CASA Marketing: Intro to Google Analytics

Don't be alarmed! Analytics can be fun! LinkedIn consistently shows Digital/Online Marketing as a top skill that gets people hired, and Web Analytics is one of the core skills for online marketing. Analytics allows you to understand the performance of Websites and ad campaigns. The goal of this book is to introduce analytics for beginners, and to encourage readers to try it out and consider learning more. I also want to see if I convince you that it is actually fun. Web Analytics is becoming increasingly important to online marketers, as they seek to track return on investment, and optimize their websites. We’ll learn about Google Analytics, starting with creating a blog, and monitoring the number of people who see the blog posts and where they come from. -- (OUTLINE) CH1 - Overview: This chapter takes a look at what analytics is, and introduces related concepts CH2 - Blogalytics: a basic recipe to get started in analytics, to take the first step in being able to track web traffic and see what they’re up to. We’ll create a simple blog, start a Google Analytics account, and connect the two, and discuss things along the way. The goal is to make a simple, relevant way to start exploring analytics. CH3 - Getting Traffic for Analytics: In this chapter we’re going to look at a couple basic techniques to generate traffic for a blog or website, following on our previous chapter about creating a blog. The purpose of these chapters is to be a self-contained experiment. Ultimately you need traffic in order to be able to look at analytics, so this chapter has a few ways to generate traffic. CH 4 - Reviewing Performance of Campaigns: In this chapter, we’re going to take a light look at some of the ways you can see information about the performance of a website or campaign, as well as some related terms, and the idea of ongoing reporting. CH5 - Fun with eCommerce Analytics Part I - Shopify: Tracking ROI is a 50 billion dollar skill, because it’s at the core of Google’s success, and you could argue it’s a trillion dollar skill, because of how much revenue Google helps businesses to make. In this chapter we’re going to look at how to set up a Shopify account, which is one of the easiest ways to set up a “real” eCommerce system to learn about tracking ROI with analytics. I think it’s important to see how you can set things up so that when you make an ad, you can track exactly how much money you are making. CH6 - Fun with eCommerce Analytics Part II - Adwords: This is part 2 of a 2 chapter series, whose goal is to capture the “full life cycle” of analytics, and take a close look at ROI (return on investment). The goal is to shed light on an elusive quarry – when you are spending money on ads, how can analytics help you know how much money you are making? And the exciting thing is that Adwords provides a way to do this. Shopify provides a foundation for ecommerce, and Adwords provides a way to advertise a site, and then track conversion. CH7 - Fun with eCommerce Analytics - Gumroad: In this chapter we’re taking another look at ecommerce analytics, courtesy of Gumroad – a free, super easy to use platform. In some ways this chapter is a back-up to the previous two chapters, another way to learn about analytics in a live setting. CH8 - Exploring Google Analytics Certification: In this chapter we’re going to explore some of the opportunities that Google offers directly, in terms of learning material, and the Google Individual Qualification, which can be a nice thing to have on your website or resume.