Google Analytics Overview

Google analytics is a digital analytics tool that can be used to understand how users/customers interact with your website or mobile app. Google is in the process of migrating from old Universal Analytics to more advanced Google Analytics 4. Following simple marketing funnel shows usual steps and how Google Analytics can help,

1. Acquisition - Building awareness. GA can help to find what marketing channels are more effective
2. Engagement - Engaging the user. GA can help to find what contents are more engaging to the user
3. Monetization and Retention - User becomes a customer or makes a purchase. GA can help to find how many users are converted to paying customers

How to setup

1. Sign up for Google analytics.
2. Add an account. Represents a business entity/division.
3. Create a property. Usually represents the websites/apps you want to track. Each property has multiple data streams.
4. Select business objectives. This will generate reports tailored for your use cases.
5. Add tracking code to your website(using script or google tag manager) or to your mobile app(firebase SDK)
6. User interactions will be sent to GA as events. And this data is available as different reports.
7. You can add custom events to track additional user interactions.

Once the account is setup, you can see data from user interactions coming to your google analytics reports and dashboards.

Standard and custom events

GA tracks a number of standard events without any additional configuration. On top of that you have ability to define your own custom events. Standard events can be viewed using standard reports. In order to view cusotm events, you need to create new reports. Any standard or custom event can be marked as "conversion" events. Conversions like filling up a contact form, making purchase etc are more useful to your business.

Dashboard and reports

Google Analytics comes with a prebuilt dashboard that is optimized for your usecase and a number of reports that are fine tuned for the business objectives you selected. There is an advanced reporting section where you can build your own custom reports. This has the ability to create your own segments and report on the dimensions and metrics you need.

Cookie consent

Regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in California require websites to obtain user consent before collecting personal data through cookies and other tracking technologies. Google Analytics offers a basic and advanced mode to manage this cookies consent. There are other analytics tools like Plausible and PostHog that provides analytics without the need for browser cookies.

Learn more

This youtube video series provided by Google is a good resource to get started with GA.

Get help

If you are looking for support in setting up Google analytics in your website or mobile app, please reach out to us.

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