Now that you know how data gets collected,
let’s look at how Google Analytics accounts are organized. All of your Google Analytics accounts
can be grouped under an “Organization,” which is optional. This allows
you to manage multiple Google Analytics accounts under one grouping. Large businesses or agencies could have multiple
accounts, while, medium to small-sized businesses generally (only)
use one account. When you
create an account, you also automatically create a property and, within
that property, a view for that account. But each Analytics account can
have multiple properties and each property can have multiple views. This
lets you organize your Analytics data collection in a way that best
reflects your business. The Google Analytics Account determines how
data is collected from your websites and manages
who can access that data. Typically, you would create separate Analytics
accounts for distinct businesses or business units. Each Google Analytics account has at least
one “property.” Each property can collect data independently
of each other using a unique tracking ID that appears
in your tracking code. You
may assign multiple properties to each account, so you can collect data
from different websites, mobile applications, or other digital assets
associated with your business. For example, you may want to have
separate properties for different sales regions or different brands. This allows you to easily view the data for
an individual part of your business, but keep in mind this won’t allow
you to see data from separate properties in aggregate. Just as each account can have multiple
“properties,” each property can have multiple “views.” You can use a
feature called Filters in your configuration settings to determine what
data you want to include in the reports for each view. For example, The
Google Store sells merchandise from their website across different
geographical regions. They could create one view that includes all
of their global website data. But if they wanted to see data for individual
regions, they could create separate views for North America, Europe, and
Asia. If the Google Store wanted to only see data
for external traffic (that didn’t include their own store employees),
they could set up a view that filtered out internal traffic based
on IP address. The view
level also lets you set Google Analytics “Goals”. Goals are a valuable
way to track conversions, or business objectives, from your website. A
goal could be how many users signed up for an email newsletter, or how
many users purchased a product. We’ll discuss Goals and Conversions in a
later lesson. Be thoughtful when setting up your accounts,
properties, and views, because you can’t change data
once it’s been collected and processed. by Google Analytics. Before we move on to user access
permissions, there are a couple important things to note about views. New views only include data from the date
the view was created and onwards. When you create a new view, it will not include
past data. If
you delete a view, only administrators can recover that view within a
limited amount of time. Otherwise, the view will be permanently deleted. You can assign permissions to other users
at the account, property, or view level. Each level inherits permissions from the level
above it. For
example, if you have access to an account, then you have the same access
permissions to the properties and views underneath that account. But if
you only have access permissions for a view, then you won’t have
permission to modify the property or account associated with that view. By clicking “Admin”, Google Analytics
lets you set user permissions for: “managing users,” “edit,” “collaborate,”
or “read and analyze.” “Managing users” lets users add or remove
user access to the account, property, or view. “Edit” lets users make changes to the
configuration settings. “Collaborate” allows users to share things
like dashboards or certain measurement settings. And finally, “Read and Analyze” lets users
view data, analyze reports, and create dashboards, but restricts them
from making changes to the settings or adding new users. How you
configure your organizations, accounts, properties, and views can affect
how your data gets collected. Be thoughtful when setting up your Google
Analytics implementation, and make sure you align your properties and
views of the data you collect with your overall business structure.
