Lisda Ikhwantini Digital Marketing Consultation

It’s hard to ‘read’ Google Analytics. I admit it. Sometimes to read Google Analytics data, I need another expert people to translate from the dashboard data to a something that can easily understand by ordinary people like me. If I can not find that expert, I go to Google Search. I think, even though Google already make it easier to user. But still reading the bulk data makes some people dizzy.

Why Google Analytics is hard to understand?

1. Full of graph and chart. This is a problem for a new rookies in Digital Marketing/Paid media/SEO team.
2. Have many similar menu, such as Behavior Flow and User Flow.
3. Find help from Google Support is easy, but still difficult to understand.
4. Too many tabs but can’t see what I find.
5. anything else?

Then Why Google Analytics is Important if it was too hard to understand?

It’s in your website! Google Analytics say everything inside your site honestly, such as what is your traffic source, is it organic or mostly from an ads? and then who is your audience, what did they do in your website, are they coming mostly from mobile? etc.

---

---

Why Google Analytics is important? Because in some ways, we can set our goals in some pages and see the Goal data and we can start to count conversion. This is something we can do for lead campaign or if we have many page consists of forms, we can count the lead number from conversion.

One of my client said their front end more accustomed to using Adobe Analytics. There is should be a gap or discrepancy between those two amazing tools. You can check the difference between Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics here. I personally never tried Adobe Analytics, since my clients here never install it in their website. Whatever your analytics dashboard, make sure you and your team can understand the data.

One of Answer that maybe can Explain Why Google Analytics Important

If your website have multiple forms with many fields and you don’t implement any tracking on button ‘submit’ or on page, be ready for a dizziness, especially if you run an ads and you forgot to set the source, medium and campaign name with URL Builder. We should know where the audience stop their journey on your website, are they only visit your homepage and gone, or are they just seeing your product?

This is not something which can based on assumptions, but we can track it using Google Analytics. This one of answer why the Google Analytics data is important. If you facing and issue like above, you can seeing the data sessions based on landing page or source/medium in Google Analytics Behavior Flow, but trust me, it’s confusing with one glance. Hehe..

Google Analytics Behavior Flow Introducing a Way to See Audience Behavior

Google Analytics Behavior Flow, you can see it by your self at behavior menu dropdown choose Behavior Flow, there’s a graphic data with sessions number coming to your page then drops off from that page to another page. Feeling 😕? Me too.

You can choose which data you want, example landing page or medium source from upper left dropdown. To know more you can point anywhere, right click and choose highlight.

Read my other article related Google Analytics: Session, Visit or Visitor?

If you choose source/medium from upper left, then maybe you see direct/none, point that, right click and choose highlight, then you will see user journey from source direct medium none to every landing page name from starting page to interaction pages (commonly only until 3rd interaction shown, you can add next interaction if you want more data). Then you will seeing user journey from source direct medium none, until last interaction. Off course number of sessions drops off will increasing, and you can see where user want to stop the session from your website.

Seeing Your Audience Behavior with New Perspective

Still dizzy? Me too. This Google Analytics is not simple tools. Maybe that’s another reason why google analytics is important. Like some twist ending on some Netflix horror series. Google create dashboard data that not too easy to understand by ordinary people, makes many true and false interpretations from its users, most of it maybe falls in wrong interpretations, so it seems very important to implement inside the website. Haha~.. Sorry Google!

But still with this chart, you can see what your ‘content’ do by seeing the audience flow from your homepage to any page on your website.

My programmer freaky friend says better to implement Google event tracking on button ‘submit’ on every form, too see how many user fill the form until they click submit and we can see that ‘submit button’ data on Google Analytics. This is a shortcut to see your ‘goals’ event session in every form pages. You don’t have to read and seeing the flow on Google Analytics Behavior Flow. You can see how to set Event Tracking Goals on Google Analytics here.

Too Many Keywords for Why Google Analytics is Important and Still Google Analytics is Hard to Understand?

Ha! I convince myself with this keyword I can at least be seen by people who are of the same thought as me, if Google Analytics is too hard to understand but still Google Analytics is important. I have to understand the data inside Google Analytics more every time I need to seeing Google Analytics with different views, maybe as an easier tracking tools than other tools, someday.

Still, make sure the data you see in Google Analytics is the data you want to see. There is a similar flow to such as Behavior Flow, named User Flow.

They are using same chart model and at a glance has the same function. But If you see it in depth, Behavior Flow start with Landing Page and User Flow start with Country. The data will be different, if you choose Landing Page in User Flow.

You can see the difference between those two? In Behavior Flow is about engaging content, and in User Flow is about where you can see what channel/source drive user the most, you can see number of your visitor coming to your form page from this flow. I hope this is a true interpretation from me. You can see the difference between Google Analytics Behavior Flow and User Flow here. Hmm.. it seems similar in a way? Maybe you can see the difference from those flow here. Still have a question in mind, why Google Analytics is important?

<p value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">I hope to peeking just Behavior Flow and User Flow not make you think Google Analytics is harder to understand then before and you don't want to use it in your website. Remember, Google Analytics is made hard to understand but Google Analytics is still important tool.I hope to peeking just Behavior Flow and User Flow not make you think Google Analytics is harder to understand then before and you don’t want to use it in your website. Remember, Google Analytics is made hard to understand but Google Analytics is still important tool.

---

Updated this blog in July 2020.