There are 5 terms you must understand to talk intelligently about analytics and data.
Analytical Decision Making
This refers to the data scientist’s scientific method. It’s the process you’ll use to identify the questions you should be asking and the best methods for answering them.
Analyst’s Toolkit
These are the tools, templates, and resources you’ll use to turn concepts and ideas into data and reports. Your toolkit will help you ask the right questions and develop a process that makes data analysis easier.
UTM Parameter
This refers to the code you can append to a URL to give you more information about where your traffic is coming from.
How to use UTM parameters
In this example, the yellow highlight shows you the actual link. Everything after that is a UTM parameter. It’s this extra information that helps you track your traffic sources.
- Green highlights the source, which tells you the audience or referring site (house list).
- Pink highlights the medium, which tells you how this traffic was referred (email).
- Blue highlights the content, which is your ad/content identifier (data cert launch email1).
- Gray highlights your campaign, which identifies the promotion or strategy this traffic came from (data cert 1-1-2016).
When you add UTM parameters to your links, anyone who clicks on those links will be tagged, and you can track those tags in Google Analytics.
This allows you to see which sources and communications are giving you the best traffic.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
KPI is another way to refer to a metric in general, and it’s usually used to talk about a metric that someone thinks is driving their business. KPI is another way to talk about a key metric.
Dashboard
A dashboard is a web page that collates your metrics from a particular source. You’ll likely have a dashboard for each data source: Google Analytics, your email service provider, your social media platforms, and more.
Most dashboards also provide graphs that turn your data into visuals, making it easy to see how well you’re performing.
Dashboards should be available to everyone on a team. They help you easily understand what’s going on in a business, which helps team members see how their work is impacting the success of your business.
