Lecture 3: Google Analytics

Before access into Google Analytics account, we are better to know the goal that we want to achieve and what the KPI for the goal is. When you first time log into the Google Analytics, setup a long period time slot to overview the fluctuation of traffic over time. We should be curious about what reasons or events caused the fluctuation, since the factors made a peak in previous period can an important element of our future element. Several critical terminologies of Google Analytics as followings were introduced during the lecture, helping web/data analyst to interpret visitor's behavior.

• Landing Page: The first page that visitors come into the website. It tells us the page that leads visitors to the website, so we can base on this information to improve pages and lead visitors to where we want.
• Exit Rate: only for sections or pages in a website but not reasonable for the whole website. Since visitors ultimately will exit website, the reasons they exit may not be website but personal factors.
• Bounce Rate: Visitors go to the website and exit without visiting any other page (single page visit to the website). It's important but can't interpret isolated. For example, if a purchase page, which is defined as a final page for buyers by the website, possesses high bounce rate, it may not be a bad sign. However, if a homepage has low bounce rate, mostly it's not a good sign.

I felt it amazing when I first time used the Google Analytics and thought that I can get all information I want in the account. After the lecture and actually using it frequently, I realized that metrics can just assist us to interpret some phenomena and support our arguments, but there is no absolute number fit every situation. That's why humanity is a key factor in BI.