CXL Institute Digital Analytics Minidegree Review #4
I’m amazed how Google has so many programs that are free to use for marketers and businesses. Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Optimize, and Google Data Studio just to name a few. I know a decent amount of things and I’m still learning. learning all these programs is very time-consuming because they have a bit of a learning curve to it. Analytics is a great tool and I can’t believe Google Data Studio is free for everyone. Really neat tool to take your data to the next level. Always wanted to learn this but was intimidated to learn it though. It seemed hard and confusing. Michele Kiss is the instructor of the course. Her love an approach for digital analytics is great. She goes over a lot of information of what you can do with Google Studio. I’ve learned a lot and now have to practice through.
Having Google Data Studio skills is definitely going to take me to the next level as a marketer. Now I’ll be able to present data in a more intriguing way to my clients and future projects. Michele doesn’t cover everything, but she went over a lot of information! the second video in the course was over an hour long! In the beginning, she goes over charts. She explains what kind of charts there are and what you can do with them. Very informative. She presents data and charts in a very creative way. Data doesn’t have to be boring anymore. It can be fun and interesting. It presents a story of a company’s online presence. I’ve learned that Data has to present a visualization of a story. Data studio makes it easy to import your data from Google Analytics and go further into data visualization. What’s cool about Google Data Studio is that you can connect many 3rd party tools to use a data source. I learned a lot on how to sort my data between metrics and dimensions. Google Data Studio is very customizable. I’ve learned to create tables, scorecards, line charts, bar charts, pie charts, maps, scatter plots, pivot tables, bullet and tree maps. Michele went deep in details on how they charts work and how to set them up. She explained how and when to use them. When it’s the appropriate time to use them. I have a better idea now of how to use certain types of charts and when. And what data should apply to them.
There’s so much you can do with Google Data Studio. So many things you can add. I have to keep testing and play around with it in order to get better. I’m wondering how I can use this for my clients. I learned that creating basic charts and graphs is not enough. We have to present our data in a more attractive way. So far with my clients, I feel like I’ve been presenting them generic data. I need to send more visualized data. It’s important to know how to set up your metrics and dimensions as well as the colors used in your graphs. Is presenting your legend necessary? Font size, spacing and all that is very important to make your data eligible. I know that all these into consideration as I move forward. Michele makes me more comfortable in knowing the process and how to do things when setting up my data analytics.
I didn’t realize that presenting data is not enough, but we need to present it a creative, artistic way. We have to take into accountability that some people are color-blind. Michele explains about how to use coloring. She talks about how series order and dimension values are presented. I thought it was interesting how Data Studio presents YYYYMMDD as the date format. Something I’ll have to get used to.
I’ve learned different types of filtering such as Report level, filter control, widget, segments. There are different use cases like organic search report, mobile reports, specific subdomains/websites. There’s the ability to crate filters for you widgets. I’ve learned that in order to set up a segment, one has to be created in Google Analytics then it appears in Data Studio. There are two types of filter controls- drop down and interactive charts. Drop downs report users can filter data. Interactive charts are cool because you can move your mouse cursor and the data displays the area where your cursor is.
In Data Studio, there are a lot of calculated metrics. Like Aggregation, arithmetic, Geo, & Text functions just to name a few. Learning the calculated dimension was pretty advanced and something that I have to definitely go over. I have to really go into learned CASE formula. Blends is another trick and more advanced thing that I’ve learned. I learned that I can join multiple data sources together even the same ones.
Data Studio isn’t too complicated in learning. There’s a lot of material that I’ll have to review again for sure. It has lots of great features that I had no clue about. I’m able to create sexy reports and send them to my clients and team-mates. It has a embed feature where you can embed data studio reports in other sites. That gives me an idea that I can use for a case studies page.
There are some other cool features like scheduling reports via auto send. Send automated reports weekly, monthly, etc. You can set up alerts and export to CSV/Google sheets and check the version history of your report. Doesn’t have commenting features at this time. You can add annotations though. Michele shows that it’s best to do it via Google Sheets. I learned that sampling takes place if we run a custom query and if we have a certain amount of traffic. This is something that I have to keep in mind. There’s so much you can do in between of Google Analytics, Google Sheets and Google Data Studio. They all intertwine and connect synchronously with another. I learned that you can do so much in creating data studio reports. I’m just touching the tip of the iceberg. I’m trying to figure how I can use it for marketing campaigns, A/B tests, and funnel visualizations. The process of creating funnel visualizations that Michele goes over was interesting. Gives a more detailed look at what’s going on with your data. Something that I have to utilize for doing Conversion Rate Optimization.
