We covered the basics of views while discussing Hierarchies within GA here. Now let's take a better look at Views because that's where an analyst spends most of his/her time. This is the level where you get your dashboards, reports and all other analysis tools.
The default view is created as soon as you create your property. In case you have just created your account, both, default property and default view, are automatically created for you. Let's understand why do we need these views in the first place.
In any organization there are multiple departments, verticals, BUs, EUs, howsoever you would like to call them. As a best practice of data security we try to ensure that different teams should not be able to view each other's data. Of course at C-suite level, like CMOs, CEOs, CTOs, CFOs, all do see over all consolidated data, but at the same time at all othe levels it's extremely important to maintain data sanctity.
Moreover think about a scenario where an organization is having multiple marketing teams for different geographies, like one for North America (NA), other for Europe (EU) and then for Asia Pacific region (APAC). In this case you should not be consolidating all data at one place and then try to get insights out of that. Reason is that consumer behavior in NA market can not be mixed with the behavior in APAC region. The socio-economic-cultural environment of these areas is so different that we can't assume these customers/prospects to behave in similar fashion. Therefore it becomes vital for a marketing team to segregate data for these geographies and then study it in detail to form assumptions and beliefs. The best way to do this is by creating views.
To create views like always you will have to go to Admin console and create view from the last pillar. While creating this view i would ask you if you are creating a view for a website or a mobile app? The only difference between app view and website view is that within app we get some additional reports like crash reports to get the vitals of the app.
We can further define filters within these views so that we can restrict the data within each view according to certain conditions. These conditions can be like include/exclude traffic from certain geography, IP address, campaign, source, or other such parameters. This way we can not only create different views for different regions but also can create views for social media marketing teams, affiliate marketing teams, organic/inorganic marketing teams etc.
As a best practice always keep your default view, and put filters in the views that you create. Reason is that once you put filters you would start losing data that you have filtered out. This is the reason that we try to keep one view intact so that if in case we need to get some historical data, we should be able to.
Filters is not the only powerful feature provided within Views, but Goals are also one of the most important feature which is available in Views section. These goals enable us to measure the efficacy of our digital platforms in terms of checkpoints that our visitors achieve during their interactions with our digital platforms.
In next few posts we will discuss about filters and goals in greater detail.
