10.00 AM Thursday / October 02, 2014

Thilini Prarthana Bandara

What is analytics?

In simple terms Analytics is the process of transforming data into insights in order to make better decisions. Businesses and organizations use analytics every day to improve the quality of the business processes, save costs, and increase revenues.

The importance of Analytics

Analytics can help people in many ways. From using analytics to improve organizational goals to applying it to a specific business problems–“Analytics” is something any business manager, leader or in fact anyone concerned with business growth should be aware. Not only analytics has become A buzzword today but it has become a game changing, data driven phenomenon in almost all aspects of life. Due to the nature of today’s data-driven economy analytics has been able to change everything, including a wide range of fields like business, sports, healthcare and government. With the phase that the world is moving forward today, it is hard to imagine any aspect of life in the modern world that won’t be affected by analytics

Job opportunities

The demand for qualified analytics professionals is ever increasing in today’s job market. According to Dr. Kenneth Gilbert, head of University of Tennessee’s Statistics, Operations and Management Science department,”Business analytics is determining the winners and losers in most industries. Business giants like “Ford” cites analytics as playing a major role in its turnaround. Many companies such as Amazon, Google and Capital One have built their entire business models around analytics. Companies that see this are looking for the talent needed to integrate business analytics into their business strategy”.

What kind of knowledge should you have?

In order to be a competent and well sought after analytics professional you should have the ability to fully measure, monitor and optimize your Digital Marketing activities. You should have the knowledge to build online reporting structures for your business, and know about the range of specialist tools that are available to help you understand how to measure and monitor online traffic. You should also have an understanding of the rationale and business benefits of adopting a formal analytics program, and learn how to set up accounts, profiles and permissions to apply analytics tracking across your websites.

You should also know how to align business KPIs with your analytics goal configuration, and utilize the features of Google Analytics to develop a detailed profile of your target audience’s location, demographics, technology, devices, interests etc. Also the ability to learn how to assess the effectiveness of your website’s technical performance and download speed, and how to measure levels of user engagement and conversion by tracking activities such as downloads, video views, purchases and registrations etc is essential. Competency of creating and scheduling customized reports and in-depth knowledge in the real time & intelligence reporting capabilities of Google Analytics is also needed. You should also be aware of data protection and privacy issues associated with website analytics too.

Study Analytics at PACE Institute.

The digital marketing course introduced by PACE Institute in collaboration with the Digital Marketing Institute of Ireland consists of all the learning capabilities we discussed above. It will be a defining learning experience for you where updated knowledge in the field of analytics is taught.

Topics covered in the Analytics Module include:

• Goal Set-up
• Account Set-up
• Audience
• Analytics Profiles
• Goal Configuration & Funnels
• Technology
• Advertising
• Adwords Campaigns
• Traffic Sources
• Dashboard
• Analytics Code
• Bounce Rate
• Site Speed
• Site Search
• Events
• Conversions
• eCommerce
• Reporting
• Real Time Reporting
• Intelligence Reporting
• Customized Reporting
• Laws & Guidelines