branded products. So they have another tactic to increase revenue from
Android-branded merchandise.

Key Performance Indicators (Metrics)

Tactics are measured by key performance indicators (or KPIs). KPIs are the metrics the Store will
use in Google Analytics to measure their success.

Increase conversion rate

The Google Store will want to measure increases in conversion rates on their website to
understand whether they're generating more revenue from Android-brand merchandise.

Increase total transactions

The Google Store will want to measure increases in total Android-brand transactions on their
website to understand whether they generate more revenue from Android-brand merchandise.

Increase total merchandise revenue

The Google Store will want to measure increases in total Android-brand merchandise revenue on
their website, since that reflects the tactic of increasing revenue.

Segments (Dimensions)
You can view your KPIs using different segments to see insights about your business such as what
traffic sources are driving referrals or driving conversion rates on your website. To analyze their
KPIs, the Google Merchandise Store will use segments for Customer Demographics, Traffic
Sources, Device Type, and User Category.

Customer Demographics
Customer Demographics can help the Google Merchandise Store understand who is visiting
Android-brand merchandise pages and purchasing items.

Traffic Sources
 Traffic Sources can help the Store understand where users are coming from.

Device Type
Device Type can help the Store optimize their site for different devices.

User Category
User Category tells the Google Merchandise Store how much of their traffic and purchases
compared to external customers were from Google employees.

Link - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6224341?hl=en
 Setting Up Data Collection and Configuration

Managing multiple accounts or properties

For many companies, Google Analytics accounts are relatively straightforward. They
could have one Organization (which is optional), one account, and one property
associated with that account. For every property, we recommend you set up at least
three views: a “Raw Data” view, a “Test” view, and a “Master” view.

Accounts

But depending on your objectives and the complexity of your business, you may need
multiple organizations, accounts, or properties, and additional views. For example, if
you’re an agency managing marketing for multiple companies at once, you can set up
different Organizations for each company with separate Google Analytics accounts under
each Organization.

When you create an account in Google Analytics, the account is assigned a unique ID.
You can see this ID in the Analytics tracking code. This is how the tracking code knows
to send hit data to the correct Analytics account. You don’t need to sign in separately for
multiple Analytics Organizations or Accounts. You can simply select any of the
Organizations or Accounts by using the account selector. You can also select accounts
that belong to your current Organization in the Admin area.

Properties

To better reflect how your business is organized, you can set up multiple properties
under each Analytics account.

For example, The Google Merchandise Store may want to view data from their website
and data from their mobile app in separate properties to analyze each data set
independently. We recommend tracking each company’s website, mobile app, or other
device in a separate property.

If you have two related websites with different URLs or subdomains that you want to
track in a single property, you can set up what’s called “cross-domain tracking.” Cross-
domain tracking will recognize when a user navigates between related websites in the
same session. This is also known as “site linking.” To set up cross-domain tracking, you’ll
need to modify the Analytics tracking code on every page of every site you want to track.
Google Tag Manager can make updating that code a lot easier.

Google Analytics 360 Customers have another way to aggregate data across domains.
Using a feature called “rollup reporting,” you can aggregate data automatically from
multiple properties into a new combined property.

For example, if the Google Merchandise Store wanted to use one property to track their
website and another property to track their mobile app, they could also create a third
property to aggregate data from both the website and the app to analyze that data
together. This gives Analytics 360 users options to combine the data from different
properties.
Note that roll-up properties don’t include data that you import or link from another account
-- like Google Ads. If you want to include linked data from your source properties into
your roll-up properties, you’ll need to re-link the roll-up property with the linked account.

Also, when users are identified by the same Client ID across different source properties,
session data for those users is usually merged; otherwise, that session data remains
separate. For more information on roll-up reporting, please see the link at the end of this
lesson.

Similar to accounts, properties also have a unique Property ID that’s appended to the
Analytics ID. This tells Analytics which hits to associate with the property. You can switch
properties in the Admin area by using the Property pulldown menu.

User permissions

If you use Analytics to manage multiple websites, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Each Analytics account has a limited number of properties and each property has a
limited number of views. Check out the documentation at the end of this lesson for limits
on properties and views.
For example, let’s say you’re the administrator of a site with multiple sub-directories
based on different departments in your business. You can create different views for each
department using filters and then grant access to each view for the members of those
departments.

To navigate to different views, in the Admin section use the View selector menu.

The Google Merchandise Store is a medium-sized ecommerce business. They use a

single account, a single property, and three views for raw data, testing, and production.
But you’ll need to decide how to set up your organizations, accounts, properties, and
views based on the individual needs of your business.

Example account structures

How to set up advanced filters on views

Filters can help refine your data and make it more readable in your reports. For example,
you can use a filter to track activity in a specific website directory or track subdomains of
your website in separate views.
There are two kinds of filters: “predefined” and “ custom” filters.

Predefined Filters

Predefined filters have already been created for you in Google Analytics, you just have to
select the filter you wish to use. These allow you to include or exclude data based on
traffic from the ISP domain, IP addresses, subdirectories, or the hostname, and
designate how the filter will match that information.

Custom Filters

Custom filters let you include or exclude hits from your data collection, format data to
lowercase or uppercase, search and replace data collected in the hit. Custom filters
accomplish this by matching a particular filter text-pattern that you identify.
Include filters

For example, let’s say your business was making a push into mobile and only wanted to
analyze mobile traffic in a specific view. You can set up a custom “include-only” filter on
the view for Device Category and specify a value of “Mobile.” The filter will look at the
criteria specified and match it to any relevant hits that Google Analytics has collected for
that view. If the filter can’t match the criteria, the filter will not be applied to that data.

Similarly, you may want to show only data for a specific campaign in a view. You can set
up a custom filter to include only campaign data with the campaign name or type
parameter you specified. Using view permissions, you can then share this campaign data
with partners that you designate.

Exclude filters

If there was data you wanted to specifically exclude such as Paid Search (or CPC) traffic,
you can set a custom “exclude” filter that will exclude all paid traffic in a particular view,
as well.

Lowercase and Uppercase filters

You can also use filters to normalize the data in your reports to make them easier to use.
Google Analytics data isn't case sensitive, so pages in the All Pages report may show the
same URL multiple times.

You can quickly combine rows that differ only by case, by using a Lowercase or
Uppercase filter. These filters will force the case to all lowercase or all uppercase, thus
eliminating duplicate data.

This will consolidate that page reporting and make the data in those reports a little
neater.

Advanced filters

In addition to include, exclude, and lowercase filters, there are other advanced filters that
allow you to remove, replace, and combine filter fields in more complex ways using what
are called “regular expressions.” Regular expressions (or “reg ex” for short) are
characters that you can use to identify matching text in order to trigger an action. A basic
regular expression on a filter can be something as simple as a word or a more
complicated combination of characters.

Let’s say the Google Merchandise Store wants to set up a view with a filter to see all the
keywords users searched for on their website for Android dolls. Because users might
search for variations like “Android plush doll,” or “Android stuffed doll,” we can create a
regular expression that identifies each of these variations.

We can add an advanced filter with a regular expression that recognizes any Site Search
queries that contain the terms “android” and “doll.” This is just a basic example, but you
can use regex to find much more sophisticated strings to apply your filters.

For example, if you have technical query parameters passed in the URL of your website,
you might have identical pages with different addresses.
Because the URL is different, this page will show up multiple times in your reports. But
since they’re the same page, it may make sense to filter out the query parameters, so
that it doesn’t appear multiple times in a report.

You can include a regular expression that recognizes the main part of the URL before the
query parameter, puts it in a variable, and overwrites the entire URL with that variable.
This renders these page URLs identical in reporting.

For businesses that collect data from multiple domains, it can be hard to distinguish page
names in Google Analytics. In the “All Pages” report, “googlestoreamerica/index.axd” and
“googlestoreeurope/index.axd” will both show up as “index.axd.”

You can use a regular expression to add the hostname in Analytics so that you can
distinguish between multiple domains. To learn more about regular expressions, please
visit the resources at the end of the lesson.

Remember that filters, like all configuration settings, are not applied retroactively to your
data. They are only applied from the moment you create them and can take up to 24
hours before being applied to your data.

Also, don’t forget that the order in which you apply the filters is very important. Each filter
passes filtered data to the next filter in the sequence, so you’ll want to be thoughtful
about the order in which you apply your filters.

You can adjust the order of your filters by going into “Admin” and selecting “Filters”. Then
select “Assign Filter Order.”

Note that you can use filters across multiple views, but be careful. If you edit the filter,
those changes will be applied across all the different views to which you’ve applied that
filter.

Once you have set up your configuration, Google Analytics processes the data by
checking each hit against your filters. If a hit matches the logic in a filter, then that filter
will be applied.
Remember to test out your filters in a “test” view before you apply them to the “master”
view. Also, be sure to test out your filters on real-time reports to make sure they’re
working because they may take several hours to filter all of your data.

How to set up Custom Dimensions

Overview

Custom dimensions are similar to default dimensions except that you define what they
are and their value. This let’s you collect data that’s customized specifically for your
business. This can be incredibly powerful because it enables you to report on particular
characteristics of your users or their behavior within the Google Analytics data you’ve
collected.

You collect data for a Custom Dimension using JavaScript tracking code that’s
implemented on a page. When a user lands on that page or performs a specific action,
the Custom Dimension will capture that data and send it over as an additional parameter
attached to the existing hit. You can then use these Custom Dimensions in your reports.

For example, the Google Merchandise Store can use a Custom Dimension to capture
whether users are retail customers or Google employees. The Store has set up a special
URL for employees to click on that identifies them as internal and applies an employee
discount.

Set up

To set up a Custom Dimension, go into Admin. Select the Property in which you want the
dimension applied. Next, click “Custom Definitions” and then “Custom Dimension.” Then
click “New Custom Dimension.”

You’ll first have to name the Custom Dimension and then define its scope. Remember
that dimensions can have a scope of “hit,” “product,” “session,” or “user.” This is based
on how broadly you want to categorize your metric data.
For example, if you want the dimension to include every time a user visited a particular
page or performed a singular action, you will need to set a hit-level scope. If you want the
dimension to group data associated with a particular product, you will set a product-level
scope. If the dimension was organizing data for the duration of a session or for a
particular user, you can set session- and user-level scopes, respectively.

Like standard dimensions and metrics, Custom Dimensions and Metrics can only be
paired with dimensions or metrics from a similar scope. Since the Google Merchandise
Store wants to track whether users are employees or not, it makes sense to set the
scope of this Custom Dimension as “user.”

Note the default checkbox to make the dimension active. You can make Custom
Dimensions inactive at any time by unchecking this box. Any Custom Dimension data
already collected and processed will appear in reports, but no data will be collected once
the dimension has been made inactive. To save the Custom Dimension, click “Create.”

When you create a Custom Dimension for the first time, you’ll be taken to a screen with
JavaScript to include on your website. You can copy the code, then click “Done.”

You’ll be taken to an overview screen where you can see all of the Custom Dimensions
that you have set up in that property. Notice that, similar to Goals, Google Analytics
assigns an index (or slot number) for each Custom Dimension you create. Note that you
cannot choose which index number is assigned; they are assigned in the order you
created them.

After you’ve set up the Custom Dimension, you must implement the JavaScript tracking
code you copied from Analytics into your website code to collect the custom data.
Different businesses will do this in different ways, depending on their data collection
method and what data they wish to collect. Google Tag Manager is a great option for
managing Custom Dimension tracking code more easily.

The Google Merchandise Store will use JavaScript to track whether employees came
from the employee discount link. If they did, then the code will pass an employee value
into the Custom Dimension tracking code on the page. If users arrive at the website
without going through the link, the code will pass a retail-customer value into the Custom
Dimension.

The Custom Dimension tracking code then picks up these values from the JavaScript
code and attaches this dimension data in the pageview hit that users first triggered when
they arrived on the page. “dimension1” refers to the index number of the Custom
Dimension created in Analytics. The “userStatus” variable is what the Store’s custom
Javascript code passes to the Custom Dimension to use in reports.

When the custom JavaScript collects whether users came from the discount URL link or
not, it will populate that index and value variable with the user status.

Once the hit has been sent to Google Analytics, Analytics will process that data into a
Custom Dimension that may be applied to reports to compare customer and employee
behavior.

Using Custom Dimensions in your reports

You can use Custom Dimensions as secondary dimensions in standard reports or as

primary dimensions in Custom Reports (which we’ll discuss later). For example, if the
Google Merchandise Store wanted to see which products were most popular among
employees and retail customers, we can open the Product Performance report under
Conversions in Ecommerce and add the secondary dimension we set up of “User
Category.”

Note that you won’t be able to apply a Custom Dimension to data you have previously
collected. You’ll have to create the Custom Dimension first and let it be applied to your
data during processing in order to use it in reports. At this time, standard Google
Analytics users can create up to 20 Custom Dimensions and Analytics 360 customers
can create up to 200. We’ll look at how to use Custom Dimensions in your analysis a little
later.

How to set up Custom Metrics

Custom Metrics let you collect metrics in Google Analytics that are specific to your
business. This can be the number of ads that loaded on a page, the bandwidth that the
page consumed when it loaded, or the total number of brand pageviews that each of your
marketing channels leads to.

Similar to Custom Dimensions, you collect Custom Metric data using JavaScript that’s
implemented on a page. When a user lands on that page or performs a specific action,
the Custom Metric will be sent as an additional parameter attached to the hit.
For example, the Google Merchandise Store is in a big push to sell Android-branded
merchandise and wants to know which marketing channels are contributing to Android
merchandise pageviews. They can include tracking code on Android merchandise pages
that fires with each pageview hit and increments a Custom Metric in Google Analytics.

To set up a Custom Metric, go into Admin. Select the Property in which you want the
metric applied. Then click “Custom Definitions” and “Custom Metrics.” Then click “New
Custom Metric.”.

You first have to name the Custom Metric. Then you have to define its scope. This is
based on how this metric data will be generated. Unlike dimensions, Custom Metrics can
only have a scope of “hit,” or “product.”
  If you select “hit,” the Custom Metric will be incremented with each hit sent over
by the tracking code and totalled up in Google Analytics.
 If you select “Product,” the Custom Metric can increment by whatever cost you
assign to the product. We’ll select “hit,” since we want the Custom Metric sent
over with each pageview hit of Android merchandise pages.

Next, we’ll need to specify the format of the Custom Metric. You can select a basic
integer, a decimal value, or a time-based value. Since we want to total up pageviews, we
can send a basic integer of “one” with each hit. This will then increment the Custom
Metric in Google Analytics by “one” each time a pageview hit fires.

You can also specify minimum and maximum values that determine whether Analytics
will process this metric and include it in your reports. This can help prevent accidental
large or small values from being collected and affecting your reporting. Since we know
we don’t want our range to exceed 1, we can set a minimum value of 0 and a maximum
value of 2.

Note the default checkbox to make the metric active. You can make Custom Metrics
inactive at any time by unchecking this box. Any Custom Metric data already collected
and processed will appear in reports, but no data will be collected once the metric has
been made inactive. To save the Custom Metric, click “Create.”

When you save a Custom Metric for the first time, you’ll be taken to a screen with
JavaScript to include on your website. You’ll need to copy the code to include on each
page you want the Custom Metric to be sent. Then click “Done.”

You’ll be taken to an overview screen where you can see all of the Custom Metrics that
you have set up in the property. Notice that, similar to “Goals” and “Custom Dimensions,”
Google Analytics assigns an index (or slot number) for each Custom Metric you create.
Notice that you cannot choose which index number is assigned; they are assigned in the
order you created them.

After you set up the Custom Metric, you must add the JavaScript tracking code you
copied from Analytics to your website to collect the data with the hit. Like Custom
Dimensions, each Custom Metric appears as a parameter of index-value pairs. “Index”
refers to the index number of the Custom Metric you created in Analytics. Value is the
metric that will be attached to the hit.

When a user performs an action like landing on an Android-branded merchandise page,

the code will send over a hit and increment this metric in Analytics using the index for that
Custom Metric.

When planning out Custom Metrics, there are a few things to keep in mind. Think about
how you want those metrics to appear in your reports. You can send Custom Metrics with
a particular value for every hit on a page or you can manually specify different values for
individual hits.

If you use Custom Metrics in conjunction with a session-level dimension such as “source
/ medium,” think about which specific hits will cause the Custom Metric to increase. If you
only expect a Custom Metric to increase once per session, you’ll want to design your
data collection accordingly.

Note that similar to Custom Dimensions, you won’t be able to apply a Custom Metric to
data you have previously collected. If you want to make it easier to manage the Custom
Metric tracking code on multiple pages of your website, check out the Google Tag
Manager course on Analytics Academy.

How to set up Event Tracking

Event tracking is a great way to know if users are engaging with your website and
performing intended actions.

The Google Merchandise Store, for instance, can track clicks on the global navigation bar
to better understand how users navigate their website.

To collect Event data from a website, you'll need to add JavaScript to the individual
elements on the site you wish to track.

Note that you’ll have to set up separate event tracking for each element or state you wish
to track. For example, if you want to track when videos are both played and paused, you
will need to set up separate event tracking for the play and pause states of the button.

When a user performs an action on an element with event tracking, the event tracking
code will pass four parameters along with the event hit. These parameters are:
“Category,” “Action,” “Label,” and “Value.”

You can define these parameters in your JavaScript to organize the data in your event
reports.
  “Category” lets you organize the events you track into groups. For your website,
this might be “Videos” or “Social Shares.”
 “Action” is the action the user took when they initiated the event. If you were
tracking when users click a video play-button, you might have a category called
“Videos” with an associated action of “Play.”
 “Label” is an optional value used to further describe the element you’re tracking
like the name of a video. This can help you make your event reports more
readable.
 “Value” is an optional numerical value like the amount of time it takes a video to
load or how much a specific event action is worth. You can use Value to assign a
specific dollar amount when a specific action occurs.

Be mindful about how you name your categories, actions, and labels, so when they show
up in your reports, the event data will be easy for you and others to understand.

If the Google Merchandise Store wants to set up an event on their website to track the
“Android” link under “Brands”, they can set the event category as “Navigation,” the action
as “Brands,” and the label as “Android.” Since navigation doesn’t have a direct monetary
impact, they can leave off the “Value” parameter.

Once the event tracking code has been added to the navigation element, every time a
user interacts with that element it will pass the parameters that were assigned to Google
Analytics, which will appear in the Events reports.

Total Events are calculated as the total number of interactions with the tracked element,
while Unique Events are how many users have triggered that event. So if a user clicks on
the Google Merchandise Store’s navigation for “Bags” five times in a single session, the
total number of link clicks for that event will be “five,” but the number of Unique Events
will be counted as “one.”

Events reports are found under Behavior. When you open the “Top Events” report,
events are organized by category.

You’ll see metrics for Total Events, Unique Events, and Event and Average Value (if
applicable) for each event category you set up. You can jump to the category, action, or
label simply by clicking on the navigation links at the top of the table report.
If you click into the Category, you can see the associated Actions. This can help you view
the various interaction states that were tracked for a Category in one place.

If you click into the action, you can see the labels associated with that action.

Another great use for events is tracking outbound link clicks that lead away from your
site.

For example, the Google Merchandise Store has a live chat button in their top navigation
bar that opens a pop-up window when clicked. However, this pop-up window was
implemented by a third-party vendor and goes to a different URL that the Google
Analytics tracking code won’t track by default.

We can set up event tracking on this button with the category “Outbound links,” an action
of “Live Chat,” and a label of “Home” (or wherever the live chat button was clicked from).
That way, we can tell how many times the live chat button was clicked and from what
page. We can then know which web pages were causing users to seek help and work to
better optimize those pages.

You should be thoughtful about the events you want to track to give you insight into the
customer behavior on your website. If your goal is to increase engagement, you’ll want to
focus on tracking actions that demonstrate how users navigate your site and interact with
your content. You can use event tracking to better understand user behavior specifically
for your website and overall business.
 Advanced Analysis Tools and Techniques

Introduction to segmentation

Segmentation in Google Analytics is a way to view a subset of data in a report. You can
create user segments or session segments. User segments can span multiple sessions
with a maximum date range of 90 days. For example, you can build a user segment that
shows data only for a specific age range, date range, gender, or a combination of these.

Session segments are confined to user behavior within a single session. For example,
you can create session segments for a Goal users completed during the session or the
amount of revenue a user generated.

A powerful part of segments is the ability to add multiple segments to a single report for
comparison. You can compare segments of users who made a purchase with those that
didn’t, to better understand what influences people to buy. Or you might choose to build
segments based on a specific traffic source like paid search and compare that to
sessions that originated from email campaigns. This helps you see which types of users
each source delivers.

Both user and session segments can be built using dimensions, metrics, session dates,
and even sequences of user actions.

In a report like the Audience Overview, notice that the “All Users” segment is
automatically applied and will include every user within the selected date range. To add
additional segments, click "Add Segment" to open up the segment builder.

There are two types of segments: default segments and custom segments. Default (or
System) segments are segments already available in Google Analytics and show up
under the System section. Custom segments are segments that you create and show up
under “Custom.”
You can also import segments that other users have created or share your own custom
segments. You can favorite any segments you think you’ll want to use often and can view
the segments currently selected.

Default Segments

To select a default segment, click the System section and select the segment you wish to
apply.

If you select Tablet traffic, for instance, and click Apply, you’ll be able to compare Tablet
traffic with all of the traffic in any of your reports. These segments will be applied to every
report you open until you remove the segment or exit Google Analytics.

To remove a segment, click the down arrow and select “Remove.”

To compare new and returning users in reports, you can select the New Users and
Returning Users segments. Notice that these segments will show up at the top next to
the All Users segment.

If we want a cleaner report for comparison, we can turn off the All Users segment and
click Apply. This now compares only new and returning users.

Click the Plus icon to add additional segments. You can compare up to four segments at
one time.

Notice that there’s an Actions drop-down menu on each segment. “Copy” lets you copy
the segment and edit it for customization. “Build audience” let’s you build an audience for
remarketing (which we’ll cover later).

Custom Segments

In addition to default segments, you can also create your own customized segments.

Simply click “Create New Segment” beneath the applied segment fields.

Here you can add your own characteristics to create a custom segment. You can
segment by demographics, technology, behavior, session dates, traffic sources, and
ecommerce (if implemented).
For example, under Demographics you can choose age “25 to 34” and language contains
“es” for Spanish, which will filter the data for users between the ages of 25 and 34 who
have their browsers set to Spanish.

You can also create more advanced segments that let you match dimensions and
metrics to specific values that you enter. You can even specify multiple filters that make
up conditions within the segment.

You can also create segments based on sequences of user interactions. For example,
you can segment users that viewed a specific page and then watched a video.
Sequences can be a mixture of pageviews or events.

You can import segments or share them to the Solutions Gallery by clicking “Share
segments.” When you share a segment you do not share any of your data. You only
share the segment. You can also import new segments that other users create from the
gallery.

Note that segments are applied after sampling. So if the data being shown in your reports
is a sample, the data shown in your segments will also be a sample.

As you encounter more complex questions about your customers’ behavior, you can
create segments to isolate subsets of data and find opportunities to improve your
website’s performance.

Using custom segments for analysis

Click "Add Segment," which lets you add or create a new segment.
Then click New Segment to create a new custom segment.

Name the segment: “Android Landing Page.” To set up a segment that includes only
users who landed on an Android-branded merchandise page, choose the
Conditions category.

Notice the filter at the top of the segment creator that allows you to include or exclude
data by session or user. This depends on the dimension and metrics you wish to use in
the segment, as well as the questions you’re looking to answer with your analysis. If
you choose “Users” as the filter, the segment will include all sessions for users for the
criteria you set, regardless of whether they did it in every session.

Typically we’d use the “Users” filter to see which users have completed a certain
action in any of their sessions such as making a purchase. If we choose “Sessions” as
the filter, that segment will only include sessions for the criteria we designate. To
include users who landed on an Android-branded merchandise page, click the
"Sessions" pulldown menu and switch it to "Users.” In the next pulldown menu, make
sure "Include" is selected.

Next select the dimension “Landing Page”. Then select the operator “contains” and
type “android” into the field (then click outside the field to dismiss the list of
suggested URLs). This filter entry includes any users who landed on a page that
contains the word "android" in the URL..

Type “android” into the field (then click outside the field to dismiss the list of
suggested URLs).
This filter entry includes any users who landed on a page that contains the word
"android" in the URL.

The summary shows what percentage of users first landed on an Android page.
Click Save. Note that the segment created in the previous step is applied. Now we can
see metrics for users who landed on an Android page.
Make sure the date range is set to: Feb 1, 2016 - Feb 29, 2016. To compare this data
to a previous timeframe, click into the date picker, check the “Compare to” checkbox,
and select “Previous period." Click Apply.

Notice the increase in pageviews, which was one of the Google Merchandise
Store’s KPIs in the measurement plan.

Now click into the Location report. We can also see that New Users went up, which
was another KPI in the measurement plan.

These are a couple of examples of how to use segments for analysis to meet your
business goals. Decide which segments and custom segments can help you best
research your audience and their behavior.

Using the Channels report for analysis

To navigate to the Channels report, click Acquisition, All Traffic, then Channels.
The Channels report shows data segmented by channel.

Note that when your Google Ads or Google Marketing Platform campaigns are served on
the Google Display Network, that traffic gets grouped in the Display channel.

If you advertise using Google Search, that traffic gets grouped in the Paid Search
channel.

The Conversions menu shows the goals set up by the Google Merchandise Store. Note
that Smart Goals are goals automatically generated by Google’s machine learning
algorithms (see links at the end of the lesson for details).
Click the menu and select "Goal 1: Purchase Completed."

For this example analysis, be sure the date range is set to Feb 1, 2016 - Feb 29, 2016.
Next open the date picker and check “Compare to previous period” so we can compare
channels from one month to the next.

Apply the Android Landing Page segment that you created in the previous lesson.

For a cleaner report, remove the "All Users" segment by clicking the arrow at the top of
the segment.
Now we can compare purchases completed by users who landed on an Android page for
the months of January and February.

We can see that the overall "Purchase Completed" conversion rate for users who landed
on an Android page went up from the month before.

We can see that the number of completed purchases also went up.

You can sort channels by conversion rate by clicking the column header “Purchase
Completed (Goal 1 Conversion Rate).”
Identify the % change in conversion rate for Paid Search. Notice that it increased in
February, a potential indicator that the Store’s paid search campaign was successful.

Click the column header “New Users” to sort by new users. Now identify the % change in
New Users by channel. You can see that new users for this segment were up in February
across Paid and Organic Search, Direct and Referral.

Click into the Referral channel.

Here you can see which websites are sending referrals to Android merchandise pages.
Some of these may be good partners to reach out to when promoting Android-branded
merchandise.

Using Multi-Channel Funnel reports for analysis

Attribution Modeling

Attribution modeling is a set of rules that determine how sales and conversions get
attributed to your marketing campaigns. The goal of attribution modeling is to help you
better understand how different marketing campaigns and different marketing channels
all work together to produce conversions. This can help you better allocate and invest
your marketing time and budget.

For example, a customer could visit the Google Merchandise Store from a Google Ads
ad. They could return a week later by clicking on a link in a social network. That same
day, they could return a third time through an email campaign and make a purchase. All
of those marketing activities worked together to generate the conversion.
By default, Google Analytics will attribute all of the credit, or ecommerce revenue, to the
last marketing activity -- in this case, the email campaign. This is called a “last-click”
attribution model.

But shouldn’t some of that credit go to the other two marketing activities?

Multi-Channel Funnel reports

To help you move beyond last-click attribution, Google Analytics has a series of reports
called Multi-Channel Funnel reports - or MCF. These reports can tell you what role prior
marketing activities played in the conversion process. A channel that contributed to a
conversion prior to the final interaction would be credited with an “assisted conversion.”

MCF reports can also indicate the time it took to go from initial interest to purchase. This
conversion path data includes interactions across virtually all digital channels including
paid and organic search, referral sites, affiliates, social networks, and email campaigns.
To use multi-channel funnels, you’ll need to have first set up Goals or Ecommerce.

You can find Multi-Channel Funnel reports in the Conversions section.

In the Overview report, you can see the Store’s total conversions, as well as click-
assisted, impression-assisted, and rich media-assisted conversions. You can look at
Ecommerce transactions or individual Goals if you’ve set them up. If you’ve linked your
Google Ads account, the report will also show specific Google Ads data.

You can also set a lookback window of 1 to 90 days. This will determine the period of
time prior to conversion used in the report.

Below the timeline, you can visualize how much each channel contributed to overall
conversions and where those overlapped.

The Assisted Conversions report shows the total number and monetary value of assisted
sales and conversions broken out by channel. The higher these numbers, the more the
channel helped assist with conversions. You can break this out by the Day of
Conversion, the Day Before Conversion, and the Path Position, which is the number of
interactions involved in the conversion.
 In the table, we can see the impact of our Paid Search campaigns and how many
conversions it drove. The Store may want to consider investing more heavily in these
campaigns to drive awareness.

The Top Conversions Paths report shows conversions and conversion value grouped by
the channel combinations that led to conversion.

The Time Lag report shows conversions grouped by the number of days it took from
initial interest to conversion. This can give you a sense of how long your users take to
make a purchase and potentially inform your remarketing campaigns.
The Path Length report also shows how many interactions on average it took to convert
and how much each series of interactions was worth.

Using Channel and Multi-Channel Attribution reports, you can measure whether the
campaigns for your business have been successful. You can use channel analysis to
better understand what channels work for your business and which are most responsible
for facilitating conversions.

Using activity, cohorts, and benchmarking for audience analysis

The Active Users report can help you quickly gauge the level of user interest in your
website. Click on the Active Users report under Audience.

Active Users measures the number of unique users who initiated sessions on your site
over the last day, seven days, fourteen days, or thirty days. You can use this to monitor
traffic drops. Short-term drops may be due to negative press or social content, while
long-term drops may signal new release problems or the inability to build a growing
audience.
The Cohort Analysis report lets you examine specific groups of users and their behavior,
to better inform your marketing. Click on the Cohort Analysis report.

At the top of the report are several menus we can use to understand whether the Google
Merchandise Store is increasing product revenue.

Cohort Type lets you select a single dimension of cohort to report on. The cohort type
“Acquisition Date” groups cohorts based on when users started their first sessions with
your site.

Cohort Size determines the size of each cohort. You can group by day, week, or month
of acquisition.

The metric selector lets you choose the metric you want to evaluate for each cohort.

The Date Range selector has preset date ranges that vary based on the cohort size. If
you group the cohorts by day, the date range will offer choices from 7 to 30 days.
To check product revenue, set the Cohort Size as “by week,” the metric as “Revenue per
User,” and the date range as “Last 9 weeks."

Notice that the Cohort Report builds a table that shows the average revenue per user for
the cohorts we defined.

The top row shows average revenue per user across all users.

The other rows show each cohort by week of acquisition. Darker blue indicates higher
results and lighter blue indicates lower results. If you ran a marketing campaign during a
specific week, you could track if it prompted higher revenue per user and run similar
campaigns in the future.

If you see that revenue per user tends to plateau around week 2 post-acquisition, you
could leverage that insight when planning your remarketing campaigns.

To compare cohorts of general site users with those who first landed on Android pages,
apply the Android Landing Page segment you created earlier.
By comparing these segments, we can analyze the effectiveness of various marketing
campaigns that brought users to Android product pages.

Next, we'll explore the Benchmarking reports.

To see data in Benchmarking reports, you must first enable Benchmarking. An account
admin can find this feature under Account Settings. Checking the box to enable
Benchmarking sets your account to share your own data anonymously. Data will
populate in the Benchmarking reports in the Audience section.

Under Audience, click Benchmarking, then Channels.

Benchmarking reports enable you to compare your data with anonymized aggregated
industry data from other companies who share their data. This can help you set
meaningful business goals, gain insight into industry trends, and give you a baseline to
measure your own business.

At the top of each report, you can select from over 1600 industry verticals to compare
your business against. You can also select a particular region and a daily session size
that’s comparable to your own.

Click Industry Vertical and type "All Shopping" into the search field. Select "All Shopping."

Select the Country “United States” and “All Regions.”

Select size of daily sessions: 5000-9999.

This allows us to compare the Google Merchandise Store property with all the properties
in the “Shopping” industry in the U.S. that receive comparable average daily sessions.

The Channels report compares your channel data to benchmarks for each channel in the
Default Channel Grouping. You can quickly see which channels perform better in
Acquisition and Behavior based on the green up or red down arrow.

More darkly colored cells indicate larger differences in outperforming or under-performing

other businesses in the category you selected.

Click the Location report.

The Location report compares your Country/Territory data to the benchmarks for each of
the Countries and Territories from which you receive traffic. Since we already selected
Country/Region of "United States," we'll only see the U.S. show up in this report.

Click the Devices report.

The Devices report compares your Devices data to the benchmarks for desktop, mobile,
and tablet traffic.

Note that you can click a visualization button to turn the metric values in the table on and

off:

You can click another visualization button to turn the heatmap colors on and off:
Using Custom Reports for Analysis

The Customization area contains any dashboards, shortcuts, alerts, or Custom Reports
that you've created. Select Customization.

Then select Custom Reports. Any Custom Reports you've previously created are located
here.

Let's create a new Custom Report that allows us to view the Google Merchandise
Store's event category, action and label dimensions together in the same report. Select
“New Custom Report.”

Give your report a meaningful name.

You can also add different tabs to the report for better organization.
There are different Custom Report types:

 Explorer is the standard Analytics report that includes a line graph and a data
table, search and sort options, and secondary dimensions.
 A Flat Table is a static, sortable table that displays data in rows.
 Map Overlay is a map of the world with regions and countries in darker colors to
indicate traffic and engagement volume.

Select Flat Table to look at all of the event parameters together. Specify at least one
dimension and one metric to save a Custom Report. You can add up to five dimensions
and 10 metrics to a Custom Report.

 Click "add dimension" and start typing "Event Category." Select "Event
Category." Next, add the dimensions "Event Action" and "Event Label" in the
same manner.
 Click "add metric" and start typing "Total Events." Select "Total Events." Similarly,
add the metric "Unique Events."

When you add dimensions and metrics, make sure they’re of the same scope or no data
will appear in the report. For example, mixing the Event Category dimension with the
Time on Page metric won't work because this mixes a hit-level dimension with a session-
level metric.

You can also add filters to the report. For example, if you created a report with the
dimension "Browser Version," you could add a filter to display only specific browsers in
the report such as Chrome.
Custom Reports can be associated with different views as well, so they can easily be
shared by users who have access to the same view.

When you’re finished creating your Custom Report, click Save.

Now you can see the category, action, and label for all events in one report, as well as
the total and unique events for those dimensions.

Custom Reports are a good alternative to secondary dimensions if you want to use a
Custom Dimension as your primary, not your secondary dimension. They can also be
useful if you want to see more than two dimensions per row, which can be helpful if you
need to export the data table into another software for analysis. And finally, Custom
Reports allow you to report on any Custom Metrics you have collected.
 Advanced Marketing Tools

Introduction to remarketing

Remarketing is a powerful tool that lets you target ad content to users who have already
visited your website. When a user visits your site and doesn’t make a purchase, you can
use remarketing to show them relevant ads on the Google Display Network, on mobile
apps, or on Google Search. This can bring them back to your website and encourage
them to make a purchase.

To enable Remarketing in Google Analytics, you need to first enable Advertising

Features in your Analytics property settings.

 In the Admin section, click on “Tracking Info” and then “Data Collection.”
 Then set Remarketing and Advertising Reporting Features to “on.”

You will also need to link your Google Ads or Display & Video 360 account to Analytics.

Once you’ve set up remarketing, you can create specific “Audiences” that let you target
groups of users based on common attributes. Audiences are made up of browser cookies
from users that visited a site with Google Analytics implemented and the remarketing
tracking code enabled.
Audiences allow you to target ads to those users. For example you can create a
Remarketing audience that includes users who visited a specific page of your website or
clicked to play a video.

Since website remarketing utilizes browser cookies, creating remarketing audiences in

Analytics doesn’t require any additional tagging on your website. But note that if a user
clears their browser cookies, they will no longer be a part of the remarketing audience
you created until they visit your site again.

To get started, click “Admin” and then “Audience Definitions” under the property you wish
to use for this audience list.

Click “Audiences.”

Then click “New Audience.”

Select the view and account you want the audience list attached to. Click Next Step.

Now you can define your audience from a preconfigured list of audience definitions. You
can mouse over the question mark next to each Audience to learn more about the users
that those Audiences target. If you click on an Audience, you can see an estimate of the
users in that audience over the last seven days.

You can set how long users are eligible to be served remarketing ads using the
membership duration. You can set Membership duration for your audience from 1 to 540
days.
If you wish to design a more specific audience for your business, you can import a
Segment to use as the basis for that audience. Click Import Segment and choose from
the segments that are available in the current property or create an audience directly
from the segment picker itself.

You can also define a new Audience from scratch. Notice that the Audience Builder is
very similar to the “Custom Segment” builder. The Google Merchandise Store can
remarket to users who have viewed Android merchandise product pages. You can click
Conditions from the options on the left and create a filter for sessions in which “page”
contains “android”.

When you finish configuring your audience, click “Apply.” You can see the estimated
number of users in the audience you just defined.

Audience lists will populate in the Google Ads or Google Marketing Platform account that
you link to Analytics. You can then use those products to create ad campaigns for those
specific audiences.

If your Audience in Analytics meets the requirements for Search remarketing, it will be
eligible for both Search and Display remarketing in your Google Ads account. An
Audience list for Google Search ads must have at least 1,000 users before it can be
used. Note that Audiences that include the Google Display Network's demographics
dimensions “Age, Gender, Interests” are not eligible for Search remarketing.

Remarketing is a powerful way of re-engaging users who have visited your website, but
didn’t complete a conversion or make a purchase. Google Analytics can help you define
those audiences based on user behavior and customize your campaigns to increase your
conversions.

Introduction to Dynamic Remarketing

Dynamic Remarketing with Analytics lets you target remarketing ads more precisely. It
enables you to target based on content or products users previously viewed on your site,
related and top-performing content and products, and purchase histories and
demographics.
For example, the Google Merchandise Store can collect product IDs from the
merchandise that users viewed on their website and later advertise those products to
those same users to bring them back to the Store website and make a purchase.

To set up Dynamic Remarketing, you first need to link your Google Ads and Analytics
accounts, and enable Advertising features, as we’ve discussed previously. Retail
businesses will also need to link their Google Ads accounts to their Google Merchant
Center. The Merchant Center is a website that lets shoppers see your online and in-store
inventory. Dynamic remarketing campaigns can use this product data to better customize
ads.

To link your Google Ads account, sign into the Merchant Center and add your Google
Ads customer ID.

To enable Dynamic Remarketing, you will need to:

 Find your vertical attributes for Dynamic Remarketing, create your Custom
Dimensions, and update your website tags
 Create audiences for Dynamic Remarketing
 Create attributes for Dynamic Remarketing
 And create your Dynamic Remarketing campaign in Google Ads

You can find the list of vertical attributes for dynamic remarketing in the Help Center.

Since the Google Merchandise Store’s industry is retail, we’ll use the Retail vertical
attribute. You can see that there are both required and optional attributes. Because we
want to track which products the user viewed, which page the user is on, and the total
value of the products viewed, we’ll need to use all three attributes when setting up the
Custom Dimension.

Once you know the vertical attributes you need to use, you can set up your Custom
Dimensions using each vertical attribute as the name of each dimension. This is how
Google Analytics will know what is being stored in the Custom Dimension.
When you save your Custom Dimensions, Analytics will provide you with tracking code to
place on the pages where your products appear. But you’ll also need to create some
additional code to pass information like product ID, page type, and total value.

Once you have added the code to your website pages, you can create your Dynamic
Remarketing audiences using the Custom Dimensions you’ve defined. These audiences
can include:

 general users who viewed your homepage or any category or product pages;
 users who viewed a search results page on your website;
 users who viewed product lists or product detail pages;
 users who abandoned their shopping carts,
 or users who previously converted.

You can create these Audiences the same way that we created Remarketing Audiences
earlier, using segments from Custom Dimensions. You can also import a preconfigured
Remarketing Audience into your Analytics Account based on your business vertical using
the link at the end of this lesson.

After adding vertical attributes to your page tags and creating your Remarketing
Audiences, you need to create Dynamic Attributes based on those vertical attributes and
link them to your Google Ads account.

 Navigate to the property in which you want to create the Dynamic Attributes.
 Under Property, click Audience Definitions, then Dynamic Attributes.
 Click New Attribute.
 First, select your Business Type. This will be the vertical you want (for example:
Retail or Flights).
 Under View, select the Analytics view in which the Dynamic Attribute data is
available.
 Then, under Destination Account, select the Google Ads account that you want to
link to the Dynamic Attributes.
 Then click Next Step.
 Under the Dynamic Attributes, select the vertical attributes you added to your
page tags and click Save.

Now you can create your Dynamic Remarketing campaigns in Google Ads following the
link at the end of this lesson. Once you’ve set up your Google Ads campaign, you’ll be
able to re-attract audiences based on the content that they previously viewed on your
site.

Course Conclusion

When you’re looking to analyze your online business with Google Analytics, the whole
process starts with measurement. This includes asking questions like: “how many people
are completing your customer journey” and “where are you losing or retaining customers
in that journey?” Measurement is all about collecting the right data you need to answer
your business questions.

Next, you’ll need to package up data into readable reports that you can send to decision-
makers that will allow them to make important strategic decisions. This often includes
developing and distributing Custom Reports and dashboards.

Then you’ll go in and analyze the data. Sometimes, analysis will be as basic as
identifying larger trends, but it can also include more complex segmentation of your data
or competitive analysis that compares your company’s performance to industry
benchmarks.

Analysis is the process of developing hypotheses based on your expectations and

figuring out why your metrics match or don’t match those expectations. When you find
data that doesn’t align with your expectations, your analysis can help you figure out the
cause.

Testing is the final phase of the process. This is where you try different solutions to the
problems you identified in your analysis to see if you can get your metrics in line with
expectations. Testing is critical because it allows you to discover opportunities for
improvement and decide what is working and what isn’t. Then, you can repeat what you
learned from this process to continue to refine and improve your marketing.

We hope that Advanced Google Analytics has been helpful and will take you to the next
level of your analytics ability. Be sure to take the industry-recognized GAIQ exam in order
to show that you’re proficient with Google Analytics.

Also, be sure to complete our post-course survey, so that we can collect our own data to
continually improve our course offerings. Thank you for participating in Advanced Google
Analytics.

Happy analyzing!