how to learn adobe analytics.

*this is a guide that was created from lecture videos and is used to help you gain an understanding of how to learn adobe analytics.

Adobe Analytics Foundations

Everything you do can leave a trail of data behind it and will most likely be tracked. Web analytics helps collect, report and analyze data.

Before analyzing the data, ensure you understand your business objectives and key performance indicators.

Adobe Analytics is a part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Adobe Reports and Analytics used to be SiteCatalyst that was from Omniture. Adobe bought Omniture in 2009.

Data Workbench used to be called Insight and Ad Hoc Analysis used to be called Discover.

Adobe Analytics is a client side solution that uses JavaScript and cookies. The cookies will be set from the code and will retrieve data about the user like their location, device and etc. Adobe will then process and store this data.

You can also integrate third party data with Adobe Analytics using data connectors. You can use Report Builder to bring the data into Excel.

Report Suite is a high level grouping of data. When Adobe Analytics is being implemented, you can send different data into different Report Suites. An Admin will control which users have which access into Report Suites. It is within the Report Suites where staging environments are created for developers.

A unique visitor is a count of unique cookie ID  that come to your digital properties. In Adobe Analytics, a visit is defined as a session. A session will end after 30 minutes of no activity or at 12 hours. A visitor can generate multiple page views. During a page view, events can occur that do not have a URL change but a specific action such as a video view or click on a button.

A metric is a measurement that counts something. There are two kinds of reports in Adobe Analytics: metric based and item based. Metric based reports typically show one metric over time. If you want context for a specific metric then you would use an item based report to look at a metric showing specific line items and their values.

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Custom Data in Adobe Analytics

Traffic and Success / Conversion Variables.

Traffic are known as sProps and can be thought of as Post it notes that provide page-level metrics context.

An example of a traffic variable would be sending the page name, title, author and topic of a blog page view.

Conversion Events / Success Events

Conversion variables are known as eVars and they give context to the conversion event that has occurred. Conversion events can be a purchase, download, click, watch, form submission and etc.

Adobe Analytics User Interface

Report and Analytics:

Favorites- favorite reports, report settings, administrative tools to customize

The Report Suite shown in the top right will determine which data property you will be seeing.

Date range that can be set is the top right. In an item level report you can compare date ranges.

Download button will allows you to download Adobe Analytics for different reports like Excel.

Advanced download allows you to download a vast amount amount of data.

Send will allow you to email the report. More provides a wealth of other options.

Graph Types

The data visualization graph option will be hidden for a report if it cannot be used. You can change the graph using Configure Graph. Graph Options: Vertical Bar, Stacked Vertical Bar, Horizontal Bar, Stacked Horizontal Bar, Pie, Scatter, Bubble.

Adobe Analytics Reports

Site Metric reports are a collection of mini reports known as reportlets, and they give a thumbnail overview of information.

Key Metric reports will let you look into different metrics all at once and over time. You can add five metrics to the key metrics report.

For most of the other reports, you will not be able to add new metrics. For example, going into the Unique Visitor report, you can see data day by day or hour by hour.

Site Content Reports are item level reports that allow more graph options and you can compare two date ranges. You can add seperate graphs for each metric.

You can filter the data using Advanced: Filter. You can use Site Sections to create content groupings for the different pages your website has.

Exit Links and File Downloads allow you to see the inks that people have clicked on to leave your website.

Using dashboards to report on your data and to have exploratory analysis of your data. Ensure you understand your business objectives and key performance indicators.

Bookmarks are used to save reports and the specific settings. You can save your report that has specific metrics, added graphs, filters and segments. Click on Bookmark to save the report as a bookmark.

Reportlets are small widget oriented graphs. The provide limited functionality and allow you to click on it to display the full report.

Adobe Analytics Dashboards

Create all the reports needed for dashboard -> Favorites -> Add Dashboard -> Drag reportlets into the dashboard -> add metrics by dragging onto dashboard -> select the metric you want to look at on the specific reportlet -> Ensure you save the dashboard

User Content Options is used to add external items to a dashboard that is not from Adobe Analytics.

Custom Segments

Segments allow you to focus on a certain subsection of data. Go into a Report -> Show Segments -> Create new segment to show segment builder -> create segment by dragging metrics to Definitions to specify segment data.

Click compare to Segment to compare segments in your data. Segments can also be applied to Reportlets.

Creating calculated metrics- Go into a Report -> Select Add Metric -> click icon next to Metric Type to create a calculated field -> Define New Metric -> Create the calculated metric by creating the formula

Targets, Alerts and Calendar Events Features

Targets- go to Favorites -> Targets -> Manage Targets -> Add New -> create target  -> go into Revenue Target Report to see quarterly goals

Alerts will notify you when a certain event has occurred within your data. You set the Alert within the specific Report. Choose the Report for Alerts -> More -> Add Alert -> Add Alert. You can adjust the Alerts in the Favorite menu.

Calendar Events allow you to make notes in your data for a specific day- Favorites -> Calendar Event

Exporting data- Create and setup Report -> Select PDF, CSV, Excel or Word. You can also select Advanced Options to get more data downloaded.

Scheduling reports- Select Report -> Send

Breakdowns- breakdowns allow you to breakdown a data point into more dimensions

For more information on creating a dashboard visit Adobe Analytics.

Adobe Analytics Mobile and Video Reports

Device Type report allows you to see the devices that different users have. You can filter this report.

Video Engagement Report will show you metrics about the videos your site has. This has to be properly implemented.

Using Paths Reports- Path reports are used to see how people navigate from page to page.

Next Page Flow will show the process of where people are navigating to on the site. Next Page report will show the next page users take on the site

There are also Previous Page Flow Report and Previous Page Report.

PathFinder Report will show you a customized report of pages that lead to a specific page.

Page Summary Report will show you information regarding a single page.

Using Traffic Sources Report- This will show information regarding where all your website traffic is arriving from. There are Search Keywords Reports, Search Engines Report, Referring Domains and Referrer Reports.

Using Visitor Retention Reports- This report will show how many visitors are going to your site nad how many visitors are returning to your site. Visitor Retention Reports: Return Frequency, Return Visits, Daily Return Visits, Visit Number and Sales Cycle

Sales Cycle Reports: Customer Loyalty, Days Before First Purchase, Daily Unique Customers, Weekly Unique Customers, Monthly Unique Customers, Quarterly Unique Customers, Yearly Unique Customers

Visitor Profile and Geo Segmentation Reports will show you information regarding the language, device, browser and etc. about the visitors to your site.

Visitor Profile Reports: GeoSegmentation, Language, Time Zone, Domains, Top Level Domains, Technology, Visitor State, Visitor ZIP/Postal Code

GeoSegmentation Reports: Countries, Regions, Cities, U.S States, U.S DMA. You can click on the map to drill down in the data into an Item report.

Technology Reports will show you the browsers, operating systems, monitor and etc. about the website visitors technology they are using.

Adobe Analytics Custom Conversion Traffic Reports

A conversion variable or eVar is used to give information about a conversion event.

E-Commerce Related Reports- Go into Site Metrics Reports -> Purchases to show Purchase Conversion Funnel, Revenue, Orders and Units Reports. You can also go into Shopping Cart to see Cart Conversion Funnel, Cart Opens, Cart Views, Cart Additions, Cart Renewals, Checkouts

Real-Time Reports will show what is happening on a website in real time. You can sort the top ranking pages using Gainers and Losers

Campaign Tracking

For each campaign, assign a campaign ID from a campaign variable. Then create a link to add to each campaign with the specified campaign ID and URL.

To see tracking codes- Click Campaigns -> Tracking Code -> Tracking Code Report will show you the tracking code of the website visitor

To see campaign by each name- Click Campaigns -> Tracking Code -> Campaign Name Report will show you the name of the campaign to see the overall summary of each channel. The Campaign Conversion Funnel can show you the weak spots in your funnel.

First Touch and Last Touch Attribution

Attribution is determining how to credit the value of certain points along the conversion path. First touch attribution gives all the credit to the first point, while Last touch will give the credit to the last point towards a user converting.

Marketing Channel Reports

Marketing Channels Reports will show First Touch and Last Touch Reports. You can also use Breakdowns in these reports to further breakdown.

Adobe Analytics Report Builder

Report Builder is an Excel add-in that will allow you to create data requests. Data Requests are used to pull specific data for Excel.

Report Builder does not work on Mac and you may not have Report Builder with your current Adobe Analytics. And if you do have Adobe Analytics Report Builder, you will need to ask your developer for the access. You can find Report Builder under Reports & Analytics if you your Adobe Analytics has it.

Request Wizard is used in Excel to pull data from an Adobe Analytics Report Suite.

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