GoogleAnalytics from users perspective (part1)

Firstly lets see what Google Analytics is?

Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about your website or mobile app’s usage. Google Analytics is a great tool for measuring your app’s usage to test if new features are working both functionally and experimentally.

Google Analytics provides you with high-level, dashboard-type data for an overview of your app’s performance, along with more in-depth reporting tools.

Now lets see how to access analytics from your Google account and get tracking that will be integrated in your App.

Setting Up Google Analytics for Your App

Create your Google account if not already exist. If you already have your account Go to www.google.com/analytics. The homepage should appear like so:

Tap on ‘Access Google Analytics’ You will get page where you need to add your App name and at the end you will get a button ‘Get tracking Id’, tap on it and get your tracking Id.

Where do you get this tracking Id in Dashboard?

Select the Admin view on the top right. To see the main dashboard area for managing your Accounts, Properties, and Views.

On the main dashboard you are presented with a workflow that starts with Account, progresses to Property and ends in View (Profile). Lets first break down what each of these sections refers to.

·                       Account – It can seem confusing however, within your own Google Analytics Account you can be a member of multiple analytics accounts owned by clients or other collaborators. In the account drop down list on the right-hand column you will see a list of all of the accounts you are a member of.

·                       Property – A property refers to a particular website or application that belongs to a given account. In this tutorial you will be creating a new Clock property to house all of the data associated with your app.

·                       View – The final column is the view column. This enables you to create different views on your data. By creating different views on a single property (in this tutorial’s case an app) you are able to monitor data from different versions of your app which you will look at later on in the tutorial.

You will get your tracking Id in ‘Tracking Info’ section in ‘property’ block

Integrate this tracking Id in your code and track data

In Brief:

If you are setting up a new Google Analytics account, start at step 5. If you already have a Google Analytics account and are adding an app property, start at step 1.

1.    From your Analytics Account home, click Admin.

2.    Find the account you want to add the new app property to. If you have a lot of accounts, click the All Accounts link just below the menu bar. Use the search box to help find the right account.

3.    From the table, click the account name you want to add the property to. If you want create a new account, click +New Account. A new property is automatically added to all new accounts

4.    Click +New Property (web or app).

5.    Select App as the type of property you want to track.
App tracking data can only appear in designated app properties, and web tracking data can only appear in designated web properties. If you want to track both apps and websites using Google Analytics, you must use different separate properties. Alternative configurations are not supported and will result in corrupted or incomplete data.

6.    Type in an Name.
If you plan on tracking more than one app in your account, use a very specific and descriptive name.

7.    Select an Industry Category.

8.    Select your Reporting Time Zone.
This only affects the time that appears in your reports.

9.    Enter an Account Name.
This option only appears when creating a property on new accounts. You can have multiple accounts in Google Analytics, and multiple properties per account. Use a descriptive and accurate name for each account to help you remember what you’re tracking.

10.                  Choose your data sharing options.
This option only appears when creating a property on new accounts.

11.                  Click Get Tracking ID.

12.                  Use the Google Analytics SDK for Android or iOS and implement the tracking code, including the tracking ID. You can also optionally download either SDK integrated with AdMob.

Now you are ready to use Google Analytics in your App.

Tracking (Reporting)

1.) Visitors tab

Lets go through the basic ‘Visitors tabs’ and see how they help us in tracking our users and app:

Following are the basic tabs that are used in analytics dashboard:

1.)                 App Overview

2.)                 Real-Time

3.)                 Audience

4.)                 Acquisition

5.)                 Behavior

6.)                 Conversions

In each of this ‘Overview’ is the common tab that contains brief overview of the tab. Lets see this tabs one by one.

1.) App Overview: This tab will contain basic app users, event, device and goal completion overview. Tap on detail button on right side of each section name will navigate you to detailing part.

2.) Real-Time: Generally tracking of frequent navigation/actions performed in app will not get tracked by general tabs. Real time as name say will give you user navigation in fraction of seconds. Real Time will track

·    Events,

·    Screens,

·    Conversions,

·    Location.

3.) Audience: Audience refers to Users of App. They can be Active, New, Repetitive users of app. This section also allow you to access data with

App version

Language

Location

Network, Device, etc….

4.) Acquisition: I am not much aware of acquisition part of analytics. Will let you know once explore it.

5.)  Behavior: I think this is the most important tab from all the tabs when you want to know your user flow, from where user enters into your app, from where it quit, from where it exits etc. Basically it gives you detail about user engagement with the app.

Most Eye-Catching part of this tab is behavior flow that gives you data in pictorial form. See this:

6.)  Conversions: This tab will give you detail about Goal completion and Flow.

These tabs are so basic and easily accessible, straightforward to track. Now lets see few examples to track your data:

2.) Event tracking

You can track events in many ways say,

·    From App Overview

·    Real Time > Events

·    Behaviors > Events

3.)  Screen tracking

  Same scree tracking can be done by many ways say,

·    From App Overview

·    Real Time > Screens

·    Behaviors > Screens

4.) Custom tracking

 Given above are some straightforward kinds of tracking. Now you have two dimensions available to get your app data relevantly. There are two dimensions called primary and secondary dimensions. This you will get almost on every tab at bottom. 

Explore it you will get more ways to get your expected data.

Few examples,

Location with App Name

Screen name with Language

Customization

Now lets do some customization in our analytics dashboard for more relevant data.

1.) Creating custom Dimension and tracking:

We faced a problem in our App. Our Client have their users divided Group wise and they want to track screens according to this group so that they may get ‘which user of what group has visited which screens’.

We have created custom dimension of group for this. To create custom dimension, Tap on Admin > Property section- Custom Definition > Custom Dimensions.

Give a name to your dimension, select scope and create your Custom Dimension. This Custom dimension you will get in your secondary dimension.

How are custom dimensions different from custom variables?

Custom dimensions are functionally very similar to custom variables. Both features enable you to group your data in new ways by applying values to hits based on a scope that you define.

The fundamental difference between the two is that custom dimensions are primarily managed on the server side, whereas custom variables are primarily managed on the client side. This has several implications:

• Less data needs to be sent in each hit. Since the name and scope of your custom dimension is defined in your property settings, only the index and value need to be sent at collection time.
• Custom dimension definitions are more flexible. Name and scope can be edited in your property settings without necessarily modifying your code. Learn more about how editing custom dimension definitions can affect your reporting.
• Each property has 20 available custom dimension indices. By contrast, custom variables are managed on the client side in five custom variable "slots" per property.

2.)  Creating custom Metrics and tracking:

While custom dimensions need to be carefully applied to specific hits and managed with scope, the hit to which a custom metric is applied will generally not affect reporting, and thus they can be set whenever the metric value becomes known.

A metric is a count of some data type, like page views, that is summed up across your Google Analytics hits. A metric corresponds to a column in a report. Dimensions allow you to break down a metric by a particular value, like screen views by screen name. Dimensions correspond to the rows in a report.

To create custom metrics go to Admin panel >property > select custom metrics in custom Definitions > New custom metrics

 

Once custom metrics gets created, add specific code in view controllers. Create a custom report and add your defined custom metrics in it and see the results :

Why are custom dimensions and metrics useful?

Custom dimensions and metrics allow you to bring data you might have outside of Google Analytics, like in a CRM system for example, and bring that data into the platform to build new reports that help you answer questions about your content or your business. For example:

• If you store the gender of signed-in users in a CRM system, you might want to combine that with your Google Analytics data to see pageviews by gender. Using custom dimensions, you could bring gender data for signed-in users into the platform, and create a new report that breaks down pageviews by gender to find see how different types of users experience your content differently.

• If you're a game developer, metrics like level completions or high scores may be more relevant to you than pre-defined metrics like screen views or avg time on site. By tracking this data with custom metrics, you can keep track progress against your most important metrics in flexible and easy-to-read custom reports.

3.)   Creating Goals: Goals are a versatile way to measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives. You can set up individual Goals to track discrete actions, like transactions with a minimum purchase amount or the amount of time spent on a screen.

To create goal tap on Admin > View Section > Goals you will get screen like below: 

Tap on ‘New Goal’ and create your goal having some track target. To track custom created goals you can see ‘Conversion’ tab ,it has Goal section. Also you can track goals from ‘App Overview’ tab.

4.) Creating Custom Reports: You can create your own custom reports if the given default reports not fulfilling your requirements. To do you will get option in ‘Customization’ tab. See below:

You will get screen look like this:

Lets look into these fields one by one

1.)   Title is simply title of your report

2.)   Tabs give you different sections of report say, user, screen, session etc

3.)   Type will give you map type

4.)   Metrics Group and Dimensions drill down will allow you to give primary and secondary dimensions

5.)   You can add your own filter on selected field. Its optional

Now let see once a custom report gets created where they exist in actual report 

5.)  Export Reports: Exporting report is so easy in analytics.

1.)          Extract your required data by selecting tabs, primary and secondary dimensions.

2.)          Tap on ‘Export’, you will get options to export your data

6.)  Duplicate Custom Reports:

1.) Select Admin Tab 

2.) Tap on 'Share Assets’ in ‘view’ section.

3.) Select your report that needs to duplicate and tap on 'Share' at top.

4.) Select ’Share template link’ and tap on share

5.) You will get a pop up which will have a URL. See below.

6.) Copy-paste this link in new tab, it will allow you to give a new name to your report and will allow you to create a duplicate report.

7.)  Changing traffic and Date: We can change traffic of our reports like, if we want only Android users or iOS users or Android and iOS users. To do so we are given an option on top most to change it. Also date from where to where we want report can be selected.

Traffic                                                

 

Date

    

Terms:

1.) Bounce rate:

According to Google, the bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that see only one page during a visit to your site. A bounce is calculated as a single-page view or single-event trigger in a session or visit. This means that if you’re using event tracking, those events will lower your bounce rate even if your drop-off rate for landing pages remains the same.

2.) Drop-Offs:

In Visitors Flow you can see how many visitors drop-off after the first, second, third etc. page; as compared to bounce rate, which only shows how many visitors, viewed only one page.

A visitor that bounces has only seen one page, whereas a drop-off can occur after any number of pages. 

Average Limit: 

Regardless whether you’re looking at bounce rate or drop-off rate, average rate should be 40 to 60%.

Ecommerce

Ecommerce measurement allows you to send in-app purchases and sales to Google Analytics. Ecommerce data in Google Analytics is generally comprised of transactions and items, related by a shared transacation ID. In the Google Analytics SDK for iOS, that relationship is established by creating a transaction object and adding items to it.

Ecommerce data is used primary in the following reports:

• Ecommerce Overview
• Product Performance
• Sales Performance
• Transactions
• Time to Purchase

To track Ecommerce, you will get Ecommerce option in Conversion section where you will get details of revenue, quantity, product performance etc…

Why set up ecommerce tracking?

With ecommerce tracking, you can better understand the value of your digital business. Use the Ecommerce Reports to segment and analyze your data, and discover relationships between your marketing campaigns, user engagement, and transactions.

That all from my end, I will keep on adding new things in the blog as and when I have something new on Google Analytics in my bucket.

Happy Coding!!