Do you ever feel like your head is going to explode from all the new pieces of information you are trying to cram into it?
‘No,’ you say. You never let yourself get overwhelmed by too much information – TMI. Please teach me how you do that!
I am constantly presented with new things that I think I should know more about, so I try to organize my life so I can learn it. Perhaps I spent too much of life as a student to let such a circumstance pass me by. If someone even vaguely implies that I should be informed about something, and they tell me where I can get the information, I feel compelled to go there and gain that knowledge. I have referred to myself as a sucker for learning something new. It is one of my greatest of joys; it is also one of my heaviest of burdens, especially as my aging brain resists assimilating more data.
The arena in which I am currently trying to become more informed is website analytics and email tracking. I know about Google Analytics. We have had an account for many years, since the days when it was fairly straightforward and simple. Have you looked at it lately? This service has become so sophisticated that just clicking onto our Dashboard makes me feel like I need to start this only when my brain is at its sharpest.
For the last several years I have used an alternative service that has served up a lot of this analytic information in bite-sized portions for those like me with limited time to do it themselves. This has been a great tool, but that company has grown beyond my ability to keep up with their services. As a result, I am looking to bring some of that tracking and analysis in-house and share it with another staff person. We want to be able to use the tools that will help us and leave the rest behind….kind of a *KISS* approach.
So what is a person to do? Well, Google it, of course!
I started by doing this search: “google analytics learning” and found many places I can go for training. Of course, I will start with the Google Analytics Guide. Hopefully, this will get me started before I move on to ‘Get Started’ at the Google Analytics Training and Certification site. Or maybe I will start with Get Started….hmmm? But then, it seems that I need to learn something about this ‘regular expressions‘ stuff so I don’t get too lost. It looks like I can pay lynda.com to teach me about this and everything else technical; or I can let Eugen Oprea at Udemy teach me for free. Or maybe it would be even better to go to this YouTube Google Analytics channel. Undoubtedly, this article from KISSmetrics, 50 Resources for Getting the Most Out of Google Analytics, will do it for me. After all, it is using that *KISS* notion, right?
You see what I mean about TMI? Maybe you have discovered a simpler way that does not include hiring a marketing firm. After all, we are in the behavioral health community and do not have lots of resources to spend on fancy stuff. How do you handle analytics for your website. Any insights for the likes of me?
Thanks for reading and for your comments.
