[kjerzyk]

Google Analytics has 3 layers: -the vanity metrics anyone can look at - this is what you described. How many pages did they view, how much time did they spend on the page? -users interactions - this requires some skill. You can set up custom tracking to view specific user interactions to answer questions such as: Which page of my sales funnel gets users frustrated and makes them abandon it? -full user journey - this might require using API and user data (instead of page data) where you get to view every single event they did during their visit. This is probably the highest level of GA skill and requires a good setup, but when you get there, you can answer pretty much every question you have about user interactions.

[reactspa]

Two questions if you'd oblige me:

1) Are the 2nd and 3rd layers free or do they cost?

2) Do you know the official nomenclature of these layer products so that I can google how to implement them?

Thank you.

[mgas]

Not OP, but I have experience with the layers they describe. These are not separate Google Analytics products, but levels of implementation of the Google Analytics code.

The first level they mention is out-of-the-box, no setup Google Analytics. You install the site code and you get metrics. You don't need to be a developer or have any real skills to accomplish this. It is essentially low-effort, low-return.

The 2nd and 3rd layers do not require an investment in Google, but they do require an investment in people. You'll need someone who understands the Google Analytics API, the Measurement Protocol, how the script collects and sorts data, who can install, configure and implement Google Tag Manager, and who has at least an intermediate understanding of HTML/CSS/JS.

There is no nomenclature apart from the aspects of Google Analytics I described above, but you can read more about them here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/

[sdoering]

Not OP, but in the end it comes down to :

1.: No - but you need people understanding your business and GA as well as being able to implement additional tracking events via Google Tagmager (for example) to be able to answer questions like: What percentage of our users came via paid social media advertising, viewed a product, added it to the shopping cart, but abandoned the checkout. And how many of them are newsletter recipients so that we might be able to send them a reminder, that they have items in their shopping cart.

2.: No official nomenclature - just deeper data analyst's knowledge to ask the business people the right questions, develop an understanding of what to measure, talk to the developers to have them help provide (if necessary) additional info in a dataLayer structure and implement the necessary tracking events in the tagmanager.

After that said analyst needs to build the necessary dashboards/reports so that management/business can have the initial questions answered.

Data/Web Analytics in a nutshell (and described way reduced).

[technobabbler]

Not OP, but the simplest ways to do the deeper stuff:

#2 - custom GA events implemented via Google Tag Manager triggers. only takes a few hours to learn.

#3 - once you identify a few particular funnels you want to dive deep into, just skip GA altogether and use an all-purpose recording tool like Hotjar that'll let you automatically record entire user journeys starting or ending at some page. go through those with your UX team/person and look for potentially confusing interactions. takes like 5 min to set up, several days to collect data, and then a good UX person to interpret likely pain points that your users are running into. it's really hard to do a good funnel analysis in Google Analytics. Hotjar, or to some degree Facebook Insights, make that analysis a lot easier because they're GUI-driven and monitor the DOM visually, not code-and-config based like GA

[kjerzyk]

I AM THE OP (felt like I needed to say that to not break the chain :D )

I feel like your questions were answered - pretty much the answer I'd give.

1) The only cost is cost of a person who has a deep understanding of Google Analytics. Google Analytics courses are hours long but they only teach you the first layer. 2nd and 3rd come with experience - I've been working with GA for about 4 years and there are still things that surprise me, caveats that we sometimes forget about. Quick example: Beginners will quite often select 2 dates (separately), get number of users from those 2 dates, add them together and say: that's the number of users we had in those 2 dates. But if you selected those 2 dates together, you'd see a lower number. Why? Because a user who visited in both periods would count as 2 if looking at separate dates, but only as 1 if looking together.

2) There isn't anything official but there's lots of blog posts - from great people like Simo Ahava and Julius Fedorovicius. If you're just starting out, I'd recommend sitting down and writing questions you want answering. Default GA implementation will not give you answers to all your questions - they had to create a product that works OK for most, so it doesn't answer specific business questions. The greatest problem with people saying Google Analytics doesn't give them the data they need is they don't start with the question. Examples of tracking I recently implemented because I taught the team to ask questions WHEN they change/implement something: -Are users printing the pages? Tracking is set up to track when they use browsers print button. -Do we have any searches on page that return no results? Do we have searches that return too many results? -How accurate are our results - which position of the result do they normally click on.

Those questions you wouldn't answer with basic setup. By setting up custom event tracking, we can answer them.

Lastly, on the most advanced setup (keep in mind you might not actually need it) - new version of Google Analytics offers free integration with Big Query. This means you get to analyse the data using SQL.