ANALYTICS BASICS

What "Analytics" is...

All right, first, let's talk about what Analytics is and that this is really going to be more conceptual. But I think it's an important thing to think about. When you're, whether it's for yourself for your client or for your business or your boss, whoever it is, typically what's happening is they got money that's pouring into something, whether it's a sales funnel, an E-commerce site, something else that has some sort of customer journey, maybe content marketing, affiliate sites, SAS, whatever. You've got money pouring into it, setting eyeballs and traffic to it, something happens with everyone going on and that spits out, hopefully, more money. Sometimes, unfortunately, it ends up being less money. But either way, the trick is, you know the results, you know how much you've spent and how much is going in that's coming from the ad platforms, you, generally speaking, most people know the results, but what they don't know is the how, and that's what's important about using Google Analytics.One is yes, it can tell you the results, but let's be honest, people are checking their bank accounts all the time, they're checking how many sales do we make all the time, they're checking their carts all the time.There are lots of ways to figure out the result of something.What they don't know is the how.And that's where Analytics really helps you to shine.You've got results and how, that's what Analytics is.And what happens is, instead of this whole black box, which is what most people start with, many of our clients, to this day, they'll come to us making lots of money and they have no idea how they're doing it.That's not abnormal and you're going to hear that story over and over and over again.Maybe you're already in that position yourself.What happens is, instead of saying okay, money's pouring into a black box, something happens that results come out, you're going to use Google Analytics to shed some light on the subject and actually show, remove that black box, and say hey, let's lift this thing and let's see exactly how this is happening.Oh, we're getting a lot of money to blog posts and then of those blog posts, 'cause maybe we're doing like a content marketing platform Facebook or something like that, of those blog posts, 10% of them become leads.Of those leads, 85% see the offer.Maybe the offer's the thank you page in that example.Another 10% will actually be retrieved through email and they come back in to see the offer page.And of those people who see the offer page,10% of those click through to the cart.Of those, 25% click through to the thank you page and you're hearing me say all these numbers, right, 10%, 25, 85, and the number itself is incredibly useful now because it shows us a map, a road map of how this is changing into this.And again, hopefully, it's changing into a lot of this.The idea is that Analytics will help you measure the how and when you think about the how, it's not just the number of people who saw the blog post and the number of people who saw the lead, but it's actually behaviors.That's how I ask that you think about this.Don't just think about it in terms of numbers, though that's obvious; you're going to see a bunch of numbers when it comes to tools like Google Analytics.But think about those numbers as what's behind the numbers and behind the numbers, it's behaviors.You're actually seeing the number of eyeballs on this page and then switched over to this page.And you're seeing the behavior of somebody saying, yes, I'm interested enough and whatever the content was here to take the next step to whatever this next step is, in this case as a lead.You're seeing behaviors.On the blog post, you'll see behaviors like a scroll.You'll be able to see behaviors like how much time they spent on certain elements, did they leave comments, if that's important to you.You can measure all sorts of interactions and behaviors that are happening on the site using Google Analytics.It does require setup to do that, which is what most people, again, don't realize about Analytics, and this is why you're here, right, to help get this tool set up and actually give you a more useful truth that you can look at.Instead of this whole black box setup, you've got something that shows you a little bit more of a roadmap.Then what happens is with Analytics, you'll get that first stage, what we call that good enough to get going stage.So you get good enough to get going you get your basics in place, then you do the drill-downs and you say, okay, well, how are they interacting and this is where you might do scroll on a blog post or certain sections maybe on an offer page or product detail page if you're using an e-commerce site, you've got product detail page.Are they interacting with all those photos you have?Are they watching the video demonstration?Well, you can measure for those behaviors.You can do a lot more details on how they are using that particular page to get to the next step.So this helps to optimize everything that's happening here once you have visibility into what those behaviors are.So when you think about, okay, what goal do I have to actually use Google Analytics, it's this.You want to know results, of course, everybody does.But those are fairly in front of you already.What you really want to know is how are you achieving those results.And you need both, we need both, but then how is what Analytics, was where Analytics really, really shines.That's the overall of why we are using Analytics and kind of what Analytics is for.

Google Analytics & Google's Marketing Platform

Now, specific to Google, Google, of course, has Google Analytics, this nice program that's free for most of us. It is part of something called the Google Marketing Platform. I'm going to bring that up here, more just to kind of give you an idea of the context, if you ever hear these terms to make sure that you understand how everything fits together. Everything that Google provides from this measurement perspective is under the Marketing Platform. They call it the Google Marketing Platform. If you scroll down to this page and you can get here very easily; MarketingPlatform.Google.com, if you're curious. When you come down here, you're going to see all of the tools. You'll see one of the largest they're featuring, of course, this is our buddy Analytics. We've got Google Analytics here, but you also see all of these other measurement systems that are back here as well, Data Studio and Optimize and Surveys and Search and we'll talk about some of the differences between some of these as well and kind of why these even exist. But of course, Analytics is the largest. Analytics is a part of the Google Marketing Platform. Now, while we're here, let's talk about the two different versions of Google Analytics, which you may not realize is there. If you hover over this, you'll see where it says Small Business, this is Analytics and Data Studio and Optimize. Small Business, guess what, that, the cost for a small business to use any of these products, which is the majority of the people from the volume perspective, the majority of people who use this product is free, at least currently, as of this recording. Google Analytics is free, Data Studio is free, and Surveys and Tag Manager, and Optimizer are all free. However, if you hover over this Enterprise edition, and again, your company may very well be at this level. At a certain point, Google Analytics taps out. There's a free version, then they have certain limits. As the point of this recording, it's around 10 million, what they call hits per month that show up and there are certain session limits and sampling limits, and things like that. If you have a ton of traffic coming into your site, if you're somebody like Best Buy, you very quickly are going to outpace what the free version will allow you to do. That is why Analytics 360 exists. If you go into the back of your Analytics and you see Analytics 360, you are one of the ones to 2%of individuals using Google Analytics who is using it that level, Analytics 360. It's paid, I believe it's around 150 grand a year, give or take, and so, it is a pricier option, but it's made for enterprise and you certainly could have access to Analytics 360. Most of you will have access to Analytics, it'll just say Analytics. And it'll say, it'll say it's a 360 account or it's not. What we're going to do in this course is we're going to cover just the basic free version of Analytics because everything, because everything that is in this Analytics free version is in Analytics 360. There are a few certain subtleties that are available in 360, again, that won't be covered in this Basics course but you can certainly find that optionsand the course that you're taking now will absolutely make sure you've got the Basics down in Analytics 360, so at least you're armed enough to go into the next levels if you so chose. That's really how this is working out and then how it all fits together. You've got Google Analytics, which is part of the Marketing Platform. Google Analytics has two versions, a free version, and a paid version. The free version is just called Google Analytics and the paid version For the Enterprise level here, Analytics 360. That's how everything fits together. Now that we know that and we've got the difference between Google Analytics and Google Marketing Platform.