It's all Gravy with Google Analytics
Digital Analytics is data-driven and online data can give us deeper insights into our business and give us an edge over the competition. Google Analytics is changing the way we collect and analyze click stream data. The invaluable online user behavior is crucial in driving product development and marketing strategies. Google has offered this indispensable tool for analysts and marketing professionals to track website and user statistics, and with a strong command over JavaScript and Google's API, we can fine tune our data collection pedigree.
Data is everything, and nothing if not used in the right context. Data awareness begins with Data acceptance, and every business that generates Data needs to set a context and strategy that derives from their business needs. Google Analytics is a tool that helps in collecting massive amounts of data with just a few lines of code and a free Google account, but what we do with this data makes the real difference. Getting the requirements spot on, defining the grain, determining the velocity and accuracy of data are paramount in making an organization data-driven. Again, Google Analytics is a platform that can define our grain, velocity and accuracy, but the real requirements are driven by the business need. Sometimes it is the other way around, "Data" can govern business needs, it can give us insights which we never could have thought of, and propel our Organization to the road of becoming more Data-Aware and Data-Driven.
Getting back to Google Analytics, it is a tool which Google offers free for the basic user; now how do we define a basic user- It can be an amateur Web Developer trying to find her/his ground, or it can be a small startup with very limited financial resources, both striving to become data-driven. With an analytical approach towards the business, we can utilize the technical chops Google has to offer, and gain data-acumen that can set us apart. The levels of granularity that we can achieve from our web resources using Google Analytics is outstanding to say the least.
The most exciting Google Analytics feature is the ability to define custom dimensions and metrics, it enables the user to attain different levels of data independence; thusly, empowering the programmer and analyst to make both subtle and complex changes to the data collection architecture. I believe that in the near future, with the pace at which digital analytics is growing, we will soon see infrastructures solely dedicated to online data collection.
Performing ETL on the data generated by Google Analytics can be challenging, there is a host of Cloud based SaaS providers who offer native connectors to Google Analytics, but building our own custom solution around the custom dimensions and metrics can be more robust and customizable. Google Sheets has native connectors that can extract data in the a very recognizable format, CSV and there are a bunch of Open Source tools that can parse that data using Google Sheets API into your database staging area using Object Oriented Technologies.
The crux of this article is that whether you are a Small Business, a Large Enterprise, a Professional Analyst, or a data Enthusiast, Google Analytics is one of the best tools to start your journey to being Data-Driven, intuitive and future-proof.
Change is here.
Please watch out for more articles on Event-Driven Programming with Google Tag Manager, Data Warehousing-Like a Boss and Creating Insightful Dashboards to bring your Data to life!