Google Analytics for Beginners — Review Part 4

This is the 4th review in my 12 review series of the Conversion Optimization Mini Degree at CXL. This Google Analytics course is in the Foundations section of the mini degree. There’s just one more course left in this first section and then I will move onto the Conversion Research section.

Before I started this Google Analytics course I felt like I already am at the beginner level, but the fact that it’s over 9 hours of video content made me think that maybe not. However, having prior knowledge helped me a lot to pick up things faster. So I had to fill my knowledge gaps and pick up some new things, but not learn it all from zero.

This course has covered the following:

• using reports (real-time, audience, acquisition, behavior, conversions)
• introduction to admin
• account, property and view settings
• basics of the filters
• types of traffic
• goals (destination, duration, pages per session and event)
• e-commerce
• analyzing reports

In Analytics,the most powerful question you can ask is,”Does this make sense?”

The instructor is Chris Mercer. He seems to be very passionate about what he is doing, analytics and how numbers tell stories. This makes learning from people like him much more exciting.

This course is perfect for auditory learners. The instructor puts emphasis on what’s important, repeats it several times if needed and it for sure starts to stick. He includes explanations more than once and if something was explained in a previous lesson he will quickly explain it again if that particular action is needed in different circumstances. Overall I’d say Mercer is a great speaker and it was a pleasure listening to him, especially because I learn best when listening.

The course has given me a fantastic overall understanding of the Google Analytics platform and how it works. I knew how to use reports, I was able to set up simple goals and understood that type of simple stuff. So I was aware of things like when to use the Landing Page report or why the session duration is showing as 0:00, but it was all separate small bits not that much connected to each other. After the course, I have a much better overall knowledge and also filled some knowledge gaps. My biggest realization was Real-Time reports' importance. I was only using those to see what’s happening on the website during and after a live on Instagram and things like that. Now I know it’s fantastic for testing. It’s kinda obvious, but I guess it was just one of those things I didn’t realize until it was pointed out to me.

“Consistency is incredibly important with your data.”

Multi-Channel Funnels report and Assisted Conversions were two new reports I wasn’t aware of. Well maybe not completely new, but I never paid attention to these or tried to make some use of them. Using filters was one more thing new to me. Mercer has said this about using them a couple of times and I makes me want to be very careful when using them:

“Filters are the most powerful and dangerous feature. It cannot be undone, data will be gone.”

When I saw there were going to be lessons about settings I felt skeptical and thought that no one needs to go through that, it’s self-explanatory. I was wrong and, Mercer, am I sorry for rolling my eyes :) I was making a lot of mistakes for a while, but now I know how to correct them. Some of them:

• I had only one View (now I know I need at least three and how to set them up)
• I used to set my time zone as it is where I live (now I know it has to match server location)
• I have not set Campaign Time Out (now I know why and how to do it)
• one more thing, not from settings, but very useful: I didn’t know it’s possible to exclude domain, i.e. Pay Pal (now I know it is possible and how to do it)

What is really useful is that Mercer gives a lot of his own opinion and insights. It’s not all just theoretical information that was provided. I have not worked with Tag Manager before and the fact that he says it’s much better to collect information than Google Analytics is great advice for me and I will for sure look into it.

There’s a clear message to not just think in terms of numbers. Behind them there are behaviors and you can see them as well as interactions if there’s a proper setup in place. So in the behaviors report you can see a story. You can see the story as a user moves from awareness to engagement and completing the action you wanted them to.

Each lesson has a summary. It is helping the information to stick and it’s what separates this course from many others. After each lesson, the instructor encourages us to go on Google Analytics and try to do it all by ourselves. It works as some form of accountability, I liked it.

The only thing I’d say could be improved is there could be slightly more information on the slides you can download after the lesson. With that I mean some more complicated things like regex he was entering for the goal set up. I personally was struggling to make a note of them during the lesson, my laptop screen is also quite small, so it has taken me a while to get around this. However, on the slides, there are links to articles, blog posts, and tools Mercer was providing so it solves the problem. So this comment about improvement was more from a selfish perspective trying to make my life easier :)

“Without the right data — and the ability to understand it — you’re blind when you don’t have to be.”

In my opinion, this course provides skills beyond beginner. I have worked in a couple of firms where my pre-beginner skills were as good or more advanced than my colleagues. So if you took this course and made an effort to actually master everything taught I guarantee you’d feel confident using GA.

I highly recommend this course.