Digital Analytics — Week 4

Hello everyone! During this week I have developed the class sessions of the Google Analytics Audit course at CXL Academy. Thank you very much for the opportunity to learn more every day! Some of the topics that we developed in the classes were Account And Property Overview, GA Property and View, Sending Page Views Correctly, The Hostname Filter and IP Filters. In the middle of the week I learned more about Site Crawl, Content Grouping and Query Parameters, GA Events, GA Goals and PII (Personally Identifiable Information). In the end, I learned about EEC (Enhanced Ecommerce) and Wrapping Up. Next, I will tell you about my experience in each of the topics in this amazing CXL Academy course.

Together with Fred Pike as an instructor, I got a structured approach to diagnose and fix any account so I can trust my data and make the most of my digital marketing dollars. In the first video, I got introduced to some key Chrome extensions and the developer console. These are the main tools I will use to run audits.

In the second video, I discovered where to find basic information about the property and immerse in the data. I learned which filters to look for. If some basic ones are missing, I knew I may have a challenging audit ahead of me. Also, I learned how to use Google Tag Assistant to discover how data is being sent to Google Analytics.

This is so important because I can recognize if the structure in Google Analytics I defined is correct or not. I verified some important settings in the Property view: default URL, referral exclusions, custom dimensions, Google Search Console, etc. Besides that, I verified view settings and the existence of specific views. A proper Google Analytics setup includes at least two different views, and specific settings within each one. Then, I verified that that raw view, if it exists, does not have blocking filters applied. The raw view is the safety net, so I don’t want to restrict the traffic going to it.

Now I saw how to go outside of Google Analytics to ensure that page view information is being sent accurately. When a visitor lands on a page, I’ll ensure that one — and only one — page view is sent.
Among the topics covered, I learned how to use data Layer Inspector + (a Chrome extension) to verify accuracy in reporting page views. Page views are fundamental Google Analytics dimensions — I need to make sure they’re right. Together with the teacher, I saw examples of under- and over-reporting of page views and learn what can cause those issues. Then I looked at a case study of a property that was only reporting about 30% of page views. Definitely, I’ll be a hero when you run across instances like this and remediate the issue.

This lessons showed me that the hostname filter is one of the best ways to ensure Google Analytics is reporting visitors who actually visited the site you’re auditing. I discovered which hostnames are valid. If I am setting up a hostname filter for accuracy, I should be accurate in which hostnames to include. Then, we reviewed why the raw view should not use the hostname filter and found how the hostname (dh) is set in a Google Analytics hit.

In the IP Filters lesson, I learned to decode a CIDR IP address and ensure Google Analytics is properly filtering that address and how not to do it. We used the recording features of the Tag Assistant to verify that the IP filters are working properly and how to deal with properties using Anonymize IP.

How can we know if the channels were implemented correctly? It is important how traffic ends up in different channels, and how to audit Google Analytics properties to ensure the rules are being applied. Then, we learned how to customize the channel groupings for the property you’re auditing to better reflect the unique traffic of that property. Be careful to look at some of the many ways traffic can inadvertently end up as “direct” and how to move traffic to the right channel.

Google Analytics will report all the results for one specific page in one line. As part of our audit, I’ll test if that’s happening. I discovered the main reason one specific page is broken into multiple lines (query parameters) and how to fix them during the audit. It is necessary to uncover one more issue that can cause page-reporting issues, the trailing slash, and how to audit and fix it. How to use the lowercase filter and why you should never use it in the raw view. Google Analytics Events are the heart and soul of a good Google Analytics implementation. The only thing worse than no Google Analytics events is too many. I explored an example of a site with way too many events, and how they cleaned it up. I saw the minimum type of events every website should have and learned to think like the website owner.

PII in the website is an important problem. Google can even delete all the data if it finds PII in the account. We learned where and how to look for PII and how to look for it. Also, at least one approach to mitigating PII using GTM, so PII never gets sent to Google.
Not all PII is truly PII. Finally, I discovered that EEC implementation can be messy. I verified that the Ecommerce checkout funnel is configured correctly, so that the site properly reports drop-offs between steps. Using dataLayer Inspector + and GTM / GA Debug, you’ll learn how to discover if the EEC data is being captured correctly.

This course was amazing! I learned how to analyze the sites that I am working on and to improve the information that me and my team are working on. Definitely, all that I have learned in these days will help me make better decisions in my organization and decipher what our users want to tell us through our website. Thank you very much CXL Institute for the opportunity to continue growing and being a better professional. Never stop learning!