- [Instructor] If I could pick only one section
to do all my work, it would be the acquisition section.
Whenever I examine a client's account for the first time,
these reports are the first place I go
to see where users are really coming from
and whether there may be any missed opportunities
in bringing more engaged traffic to the site.
And to really understand the difference
these reports can make, it's worth stepping back
and looking at things in perspective.
There's a very famous person in the business world many
of you may know by the name of John Wanamaker.
He's a very successful retail magnate,
and one of the things he's famous for is the phrase,
"I fully believe half the money I spend
"on advertising is wasted;
"the trouble is I don't know which half."
And back in his day, this was just sort of accepted
as a cost of doing business.
I mean, you couldn't not advertise.
it wasn't really an issue
because the playing field was level.
Everybody had the same problem,
just sort of not advertising at all,
and there wasn't a lot you could really do about it.
But with the tools at our disposal,
this just isn't true anymore,
particularly in the world of digital.
With accurate analytics on my site,
I can evaluate my marketing campaigns and understand exactly
which ones are working and which ones aren't.
I know with fairly high precision
where the money I'm spending on campaigns
for my site is effective and where it's not.
So I don't have to waste half the money on advertising
'cause I simply can't track
which ones are bringing in more engaged traffic
and which ones aren't.
In other words,
accurate analytics is a major competitive advantage.
You do have to take the time, though,
to learn how to interpret these reports and metrics
to get the real value, so let's go into the tool
and introduce the Acquisition section.
Here in the left-hand navigation panel,
we've come down here to the Acquisition section
and we've got these into different sections.
We've got the All Traffic, Google Ads, Search Console,
Social, and finally The Campaigns.
We start here in our overview report
to get a taste of what kind of data is available
to us under these acquisition reports,
and we get a nice graphical overview
with an incredibly valuable bird's eye view
of the traffic that drives your site.
Now, at the top of the report,
you can change your primary dimension here
from Default Channel Grouping to Source/Medium
or some combination of the two.
Now, we'll go over the difference
between sources and mediums in a moment.
The other thing that you can do
is change your conversions here,
and this will normally be on goals.
I like to switch this over to eCommerce
if that's something you have on your site
'cause this is going to give us the ability
to gather revenue transactions
and other financial-related data down here.
And as you scroll down here,
you're going to see the data table's going to be
a little bit different than previous reports.
And it shows a visual comparison of each channel
by the acquisition, behavior, and conversion metrics.
But I can click on each one of these, and I can toggle,
not only which ones I want to bring in,
but I can actually switch it over
such that these will slide over
and become the next one there.
For example, if I click the number for new users,
then not only is this going to make all the new users,
the numbers that we see here,
but it's going to be represented by the bar charts as well.
Same here if I click Sessions, and that one slides over.
The bar charts are going to be updated as well as the numbers,
and then same here for users.
I can come over and do the same thing here.
If I wanted to see the amount of revenue,
I slide that on over, and then I can sort by that as well.
And that will make each of these rows sorted
by this particular column, but also update the numbers here.
So it gives you the ability to see
both visual representation as well as data charts,
but you can operate these a little bit independently
and customize this report as well.
It's pretty neat.
In this chapter, we're going to go in depth
through traffic data in these various reports,
focusing on these channels,
the sources and mediums, and the referral reports.
We're also going to touch on how
to begin tracking your campaigns.
While we won't really talk about the social or the AdWords
in this Google Analytics Essentials course,
it's important to note these acquisition reports
can have a big impact on your analytics advantage,
especially depending on your business model.
And if you're interested in the analysis
and optimization of AdWords,
I highly suggest you check out the Lynda course dedicated
to just that.
I think you'll agree that a few minutes
of browsing these reports in this section can be invaluable
for understanding where your traffic is coming from,
which of course is a fundamental pillar of analysis,
so let's dive in and learn more
about the All Traffic section under Acquisition,
beginning here with the Channels report.