CXL Institute Digital Analytics Mini-degree Program

Contents:

• About CXL Institute and the Courses
• Google Analytics Goals
• Assisted Conversions - Essence of the Source/Medium Report
• Measurement Protocol - Respect it!
• Wrap Up

I would like to share my experience and key learnings during the first week of studying Digital Analytics Mini-degree at CXL Institute. Starting a new course or a program is hard, especially if you’re not sure you’ll be able to benefit from it. I started this minidegree feeling the same way but now that I’ve spend the last week going through the course material and taking sessions, this minidegree is definitely worth your time. 

The course content covered so far was broad enough to cover all the major sections of Google Analytics and I consider it to be the perfect foundation for any marketer wanting to establish eminence in digital analytics.

Firstly, I would like to praise the teaching style of Chris Mercer. I was stunned right after the first course lecture. The way he casually explains and dives into the intricate details, gradually peeling off the strenuous layers of content, is just wonderful. Plus, now I am a fan of Lucid-chart too. Mercer explains with such expertise and clear demonstrations that it made my attempt at understanding the content almost effortless.

I have been following the CXL blog for a while to educate myself for best practices in analytics, CRO and LPO. Moreover, during the last year I became a big fan of analytics gurus and platforms like Simo Ahava, Avinash Kaushik, Bounteous and OptimizeSmart. Knowing that these guys are very involved in the CXL community made this scholarship opportunity a godsend in terms of gaining vertical depth in digital analytics and becoming a data driven individual through content and community.

For those who are not aware of the ConversionXL Institute, allow me to make a formal introduction. ConversionXL Institute (CXL) is an online research and training product for optimizers and data-driven marketers. CXL Institute basically aims to educate upon four main hot spots:

- Collecting data: qualitative and quantitative.

- Coming up with a conversion optimization framework and making it work for you.

- Investigating what works better and gathering data on it.

- Continuous skill development.

An Appeal to use GA goals

During my first week, I plowed through and completed the google analytics beginners and intermediate courses along with its exams. I use google analytics extensively in my current role so could not resist deep diving into finding out how the course material may aid my understanding of the tool. I drifted seamlessly through the google analytics (GA) beginners course initially but stumbled upon the use of goals. I admit I didn't pay much heed to GA goals when I stepped into the world of analytics but the course makes a compelling case regarding the significance of goals and the kind of diversity they bring with them. Upon further research I found out that customized goals are quite underused in the local industry.

Goals are basically configuration settings within Google Analytics that can help connect business objectives to specific KPIs.

GA offers four types of goals:

Source: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1012040?hl=en

In my case, learning about goal tracking using events was quite fruitful and provided me with a quick-to-apply training as I already had some experience in setting up custom events for GA through Google Tag Manager (GTM). This type of characteristic grants me the capability to consider nearly every relevant event on my site as a goal and setting up goals isn’t that hard once the required events are in place.

Let me share how I plan to use goals to make my case for testing a hypothesis: As I work in an Online Travel Agency (OTA), I will be using a flight booking process as a reference.  

The checkout funnel commonly consists of 4 steps:

1) Search Flight --- 2) Select Flight --- 3) Add to Cart --- 4) Payment

Using destinations goals I can set up a funnel according to the aforementioned checkout process. Then using funnel visualization reports in GA, I am able to find out that the goal abandonment rate for checkout funnel step 2 is quite high. Coupled along with qualitative data, I can hypothesize that if I introduce a discount tag or somehow show the user availability of a coupon code, at this stage the user will be enticed to add the flight to the cart to at least discover the coupon value. Once the test is implemented I will be able to conclude whether the goal abandonment rate for checkout funnel step 2 changed negatively or positively, that is while keeping other variables constant of course.

Assisted Conversions - Essence of the Source/Medium Report

During the Intermediate Google Analytics course, two very useful traits caught my attention that I didn't know how to efficiently utilize. Firstly, the Assisted Conversions report in multi-channel funnels and secondly the Measurement Protocol.

Mercer explains with superb clarity regarding the significance of understanding the ratio of assisted to last click conversions. Instead of utilizing the last interaction attribution model to allocate credit to the way a user hopped on your site, we can gauge the value of all channels through what GA calls “Assisted Conversions” in its multi-channel funnels. Additionally GA provides Assisted / Last Click Conversions which calculates how often channels appear in that conversion pathway.

To understand this ratio consider the following:

- If a channel’s Assisted / Last Click Conversions ratio is closer to 0, then it is more likely to be the final interaction a user had before converting.

- If a channel’s ratio is 1, then it is equally likely to assist and complete conversions.

- If a channel’s ratio is greater than 1, then it is more likely to assist.

This led me to a much needed conclusion regarding a deliberation which I indulged in a few months back with my colleagues. A comparatively low ROI of display channels. This assisted conversions report basically makes up the case as to why a display channel may have low ROAS. In GA, ecommerce transactions/conversions are credited to the last ad a user clicked on directly before the conversion. However, since display advertising is often the first step in a purchase cycle, a last-click conversion model may not accurately depict the actual value of the display network. This, subsequently demonstrates that a display network will have an assisted / last click conversion ratio of higher than 1 and this ratio can be used as a valid metric to defend the use of a display channel.

Measurement Protocol - Respect it!

Another one of the great features of GA that I was exposed to during the intermediate course was the Measurement Protocol (MP) which solves very real problems many business may encounter. Basically there are certain limitations with regards to tracking with GA and GTM which cannot be catered to using standard or enhanced ecommerce (EE) implementations. Many issues such as updating a user status from your CRM or sending refund data can be solved by Google Analytics’ Measurement Protocol:

“The Google Analytics Measurement Protocol allows developers to make HTTP requests to send raw user interaction data directly to Google Analytics servers. This allows developers to measure how users interact with their business from almost any environment.”

Source: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1

I was enlightened to learn that this feature caters to tracking any kind of offline conversion that didn’t occur on the platform and using MP one can basically stitch back the said conversion to a user or a session  Chris Mercer sums it up perfectly in the diagram below:

Source: Intermediate Google Analytics - Digital Analytics, CXL Institute

However, MP gets very advanced very fast, If need be, a marketer needs to indulge in the basics of HTTP POST and GET requests, URL endpoints and parameters. Upon deep diving into the practical examples of using MP, I found a use-case that relates to a dilemma my organization encountered previously which basically allows modification in statuses of an existing lead/order over the Transaction ID from a CRM/database and into GA. I plan to share this and brainstorm with our developers whether using MP is an appropriate approach.

Wrap up

The courses within the mini-degree are fittingly detailed and also provide a holistic view of roughly how the journey of implementing and deriving value from digital analytics should map out to be. Overall, I feel courses like these should be compulsory for every marketer who wants to provide value to any sort of business and this kind of hands on curriculum taught by industry experts will go a long way in terms of developing marketable skills. I’m really looking forward to future sessions!