Third Week with Digital Analytics

 This week, I have decided to take a mini-sabbatical from Google Analytics. I have received a flurry of information, and I think I would be able to apply it better if I give myself more self-study time on it as compared to watching video lectures. However, I still am under a time crunch, so hence, I have started the lesson on “Excel and Sheets for Marketers”. For a long time, I have had the inclination towards learning Excel with a special focus on using it for efficient usage of data. This is exactly what my focus has been for this week.

Now to a bit of an informal note, I have been accepted into the IPM program at NALSAR University, and will be starting my studies there (although in a remote environment) from 20th September! I am stoked to start my journey there, starting to learn more about business and its real-world applications. For sure, I plan to incorporate my CXL course into my schedule such that I can ramp up the speed with which I am doing my course while also beginning with my undergrad journey. So, I’m gonna slow down on the course and take up Excel for a while, as I gauge how fast or slow I can take everything. Once I get the hang of everything, it’s only a matter of time before I set to cruise control and then gradually shift gears. 

Starting off with my progress in Google Analytics, I delved deeper into what Events mean in GA4. Time and again, I’ve been reminded of the basics of what makes this different from Universal Analytics; it being a more versatile event-based model as compared to the archaic hit-based model. The model is similar to new tools such as Snowplow and Heap, which makes integration very efficient. 

Then, I was introduced to the best practices for using events, which include using headers in lowercase, using underscores in place of spaces, using a data dictionary, and consolidating event names while reusing parameters as much as possible. Figuring out scroll tracking was an interesting exercise I went through. Since the “Event Name” as such was available but the parameters were not in the UI, we need to register them as a custom dimension. Configuration of events can be changed by opening the ‘config’ and updating the matching conditions. Under ‘Modify Parameters’ we can further update by feed in the correct parameter which feeds the value. What this correct parameter does, is specify the corrected function in the backend from which the data will be flowing. I understand, this feels like jargon, so I have attached a photo that illustrates what I had done.

Also, I encountered yet another problem while updating the function. After putting in the New Value as “[[percent_scroll]]” I encountered subsequent errors which couldn’t detect what the function was. Obviously, I later realized, that a UI is nothing but a plate that offers you connection (or wires if it better helps visualization) to the mainframe brain. If the wires don’t know where to connect, they are likely to just keep floating around, irrespective of how many times you check it from the other side. Took me a good while and a lot of fiddling with the settings to realize that I had to include the function directly from the settings into the program, and voila! The rest was just as how the video showed me, and it was all smooth sailing subsequently. This little hiccup was probably because of the small ‘delta’ of time that existed between when the video was recorded and the current state of GA4. Understandably, since it is constantly evolving to newer versions of itself.

Also, I realized that usual (or default, for the lack of a better phrase) settings for the scroll function only specify a certain percent of scrolls (say, 90), which doesn’t always cater to the needs of every person/organization. This is where custom dimensions come in because as shown by Chris, I was able to set tracking for any per-cent of scrolls.

With this, I finally took my mini-sabbatical from GA4 and dove headfirst into Excel and Sheets for managers. The first lesson into this sub-course, I realized exactly how long a journey I will have to traverse in order to master this software. Excel and Sheets (subsequently referred to as EAS) are incredibly softwares, since we can plug them into various other projects of ours, irrespective of whether they are in GA4, or any other platforms. This is because databases are the backbone of data storage, which in turn is synonyms with EAS. We can use EAS not only for merely pulling data from various platforms, but the remarkable data processing they offer is a sight to behold. We can pull out insights from millions of garbled data sources and still be able to plan out a path relevant to our data.

Then, I was introduced to Google Search Console (subsequently called GSC), which reiterated just how powerful Google is at not only the institutional level but also the impeccable granular control it shows on individual devices blew me away. GSC is pivotal for monitoring how your website shows up in Google Searches; which keywords lead the viewer to the site, what rank it shows in the aforementioned keyword search and how to boost up our scores in the same. It is remarkable, how we as users don’t even realize what the order of sites is in our presented search, and only when we try to peep past and into the backend of this function, do we truly see that nothing that happens with Tech Giants is a mere glitch or a matter of probability. Everything has been intricately set and curated, and the growth potential in such a set market is exponential.

Furthermore, I went into the Sort and Filter functionalities of EAS, wherein I was able to filter data based on parameters such as keywords and sorting the data (ascending or descending) further upon the already filtered data without hampering any of the previous processes. Then, I was introduced to the Sum and Count functions and their variations; Sum, SumIf and SumIfs, adding the functionality of sum along with the querying done by specifying our conditions and Count, CountA and CountIfs, which does the same, simply with the ‘count’ functionality. There was the added spice of Absolute vs Relative Cell Reference, which simply was the difference between altering the rows/colums in our formula as we traverse the table with a formula.

I have planned out my upcoming weeks, wherein I plan on doing two things; one, finding my cruise control and balancing EAS, GA4 and college and two, completing EAS and attempting the exam. 

Here is the link to the site I am learning everything from!

https://cxl.com/

As always, I’ll link my website down below. Do check it out!

https://datalytics101.weebly.com/